In 1757, a down-and-out Irish poet, the head waiter at the Shakespear’s Head Tavern in Covent Garden, and a celebrated London courtesan became bound together by the publication of a little book: Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. This salacious work – detailing the names and ‘specialities’ of the capital’s sex-workers – became one of […]
Harlots: Episode One
The opening titles of Harlots pull no punches: It’s 1763, London is booming and one in five women make a living by selling sex. We’re plunged immediately into the vivid world of Margaret Wells’s brothel, as her working girls laugh and bicker over their entries in the latest edition of Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. […]