The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (27 page)

How much time elapsed before Charlotte Hayes made the acquaintance of a man who could fulfil this role, both inside the Fleet and in her life thereafter, is unknown. At some point during her three-year sentence, her path crossed that of an Irishman called Dennis O’Kelly. The relationship they forged while in prison, and the tales of the couple’s escapades carried out under the noses of the Fleet’s authorities, were to become legendary among the more dissolute circles of society.

Charlotte and Dennis had met at a juncture in both of their lives where luck, uncharacteristically, had deserted them. Only a few years younger than her, O’Kelly, like Charlotte, had already experienced ‘all the varieties of life’. Bearing a curious similarity to W.M. Thackeray’s infamous character, Barry Lyndon, Dennis O’Kelly had been born into an impoverished family of minor landholders in Tullow, County Carlow. With no hopes of an inheritance and no prospects of furthering a career, Dennis left home for Dublin as a teenager, where some accounts of his life claim that ‘he was first introduced into bad company’. Other sources, including a posthumous publication entitled
The Genuine Memoirs of Dennis O’Kelly Esq., Commonly Called Count O’Kelly
, maintain that Dennis arrived in London before experiencing the seamier side of existence. Described as being ‘about five feet eleven inches high, very broad in the shoulders and equally deep chested’, with ‘legs well proportioned, and … hands finely formed by nature’, O’Kelly was able to cut a dash for himself as a sedan chairman, exerting his strength and displaying ‘the comeliness of his person’ in the exercise of heaving ladies’ chairs onto his strong back. Not surprisingly, his looks did not escape the notice of many of his female passengers, one of whom he supplied with the same services that Charlotte was offering to men. Through his amours he was able to earn a fair sum of money, which eventually allowed him to shed his servant’s ‘long coat and purchase smart clothes’, for the purpose of ‘commencing a fine gentleman’. It was at this period that Dennis ‘acquired that invincible disposition for play, which proved in the end the happy source of his good fortune’.

O’Kelly was considered, in every sense, what the folk of the era would term ‘an adventurer’ or a ‘sharper’. His villainy was difficult to detect beneath his polished air and his fine laced coat, but his wealth was won and maintained through a fatal combination of convincing deceits and charm. Accounts vary as to how many tricks at the expense of others he was able to successfully carry out in the years before he met Charlotte. His mastery of ‘the long shuffle’, a highly orchestrated method of cheating at cards, was said to have begun at the gaming tables of ‘the polite circle’. This group was comprised in part of the same crew of indulgent young bucks who also frequented London’s billiards tables and tennis courts, where Dennis had worked as ‘a marker … and … attendant’. As with the other inhabitants of the sphere in which he now moved, the girth of O’Kelly’s purse was in a constant state of flux, and in order to dig himself out of one particularly bad round at the tables, he began to search for an expedient method of relieving his indebtedness. According to
Town and Country Magazine
, O’Kelly and a companion established a scheme to entrap two sisters ‘who had a thousand pounds between them’. After encouraging the ladies to enter into clandestine unions, Dennis decamped with both marriage portions, disappearing ‘to Scarborough, where he remained for some time, and appeared as a man of fashion’, gaming ‘as high as any man, according to the present etiquette of play’. With his illicit proceeds he embarked upon a tour of the country, appearing first ‘at York races,… at Bath, and all the other genteel watering places, where he behaved as well as gamesters generally do, a variety of fortune attending him and his different operations’. In later years, horrified by the indignity of his actions, Dennis took pains to sweep all vestiges of the disreputable incident under the carpet. Although he and Charlotte profusely denied the accusations as they periodically reared their heads, Dennis’s previous union may offer an explanation as to why he and Charlotte never officially married.

Dennis O’Kelly had been gambling his way around Britain for roughly ten years before he met with any serious objection to his practices. By the late 1750s O’Kelly was such a master at his art that few could catch him out, although many suspected that his wins were not acquired through chance alone. One particular gentleman, a visiting officer from the American colonies who had lost his purse to Dennis at
the
Bedford Arms, was convinced that he had been defrauded of his fortune. In a fury, the officer marched directly over to Justice Fielding and reported the incident. According to legend, it was only through the persuasions of O’Kelly’s friend, Samuel Foote, that the charges were mitigated, enabling the cardsharp to wiggle his way out of the Tyburn nooses and land instead in the Fleet. Another account claims that Dennis’s ‘disposition for dress and play’, one which ‘far exceeded his means’, bore the responsibility for a trail of unpaid bills and receipts. Although skilled at making money, he had become shamefully adept at spending it as well, so much so that when it came time to inscribe his name into the Fleet’s committal book, it was placed under the Common side.

