The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (2 page)

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-style 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.

On an evening in the Piazza, it might also occur to you that the men outnumbered the women quite considerably. There are no genuine ladies to be found here, late at night. Even the ones that appear respectable, in their elegant hats and glimmering jewels, are merely the more successful members of ‘the fallen sisterhood’. Society has many names for these tainted women, who have sacrificed their prized virtue and the sanctity of their bodies in order to service the
men
of this nation. Among other epithets they are known as ‘women of the town’, ‘members of the Cyprian Corps’, ‘impures’, ‘strumpets’, ‘light girls’, ‘thaises’, ‘wantons’, ‘demi-reps’, ‘demi-mondaines’, ‘jades’, ‘hussies’, ‘tarts’, ‘votaries of Venus’, ‘nymphs’, ‘jezebels’, ‘doxies’, ‘molls’, ‘fallen women’, ‘trollopes’ and ‘harlots’. They have come from a variety of locations and backgrounds. Some, like Charlotte Hayes, a devotee of Venus who features prominently in this tale, were born into prostitution. Others are its recruits: orphans, seduced servants, poor seamstresses, trained milliners, hopeful actresses and rape victims. They come from London and all points beyond it, from the outlying counties and from Scotland and Ireland. Some have washed up on these shores from as far afield as the American colonies and the West Indies, as well as from France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. In this city of immigrants, they represent a cross section of races and ethnicities.

Contrary to popular belief, not all the ‘ladies’ who work in Covent Garden started their lives nuzzled at the breast of poverty. In the eighteenth century, one’s standard of living is a mutable thing. There are no guarantees for anyone. There are no state benefits or worker’s pensions, no unemployment or disability pay. If you lose your job, you don’t eat. If you want to eat, you work until you die. The concept of nationalised healthcare wasn’t even a twinkle in a moral reformer’s eye. This is an awkward age to be a Londoner: change is afoot in all respects, economically, socially and politically. Britain stands on the cusp of losing an old empire in America and gaining a new one in India. Raw materials are pouring into the country, while useful and interesting goods continue to decorate the shop fronts. New buildings, streets and squares seem to appear with each passing season. It feels as if opportunities to make money are everywhere, but do not be fooled. The newspapers, with their shameful lists of the bankrupt, tell another story. London is populated by speculators and debtors. Quite a number of middle-class families buckle under the weight of loan repayments. The pressure to own the latest household items is inescapable. Everyone wants to appear in the finest clothing and to have a home furnished with status symbols, but meeting the cost of the rent can be difficult and levels of personal debt are spiralling out of control. (Sound familiar?)

Being middle-class is a fairly new phenomenon, and these people are still a strangely amphibious group. Those at the top are often as wealthy as the aristocracy. Those towards the middle and at the bottom – the small shop-keepers, the master craftsmen, the apothecaries, publishers, schoolmasters and petty clergy – are more often than not struggling to hang on. It is this ‘precarious middle class’, and those families that bounce up and down the lower end of the social ladder, that have donated a number of their daughters to the metropolis’s more exclusive brothels. A lack of financial security means that a bad year of trade could bring ruin, as could a fire, a legal battle or an imprudent night at the gaming tables. As the debtor’s prison known as the Fleet beckons, the china, table linens, fine silks and furniture may have to go to the pawn shop. The family that have enjoyed the luxuries of their own house may now live in two rented rooms. From this plateau, the dip into criminality is only a wrong foot away. The following year, the unfortunate individuals may recover their fortunes, retrieve their goods and move back into their terraced house. Alternatively, they may slip further into the ranks of the poor.

In the eighteenth century, there is nothing worse than being poor. Unless you have had the opportunity of travelling to parts of Asia, Africa and South America, you with your soft modern sensibilities could not begin to imagine what the realities of this state entails. True poverty means constantly fending off disease as it feeds on the malnourishment of your body. It means continuous hunger and physical discomfort. It means horrific living conditions, sharing your bed not only with other unwashed humans but with rats, mice, lice, fleas and bedbugs. It means feeling the cold acutely through ragged clothing and not even owning a change of undergarments. In eighteenth-century London it means having no voice, no vote and virtually no legal protection or access to true justice. More than anything, it means being feared and reviled by those above you. You are disrespected, regarded as subhuman by some and ignored by others. You are likely to be a victim of violence and to numb your soul with large quantities of cheap gin. It is a degrading and miserable existence to which not everyone is willing to submit. Hard work may help raise you out of this sink, but most available jobs are not well paid. A life of crime is always a viable possibility. Prostitution helps quite a few women; some even scale the social heights by its profits.
Pickpocketing,
robbery, housebreaking, dealing in stolen goods, procuring women for lascivious men and forgery can also be quite profitable. As can cheating at cards. These may be your only hopes of survival in brutal London if you have the misfortune of being born into its lowest ranks.

The story of the
Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies
is the tale of these people. They are the ones who linger at the fringe of eighteenth-century society. Their footing on the social ladder is a perpetually unsure one and their acceptance into the ‘normal’ circles of the respectable population will never be sanctioned. John Harrison (a.k.a. Jack Harris), Samuel Derrick and Charlotte Hayes are our representatives of this realm. In this parable, fate has provided us with an interesting cross section of history’s minor players, or outcasts, if you like: the hardened criminal, the determined but impoverished poet, and the daughter of a bawd. In the telling of it we must remember that these personalities are as much the products of their era as are we. Their judgements and biases belong to a time less forgiving than our own. Do not make the mistake that moralists of their own age might be inclined to – that it is their badness that motivates them. This reeks of the simple-mindedness that sent petty pickpockets to the nooses at Tyburn. You have been provided with a glimpse into their world, the extreme difficulties, the cruelties, abuses and inequalities. In the heart of each of them beats an indomitable desire not to suffer these miseries, even if, paradoxically, it means bringing about the suffering of others. Be warned, this is not a tale where wrongdoers are punished and the exploited are vindicated. This has nothing to do with the gilded, safe and privileged Georgian era of Jane Austen. She and others like her are on the inside of society looking out, and their sight does not extend as far as these dark corners. There is no comfortable moral to be found within the lurid biographies of the
Harris’s Lists
, nor between the covers of this book. But history rarely provides a comfortable moral to a good yarn.