The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List

by Rubenhold, Hallie

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  In 1757, a down-and-out Irish poet, the head-waiter at Shakespear’s Head Tavern in Covent Garden, and a celebrated London courtesan became bound together by the publication of a little book: Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. This salacious publication detaling the names and ‘specialities’ of the capital’s prostitutes eventually became one of the eighteenth century’s most successful and scandalous literary works, selling 250,000 copies. During its heyday (1757-95) Harris’s List was the essential accessory for any serious gentleman of pleasure. Yet beyond its titillating passages lay a glimpse into the sex lives of those who lived and died by the List’s profits during the Georgian era.

  The Covent Garden Ladies tells the story of three unusual characters: Samuel Derrick, John Harrison (aka Jack Harris) and Charlotte Hayes, whose complicated and colourful lives were brought together by this publication. The true history of the book is a tragicomic opera motivated by poverty, passionate love, aspiration and shame. Its story plunges the reader down the dark alleys of eighteenth-century London’s underworld, a realm populated by tavern owners, pimps, punters, card sharks and of course, a colourful range of prostitutes and brothel-keepers.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary of Eighteenth-Century Terms

  1. The Curtain Rises

  2. The Legend of Jack Harris

  3. The Irish Poet

  4. The Birth of a Venus

  5. The Rise of Pimp General Jack

  6. Slave to Grub Street

  7. The Complexities of Love

  8. Inspiration

  9. An Introduction to Harris’s Ladies

  10. The List

  11. The Pimp Pays

  12. The Fleet and O’Kelly

  13. Harrison’s Return

  14. Santa Charlotta of King’s Place

  15. ‘The Little King of Bath’

  16. ‘Whore Raising, or Horse Racing; How to Brood a Mare or Make Sense of a Foal-ly’

  17. Full Circle

  18. The Respectable Mrs Kelly

  19. The Last Days of the List

  20. Ladies of the List

  Picture Section

  Appendix: A List of Covent Garden Lovers

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  List of Illustrations

  Index

  About the Author

  Extract from Mistress of My Fate

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The researching and writing of this work has been a fascinating voyage of discovery, not only for me but for a number of others involved. First and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to Jonathan Reeve at Tempus for his insight, his assistance and for his unwavering faith in this book. An expression of thanks is also due to Frances Wilson for taking the time to read the manuscript in its early incarnation.

  Similarly, the completion of my research would not have been possible without the contributions of several individuals. Elizabeth Denlinger’s generosity in sharing her unpublished research and engaging with me in lengthy ‘e-conversations’ about the Harris’s List has not gone unappreciated. Neither has the interest and assistance demonstrated by Susan Walker at the Lewis Walpole Library. Kieran Burns, Helen Roberts, Sarah Peacock, Paul Tankard, Robin Eagles, Matthew Symonds, James Mitchell, Declan Barriskill and Elen Curran have all been instrumental in helping to pull together the various strands of this history. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the staff at the British Library, the National Art Library, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Westminster City Archives, where the majority of my research was conducted.

  Finally, but certainly not least on my roll of honours, my husband, Frank deserves a special commendation for agreeing to share his home and his life with Jack Harris, Samuel Derrick and the O’Kelly family for two long years. Without his support and that of my parents it is unlikely that their stories would have been given the airing they deserve.

  GLOSSARY

  Abbess: the female keeper of a high-class brothel.

  Adventurer: a con man, usually well dressed and seemingly genteel.

  Aretino’s Postures: a popular series of engravings illustrating the sexual positions featured in Pietro Aretino’s 1534 work, Sonetti Lussuriosi.

  Bawd: a woman who procures prostitutes.

  Bawdy House: a brothel.

  Bagnio: a bath house, usually a location where sexual favours could be received.

  Bilk: to cheat one out of their pay.

  Black Legs: a gambler who bets on horse races and other outdoor sports. ‘Black legs’ refer to the tall black boots generally worn by such men.

  Blood: ‘a riotous and disorderly fellow’.

  Bow Street: the headquarters of the magistrate, John Fielding, and his flying squad, the ‘Bow Street runners’.

