The dress Anna Lee is wearing as she mounts her horse is the one Vivien Leigh made from the curtains in Autant en emporte le vent (1939).
Pompey the boy, is playing 'conkers', a child's game with chestnuts on strings, in the waiting room.
In one of the street scenes, a flower seller is heard calling. "Lavender, sweet blooming lavender/ Six bunches a penny today/ Lavender, sweet blooming lavender/ Ladies buy it while you may." This is an old street cry from London.
The film was inspired by A Rake's Progress, a series of eight prints by 18th-century English artist, William Hogarth, who was given a writing credit.
The comment Sims makes to Nell about the inmates, "Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies, these have oft from strangers' side snatched rapiers suddenly and done much harm", is a quote from the play, 'The Honest Whore' by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton