Long before the legend that is George McCoy began publishing his annual guide to the massage parlours of this green and pleasant land, Jack Harris, ‘Pimp-General-of-All-England’, was producing The Harris’s List Of Covent Garden Ladies. Between 1757 and 1795, this list, which detailed the names and specialities of London’s prostitutes, was required reading for any gentleman seeking illicit pleasure. In The Harlot’s Handbook, Halle Rubenhold has compiled some of the list’s finest — and strangest — entries.
Take Miss Godf—y of Upper Newmanstreet, who ‘will take brandy with anyone, or drink and swear, and though but little, will fight a good battle’ (and you thought the ladette was a modern invention). Or Miss Le— of Berwick Street, who is ‘constantly visited by amateurs of birch discipline’ and Miss Nunn of Compton Street, who is ‘a lewd piece of gigantic love (being six full feet high)’ and a renowned biter who is reported to have taken off part of a man’s tongue. Ouch!
Harris also warns against those women who are likely to dispense a dose of the clap or have less than perfect hygiene. Of Bet Ellis of Chandos Street, for instance, he says, ‘Neither her teeth nor her legs are good, and by being redhaired she emits an unsavoury effluvia’ — a theory my Titian companion Ms Allerhand may wish to take issue with! It’s all fascinating stuff and far more entertaining than the words ‘busty model’ scrawled on a card in a phone box.
Elizabeth Coldwell