Georgian guide to London's sex workers acquired by Wellcome Collection
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Version 0 of 1. The modest little book must have sat so innocently on the shelf of some expensive library, possibly placed “between Debrett’s and a continental railway guide”, Richard Aspin muses. Aspin, head of research and scholarship at the vast library of the Wellcome Collection, has just acquired the book from a London dealer for “a low five-figure sum”, and is adding it to the special bindings section of the central London museum. Anyone who opens the beautiful crimson and gold leather cover is in for a surprise. Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies is a late 18th century guide to the pleasures of late Georgian London. The crosses and house numbers added to the margins in pencil suggest the book was really used, not just flicked through for vicarious pleasure in an armchair. The two crudely printed little booklets, which originally cost half a crown each, were clearly treasured: whoever owned them decades later had them bound at one of the most expensive book binders in Paris, Leon Gruel. Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was published in 1757, and updated annually for almost 30 years The historian Hallie Rubenhold believes at least 250,000 copies were sold over the decades. In flurries of euphemism, names disguised by splashes of asterisks, the guide offered a list of the sex workers of an area infamous for its brothels and bath houses, including the women’s addresses, the prices they charged, and any special services they offered. The Wellcome Collection will house the 1788 guide and a unique surviving 1787 copy in which one woman was described as an expert on the flute: “She has a variety of sweet notes and many pleasing airs, every shake and quaver she feels instinctively, and sometimes has played same tune over twice before her partner has gone through it once”. Miss B-nd of No 28, Frith Street is distinguished more by the elegancy of her dress than the beauty of her person The guide was such a bestseller that it sparked a cluster of imitations, which newspaper ads warned buyers to beware of. The Wellcome’s volumes are authenticated with a facsimile Harris signature on each title page. An attempt is made to present them as a blameless enterprise. “What was formerly seen in the eyes of our world a disgrace is now considered pleasing, delightful and honourable”, insisted the anonymous author – probably not Harris, a waiter at the Shakespeare’s Head with a reputation as a pimp, and certainly maintained over nearly 30 years by different writers. Some historians have suggested the works were fiction, read as pornography, but Aspin thinks not. “My feeling is that behind what may be entirely false and repeatedly changed names, these were real people at real addresses. But it may certainly be that many who would hesitate to spend two guineas on their company might be happy to curl up in an armchair with the guide for half a crown.” The text might have been more fun to read at home than tramping the streets looking for the enticingly described subjects. The reader was begged to “throw a friendly veil over all the unavoidable errors that may have happened in this work … for as their residence is changed as often as their names, it is almost impossible but some such mistakes just happen.” Occasionally there are glimpses of what must have been tragic past lives which brought the women to Covent Garden. “Miss B-nd of No 28, Frith Street … is a very genteel agreeable little girl, and is distinguished more by the elegancy of her dress than the beauty of her person, which might perhaps have been ranked in the list of tolerables, had not the small pox been quite so unkind”. Sadly, for conservation reasons, Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies will not be on display in the Wellcome Library and researchers wishing to see the physical volume will have to put in a special request. This is for conservation reasons, as the volume is in delicate condition. However the full book has been digitised on the Wellcome Library’s website, so anyone who wants to read on can do so for free. |