From Hogarth's "Rake's Progress" series. This panel features one of the "private rooms" at the Rose Tavern.

You are now entering the narrow lanes around Covent Garden, most notorious for its large concentration of bawdy houses and streetwalkers. It is along these alleyways that figures like Macheath, Peachum, Jemmy Twitcher, and Crook-fingered Jack would have be roamed in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. Here, a vast variety of taverns, bagnios (public baths often used for disorderly purposes), and houses of ill-repute are frequented by noblemen and low-class persons alike. Indeed, the location facilitates these activities well. The active nightlife of this district, generated most particularly by the nearby Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters, provides ample customers for the lewd women and allows such “irregular taverns” and brothels to remain open beyond the conventional shutting-up time of eleven o’clock.1

From Hogarth's "Harlot's Progress:" a young maiden being lured into prostitution by the keeper of a London brothel.

By day, Covent Garden is London’s most important vegetable and flower market, but its nightly uses are well known. Indeed, the corruption of Covent Garden is alluded to in Gay’s comic romp through the London underworld, The Beggar’s Opera. Polly sings:

Virgins are like the fair flower in its luster,
Which in the garden enamels the ground…
But, when once plucked, ‘tis no longer alluring,
To Covent Garden ‘tis sent (as yet sweet),
There fades, and shrinks, and grows past all enduring,
Rots, stinks, and dies, and is trod under feet.2

The methods of obtaining a woman for fleshly purposes are numerous. While many prostitutes can be found walking the streets during the evenings, a large number patronize the local pubs and theaters in search of customers. In fact, the managers of the Drury Lane theater (among others) are often chastised by the press for allowing loose women to solicit in the vestibules and auditoria.3 From such meeting-places, there are many places to which a couple may retire for the purposes of satisfying their lust. A number of lodging houses and taverns reserve private rooms expressly for this purpose. The Rose Tavern in Drury Lane, portrayed in Hogarth’s “Rake’s Progress,” was one such site (see also Mr. Boswell’s allusion to a room in the Shakespeare’s Head Tavern, below).

Among the most famous illicit taverns of this region was that of Tom King. His Coffee-house, featured in Hogarth’s “Morning” (1738), served a diverse assortment of customers. It is said that “Noblemen and first beaux” visited the place “after Court in full dress, with swords and bags, and in rich brocaded coats and walked and conversed with persons of every description”.4 After King’s death, his widow, known as Moll King carried on the business for an additional two years before being arrested on charges of “keeping a disorderly house”.5 In the 1730’s, Elizabeth (“Betty”) Careless kept a well-known bagnio on the south-east side of Covent Garden. According to the rate books, Betty Careless’s premises were utilized solely as a brothel, despite their designation as a bagnio.

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