The history behind Harlots: how a ‘Yellow Pages of Georgian prostitutes’ inspired the risqué drama

Think of Covent Garden, and – at least until the eerie silence of the Covid pandemic – tourists, pre-theatre dinner deals and high-street chains are the things that will spring to mind.

Rewind just over 200 years, though, and a different kind of entertainment was on offer in the area. Harlots, the ITV-Hulu now airing on BBC Two, stars Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay, and it tells the stories of Covent Garden’s sex workers in 1763.

The show’s characters are all based on the entries found in a book called Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. This was, in essence, the Yellow Pages of Georgian prostitutes. In a city of one million people, the salacious list shifted 250,000 copies. The volume, revised annually, contained everything you would want to know about the “working girls” of London: their names, address, physical description and so on, right down to their sexual specialities, family background and (of course) their price.

So, who was behind Harris’s list? According to historian Hallie Rubenhold, on whose research the series was partially based, it was a joint enterprise. The list takes its name from John Harrison, better known as “Jack Harris”, the self-styled “Pimp-General of All England”. Not only did Harris run the Shakespeare’s Head Tavern in Covent Garden, but he also kept a record of all the women whose services he sold – like many men of his trade.

The impoverished Irish poet Samuel Derrick was well-acquainted with the Shakespeare’s Head, having written The Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head (1755), in which he described “Jack, a waiter… who presides over the Venereal Pleasures of this Dome”.

Needless to say, Derrick also had an extensive knowledge of the ladies who frequented Covent Garden. In her 2005 book, The Covent Garden Ladies, Rubenhold suggested that Harris allowed Derrick to attach his name to the list for a one-off payment.

Derrick, an aspiring author and social climber, didn’t want his name attached to the salacious directory, but Harris’s List was a good opportunity for him to exercise his witty writing, as can be seen in plenty of the tongue-in-cheek entries. Miss Godfrey of Upper Newman Street, for instance, was said to “take brandy with anyone, or drink and swear, and though but little, will fight a good battle.

“We apprehend,” the List went on, “that this lady would be an extraordinary good companion for an officer in the Army, as she might save him the trouble of giving the word of command.”

The profits from the hugely successful first edition enabled Derrick to pay off his many debts, and get him out of the sponging house (a slightly more hospitable debtors’ prison). When he died in 1769, he bequeathed his share of the profits from the latest edition of Harris’s List to his mistress, Charlotte Hayes – a former prostitute and successful brothel madam herself.

Meanwhile, the swaggering Harris was becoming rich off the back of his new-found fame. Unfortunately, that fame didn’t escape the attention of the authorities, who were already under pressure from reformers to act against London’s booming sex trade. The Shakespeare’s Head was raided (one of many raids that inspired the opening episode of Harlots), and the “Pimp General” ended up languishing in Newgate for a spell.

In 18th-century London, working in the sex trade wasn’t uncommon. One in five women earned money by selling their body: some did it by choice, but many out of desperation. Long before the welfare state and equality laws, prostitution was one of the few ways a woman could earn a guaranteed living.

Most worked the streets and local bathhouses, but luckier women would end up in a brothel, and an even luckier few would end up “in keeping” – being the paid mistress of a wealthy man.

In a 2017 interview with The Sun, Rubenhold explained that any “gentleman of influence” had to keep his mistress in a lifestyle as lavish as his own in order to show his financial prowess. In practice, this meant that a kept mistress would frequented the high-society haunts, from gambling tables to theatres, while their lover picked up the bill.

Nor was it uncommon for girls to be born into the sex trade, as daughters of prostitutes would often follow their mothers. Charlotte Hayes’s mother was a brothel owner and spent 14 years cultivating her daughter’s charms to prepare her for life as a courtesan. Charlotte’s virginity was sold to the highest bidder – several times over. She grew up to be one of London’s most desirable “votaries of Venus”, juggling wealthy keepers and favourites on the side.

The love of her life, however, was an impoverished Irishman, Dennis O’Kelly. He started out as a sedan chairman offering sexual favours to wealthy women, before becoming a successful gambling man. Together, Hayes and O’Kelly opened up a chain of upscale brothels.

Harris’s List was highly popular, but historians now believe it was often purchased for entertainment, rather than as a genuine “shopping catalogue” of working girls. Notably, it was unstinting about those women who were suffering venereal disease. The List didn’t discriminate, detailing every sex worker and their body’s condition, from “low-born errant drabs” to refined courtesans.

For example, there was poor Mrs Forbes of Yeoman’s Row, who was “very much pitted with the pox… but has played with her own sex in bed (where she is as lascivious as a goat)”. Elsewhere, at No 10 Plow Court, Miss Moble “has the most consummate skill in reviving the dead… the tip of her tongue can talk eloquently to the heart”.

Some of the more unusual entries in Harris’s List include Miss L-k-ns and her clients, who enjoyed having their eyes licked. Meanwhile, Nancy Burroughs’s entry proves that dominatrices are nothing new: she used “more birch rods in a week than Westminster School in a twelve-month”.

Even George III’s brother, the Duke of York, made a guest appearance in the 1794 edition of the list, when one prostitute’s royal encounter was used as an endorsement of her skills.

In the weeks before Harlots first aired in 2017, however, historians were up in arms. It came in the wake of a furore over the historical accuracy of the BBC series Versailles, but here the debate was very different.

Harlots was initially hailed as a bastion of “girl power”, based on original research, made by a predominantly female production team and cast. This declaration was met online with some derision, while Rubenhold, who hadn’t been credited, pointed out the surprising number of parallels between her own historical work and this groundbreaking new show.

Outside academic circles, it transpired, few had heard of Harris’s List before Rubenhold wrote her 2005 book. There had been a handful of articles previously, but Rubenhold’s was the first book-length study of the List, and the only one to date. She followed it with an edited version of the List itself, retitled The Harlot’s Handbook: Harris’s List, which brought it to a 21st-century audience.

And yet, despite being the authoritative work on the subject, The Covent Garden Ladies wasn’t optioned or credited by the team behind Harlots. They insisted that they had conducted thorough research – but that they’d never used Rubenhold’s books.

No one has a monopoly on the past, but the dispute raised questions, and strong debate, about to what extent historical research should become intellectual property. Non-fiction research, being a matter of historical fact, has long proved tricky to protect through copyright laws.

Rubenhold protested on her blog that it took two years of laborious archive work to piece together the story behind Harris’s List – as well as the lives of some of the women who appear in it. It was only at length that the Harlots team relented, admitted that the drama was inspired by Rubenhold’s book, and credited her. Justice, for one modern woman at least, was done.

Harlots airs on BBC Two at 9pm and 9.50pm tonight