The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (29 page)

When Harrison joined the ranks of the Rose’s employees, it is likely that he had his sights on something grander than simply resuming, however cautiously, the pursuits of his former profession. In spite of falling foul of the law, he would not allow his ambition to be dampened; once he had tasted the spoils of his success, the comforts, celebrity and influence it had bought him, he was unlikely ever to be content leading a humble existence. His experience with Tomkins had taught him that the only sure way of building and maintaining an empire was to operate independently of a tavern-keeper or, better yet, to operate the tavern. As Harrison had always possessed a shrewd mind, it is unlikely that he had been committed to Newgate without managing to squirrel away at least a portion of his ill-gotten earnings. Upon his release, this sum formed the foundation for his revised aspirations. While living quietly under the roof of the Rose for four years, he practised his trade, drawing in the punters as he had for Packington
Tomkins
and amassing a nest egg in the process. Since Jack Harris’s arrest, it seemed that Tomkins was not keen to sail so close to the wind as he had before. He never replaced the infamous Harris with anyone else of his ilk. After all, the Pimp General of All England had been a unique feature of the Shakespear’s Head. Now, working under his true identity, Harrison had set up shop at the Rose and began to siphon off custom. The visible lights of the Shakespear’s Head reflecting in the Rose’s windows would have served as a constant reminder to the pimp of his ultimate aspiration. Then, in 1765, the opportunity for which he had been waiting presented itself.

Whatever arrangement Harrison had struck with Thomas Watson, it was his name that came to replace that of his employer’s as proprietor of the Rose. Now, presiding on a level equal to that of the hated Tomkins, Harrison could mount a campaign of empire-building, more carefully orchestrated and diverse than that constructed in his previous incarnation. The Rose and its location were ideal, allowing Harrison to transform himself into Brydges Street’s resident baron of sin, while blending unobtrusively into the surroundings. The street, with the imposing presence of the Theatre Royal mounted at its head and a passageway to the Strand at its feet, was a channel awash with constant traffic and strangers. It was a mixed neighbourhood of terraced houses split into cheap prostitutes’ lodgings and loud taverns, as well as respectable milliners, grocers and pawnbrokers. Due to its proximity to the Drury Lane theatre, it was also a favourite location for thespians. Its ratepayers at various times included David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, among lesser-known entertainers. On performance nights, the doors of the theatre swung out onto the street, depositing audiences into the path of waiting chairmen, painted whores and pickpockets. As a thoroughfare, it could also be a dangerous place frequented by pistol-wielding robbers, gangs of muggers and violent drunks. By 1787, Brydges Street had been identified as housing four of the ten most disorderly taverns west of the city. Not surprisingly, the Rose was listed among them.

Despite its infamous reputation, Harrison managed to keep the law from his tavern door. As only a pimp would, the new proprietor of the Rose understood the importance of enforcing discipline and the methods that best brought it about. Through the use of bribes and
threats
of violence, the watch never reported the activities of the Rose, and Harrison’s clientele were compliant in maintaining a conspiracy of silence. With the local authorities at an arm’s length, England’s former Pimp General was able to dig himself into the neighbourhood and restore his influence with surprising swiftness. By the second half of the 1760s, Harrison had established himself as a landlord and owned the leaseholds of a number of properties on Brydges Street. In addition to the Rose, he had possession of the house adjoining it, which he took as his own residence. At the same time, he was also the ratepayer for a handful of other premises on the street, which he held in either his own name, the name of John Harris or that of Nicholas Harrison, perhaps another alias or even a relation who may have been drafted in to assist in the running of what had become a family enterprise. It was under the roofs of these premises that Harrison discreetly out-housed his other interests: prostitution and, briefly, a printing press that set obscenity into typeface.

When Harrison agreed to lend his alias to Sam Derrick’s publication, he never could have foreseen the profitability of the endeavour. Hacks produced new pamphlets almost on a weekly basis, most of which sunk into unpurchased obscurity. There was no reason to believe that Derrick’s
Harris’s List
would prove any more lucrative or would extend beyond one edition. At the time, Harrison most likely would have been satisfied with an initial sum, whether this included a portion of the profits or simply a payment for the use of his name. Beyond this, Harrison in all probability would have been severed from any further involvement with the publication. His disappearance into prison shortly after its launch would have reinforced this separation. After 1757, whatever profits were cleared went to fill the purses of Sam Derrick and that of his publisher, H. Ranger. Several years on, it must have caused Harrison no end of frustration to bear testament to the
List
’s continuous appearance in print, a new edition making its way onto the booksellers’ stands at twelve-month intervals. More than any of his other circumstances, his inability to corner the proceeds of the publication that bore his name must have incensed him. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the market for lewd publications was a growing one and Harrison was determined to get his just piece of it. In an attempt to
recapture
a share of the market he believed lost to him, the keeper of the Rose Tavern purchased a printing press. Although a short-lived venture, between 1765 and the end of 1766, ‘J. Harrison near Covent Garden’ produced a number of provocative publications. Of the handful that survive, Edward Thompson’s
The Courtesan
was Harrison’s greatest triumph in print. The epic-style poem, which set the Garden’s gossip into rhyme, was updated and republished three times throughout 1765.
The Fruit-Shop
, published in 1766, documenting the lurid tales of history’s fornicators, also seems to have been a work unique to the press of J. Harrison. As was another less ingenious work,
Kitty’s Attalantis
.

Sam Derrick’s decision to arrange the pimp’s list into a format readable by the pleasure-seeking punter had required no great spark of creativity. Atlantises, as they were called, had been in existence since the end of the previous century and took on a variety of guises. Generally, they existed as compendiums of erotic stories detailing the activities of noted ladies of dubious morality. Frequently real names were concealed through titillatingly transparent pseudonyms, which were readily recognisable to those in the know. Derrick had followed the well-established tradition of formatting his atlantis as a guide book that offered practical advice on how to locate the women concerned.
Kitty’s Attalantis
was no different in concept, although in execution it was of a much poorer quality. Its layout looked very similar to that of its bestselling rival, containing the names of sixty-one women complete with alluring short biographies and addresses. Having already sold his name, nothing prevented Harrison from utilising the same formula that worked for Derrick. But
Kitty’s Attalantis
lacked the verve, the witty prose and agility of Derrick’s storytelling. Whoever authored the work for Harrison (under the suggestive pseudonym of Nancy Laycock) fell back on misogynistic cant, littering his pages with coarse language and references to the listees as ‘vile bitches’ and ‘blasted whores’.
Kitty’s Attalantis
could not hold a candle to the now well-established
Harris’s List
, and never saw more than one print run. Ironically, and undoubtedly to his great frustration, Harrison could not manage to match the success of his own name.

What exactly happened to the pimp’s publishing business after 1766 is a mystery. Any trace of it seems to have disappeared altogether by the following year. It is possible that Harrison may have decided to wind it
down
if it was not yielding the spectacular returns that he had anticipated. It could only have served an appendage to his more lucrative pursuits of managing a tavern, rustling up prostitutes for his patrons and extracting rents from his exploited tenants. It was these activities, and possibly other unknown and even more nefarious ones, that maintained his status on Brydges Street and perhaps beyond. At the centre of his rebuilt empire remained his citadel, the Rose. From his vantage point near the Shakespear’s Head, Harrison could keep a wary eye on Packington Tomkins, a man who in turn may have spent the remainder of his days living in fear of some unannounced reprisal from his embittered rival. Harrison’s other eye would have been fixed on Bow Street, which he would have studied for any sign of impending confrontation. He would never again be fool enough to believe himself wholly untouchable by Justice Fielding’s legions. Fortunately for the tavern-keeper, the magistrate seemed to display little interest in regulating Harrison’s schemes throughout the 1760s and 1770s. With few real threats to his primacy, and at the tail end of his middle age, the pimp would have welcomed the constancy of a reliable source of revenue. The Rose’s future promised to be secure as long as the Theatre Royal continued to spill revellers outside its doors, a circumstance that neither Packington Tomkins nor John Fielding could possibly alter. It was something, however, that David Garrick could.

