LONDON 1751 Fanny Murray is a celebrity courtesan, in
return for the pleasure of her company and the use of her body wealthy men lavish her
with expensive gifts She's famous, not just "very well known around
town" but proper "Everybody in England knows who I am" famous.
She's beauty, sex and extravagance personified.
Women eagerly follow and slavishly copy her tiniest fashion whim -although no respectable
one, would ever invite her into their home.
Love struck young men gaze adoringly at her picture.
Many carry miniature portraits of her face inside the cases of their pocket watches.
Today she needs some spending money and all her current "Protector" Sir Robert Atkins
6th baronet of Clapham - is prepared to give, is a measly 20 pounds.
Insulted Fanny lets her displeasure be known.
"Damn your twenty pound!"
She cries snatching the note from his hand.
She then stuffs it in between two slices of bread and as the long-suffering Atkins watches
helplessly, takes a big bite.
You don't insult the most desirable woman in England with 20 pounds.
She's Fanny Murray.. she's had to work bloody hard to get where she is, satisfying the depraved
sexual desires of men rich and poor.
She's THE Fanny Murray and she's worth more than 20 fucking pounds.
Her "Apple Faced Beauty" has ensnared some of the wealthiest and most important men in
the land along with her impressive cleavage which one admirer described as "those fair
hemispheres, those orbs of more than snowy whiteness, which seem to pant for release
from irksome robes" Atkins dotes upon her and has been more than
generous in the past setting her up in fashionable rooms at St James, furnishing her with an
a la mode wardrobe that's made her the toast of Covent Garden and a jewellery box so plentiful
that she could illuminate the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
He's even bought her, her own coach - how many women of pleasure have one of those?
The whole country is in the grip of "Fanny- Mania"
Songs and poems are written about her, magazines write of her exploits constantly, she has
her own signature hat.
The author, Henry Fielding recently enjoyed great success with a salacious puppet show
about her and even a racehorse bears her name It's funny to think that seven years before
she'd been sucking off old drunks round the back of the Old Bailey.
Fanny had grown up a poor orphan in the fashionable town of Bath.
Bath was a popular destination for ladies and gentlemen of quality - both to take the
restorative waters and to escape from the hurly burly of London life.
The town also had a well-deserved reputation for vice and it was said to be as easy to
get the pox in Bath as it was to get the cure.
From an early age, Fanny earned a pittance as a flower seller, following the quality
from Spa to Ballroom to Theatre offering small posies for them to wear.
While doing this she got to see and hear the most outrageous gossip, observe the "Trulls"
looking for trade and notice how lots of ugly old rich men seemed to have pretty young women
on their arms.
At the age of 13 she came to the attention of John Spencer - a 34-year-old arch rake
and chronic alcoholic who was in Bath trying to shift a nasty case of venereal disease.
A charmless prankster, Spencer was once arrested for driving a coach naked down the Strand.
He also thought it was hysterical to invite some of his high-born friends to a dinner
party where all the other guests were hunchbacks and people with speech impediments.
When he turned her out she could easily have become another "ruined" girl had she not fallen
under the "Protection" of 67-year-old "Monarch of Bath" Richard "Beau" Nash.
In his youth, Nash had been a roaring boy about town who once said "wit, flattery, and
fine clothes, are enough to debauch a nunnery."
By 1744, however, he occupied a position at the very centre of Baths social world deciding
who was accepted into the inner circle and who was not.
Captivated by her beauty and innocence Nash installed her in his mansion giving Fanny
her first taste of luxury.
He probably also gave her her first taste of potatoes too as he was especially fond
of them and referred to one particular type as "The English Pineapple."
After dinner, it was said, he would eat potatoes as others do fruit.
Stopped in the street one day and taken to task for sharing his house with a teenage
prostitute Nash replied "I have a Woman lives in my House, and that
may have occasioned the Mistake that I am a whoremonger but, a Man can no more be deemed
a Whoremonger, from having one Whore in his House, than a Cheesemonger, for having one
Cheese" Which at the very least sent the accuser away
confused.
As he got older, Nash became increasingly grumpy and when he went bankrupt through gambling
Fanny - who was by now aware of her beauty, knew exactly the lifestyle she wanted and
just how to get it - took herself off to London.
