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Raunchy new ITV show based on real 18th century harlots reveals secrets from a pimp’s guide including a mum who sold her girl’s virginity several times… and one in five women were prostitutes

ITV drama Harlots will show the world of the debauched 18th Century sex trade

THEY were known as the Daughters of Venus, pimped out via a Yellow Pages-style guide listing their age, price and sexual perversions.

Now the story of the debauched — and sometimes brutal — world of the 18th Century sex trade is told in new ITV drama Harlots.

 A new ITV drama will reveal the 18th century sex trade
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A new ITV drama will reveal the 18th century sex tradeCredit: ITV Picture Desk
 Eloise as Lucy Wells
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Eloise as Lucy WellsCredit: ITV Picture Desk

Starring Samantha Morton, Lesley Manville and Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay, the series peers into a liberal Georgian age where up to one in five women was a prostitute and virginity could be sold for £100 — more than the average annual salary.

The directory of prostitutes, called Harris’s List Of Covent Garden Ladies, was a bestseller, shifting 250,000 copies in a city with a ­population of just one million.

 Harris’s List Of Covent Garden Ladies listed prostitutes and gave reviews
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Harris’s List Of Covent Garden Ladies listed prostitutes and gave reviews

Compiled by impoverished Irish writer Sam Derrick, the guide was named after Jack Harris, the self- proclaimed “Pimp-General” of England.

It listed everyone from “low-born errant drabs” to high-end courtesans, giving reviews and advice with a tongue-in-cheek tone.

 1 in 5 women were prostitutes
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1 in 5 women were prostitutesCredit: ITV Picture Desk
 Prostitutes worked the streets and bathhouses
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Prostitutes worked the streets and bathhousesCredit: ITV Picture Desk

At the time, Harris’s income was said to be comparable to the first Lord of the Treasury.

Social historian and author of The Covent Garden Ladies, Hallie ­Rubenhold, explained: “Derrick, a down-and-out Irish writer who loved women and brothels, needed to make some money to get himself out of debt, so he borrowed the idea of the ‘pimp’s ledger’, which traditionally all pimps carried, and turned it into a literary annual guidebook.”

 Hallie Rubenhold, social historian, explains more behind the sex industry of the 18th century
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Hallie Rubenhold, social historian, explains more behind the sex industry of the 18th century

With few opportunities for employment elsewhere, prostitutes worked the streets and bathhouses while those lucky enough to be “in keeping” would be put up in their own posh apartments and given luxuries ­including horse-drawn carriages and their own staff of liveried servants.

 Virginity could be sold for more than the average annual salary
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Virginity could be sold for more than the average annual salaryCredit: ITV Picture Desk
 Men could refer to a directory of prostitutes
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Men could refer to a directory of prostitutesCredit: ITV Picture Desk

Hallie — who also wrote The ­Scandalous Lady W, which was made into a BBC2 drama starring Natalie Dormer — said: “In order to ­demonstrate his financial prowess, fashion demanded that a gentleman of influence keep a mistress as lavish in her spending habits as he.

“Kept mistresses were given free rein with shopkeepers and dressmakers, at the gambling tables, taverns and theatres, placing all expenses on their lovers’ generous credit accounts.”

Many aspired to be courtesans.

 Many women aspired to be courtesans
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Many women aspired to be courtesansCredit: ITV Picture Desk
 Middle-class housewives sometimes sold sex for fun
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Middle-class housewives sometimes sold sex for funCredit: ITV Picture Desk

When Elizabeth Ward gave birth to an illegitimate child, she opened a luxurious brothel with the last of her departed lover’s cash and spent the next 14 years cultivating her daughter Charlotte’s charms in the hopes that she would become a courtesan.

When Charlotte came of age, Elizabeth set about selling her daughter’s virginity.

Hallie said: “No sexual experience was more coveted in the 18th Century than intercourse with a virgin.

“It was not simply the erotic pleasure of introducing an innocent to the sin of fornication that commanded these fees but the guarantee of a truly safe sexual encounter.”

Charlotte’s mum certainly did well out of it. Her daughter was passed off as a virgin several times.
The girl went on to become ­Charlotte Hayes, a celebrated ­courtesan who owned a string of brothels around St James’s.

 Harlots is set in 1763
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Harlots is set in 1763Credit: ITV Picture Desk

She was first kept by Edward Strode, who used his fortune and wife Lucy’s inheritance to fund Charlotte’s lifestyle. When Lucy refused, Strode beat her until she relented. Later, Charlotte was kept by wealthy lothario Robert “Beau” Tracy before starting a romance with Harris’ List author Derrick.

The guide, which also features many risqué rhymes owing to ­Derrick’s ambitions as a poet, is split into sections including The Full ­Figured, The Unusual, Ladies Of Experience and — to be avoided — the Poxed.
A section on busty women ­recommended a Miss Brown of 14 Old Compton Street, Soho. Her billing read: “This bit of luscious stuff is not above nineteen. She is remarkably full breasted for her age.

“It is said that a certain gentleman was so enamoured with her pouting orbs that he compared them to two poached eggs in fine preservation that he desired to cover them with two bank notes of twenty pounds each whenever he regaled himself with such a luxuriant banquet.”

 Women were listed in terms of their ­services
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Women were listed in terms of their ­servicesCredit: ITV Picture Desk

Women were also listed in terms of their ­services. Under the heading Oral Sex, Miss Moble of No10 Plow Court was said to have “the most consummate skill in reviving the dead” while her tongue was praised for having a “double charm” as “the tip of it, properly applied, can talk eloquently to the heart”.

Men were both tempted and repulsed by Mrs Forbes, of Yeoman’s Row in Knightsbridge, who was “very much pitted with the pox” but on the plus side, depending on your view, “has played with her own sex in bed (where she is as ­lascivious as a goat)”.

Prostitution helped many poor women live lives of luxury. Fanny Murray was another desirable courtesan and her lovers included the Earl of Sandwich, the Baronet of Clapham and Princess Diana’s ancestor, the Honourable John Spencer. She is thought to have inspired 18th Century writer John Cleland’s character Fanny Hill from controversial erotic novel Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure.

Fanny’s celebrity soared when she humiliated Sir Richard Atkins, the Baronet of Clapham, after he offered to pay her £20 (around £2,400 today) for her services. By way of declining, she put the note between two slices of bread and ate it.

 The new series won't shy away from the violence women often experienced
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The new series won't shy away from the violence women often experiencedCredit: ITV Picture Desk

According to Barbara White, author of Queen Of The Courtesans: Fanny Murray, the story spread quickly. So when Kitty Fredericks, the mistress of William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensbury, asked for more money, he threw £100 at her and warned her not to “pretend she could make a breakfast of it”.

Another courtesan, Kitty Fisher, became a celebrity when she fell off her horse and the papers mocked her for being a fallen woman.

However, she had the last laugh when the publicity led to her being painted by celebrated artists Joshua Reynolds and Nathaniel Hone. Her picture now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

Even King George III’s brother, the Duke of York, featured in Harris’ List in 1794, when a sexual encounter was used to endorse a prostitute.

 The legal age of consent was then just 12
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The legal age of consent was then just 12Credit: ITV Picture Desk

It read: “He gazed on her a while with eyes of transport and fondness, and gave her a world of kisses; at the close of which, in a pretended struggle, she contrived matters so artfully, that the bed-cloaths having fallen off, her naked beauties lay exposed at full length.”

While some prostitutes became courtesans, many were not so lucky and suffered violence and illness.

Thousands of children were also involved, as the legal age of consent was then just 12. Others fell victim to their wealthy customers. Ann Bell’s lover raped her and slashed her with a penknife before dumping her in a Covent Garden bathhouse.

Harlots, which is set in 1763 and also stars Fortitude’s Eloise Smyth, will not shy away from such violence.

 Prostitution helped many poor women live lives of luxury
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Prostitution helped many poor women live lives of luxuryCredit: ITV Picture Desk

Samantha Morton, who plays madam Margaret Wells, said the series is “about women, the heartbreak, the cruel reality that is being a woman, the choices we are forced to make and why”.

But prostitution was not always a full-time career. Middle-class housewives sometimes sold sex purely to escape their dull home lives.

As Lesley Manville, who stars as brothel owner Lydia Quigley, put it: “It was not so much for the money but just to have a bit of fun.”

Harlots starts at 10pm on ITV Encore on March 27

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