Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
Introduction to the Ex-Classics Edition
The
coarseness of the Georgian era in Britain contrasts with the strait-lacedness
of the Victorian era which followed it. Great poverty and suffering contrasted with
great wealth; drunkenness and debauchery were commonplace among all ranks of
society. In the engravings of Hogarth, Gillray and
Rowlandson we can see this clearly. There is one in particular – Morning
by Hogarth shows an early morning scene in Covent Garden. There is a brawl in a
coffee-house, the destitute homeless scavenging discarded vegetables, beggars,
respectable citizens on their way to church, and prostitutes with their
clients. Prostitution was very widespread and shamelessly practised in Georgian
London. The morality of the time allowed women no other status than virgin,
wife or whore. Once a girl had been "ruined" (often by rape) there
were very few other ways she could make a living than by selling her body, and
there were very many who stood to benefit by taking their cut of her earnings;
so much so that the entrapment of young girls was an important part of their
profession.
For the
clients, there was a very wide choice; from high-class girls in their own
houses to wretched street-walkers ready to perform in an alleyway for sixpence.
Turnover was high; drink, imprisonment and venereal diseases took a rapid toll.
Hogarth's Moll Hackabout was entrapped into
prostitution at seventeen and was dead of syphilis at twenty-four. Every year
there would be the arrival of new faces and the departure of old ones. There
was thus a gap in the market for a guidebook for the use of clients, and
Harris's List first appeared in 1756 and was published yearly until 1795, when
it was suppressed by the authorities. Pocket size, and costing half a crown, it
sold about 8,000 copies of each edition and at first listed upwards of a
hundred and fifty women at different levels and prices. Later editions tended
more towards the upper end of the market: price half a guinea and upwards.