14

Santa Charlotta
OF
KING’S PLACE

APPROXIMATELY SIX YEARS
after Charlotte and Dennis had purchased the leasehold of the terraced house on Great Marlborough Street, the couple were prepared to take on a far more high-profile residence. They settled on a site in a discreet passage that joined Pall Mall with King’s Street, known as King’s Place, a location that had by 1744 acquired a name for sexual intrigue. Situated directly next door to Almack’s, their new headquarters was as large as their ambitions. Described as being ‘a very elegant house’, by virtue of its very roominess it contained all the facilities Charlotte required to entertain her customers on the scale she had envisioned. A newly built townhouse of aristocratic proportions, it would have contained several sets of what were called ‘apartments’, or adjoining rooms, ideal for the purpose of turning a visitor’s intention of a quick tumble into a drawn-out evening’s event. Charlotte’s ladies and their customers wouldn’t be forced through lack of space to retire to the bed or the couch immediately, as would have been the case at some less well-equipped establishments. Just as in the lavish
sérails
of Paris, a visit to Charlotte’s abode might begin with friendly conversation and perhaps even musical entertainment in the drawing room or salon. Drinks could be taken and a
round
of cards played before everyone’s spirits were loose enough to proceed in private to the evening’s main event. The advantages of this arrangement were great: the following morning Charlotte would have the pleasure of presenting a bill not only for sexual services but for the time a gentleman caller spent in the precious company of one of her nymphs. He would receive a charge for drinks served, music played, for any food consumed, for a night’s lodgings under Charlotte’s roof (presumably when the bed occupied could have been used by another) and of course for his losses at cards. Through this clever scheme a customer could ratchet up a bill so high that it would require payment in banknotes rather than in coin. Many would opt for an account on credit, a request which Charlotte would have willingly obliged if the visitor was an established customer with a handsome enough fortune. According to William Hickey, it was possible to accrue a tab of ‘near one hundred pounds for suppers and wines’ in addition to sex, over the course of a handful of visits to Mrs Hayes’s brothel. At a time when £100 would have served as a satisfactory income for an established merchant, her house was a luxury that no tradesman or apprentice could afford. And Charlotte intended to keep it that way.

In addition to the facilities that her King’s Place residence offered, the greatest attraction that her
sérail
afforded was the women that Charlotte employed. According to the
Revels
, she ‘took care to have the choicest goods, as she called them, that could be had at market’. ‘In other words’, the author goes on to say, ‘her nuns were of the first class’. If she were to charge exorbitant fees it was imperative that her customers felt as if they were getting services worth the price. Recruitment into the ranks of Venus was one of Charlotte’s primary skills. As she traversed the streets of the west end, from her carriage or sedan chair, she searched the faces and figures of the girls who composed the mêlée of the streets: the flower sellers, the servants scurrying from house to house, the beggars, and those already initiated into the ways of prostitution. Like a modern-day talent scout, she looked not only for the indications of beauty but for the sparks of light that made a young woman pleasant company. Musical ability was also a bonus and Charlotte always kept an eye on the itinerant dancers and singers who moved between playhouses and pleasure gardens in hope of becoming famous. Within only a few years of
opening
the doors of her King’s Place nunnery, she had launched the careers of some of the era’s most successful courtesans. Clara Hayward, who was later to find her fame as an actress and as the mistress of the Duke of Kingston, was introduced into higher circles through Charlotte. Sam Foote, on a visit to King’s Place, was so charmed with her recitations from ‘The Fair Penitent’, that ‘she was immediately engaged at the Haymarket’ and later featured upon the stages of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The beautiful Harriet Powell, who later married the Earl of Seaforth, began her days as one of Madam Hayes’s recruits, as did ‘the
rage
of the town’ Betsy Coxe, who gained fame not only for her ‘fine contralto voice’ but through her association with a string of noble lovers, including the Earl of Alford and the Earl of Abergavenny. Betsy Coxe, whose original name had been Elizabeth Green, came to Charlotte as a charity case. An orphan who had been seduced at a young age, she was taken off the street by a Captain Coxe who deposited her at Charlotte’s doorstep. With some tutelage, Madam Hayes turned a downmarket guttersnipe into a heart-winning courtesan. She worked similar magic on one of William Hickey’s favourites, Emily Warren, whom she had spotted on ‘the streets of London when not quite twelve years of age, leading her father, a blind beggar about, soliciting charity from every person that passed’. According to Hickey, Charlotte was ‘struck by the uncommon beauty of the child’s countenance … and without difficulty soon got her into her clutches’.