Free The Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold

first decades of her career, there were many more lessons still to be learned.

5
    The Rise OF PIMP GENERAL JACK
    THE SHAKESPEAR’S HEAD Tavern, even in the early 1750s when Harrison arrived there, had been a fixture in Covent Garden for several generations. Reputed to be the first tavern in the Piazza, the Shakespear did a handsome trade and was, along with the Bedford Head Coffee House, one of the most profitable places of resort with which to be connected. This had something to do with its location in the north-eastern corner of the square, within easy stumbling distance of the two major theatres, and also with the availability of upstairs rooms. Private rooms brought gatherings of men (and sometimes women) before the establishment of fee-paying private members’ clubs. The society meetings it hosted were entirely legitimate and trumpeted openly in local papers, the most notable of these being the dinners held by the Beef-steak Society. When the rooms were not let out to society members intent on satiating themselves with beef and beer, individual patrons might be permitted to do the same with any number of Covent Garden’s luminary whores.
    The crowd at the Shakespear was a mixed and boisterous one. A recognised theatrical retreat, the raucous and drunken voices of Ned Shuter, Charles Macklin and Peg Woffington could be heard thereabove the din following a performance night. Aristocrats and wealthy ‘Cits’, such as William Hickey, were as conspicuous at its tables as the Garden’s least savoury element. The Shakespear was very much a no-holds-barred type of establishment, where no one asked questions and punters did as they pleased. Devoted patrons and local scions of the law, Justice Saunders Welch and the vice-busting Fielding brothers, did little to impede the activities that flourished in the more inconspicuous parts of the taproom. While enjoying their beefsteaks above stairs, they feigned blissful ignorance as to what transpired directly below their feet.
    Although gambling was officially banned from Covent Garden taverns, the Shakespear hosted a Hazard Club, where large sums of money were lost and won. Some fortunate souls could be seen carrying hats filled with guineas away from its illicit gaming tables. Bucks and bloods loved the Shakespear, Boswell being among them. Taking advantage of one of the empty rooms above stairs, the author escorted two willing ladies of pleasure to the Shakespear and ‘solaced my existence with them, one after the other, according to their seniority’. Those unable to afford or too impatient to wait for a private room could easily ‘solace’ themselves in a quiet corner with one of the ‘drunken and starving Harlots’, who often complained that such ‘wanton embracing’ on the tavern floor ‘soiled their clothes’.
    There were few in Covent Garden who swaggered with an air of wealth more convincing than the Shakespear’s proprietor, Packington Tomkins. His tavern had everything the Covent Garden punter desired and more: drink, women, convivial company, celebrities, gaming, and the unexpected. The Shakespear’s popularity was enormous and Tomkins’s taps never ran dry; he had one of the most extensive cellars in the area, containing ‘never less than a hundred pipes of wine’. Naturally, roaring trade made Tomkins shamefully wealthy. In addition to a house in London, he also maintained a Herefordshire estate and a private coach to shuttle him there and back at his leisure. Although the owner of a disreputable business, he was able to wipe the smudges of moral taint from his person and walk the streets of London as a convincingly respectable family man. By the end of his life he had married his daughter into the Longman family of publishers, and he died with a fortune inexcess of £20,000. Unlike the majority of the patrons of his establishment, Tomkins was exactingly shrewd, and sober-headed enough to steer clear of the gaming tables.
    A booming business required