In reviewing the 2009 book The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital, by Dan Cruickshank, The Economist (October 15, 2009) wrote that, “As many as one in five young women were prostitutes in 18th-century London. The Covent Garden that tourists frequent today was the centre of a vast sex trade strewn across hundreds of brothels and so-called coffee houses.”
Another oft-quoted figure of the number of prostitutes is that there were 50,000 in London, or about 10 percent of the total female population. This is based on a 1797 estimate made by Patrick Colquhoun in his Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis.
London was a City of Vice
There were few employment opportunities available to uneducated women in Georgian England. There was the drudgery of domestic service or the chance to make real money selling sex. For those who took up the oldest profession their trade was centred on the theatre district around Covent Garden, and it was the wealthy patrons of the theatre that sustained the activity.
Author Anita Davison has written about diversions available to gentlemen should the play they were watching prove boring: “Covent Garden theatres were built with ‘retiring rooms’ connected to the boxes in order for the entertainment of clients while they enjoyed an evening out at the theatre.”
William Hogarth depicted the debauched life of a young man who fell into the licentious life of Georgian London in his famous series of eight paintings, A Rake’s Progress produced between 1732 and 1733.
Lavinia Fenton was an Exception
It was possible, though unlikely, for an enterprising woman to rise from humble beginnings to high society. The Greenwich Phantom describes the life of one who did, Lavinia Fenton.
She started out as a child prostitute but soon used her charms to gain a place on the stage.
“Her big moment came with the still-performed…Beggar’s Opera by John Gay. No one was interested in any of the other poor sods in the show - all the notices raved about her portrayal of Polly Peachum and she became almost synonymous with the role.”
She caught the eye particularly of Charles Paulet. He doted on her and soon Lavinia moved in with him.
He was nothing if not a gentleman, because in 1751, as The Greenwich Phantom relates “He married her as soon as his wife died. They had three illegitimate children.” The marriage brought with it a title for Charles Paulet was also the Duke of Bolton; Lavinia Fenton had gone from street hooker to duchess in a couple of decades.
Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies
Each year at Christmas, Samuel Derrick published a directory of prostitutes called Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. Derrick borrowed the name for his publication from Jack Harris, a waiter who called himself “The Pimp General of All England.” The two had become acquainted while languishing in Newgate debtor’s prison.
Between 1757 and 1795, the guide to London’s underworld sold a quarter of a million copies. It contained descriptions of prostitutes, outlining their specialties, and what charges a gentleman might be expected to pay.
Historian Hallie Rubenhold wrote a book about the directory in 2005 entitled, The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris’s List.
Most Streetwalkers had Lives of Misery
But, for all the Lavinia Fenton’s of the time thousands of women involved in the business ended up, as most prostitutes do still, destitute and disease-ridden.
 |
