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

by Rubenhold, Hallie

  In spite of the difficult state of affairs, it was not wholly impossible for a prisoner in a spunging house to make good on their debts, although this would have required exceptional luck, wealthy friends or a healthy dose of ingenuity. Derrick, in this case, had ingenuity on his side. In the confines of Bailiff Ferguson’s spunging house he was left to simmer in his own thoughts and contemplate a possible remedy. His mood would have been a black one indeed. To Derrick it must have seemed that he had tried his hand at everything and failed. As an actor he was abysmal. No one was interested in the plays he had written. He had not received the reception he had anticipated as a poet. He had no major literary works of which to speak. He had no income, no home, no mistress and no inheritance. The only thing he did have was friends in Covent Garden.

  By 1757 there were virtually no faces to be found in the Piazza that Derrick didn’t recognise. He knew every actor, every bully, buck and bunter in circulation. Years of wearing down the benches at the Shakespear, the Bedford Coffee House, the Rose and the Piazza Coffee House meant that he was never short of a drink or of somebody with whom to converse. As an inveterate subscription-hunter, he excelled at ingratiating himself and making introductions. James Boswell was to learn that no one knew better than Sam Derrick the needs of the wealthy wastrel and the wandering wanton, and what both were likely to be seeking on a night’s excursion. He had personally inaugurated Boswell in the ‘sportive’ delights of the capital. Johnson’s biographer was duly impressed and later, with hindsight, thoroughly disgusted at the breadth of his associate’s knowledge. He chose his epithets carefully when referring to his former host, calling him ‘a little blackguard pimping dog’. It was a term that acknowledged, much to Sam’s discomfort, the fine line that existed between himself and those seasoned professionals of the Piazza.

  Rather than turning his hand to professional pimping, a vocation which Derrick would have deemed far beneath his calling, he deployed his knowledge of local characters in another direction. In 1751 a small, witty volume called The Memoirs of the Bedford Coffee House, written by someone who referred to himself simply as ‘A. Genius’, appeared in print. Whoever A. Genius was, he was a man who had passed a good deal of time taking in the melodrama of Covent Garden’s most renowned drinking spot. What the author perceived around him – actors drawing blood in drunken brawls, jilted mistresses bursting into tears, and practical jokes being played on the unsuspecting – he gathered together in a collection of amusing tableaux. In order to protect vulnerable reputations, the names featured on the Memoirs’ pages were disguised, but any of the regulars to the Garden would have easily recognised the antics and true identities of characters like Errato, the poet, and Mopsy, the inveterate womaniser. Packed with tittle-tattle and retellings of drunken revels, the stories would have raised a storm of hilarity among those who were able to identify their exploits in print. The book proved amusing enough to warrant a second edition, shortly before the appearance of another work intended as its companion piece, The Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head.

  It is quite likely that Derrick, who was responsible for the creation of The Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head, was also the enigmatic A. Genius. The vantage point he enjoyed as a permanent fixture in both establishments would have provided him with ample opportunity to document the whirl of activity. Sam may have viewed himself primarily as a poet but in many respects, his true flair lay in journalism. Like the hack writer Ned Ward a generation earlier, he was especially accomplished at describing the eccentric mix of characters that inhabited his patch of London. Writing the Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head proved to be an easy feat for someone so accustomed to soaking in the scenery of his favourite tavern. He certainly didn’t have to travel far for inspiration. Comfortably ensconced by the fire, he set his eyes and ears to the task of information-gathering.

