Green’s Dictionary of Slang

picked-hatch n.

1. a brothel, thus picked-hatch captain, a pimp.

1597		Middlesex Sessions charge 23 Nov. in Middlesex County Records I 234: At Pickthatche [...] for six months. Elizabeth Hollande kept a common brothel.
1607		E. Sharpham Cupid’s Whirligig III iii: Set some pickes vppon your hatch, and I pray professe to keepe a Baudy-house.
1612		N. Field Woman is a Weathercock I ii: Where I suspected you might lie all night; Scratch faces, like a wild-cat of Pick’d-hatch.
1619		H. Hutton Follie’s Anatomie 14: [He will go] to Pickthatch, Shore-ditch, or Turneball, in despite o’th’ watch; And there reposing on his mistrisse lap, Beg some fond favour.
1630		J. Taylor ‘Sir Gregory Nonsense’ in Works (1869) II 1: Yet by the Calculation of Pickt-hatch, / Milke must not be so deere as Muskadell.
1639		R. Davenport A New Tricke to Cheat the Divell I ii: Search all the Allyes, Spittle, or Pickt-hatch, Turnball, the Banke side, or the Minories, White Fryers, St. Peters Street, and Mutton Lane.
1647		Crete Wonders foretold by her crete Prophet of Wales in E. Ashbee Facsimile Reprints n.p.: [as written] Tat [that] there shall also tis present yesre be [be] many crete [great] fires in [...] pick-hatch, Turnbull-street, the Myneries, Coven-Garden, te Strand, Holborne, and poth [both] te Friers, and other such religious places, where Venus Nunnes are cloystered.
1651		T. Randolph Hey for Honesty V i: Venus may set up at Pickt-hatch or Bloomsbury.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Pickt hatch, to go to the manor of pickt hatch, a cant name for some part of the town noted for bawdy houses in Shakespeare’s time, and used by him in that sense.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1822		R. Nares Gloss. (1888) II 657: pict-hatch. A noted tavern or brothel in Turnmill, commonly called Turnbull steet, Cow-cross, Clerkenwell; a haunt of the worst part of both sexes.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1785].
1832		W. Toone Gloss. n.p.: Pickt hatch, this was a cant word, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, for a part of the town, supposed to be Turnmill Street, Clerkenwell, then noted for houses of ill fame... The term was derived from the hatch or half door, in houses of this description, being guarded with iron spikes, as the houses of sheriffs officers are at this time.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1604		Middleton Black Book line 103: Gilded nosed usurers, base metalled panders, To copper-captaines and Pickt-hatch commanders.
1607		T. Walkington Optic Glasse of Humors 45: These bee your pickhatch courtesan wits, that merit [...] after their decease to be carted in Charles waine.
1619		J. Sylvester (trans.) Tobacco Battered in Grosart Works III 599: Whorish Tire ... Borrow’d and brought from loose Venetians, Becomes Pickt-hatch, and Shoreditch Courtizans.
1656		Mennis & Smith et al. ‘On Luce Morgan a Common-Whore’ Wit and Drollery 19: Here lies black Luce, that Pick-hatch drab, Who had a word for every stab, Was lecherous as any Sparrow, Her Quiver ope to every Arrow.

In compounds

picked-hatch vestal (n.) (also pickthatch vestal) [ironic use of Vestal virgin]

a prostitute.

1610

Jonson Alchemist II i: The decayed Vestals of Pict-Hatch would thank you.

In phrases

go to the manor of picked hatch (v.) (also go to the manor of pickt hatch, go to picket hatch grane)

to visit a brothel.

c.1597		Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor II ii: To your manor of Pickt-hatch! go.
1785, 1788, 1796		see sense 1 above.
1811		see sense 1 above.
1823		see sense 1 above.