When Charlotte encountered him, Dennis had already succumbed to the sale of most of his clothing and the ‘few little moveables’ that he had on his person. According to her recollections, ‘wretched tatters scarce covered his nakedness’ and ‘famine stared him in the face’. Remarkably, however, O’Kelly’s spirit remained wholly intact. For most of his life, Dennis had been noted for possessing ‘the ease, the agremens, the manners of a gentleman’, as well as ‘the attractive quaintness of a humourist’, and it was these qualities, in addition to his ruggedly handsome features, that captured Charlotte’s confidence. With his formidable build, O’Kelly would have made an ideal protector, while his good humour, sharp wit and resourcefulness would have assisted in fortifying her emotionally. With Dennis at her side, Charlotte might now begin to win back some control over her position within the prison. After feeding and clothing Dennis, she was able to secure him a job within the Fleet as ‘attendant in the Tap’, a measure that then allowed him ‘to live by carrying out porter to his fellow prisoners’. Now the tables were turned, and Dennis could exact fees for the privilege of drink, just as they had been coerced from him. Unlike others, however, he was ‘distinguished for his jolly song’ rather than for abusing his newly acquired position. Consequently, the downcast inmates lodging on the Master’s side welcomed the singing, jocular Irishman into their fold with open smiles. ‘His reputation extended to the private apartments’ and, not surprisingly, ‘his company was frequently solicited among convivial circles’. Among the downtrodden population on both
sides
of the prison, O’Kelly became so popular that a fellow inmate, known affectionately as ‘the King’, bestowed on him the honorary title of ‘Count’.

While collecting Fleet honorariums was an amusing way of passing one’s sentence, Charlotte harboured much more substantial ideas of how she and Dennis might improve their lot. Throughout their lives, the couple were noted for their ability to scent promising opportunities. Although Charlotte had attempted to establish a brothel on Berwick Street shortly before her incarceration, her absence meant that the untended enterprise had withered and died by the time of her release in 1760. Now, contained by the perimeters of the prison, Charlotte’s hopes for surviving in the Fleet and building the foundation for a life beyond it were pinned on Dennis. Dennis, in turn, placed his hopes on the gaming tables. Their objective was then to get him to them.

While the Fleet did not prevent prisoners from gambling, anyone hoping to make a profit from the proceeds of card games would not seriously consider wasting his or her time matching hands with the insolvents in a debtor’s prison. Fortunately, as those pursuing legitimate work and seeking counsel from their legal representatives were allowed to traverse the boundaries of the prison, gaining access to the world outside was not an impossibility. The implications of the Fleet’s ‘day rules’ meant that debtors had to remain within a short distance of the prison walls and return at nightfall. This final stipulation was what would prove to be problematic. In Georgian London, dedicated gamesters could find any excuse to lay bets or sit at a card table, whether it was mid-afternoon or in the diminishing hours of darkness. Dennis required a bit of flexibility in order to perform his card tricks, and could hardly abandon a healthy rubber midway through simply because the sun had begun to set. The scheme therefore required the assistance of Charlotte’s expert diversion tactics. Outside the prison walls, O’Kelly ‘… was now as constantly seen in all public places as if he had not owed a shilling. These day and
night
rules frequently continued for weeks,’ wrote the author of
The Exploits of Count Kelly
, explaining that ‘as his judgement was now matured by experience, he seldom failed to make these excursions very advantageous’. Meanwhile, back at the Fleet, the prison’s grubby guards failed to notice
the
Count’s absence while Charlotte Hayes, ‘that well known priestess of the Cyprian Diety, that love and mirth admiring votress to pleasing sensuality … did not forget to perform her midnight orgies or sacrifice to the powers of love and wine’.