  Not unlike the Memoirs of the Bedford Coffee House, the Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head recounts similar tales of its patrons’ amorous conquests and general bad behaviour. On the whole, the characters that colour its narrative are of the same basic stock as before, except for one, whose presence on an average evening might have otherwise gone unmentioned. ‘Jack, a waiter … who presides over the Venereal Pleasures of this Dome’ features prominently in Derrick’s account of the Shakespear. As he had sat in his corner during the early months of 1755 and observed Harris conduct the movements of Packington Tomkins’s establishment with the ease of a master of ceremonies, the pimp’s organisational skills left a strong impression on him. Sam’s picture of the Shakespear is one dominated by Harris’s activities. Whether or not Jack Harris had been aware of it, Derrick had been studying the pimp’s science intently, listening in on transactions as they occurred in private booths or around the tavern hearth. The result, that which appears in The Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head, reads like a tour through ‘good pimping practice’. In the course of his work, the reader follows Harris as he moves from table to table, assisting women into the company of men, enrolling recruits onto his list, promising variety and smoothing ruffled feathers. Derrick records the discussion surrounding the ‘re-branding’ of one of Jack’s listees, and his decision to bestow her with a more alluring appellation. Additionally he shares with his readers the intricacies involved in palming off one man’s spent mistress onto a waiting patron, much to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. Far from casting an unwelcome light on Harris’s secrets, much of Derrick’s account pokes fun at the punters while demonstrating a quiet reverence for the pimp’s abilities.

  Although Harris and Derrick would have maintained at least a passing acquaintance in the years before 1755, it is quite probable that the idea to publish Jack Harris’s compendium of names had its genesis at about the time Derrick was documenting the happenings at the Shakespear’s Head. Whose idea precisely it was to lay the work in print will never be known. Either the entrepreneurial Harris may have planted the seed in the author’s mind or Sam, after spying the ordered entries of the pimp’s personal catalogue, became fascinated by its contents. From behind the bars of the spunging house the pimp’s list, this rambling handbook, the product of Harris’s hand with its many pages of detailed descriptions, came to occupy Sam’s thoughts. In his mind, it was a ledger that bristled with gold. Although Derrick himself would never renounce his calling or social aspirations to lead the life of a professional panderer, the temptation to cash in on the knowledge he possessed, the same information he shared with Harris, was too great in his time of need to be ignored. In taking such a step, Sam was entering Jack Harris’s playing field, and in doing so, he would become everything of which Boswell accused him.

  Even if Harris’s handwritten list was unavailable for consultation, Sam could have easily scribbled out his own prototype drawn from his extensive experience with Covent Garden’s ladies of pleasure. It would have been as simple as jotting down the names and descriptions of his neighbours, his drinking companions, his friends and his lovers. While Harris’s personal inventory would have formed the inspiration for Derrick’s work, it was his plan to make the published version of the pimp’s list more literary. Here was an opportunity for Sam to flex his poetic muscle. He would add embellishment to what was, in its original form, not much more than a ‘little black book’ of names, addresses and brief descriptions. A pimp’s list on its own would not necessarily have made titillating reading, but with the trained mind of a hack, Derrick would be able to spin straw into gold.

  His task would be to create a truthful yet colourful and witty romp of a work, not unlike the Memoirs of both the Shakespear’s Head and the Bedford Coffee House: a publication that delighted in chronicling the area’s characters and their scandals. Harris’s List, as reworked by Derrick, would have appealed to the same readers as his tavern and coffee house memoirs, vain men hoping to see some mention of their exploits or those of their mistresses and friends in print. Like the Memoirs, Derrick’s Harris’s List is filled with snippets of local knowledge, references to waiters,
to the area’s watering holes and to incidents that had unfolded on particular evenings. But unlike Sam’s earlier productions, Harris’s List offered more than a one-off laugh and the gratification of seeing a friend’s name emblazoned in ink. Its primary function was always to serve as a practical catalogue to the sexual goods on offer in Covent Garden. The beauty of the scheme was that now, rather than relying solely on a pimp to secure the wares, the customer could cut out the middleman and go straight to the supplier. Such a plan on its own, devised by an outsider to the trade, was bound to have incurred the wrath of the area’s waiters, had not Jack Harris, the undisputed ‘Pimp General of all England’ subscribed his name to the endeavour. As far as Sam was concerned, he was more than pleased for the pimp to receive top billing. Regardless of how lucrative or popular the publication might prove to be, this would be one literary undertaking with which Derrick would not wish to be publicly associated. Although he was content to receive dividends from his ghostwritten work, once he moved into a higher social sphere he would spend the final years of his life attempting to outrun its shadow.

