No. 12 John Street is “just come from the North, as her speech will testify,” and, more to the point, she is “formed to excite desire.” Miss Charl—tte C—ll—ns of Oxford Street is burdened with “indifferent” teeth, small breasts, and arms and legs that are “too much in the gothic stile,” but, thanks perhaps to her previous employment as a milkmaid, she “is said to have . . . a delicate hand at stroaking.” So, at least, promises the author of “Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies,” a popular eighteenth-century Zagat-style guide to the prostitutes of London, published annually between 1757 and 1795.
-The New Yorker