Such a plan could not have been carried to fruition without the cunning of both parties. Of all the accounts written about their relationship, not one differs in opinion about the bond that existed between them. This was love, in the truest, most devoted sense. Although the relationship may have begun as one of mutual convenience, forged through the shared experience of hardship, it evolved into something much more substantial. The ‘friendly assistance’ that Charlotte was said to have received from Dennis at this period became ‘the basis of her future attachment to him’, while he in return ‘now devoted the whole of his time to Charlotte’ and concentrated on securing her happiness. It is perhaps slightly over-romantic to believe that from the period of their meeting, ‘time passed without care’, as O’Kelly’s
Memoirs
suggest. No one’s sentence in a prison could slip away unnoticed, but there is much to substantiate the claim that their ‘attachment became so strong, that no circumstance in future life, could ever dissolve or shake the union.’ Dennis O’Kelly was Charlotte Hayes’s perfect match. He countered every quality she possessed. He was as well-endowed with physical and personal charms as she, and maintained the knowledge necessary to deploy his gifts to their greatest effect. Like Charlotte, Dennis had ‘a great ingenuity and a constant eye to temporary resources’. Both were instinctive emotional manipulators and observers of human behaviour. Both were intellectually astute, Charlotte particularly so with money: in the modern era she would have made a formidable business rival. Her survival skills, especially after a stint in prison, would have been honed to a vicious sharpness. However, ‘notwithstanding the varieties she has seen in life’, Sam Derrick wrote, Charlotte retained the ability to love. She had a weak side to which Dennis alone was privy.

Like many couples, Dennis and Charlotte passed away the hours together contemplating their future. If or when they were able to secure their release,
if
Dennis was able to earn enough by his gaming to satisfy their creditors,
if
they could then raise enough money upon which to live, they resolved to throw their lots into a business venture that was
certain
to make them rich. While residing in the Fleet, she and Dennis had begun to lay ‘the plan of an elegant brothel, under the title of a
nunnery
’. It was an idea over which she had mused for some time, since first encountering the concept at her rival Mrs Goadby’s establishment. Jane Goadby had taken credit for bringing to England this fashionable new style of brothel, in imitation of the
sérails
found in Paris. For a number of years, she had been regaled with stories of lavish brothels in palatial
hôtels de villes
by young men who had whiled away their grand tours exploring the insides of such places. According to the
Nocturnal Revels
, the enterprising Jane Goadby was so taken with these stories that she mounted an investigative campaign to France’s capital city to see these seraglios for herself. What she found was a complete novelty to the British bawd. The French serails were ordered and operated impeccably by ‘two veteran procuresses’. ‘Under each of their roofs were assembled about a score of the handsomest prostitutes in the purlieus of Paris …’ – but this alone was not the attraction. Mrs Goadby found that her French counterparts were offering more than just sex; rather, they provided an entire evening’s worth of genteel entertainment, where women relaxed with their customers by passing ‘their hours after dinner till the evening in a large saloon; some playing upon the guitar, whilst vocal performers were accompanying them; others were employed with needle or tambour work.’ Drunken behaviour, and anything other than the ‘strictest decorum’, was not tolerated among the nymphs or their guests. Such a concept flew in the face of London’s seedy bagnios and insalubrious taverns, where riff-raff, aristocrat, bunter and courtesan mixed indiscriminately over smashed glasses, foul language and punch-ups. Even the damask-lined drawing rooms of Mrs Douglas’s abode had nothing on the grandness of such places. Mrs Goadby was certain that the French ‘system of brothels’ would earn her riches in England, and upon her return to London ‘she immediately began to refine her amorous amusements and regulate them according to the Parisian system.’ This included fitting up ‘a house in an elegant stile’, engaging ‘some of the first rate
fille de joye
in London’ to work for her, and employing a surgeon to vouchsafe for their health. Additionally, the enterprising procuress ‘brought over a large quantity of French silks and laces,’ which enabled her ‘to equip her Thaises in the highest gusto; and
for
which she took care to make a sufficient charge’. Most importantly, though, ‘Mrs. Goadby’s serail was not a seraglio for
les bourgeois
; she aimed at accommodating only people of rank and men of fortune …’ – and by such means secured her own.