Arriving in the capital, Fanny's courtesan career got off to a most inauspicious start.
Her first bawd a Mrs Softing introduced her to an old man whose breath was so pungent
she had to resort to a bottle of smelling salts in order to complete the assignation.
Pleased with how she handled her malodorous client Mrs Softling kept her on at her brothel
..until Fanny caught the pox.
Nearly bankrupting herself with doctors bills in order to get cured Fanny was forced into
becoming a common streetwalker a bunter, a bulk-monger.
For as little as sixpence, Fanny shared her favours with the dregs of London's criminal
classes, but she had her own plan of escape.
By hoarding and stealing, she managed to save up enough to rent a room of her own and as
word of her looks and bed skills began to get around she found herself much in demand.
In fact, soon, so many gentleman callers began paying her a visit that she took to renting
a second room and hiring a look alike so she could service twice as many.
Her real rise to fame began when she came to the attention of John Montague the 4th
earl of sandwich.
He was a renowned libertine with a lugubrious corpse like demeanour that concealed a voracious
sexual appetite.
He was noted however for only consorting with the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans.
With his seal of approval, the quality and wealth of Fanny's admirers began to grow.
Sandwich was also noted for having a love of all things Eastern.
He formed "The Divan Club" so fellow aficionados of the Ottoman way of life could dress up
in Turkish costume and talk about harems.
Fanny often attended - suitably dressed of course.
He also took her to the notorious Hellfire Club at Mendham where his friend Francis Dashwood
conducted booze and harlot filled religious services.
Dashwood and Sandwiches fellow members attended soirees dressed as monks and in an orgy of
delicious blasphemy enjoyed the devotions of selected whores who were dressed as nuns.
Some visitors said that the nuns were sometimes encouraged to ride upon a wooden horse shaped
like a huge penis for both their own pleasure and club member's amusement.
By now, Fanny was being mobbed by admirers in the street.
It was said to be "a vice not to be acquainted with her and; a crime not to toast her at
every meal" With fellow courtesan Kitty Fisher, she sat
for a joint nude portrait that Sandwich proudly displayed in his home.
If any of his friends failed to recognise either of the unclothed women Sandwich would
loudly berate them for not getting out enough.
As her fame became national celebrity, Fanny found herself the subject of bawdy jokes,
told in taverns throughout England Ere.
Why is Fanny Murray like the Serjeant at Arms?
- Because she takes unruly Members into Custody Fanny's fellow celebrity lovers included the
notorious highwayman John MacLaine - she was said to have been found in his bed the night
he was arrested - various members of the aristocracy, the relative of a famous novelist and even
, its rumoured, a member of the royal family.
At a ball held by Gertrude, Duchess of Bedford - the youngest son of George III, Prince William
Augustus attended with thirty masked ladies.
Most were fellow members of his ennobled class but three who stood apart were said to be
"fine but dirty" a euphemism for a well-dressed strumpet - one of them was Fanny.
She was also seeing Robert Tracy a fellow who styled himself as the most handsome man
in England but who was often so drunk he didn't know if he was in England or not.
The story of how he got so pissed one night that he woke up the next morning to find himself
married to a washerwoman's daughter who'd tried to sell him some eggs never failed to
raise a laugh.
During their first meeting, Fanny had offered to spend the night with Tracey as recompense
for taking all of his money at cards.
A salivating Tracy was beside himself at the prospect of bedding the most desirable woman
in England but later in his rooms, his drunken pizzle tragically let him down, much to Fanny's
amusement.
Throughout most of this time, Fanny was under the protection of the long-suffering 25-year-old
Atkins who put up with her, imperious ways, multiple suitors, lewd behaviour and business-like
avarice with indulgent good grace.
Eating two pounds in front of him though might just be the last straw.
It had been a close thing when they had rowed so furiously that he had abandoned her At
the Shakespeare's Head and gone off with a one-eyed prostitute called Betsy (The little
squinting Venus) but this could definitely be it.
Fanny pays little heed, her keen business brain knows that her beauty and fame will
only last so long and for a courtesan, eight years is long enough.
Flashing Atkins a dazzling smile and a glimpse of the most engraved bosom in England she
knows that the next step is retirement and a respectable marriage.
Celebrity is all very well but only a fool thinks it's going to last forever.