The Loose Ladies of London

Prostitution in London was more prevalent than probably at any other period of the city’s loose-living history. It has been calculated that in the 1760s one in five of all the women in the capital was in one way or another selling her body for sex. We are fortunate in having intimate details of the lives of a large number of individual ladies, from Charlotte Collins, a dairy-maid who attracted men by salaciously caressing the udders of her cows, to Miss Beecham, delighted to have escaped from her boarding-house to set up in business in London-street, where she charged three guineas (about £300 in 2015 value) for her time and attention. At the top end of the business, some of the most admired actresses on the stage started out as prostitutes, and the theatre remained the best place at which to find a really experienced and beautiful whore. What did they do, and where did they do it, and how much did they charge? Men’s tastes have changed, in all sorts of ways, since the 1700s, and this too is revealed in the extensive notes on the ‘loose ladies’ found in Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, which allows us an intimate look into what went on in the small rooms and extensive apartments of both the poor and the up-market women of the age. We know more about sex in the 18th century, in London, than in any other age before our own, and the lessons – for anyone interested in a properly organised sex industry – are fascinating.