  Bridewell: the Clerkenwell-based prison for prostitutes.

  Buck: ‘a man of spirit’ or a debauchee.

  Bulk Monger: a homeless prostitute who lives and plies her trade from the benches below shop fronts.

  Bully: a man who acts as a protector to a prostitute, also the eighteenth-century equivalent of a bouncer.

  Bunter: a destitute prostitute.

  Cantharides: aphrodisiacs.

  Chariot: a phaeton or two-wheeled carriage (could also be a reference to a coach).

  Chair/Sedan Chair: a chair enclosed within a small cabin and carried on two poles by two bearers. Usually used for covering short distances.

  Clap: ‘a venereal taint’, usually gonorrhoea.

  Compter/Round House: a local lock-up or gaol.

  Cull/Cully: a prostitute’s customer.

  Cundum: a condom. In the eighteenth century these were generally made of animal intestine and fixed in place with a ribbon. Used as a prophylactic rather than a contraceptive device.

  Disorderly House: the legal term used to describe a brothel.

  The Fleet: London’s main debtor’s prison.

  Gin: a cheap, frequently adulterated alcoholic drink favoured by the London poor.

  High-keeping: the extravagant maintenance of a prostitute in expensive lodgings.

  ‘In keeping’: the state of being financially supported by one man as his mistress.

  Jellies/Jelly Houses: a gelatine dessert favoured by both high and low society. Jelly houses, which were a mid-eighteenth-century fad, were outlets that specifically sold moulded jellies. They tended to be patronised by prostitutes.

  The King’s Bench Prison: the Southwark-based prison generally used for holding debtors and those guilty of libel.

  The Lock Hospital: a hospital for the cure of venereal disorders. Founded in 1746.

  The Magdalen Hospital: a reformatory for repentant prostitutes.

  The Marshalsea: a Southwark-based prison mainly used to house debtors in the eighteenth century.

  Mercury: the primary ingredient in treatments for venereal disorders.

  Newgate: London’s chief prison, where its most dangerous felons were held.

  Night Constable: a parish constable on duty in the evenings.

  Night Watch: the lowest ranking law-enforcers. Notorious for their dishonesty and their susceptibility to bribes.

  Nunnery: a high-class brothel, usually based on or around King’s Place.

  Panderer: a slightly higher-ranking pimp who worked within doors.

  Pimp: a man who seeks ‘to bring in customers and to procure … wenches’.

  ‘Plead her bell
y’: when a woman claims she is pregnant in order to save herself from execution.

  Pox: syphilis

  Rake: ‘a lewd debauched man’. Other terms include ranger or roué.

  Register office: an employment office where jobs were advertised.

  Sal/Salivation/‘down in a sal’: someone in the midst of a mercury treatment for venereal disease. Among other symptoms, the ingestion of mercury brought on profuse salivation.

  Serail: a high class, French-style brothel.

  Sharper: a cheat, ‘one who lives by his wits’.

  Spunging House: a bailiff’s lock-up ‘to which persons arrested are taken till they find bail, or have spent all of their money’.

  Tyburn: the location where public hangings were conducted during the eighteenth century.

  1

  THE CURTAIN Rises

  ALTHOUGH YOU MAY not recognise it, you are standing in Covent Garden. It may look strange to you without its glass and steel market arches and its swirl of tourists. The buskers are gone, as are the rickshaw bicycles and shops peddling plastic gadgetry. What is left behind is the Piazza in puris naturalibus, in its mid-eighteenth-century state, complete with cobblestones, dust and open drains.

  It’s a colourful place, even by the first thrust of morning light. At this early hour, the market square is alive with London life. Fruit and vegetable sellers, carters, ballad singers, knife grinders and milkmaids circle one another in their daily dance of work. Under wide-brimmed straw bonnets, women with red elbows balance baskets of produce on their hips. Men in wool frock coats or leather aprons toil, with their tri-cornered hats pulled over their sleepy eyes. There are children running barefoot chasing dogs. There are old men hobbling on makeshift walking sticks as crooked as their backs. There are toothless, wrinkled women, who are much younger than they look. Many of those who have come to haggle, wrapped up against the dawn’s chill, belong to the metropolis’s army of domestic servants. They will scurry back to their employers’ homes with heavy baskets before their masters and mistresses have stirred from their beds.

