Harlots & 18th Century Working Women

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harlots - the TV series about 18th century female sex workers - and translating historical fact into onscreen drama. Shahidha Bari is joined by Hallie Rubenhold, Moira Buffini, and Laura Lammasniemi in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature.

Harlots depicts the stories of working women detailed in 1757 in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Historian Hallie Rubenhold has researched their history and Moira Buffini has translated that into TV scripts. They join Shahidha Bari alongside legal historian Laura Lammasniemi to look at the opportunities and pitfalls in creating historical dramas and what we know and don't know about the lives of sex workers in the 18th century.

Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Covent Garden Ladies is about Harris’s List and inspired the series Harlots, to which she was historical consultant. She is author of The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed By Jack The Ripper, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and has also been optioned as a drama series; and she is author of Lady Worsley's Whim, which became the TV drama The Scandalous Lady W.

Scriptwriter Moira Buffini is writer of Harlots, new the film The Dig, which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, and Jane Eyre. Her plays include wonder.land, Handbagged, and Dinner.

Laura Lammasniemi is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick Law School. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow working on a project called Narratives Of Sexual Consent In Criminal Courts, 1870-1950, which looks at how the concept of consent has been understood historically in contexts, such as rape, age of consent, and BDSM.

Producer: Emma Wallace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
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0:32.1	Hello, what's the difference between a cull and a keeper, a board and a bunter?
0:36.9	You'll need a whole new vocabulary to keep up with the world of 18th century sex workers in today's Arts and Ideas podcast. We'll be talking about the infamous Ladies of Covent Garden and Harlots, the TV series, based on their lives. Join me Shahedabari just after this.
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1:36.5	Hello, a good review goes a long way, so spare a thought for Pole Forrester. She drinks like a fish, eats like a horse, and her breath is worse than a Welsh bagpipe. So says Harris in the ruthlessly
1:42.2	candid list of Covent Garden Ladies, a sort of zagat guide to sex workers written in 18th century London. Poor old poll. You might know about the list of Covent Garden Ladies if you've been following Harlots, the hit TV series starring Samantha Morton and Leslie Manville's warring brothel owners whose rivalrous girls spit colourful insults evade the law
2:02.9	and exchange tales of outrageous sexual exploits.
2:06.7	Let's see what's in here about you girls.
2:09.1	Here's yours, Fanny.
2:10.7	Miss Fanny Lambert, the very thing in winter for those who love a fat jolly girl.
	...

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