Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
Lead Research Organisation:
Brunel University London
Department Name: Arts and Humanities
Abstract
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes working in Georgian London. Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120-190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Most of the entries are complimentary about the women, but they are described entirely through the male gaze and in terms of their ability to give male pleasure. These were real women, although possibly not using their real names who made their living selling sex.
I have always been interested in eighteenth-century literature and social history, not least because the attitude towards sex and sexuality was markedly different. Sex was part of life and selling sex was commonplace, many working-class women turning to prostitution when seasonal work dried up, for example. Erotic literature and explicit engravings were freely available in Grub Street, and chastity was the preserve of the polite classes. Novels such as Defoe's Roxana and Moll Flanders and Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, were first-person narratives where prostitutes told their stories and evaded the moral consequences of a life of sin. Cleland's novel actually takes the form of a letter from Fanny to her daughter. The terrible fate of Hogarth's Moll Hackabout in The Harlot's Progress, who dies alone of syphilis in poverty was a more likely end for many prostitutes, and this project looks to uncover the fate, or at least tell the stories of the women in Harris's List.
The list has been mapped, but I would like to map the women mentioned and to see if they recur and move around the brothels. I'd also like to see if I can find mention of any of them in the public records, and understand more about their lives. From there, I'd like to write their stories, to give them life and expression beyond their entries in Harris's List.
The project would include a large element of social history, aimed at giving visibility and voice to a marginalised community of sex workers. It would also include local history of Covent Garden. The end result would be either a collection of short stories or a novel to be dictated by the material.
I have always been interested in eighteenth-century literature and social history, not least because the attitude towards sex and sexuality was markedly different. Sex was part of life and selling sex was commonplace, many working-class women turning to prostitution when seasonal work dried up, for example. Erotic literature and explicit engravings were freely available in Grub Street, and chastity was the preserve of the polite classes. Novels such as Defoe's Roxana and Moll Flanders and Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, were first-person narratives where prostitutes told their stories and evaded the moral consequences of a life of sin. Cleland's novel actually takes the form of a letter from Fanny to her daughter. The terrible fate of Hogarth's Moll Hackabout in The Harlot's Progress, who dies alone of syphilis in poverty was a more likely end for many prostitutes, and this project looks to uncover the fate, or at least tell the stories of the women in Harris's List.
The list has been mapped, but I would like to map the women mentioned and to see if they recur and move around the brothels. I'd also like to see if I can find mention of any of them in the public records, and understand more about their lives. From there, I'd like to write their stories, to give them life and expression beyond their entries in Harris's List.
The project would include a large element of social history, aimed at giving visibility and voice to a marginalised community of sex workers. It would also include local history of Covent Garden. The end result would be either a collection of short stories or a novel to be dictated by the material.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Emma Filtness (Primary Supervisor) | |
| EMMA MITCHELL (Student) |