  While the decision to use Harris’s name as a kind of brand recognition formed part of the bargain negotiated between the pimp and the poet, it would be impossible to know exactly what type of agreement was struck between them or how the published list’s profits were divided. Certainly, Harris would have been promised his share of the List’s profits, either by Derrick or by his publisher-bookseller, the mysterious H. Ranger. It is probable that this amounted to a one-off payment, as no one, and especially not Derrick, could have possibly predicted a thirty-eight-year print run for what looked on the surface to be yet another piece of Grub Street dross. Either way, Harris would not have done badly out of the arrangement. Regardless of how well the published version of his list performed in the public domain, his longstanding pimping practices remained the same. Harris would have continued to charge his women a fee to have their names inscribed on his personal handwritten list, and all the usual agreements concerning percentages and dues would have remained. However, greater publicity in turn spelled increased custom for the listed ladies, while a wider clientele equalled a better return for the procurer as well as the prostitute. In financial terms, both stood to benefit. Of the two groups, those who gained the most were the ladies who worked independently of either a bawd or pimp. Favourable exposure on the List would have broadened the range of patrons requesting a woman by name, a situation which might then allow the much-desired Thais some discretion in her choice of bedfellow.

  The true genius of Sam Derrick’s plan was that, for his version of the Harris’s List to prove useful to anyone, it had to remain current. If it were to take the form of an annual register, as Derrick may have originally proposed, it would require constant updating, thereby providing him with a reliable stream of work. An effective publication of this nature would have to keep in step with the frequent movements of the working girls of the Garden. The nature of the sex trade was one which lent itself to perpetual change and variety: a harlot who was deemed ‘sound in wind and limb’ one night could the next week find herself ‘down in a sal’. Additionally, any procurer or punter knew that women bounced in and out of exclusive keeping on a frequent basis and that the London-bound wagons replenished the capital’s stock of recruits almost daily. Recording every new addition to the legions of Venus, or confirming the location of an elusive veteran, was a difficult task to master at the best of times. For this reason, Derrick’s version of the panderer’s ‘little black book’ would never offer any real challenge to the supremacy of what remained in Harris’s pocket; the pimps who kept up-to-date inventories of their wares would always maintain the upper hand. But in order for the printed Harris’s List to offer some credibility, it would have to be an ongoing project, requiring Derrick as the editor to revise and research names, addresses and stories on a regular basis.

  Although Sam may have borrowed a few choice bits of information from Harris’s compilation, by and large the names listed in his publication were collected from a variety of sources. Derrick’s 1761 version, the earliest extant edition of the List, makes it clear that the ladies featured were not only those with whom he had a personal acquaintance but ‘… the personages whose intrigues were most universally spoken of, and whose celebrated names were in almost everybody’s mouth’. Unlike later issues of the Harris’s List, published long after Derrick was in his grave, the early versions are earnest in their desire to create a truthful picture of the women concerned. Derrick strenuously insists that ‘the present work cannot be looked upon in light of romance or novel, merely to draw the attention of the idly curious … for we can assert that the facts herein contained have been most authentically proved to us’, and reminds the reader that his circumspect quest for the truth ‘has cost no small trouble and enquiry’.

  While mentally matching faces with their associated scandals and sexual skills may have helped to pass the time inside the spunging house, repeating the task later when he was at liberty would become an altogether different venture. For support in his enterprise, Sam deferred to the input of his Covent Garden comrades, and turned the act of compiling the Harris’s List into a community undertaking. Derrick appealed to the eyes and ears of the Garden’s patrons as well as to the ladies themselves for his information, encouraging them to ‘… send us the anecdotes of their private engagements and places of abode’. In this manner he (or ‘we’, as Derrick writes from behind the mask of Jack Harris) could be everywhere, seeing everything and keeping himself fully abreast of the area’s happenings. Like the editor of Playboy magazine’s letters page, Sam also sought his readers’ stories to flesh out existing descriptions or to remind him of an omitted name or clarify confusion. In the 1761 edition he thanked his ‘correspondent at the Cardigan Head, Charing Cross’ for informing him ‘of another Irish girl, bearing the same name [Polly Gay], who has lately appeared in his precincts, and who has not yet reached the Garden’.