  Of course, this visual carnival is not without its scents and sounds. The market, stacked high with fresh and rotting produce, emits a sweet stench of cabbage and apple. The wet pungency of horse droppings is equally unavoidable, as is the constant presence of yellowy coal smoke and the incense of burning wood. It is, however, the murky puddles that give off some of the more unexpected odours. In the absence of an operational sewage system, London droops under its own stink. The wealthy have become quite adept at fending off the sudden olfactory assaults of decomposition and human waste, hiding their noses against perfumed handkerchiefs and nosegays. The poor, on the other hand, have just learned to live with the unpleasantness. Those of the labouring classes discovered long ago that many of their hardships could be smothered through song, and it is their melodies that take to the Piazza’s air. Many of the tunes whistled or hummed come from those heard at the two local theatres. Music is one of the mainstays of an evening’s entertainment at the Covent Garden theatre, sitting at the eastern edge of the Piazza, and its rival, the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. This part of town has always been a spot for instruments and voices, day or night. When the stage lights are extinguished, the market provides a chorus of sound instead. Higglers cry their wares, their tones floating together discordantly. Between melodic solicitations to buy quinces and oranges, they flirt and banter, challenging one another boisterously. Above their declarations can be heard yet another type of music, the urban clatter of horses’ hooves, the squeak and bounce of wooden wheels, doors slamming, the roll of barrels, the cries of babies, the squeals and brays of animals. There are no silently ticking engines, no electricity or automation to do their work for them, only the grunts and sweat of men and beasts.

  Despite the pulsing activity of the market place, there is much more to Covent Garden than this hustle of morning commerce. Not everyone comes here to purchase fruit for their pies and puddings. As morning matures into afternoon and the vendors have sold the last of their wares, the Piazza’s more lucrative trade begins to stir from its slumber. The centre of the action shifts from the ring-fenced vegetable exchange at the square’s heart to the stone-faced buildings at its periphery.

  From our vantage point looking northwards, a number of the more infamous haunts are visible. In the most north-easterly corner, slightly obscured behind the arcaded walk, lies one of the set pieces of our story. Beneath a magnificent swinging signboard, featuring the face of England’s best-loved bard, is the entrance to a tavern known as the Shakespear’s Head. The sordid details of what transpired in its dim rooms I will leave for later. Next door, to the south of the Shakespear’s Head, is the Bedford Coffee House, a slightly more respectable establishment, although only just. Its distinguished dramatic and literary clientele bestow on it a certain fashionable cachet, which barely saves it from sharing its neighbour’s dubious stigma. On the opposite side of the Shakespear, to the north, are the elegant premises of the bawd, Mrs Jane Douglas. As the tavern drunks ensure that Mother Douglas’s girls never go patron-less, business thrives well into the early 1760s. After that time, any woman of Jane Douglas’s profession will be turning her sights towards the more fashionable parts of town, first Soho and then St James’s, Mayfair and Piccadilly. For the moment, however, Jane Douglas and her sister Covent Garden procuresses are doing quite well, nestled in this nook of sin. The keepers of Haddock’s Bagnio, on the Piazza, just south of the corner of Russell Street, are also doing a booming trade. The aristocratic set finds the novelty of indulging in a Turkish bath, a meal and the company of a prostitute all under one roof quite pleasing. On any given night they can be seen bumbling between Haddock’s and the adjoining Bedford Arms Tavern (not to be confused with the Bedford Coffee House, or the Bedford Head Tavern on Maiden Lane). In fact, there is so much here in the way of carnal diversion that you might be forgiven for omitting to notice the parish church, St Paul’s Covent Garden, in all of its austere beauty, occupying the west side of the square. It has sat there, silently observing, for over a hundred years.

