page_title: Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
section_title: Possible authors
hierarchical_section_title: Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies / Description / Possible authors
caption_attribution_description: Engraving of Samuel Derrick, a poet, writer, and Master of the Ceremonies at Bath: this was based on a portrait by Vesprit and engraved by W. Hibbart. The image was first published on p. 177 of The Town and Country Magazine (April 1769) and was meant to illustrate Anecdotes of the Life of Samuel Derrick, Esq..[1]
context_page_description: Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually.
  Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the list's authors, who are never revealed.
  Samuel Derrick is the man normally credited for the design of Harris's List, possibly having been inspired by the activities of a Covent Garden pimp, Jack Harris. A Grub Street hack, Derrick may have written the lists from 1757 until his death in 1769; thereafter, the annual's authors are unknown. Throughout its print run it was published pseudonymously by H.
context_section_description: The identity of the lists' authors is uncertain.  Some editions may have been written by Samuel Derrick, a Grub Street hack born in 1724 in Dublin, who had moved to London to become an actor.  With little success there, he had turned instead to writing, publishing works including The dramatic censor; being remarks upon the conduct, characters, and catastrophe of our most celebrated plays (1752), A Voyage to the Moon (1753) (a translation of Cyrano de Bergerac's L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune), and The Battle of Lora (1762). Derrick, who lived with the actress Jane Lessingham, was an acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The latter viewed him as "but a poor writer", while Johnson admitted that "if Derrick's letters had been written by one of a more established name, they would have been thought very pretty letters."
  Hallie Rubenhold's 2005 book The Covent Garden Ladies sets out her interpretation of the story behind Harris's List.  She claims that John Harrison—otherwise known as Jack Harris, a savvy businessman and pimp who worked at the Shakespear's Head Tavern in Covent Garden—was the list's originator.  Born perhaps around 1720–1730, Harris apparently had expert knowledge of prostitutes working in Covent Garden and beyond, as well as access to rented rooms and premises for his clients' use.  He kept a record of the women he pimped and the properties he had access to, possibly in the form of a small ledger or notebook. Derrick, having previously authored The Memoirs of the Shakespear's Head, and possibly also its companion piece, The Memoirs of the Bedford Coffee House, was probably familiar with the Shakespear's Head.  The former book details "Jack, a waiter ... who presides over the Venereal Pleasures of this Dome", and its author likely studied Harris as he went about his business.  Which of the two men first thought to produce Harris's List is unknown, but probably for a one-off payment Harris allowed his name to be attached to it.  With his detailed knowledge of Covent Garden, and with help from various associates, Derrick was therefore able to write the first edition of Harris's List in 1757.  As an aspiring author and social climber he preferred not to associate himself publicly with such questionable material, and his name therefore does not appear on any editions.
  Printed and published by the pseudonymous H. Ranger, responsible for such works as Love Feasts; or the different methods of courtship in every country, throughout the known world, the proceeds from the hugely successful first edition enabled Derrick to repay his debts, thereby freeing himself from a spunging house. His fortunes changed for the better when he became master of ceremonies at Bath and Tunbridge Wells in 1763. His death on 28 March 1769 followed a protracted illness, but despite a significant income, he died penniless.  He left no official will, but on his deathbed he bequeathed the 1769 edition of Harris's List to Charlotte Hayes, his former friend and mistress, and a madam in her own right. Hayes died in 1813.
  As the self-declared "Pimp General of All England", the swaggering Harris amassed a considerable fortune, but his indiscretion proved to be his undoing.  Prompted by reformers, in April 1758 the authorities began to hunt down and close "houses of ill fame".  Covent Garden was not spared, and the Shakespear's Head Tavern was raided.  Harris was caught, locked up in the local compter, and then imprisoned in Newgate. He was released in 1761 and had some interests in publishing from 1765 to 1766, printing Edward Thompson's The Courtesan, and later The Fruit-Shop and Kitty's Atlantis, but he seems to have given this up late in 1766. He became the proprietor of the Rose Tavern, not far from the Shakespear's Head, but by the 1780s had delegated its running to an employee.  The Rose was demolished about 1790, and for a few years Harris ran another tavern, the Bedford Head, with his son and daughter-in-law.  He died sometime in 1792. The Shakespear's Head closed for business in 1804, and four years later the 
caption: Samuel Derrick
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:07:09 23:14:11", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8135", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "276", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "376"}