[PROSTITUTION]. &
[?CRUIKSHANK (Isaac)].
A Cruize to Covent Garden!!
VICE IN COVENT GARDEN
Rare. The British Museum and Haravrd have a later impression (dated 1812); there is an example in the London Transport Museum (dated 1806), Yale (one dated 1806 and the other 1812) and Princeton (1806)
A scene in London’s notorious Covent Garden with a young prostitute being carried away in a sedan chair by two sailors while a third sailor sat on top the carriage calls out “Come Mess mat[e]s heave a head.”
“The life that surrounded these Covent Garden people was vibrant. Artists, engravers, actors and well-born rakes took both their drink and their women there, while the theatres brought in the fashionable clientele for courtesans in chandeliered bordellos above the colonnades for those prepared to pay fifty guineas a night…” (Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter, Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (2006) p.85-6)