  In order to avoid confusion and preserve authenticity, Derrick would also have maintained a system of notes, not entirely dissimilar to those kept by Harris. However, in spite of his record-keeping and the assistance of his readers and informants, following the every movement of listees was a complicated endeavour. Unlike the pimp, he was not in the business of preventing some of the more requested names from disappearing. Derrick candidly confessed that he was incapable of unearthing every punter’s lost harlot. Women like Poll Edmonds, he was forced to admit, ‘we know not where to trace … for she has left Long-Acre about a year ago’. Jack Harris’s job, it seemed, was more difficult than Sam had ever imagined.

  There were other problems inherent to his project. In authoring the Harris’s List, Derrick recognised that he was skirting the boundaries of complete social disgrace. The recent debacle regarding his living arrangements would appear minor if compared with the repercussions he was likely to suffer should some of his supporters catch wind of his activities. Among circles of polite society ladies and even some gentlemen, any mention of his project would be taboo. While Sam maintained his aspirations to succeed as an author of legitimate literature, he would have to preserve his anonymity as the List’s creator. Unfortunately, all those who knew the Garden would have known whose efforts lay behind the title. Sam had left his paw prints all over the publication. His unmistakable voice could be heard distinctly throughout the work, which was peppered with his unique brand of personal observations, witticisms and toilet humour. It is the informal and brusque sound of Georgian London, the inappropriate male chatter otherwise confined to the tavern back room and coffee house table.

  By 1757, when Derrick first touched his pen to paper in the process of committing his List to ink, Covent Garden had become his home in every sense of the word. He wrote confidently and from a position of complete familiarity with his surroundings, as one who knew each bagnio, brothel and quiet tavern corner, and who had paced every street and byway of the area. The short biographical entries he co
mposed said as much about the locality in which they were written as they did about the women they profiled. Based upon an amalgam of collected observations, he alternately bestows jeers and praises beneath each listee’s title. About ‘Mrs Hughes, in the Strand’, he writes with personal scorn: ‘This matron … keeps a house of entertainment, much frequented by the bloods and bucks, who gives the sign the title of the Cat, although in fact it looks more like a lion; but which of her good qualities bear any resemblance to that animal, I could never learn.’ He praises ‘Nancy Howard, near Spring-Gardens’, who he claims after meeting ‘appears at least ten years younger than she is in reality’, and always seems ‘chatty enough when she pleases’. He also takes the opportunity to wag a finger at acquaintances of his, like Miss Clarke, who he had observed ‘breaking the glasses at taverns and the windows of hackney chairs’, or Bet Davies, who not only could ‘damn a waiter with … grace’ but whom he had spied smashing bottles ‘with the air of a bully’. Such behaviour, he warns, ‘will never recommend’ these ladies ‘to OUR notice’. In taking such a tone, Derrick went beyond any service a pimp might perform by simply compiling a list of available names. Instead, he succeeded in creating an animated record of Covent Garden’s personalities, which appealed to a more literate class of patron.

  If Derrick’s intention was to secure his liberty through the creation of a printed pimp’s list, then his endeavours were an unmitigated triumph. Even before it arrived on the shelves, the Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies had earned him enough ‘by its sale to a certain book seller’ to absolve him from his debts. For the first time in his life, Sam’s pen had bought him something truly worthy of merit: his freedom. There was, however, a sting in the tail. In order for his career as an estimable poet to move forward, his identity as the List’s author would have to remain a very well kept secret.