Elizabeth Haywood (d. 1743; fl. 1720–1743)

Allison Muri, University of Saskatchewan
August 2024

Elizabeth Haywood, also Heywood, Hayward, Harwood, Mother Haywood, ran a bawdy house in Covent Garden from at least 1720 until her death in 1743. Husband Richard Haywood kept the King George's Head Tavern, also known as the King's Head Tavern, in Russel Street in 1720; probably, his arrest leading to his conviction in that year spurred the advertisement in the Daily Post of January 9, 1720:

To be Let,
The King George's Head Tavern in Russel-street, Covent-Garden, having a Passage into the Theatre-Royal, a good accustomed House. N.B. All the Goods and Stock are to be sold, the master leaving off Trade.

Richard Haywood was convicted in December 1720 of keeping a lewd and disorderly house at the King's Head Tavern in Russel Street, and for injuring the informers when they came to search it. When he was sentenced in 1721, he and Elizabeth were ordered to stand in the pillory in Covent Garden, to be imprisoned for three months, and, upon their release, to find sureties for their good behaviour for seven years after. However, arguing that Elizabeth was with child and such a punishment might endanger her life, King's advocate Mr. Kettleby convinced the Court of King's Bench to execute the sentence at a more convenient time. RIchard Haywood lived in Russel Street until 1723, according to the Westminster Rate Books. His address is listed as Charles Street from at least 1733; from at least the 1730s, their brothel was known as "the Bagnio in Charles Street." An advertisement in the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 7 February 1736, mentions the removal of Edward Beswick, cupper, from "Mrs. Hayward's Bagnio, in Charles-street" to the Turk's Head Bagnio in Chancery Lane.

Mother Haywood was notorious during her day and appears in various sources as a specimen of the turpitude of Covent Garden. Henry Fielding features her as Mother Haycock in his play Miss Lucy in Town, wherein the newly married Lucy and her husband rent lodgings at Haywood's, not knowing what the place is. A Letter to a Noble Lord, an anonymous contemporary pamphlet attributed to Fielding, provides some anecdotal explanatory material:

as the Prejudices of Education, and the Severity of some Parents who presume to be decent, may possibly have hinder'd a few from having launched into the nightly Misteries of Covent Garden, that they may no longer be ignorant in such essential Secrets, in which all venal Love is shewn in the purest Light, this Farce is presented to the Public.  The Scene, lest it should not have its due Attention, is continued to the End. It is a Brothel, the Plan taken exactly from a Ladys House of very notorious Fame in that Part of the Town, called Mother Heywood, and the chief of the Dramatis Personae, is one Mrs. Laycock. ...

Whilst the Farce was performing, I over-heard a Gentleman behind me cry out, by G—, it is quite natural! Damn it, I fancy myself at Mother Heywood's! S'Blood, the B—ch serv'd me once just as she does Lord Bawble, and gave me a damned P—x. A sober Person that sat by, taking a Pinch of Snuff, said, Faith Fleetwood had better have hired Mother Heywood, and her Company, personally to have appeared. A third, knowing your G—'s [Grace's] Modesty, said, To be sure my L—d C——n [Lord Chamberlain] would not have suffer'd it. Why not? By G—, says the first Spark, I know of no Objection, unless perhaps Heywood would put on more squeamish Airs, and affect more Modesty than Cross's Wife.[1]

Fielding also alludes to Haywood in his Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, Modernised in Burlesque Verse, describing one "digify'd example" of adultery:

When she perceiv'd her Huband snoring,
Th' Imperial Strumpet went a Whoring:
Daring with private Rakes to solace,
She preferr'd Ch—ri—s-Street to the Palace:
Went with a single Maid of Honour,
And with a Capuchin upon her,
Which hid her black and lovely Hairs;
At H——d's softly stole up Stairs:
There at Receipt of Custom fitting,
She boldly call'd herself the Kitten;
Smil'd, and pretended to be needy.
And ask'd Men to come down the Ready.

Fielding's note defines "H—d" as "A useful Woman in the Parish of Covent-Garden."[2]

The anonymous 1747 biography of Moll King, proprietor of the infamous Coffee Shop in Covent Garden Market, features Haywood as one of the "vile Harpies" or "old Bawds" that Moll dealt with:

The famous, or rather infamous, Mother Hay­wood, well known in Covent Garden, but lately deceased, used very often in the Night Time, to pay Moll a Visit, but her chief Errant was to look after her Girls, who us’d frequently to desert to this House for a Regale, as they called it, and leave the old Beldrum by herself to hunt for Wenches for her Customers. As these two old Sinners were implacable Enemies, nothing was so agreeable to the Company in Moll’s House as to hear their Quarrels and Bickerings.[3]

Edward Moore writing as “Adam Fitz-Adam” in his satirical periodical The World makes a posthumous reference to the bawd Haywood:

The Bagnio’s were constantly under the direction of discreet and venerable matrons, who had passed their youths in the practice of these exercises which they were now preaching to their daughters: while the management of the Theatres was the province of the men. The natural connection between these houses made it convenient that they should be erected in the neighbourhood of each other; and indeed the harmony subsisting between them inclined many people to think that the profits of both were divided equally by each. But I have always considered them as only playing into one another’s hands, without any nearer affinity than that of the schools of Westminster and Eton, to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. At the Play-house young gentlemen and ladies were instructed by an Etheridge, a Wycherly, a Congreve, and a Vanbrugh, in the rudiments of that science, which there were to perfect at the Bagnio, under a Needham, a Haywood, a Haddock, and a Roberts.[4]

Regrettably, there is little known about Elizabeth Haywood beyond such anecdotes and caricatures.

In December 1743, numerous papers reported the death of Mrs. Haywood, who had “for many years” kept a bagnio in Charles Street.[5] The spelling of the name is varied, but the content of the notice almost inevitably observed her worth as near 10,000 l. Old England provided the most detailed account:

Last Week died the Celebrated Mrs. Heywood, who for many Years kept the Bagnio in Charles-street, Covent-Garden, a Lady well known by the Polite Part of the World; who by her great Industry in application to Business, acquir’d a Fortune of near 10,000 l. In one of her Petticoats there was found conceal’d 3000 l.[6]