He found she could sing and she began performing for the neighborhood, at a young age, she was known for her angelic voice and looks, garnering multiple admirers.

It was not known if Ann lost her virginity to any of the “numerous corp admirers who daily laid siege to her” but it was “certain that she had scarcely entered her fourteenth year when she parted with her innocence” (Ambross, 8).

She was apprenticed aged fifteen to William Bates, a composer and singing teacher, with a £200 penalty in case of misconduct from the child.

She managed to gain an appearance at Vauxhall music hall at aged 17 in the summer and the Covent Garden the following fall under his mentorship.

[1] Charles Macklin was the first to discover Ann for the stage with which she “assum[ed] chaste acting, and executed many characters of difficulty with critical justice” (Ambross 36).

She took her sister Mary in, exacting similar treatment upon her as the Catleys with “violence of her fists…[resulting in bloody noses and cheeks]” (Ambross 37).

Ann, unbothered, continued her life in Ireland, taking lovers at a price proportioned at her idea of the men's fortunes.

Ann was “perhaps the only woman of early virtue that ever received countenance on the stage from the modest women of Ireland,” for “in spite of Catley’s blatant prostitution necessary for her survival, female spectators at the theater absolved her of responsibility for her sexual looseness” (Nussbaum, 445).

Her notable sexually explicit roles, such as Polly from The Beggar's Opera and Juno in The Golden Pippin, were a stylistic reflection of her own life.

Due to her eccentric acting style and melodious voice, Ms. Ann Catley did not shy away from knowing her worth and power.

She built a brand for herself and reversed the power dynamic of commodifying women's bodies by using it as her strength and proving her worth.

Apparently, Catley died “in charity with the world, and in lamenting that the early parts of her life had not been equally virtuous and honourable with her latter days” (Ambross 55).

[1] John O'Keeffe wrote of her: "she was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw: the expression of her eyes, and the smiles and dimples that played round her lips and cheeks, enchanting".

Ambross, E. The life and memoirs of the late Miss Ann Catley, the celebrated actress: with biographical sketches of Sir Francis Black Delaval, and the Hon.

Pearce, Charles E. "Polly Peachum": Being the Story of Lavinia Fenton (Duchess of Bolton) and "The Beggar's Opera".