Although John Howard shunned most social occasions, he greatly enjoyed the company of women. According to Howard’s close friend John Aikin:
Mr. Howard had, in a high degree, that respectful attention to the female sex which so much characterizes the gentleman. … He was fond of nothing so much as the conversation of women of education and cultivated manners, and studied to attach them by little elegant presents, and other marks of attention.^
In a letter to his close friend Richard Price, Howard concluded:
P.S. My best respects wait on Mrs Morgan and the Ladies, tell ‘em I long to make one round the fireside and if I had one of them now to make my Tea, I should have luxurious entertainment.^
Howard married twice. His first marriage was at age twenty-five to a woman about fifty years old. She died three years after they married. Two years later he married again. His second wife , Harriet, died in 1765, six years after they married and a week after the birth of their first child. In his biography of Howard, John Aikin told a story suggesting Howard’s longing for a woman like Harriet:
In going from one town in Holland to another, in the common passage boat, he {Howard} was placed near an elderly gentleman, who had in company a young lady of a most engaging manner and appearnace, which strongly reminded him of his Harriet. He was so much struck with her, that, on arriving at the place of destination, he caused his servant to follow them, and get intelligence who they were. It was not without some disappointment that he learned that the old gentleman was an eminent merchant, and the young lady — his wife.^
Howard reportedly met a widowed, pregnant Englishwoman in a mad house in Constantinople. Howard cured her, liberated her, paid for her return to England, and promised her a small annuity for life.^ Folk stories about Howard’s death in Kherson include a story that he was murdered because of jealousy arising from his frequent visits to a woman who lived on an estate near Kherson.