The Covent Garden Ladies (44 page)

5
Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn
. During the eighteenth century, actors and actresses bore a shameful reputation for flouting the conventions of society. Backstage, men and women mixed freely in various states of undress (as pictured here), while the term ‘actress’ was considered synonymous with that of ‘whore’. The presence of children in this engraving alludes to the fact that actresses were noted for fostering broods of illegitimates by fellow performers and adoring patrons alike.

6
The Harlot’s Progress
, Plate 1. The entrapment of an innocent country girl by a scheming London bawd was a story retold countless times in the eighteenth century. William Hogarth made use of this urban fable in his moral tale,
The Harlot’s Progress
. Drawing upon recognisable London personalities in many of his works, here he depicts the well-known procuress Mother Needham luring the unsuspecting heroine of his series, Moll Hackabout, into a life of prostitution.

7 Mrs Lessingham in the character of Ophelia: ‘There’s rue for you’. Jane Lessingham appeared as Ophelia in a production of
Hamlet
at the Covent Garden theatre in 1772. The actress had a notorious reputation for casting off her lovers.

8 Frontispiece and title page from the
Harris’s List
, 1761. Over the course of its thirty-eight-year print run, the publishers of the
List
changed the work’s frontispiece at least three times. This title page bears the supposed signature of Jack Harris as a seal of authenticity. The handwriting is almost certainly that of Sam Derrick, to whose own signature this sample bears a striking resemblance.

9 Frontispiece from the
Harris’s List
, 1779, featuring a man soliciting the favours of a prostitute beside the colonnades of Covent Garden. The two very long objects in the man’s possession, his sword and his oversized walking stick, are particularly suggestive. His companion is coyly accepting payment from the small purse in his hand.

10 The
Harris’s List
, 1761. A page from the earliest existing copy.

11 Frontispiece and title page from the
Harris’s List
, 1793. By the 1790s, H. Ranger has decided to adorn the frontispiece to his publication with frolicking nymphs and garlands, bestowing the work with a slightly more dignified, classical appearance.

12 The owner of the 1761 copy of the
Harris’s List
had this image of a noted votary of Venus bound in the work beside mention of Miss Smith’s name. Miss Smith had been a beauty in her earlier years, the period when this engraving was most likely executed. However, by the time Sam Derrick mentions her in 1761 he claimed that she had ‘defaced her native charms’ through ‘too much use’.

13
Industry and Idleness
, ‘The Idle ’Prentice return’d from Sea & in a Garret with a common Prostitute.’ The life of streetwalking prostitutes differed enormously from that of those who worked in the more well-established brothels in Covent Garden, Soho and St James’s. Forced to live in slum conditions, many coupled soliciting with other criminal activities such as pickpocketing. Beside the young apprentice in this engraving by Hogarth, a prostitute examines her cache of pilfered watches and jewellery.

14
Before
and 15
After
. Alexander Pope’s statement that ‘every woman is at heart a rake’ was one to which many eighteenth-century men subscribed. Although a woman might protest at a sexual advance, it was believed that, in fact, ‘no’ meant ‘yes’. It was dependent upon the man to ‘force his point’, a situation which greatly blurred the line between rape and what was defined as ‘seduction’. As expressed in these engravings by Hogarth, once a woman’s sexual appetite had been whetted, irrespective of the circumstances, she was then thought to become insatiable in her desires.