Background
Understanding the world of Eighteenth-Century London Harris's List describes
Understanding the world of Eighteenth-Century London Harris's List describes
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies was published against the backdrop of a rapidly changing London, a city experiencing dramatic population growth, shifting moral attitudes, and a booming print culture. The essays below explore the social, political, and cultural contexts that shaped both the publication and the lives of the women it described.
London's patchwork of jurisdictions (the City, Westminster, Southwark, and Middlesex) each with its own governance and policing.
Read MoreMagistrates, constables, and the Bow Street Runners: how the law addressed (or ignored) sex work in Georgian London.
Read MoreFrom 600,000 to over a million: London's explosive growth, migration patterns, and the diverse communities of the metropolis.
Read MoreWomen's limited employment options: domestic service, needlework, and the economics that drove many into sex work.
Read MoreThe culture of pleasure: theatres, taverns, bagnios, and the sex trade that flourished in Covent Garden and beyond.
Read MoreThe Georgian book trade, scandal sheets, and erotica: the publishing world that made Harris's List possible.
Read MoreMedical knowledge and quackery, venereal disease, and the hospitals that served (or failed) London's most vulnerable.
Read MoreMoral reform societies, the Magdalen Hospital, and the tension between libertine culture and evangelical zeal.
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