  Even under the censorious gaze of St Paul’s, the Piazza seems quite at home with abandonment. There are many more wanton establishments that hug the perimeter of the square. In fact all of the neighbouring streets are infested with brothels, rowdy taverns, noisy coffee houses and warrens of cheap accommodation for ‘working girls’. Bow Street, Drury Lane and Brydges Street, to the east of the square, are the most notorious. The Shakespear’s Head’s rival tavern, The Rose, is situated on the corner of Brydges Street (Catherine Street, as you know it) and Russell Street. This is a lewd and low place, where ‘posture girls’ writhe around naked on the tables. Here, glasses and tankards fly through the air, people lose eyes and have their noses broken. It’s not a very safe place, but then again, neither are the streets at night. Thoroughfare and alleyway alike are the haunts of foot pads and muggers. Even the cherubic-faced link-boys who offer to light you home with their lanterns frequently work with robbers. People in this part of London try to get what they can by any means. Gentlemen wise to ways of Covent Garden are certain to keep an eye on their watch and a hand on their purse when enjoying the services of one of its ‘ladies’.

  As baffling as it might seem, right at the heart of this village of sin, on Bow Street, sandwiched between a brothel and a tavern, are the headquarters of the area’s law enforcement. Justice John Fielding, ably assisted by his brother Henry before his death, is the magistrate here. A police force as we know it does not exist. The night watch is virtually useless and easily bribed. Nevertheless, Justice Fielding is committed to tackling crime and has employed a team of eight men to apprehend law-breakers. At the moment, they haven’t made much of a difference. It’s a villain’s paradise.

  Of course, those who first lived in Covent Garden would never have envisioned its future as being quite like this. In the 1630s the 4th Earl of Bedford had commissioned the architect Inigo Jones to lay out a genteel, Italian-s
tyle square. Initially, this was a place where the nobility had their London homes, but the neighbourhood took a turn for the worse when the Theatre Royal opened in 1663. The ever-immoral theatre and its companies of actors brought the rabble, and the rabble liked drinking and whoring, or so the story goes. However, it does not require more than a brief glance around the Piazza to confirm that the aristocracy are as much the devotees of debauchery as anyone else. Certainly, it was their money that helped fan the flames of its prosperity. By the time the produce market had pitched its stands in 1670, the purveyors of flesh had already set up shop.

  Just as morning is a time for marketing in Covent Garden, so night is the time when other wares are plied. In the evening, when the lamps are lit and the bowed tavern and coffee house windows glow dimly orange, the Piazza shows its painted face. There is laughter and shouting, pranks are played and punches thrown. Walls and floorboards shake to the motion of urgent coupling. There are children conceived, and fortunes lost at rounds of cards. Both men and women succumb to the enticements of gin, wine, beer and brandy. Some slide under tables, some are sick on their own clothes. Many have their pockets picked. The pursuit of pleasure is this society’s greatest leveller. It brings together the sons of dukes to drink with the daughters of tailors and penniless poets. Wealthy city merchants and military officers, lawyers, painters and common criminals interact freely with one another. In a Britain wholly governed by the divisions of class, what transpires here in Covent Garden is quite remarkable. Even those who witness it agree, as one anonymous scribe observed:

  Here buskin’d Beaus in rich lac’d Cloathes

  Like Lords and Squires do bluster;

  Bards, Quacks and Cits, Knaves, Fools and Wits

  An Odd surprising Cluster.

  This ‘Odd surprising Cluster’ is made more luminous by a sprinkling of eighteenth-century celebrities. At the Bedford Coffee House or at Charles Macklin’s Piazza Coffee House, David Garrick, the A-list actor of his day, along with Dr Samuel Johnson, the acclaimed lexicographer, might have been spotted deep in conversation. Samuel Foote would also have been seen, accompanied by a crowd of aspiring actresses and playwrights. Undoubtedly, Samuel Derrick would have been among this last group. There is more of his story to come. When he finished with Foote, he most likely moved on to Ned Shuter, who would have been sighted arm in arm with the dancer Nancy Dawson. With no long-lensed paparazzi angling for perfect shots, what an easy life such superstars must have enjoyed.