Betty Careless

Initially under the protection of the barrister Robert Henley (later Lord Chancellor), by 1729 when she opened her own house in Tavistock Row she was attached to Sir Charles Wyndham (later Earl of Egremont).

He had seen her a few days before "in bed with a Rake, at a bagnio, smoking Tobacco, drinking Punch, talking obscenity and swearing and cursing with all the Impudence and Impiety of the lowest and most abandoned Trull of a Soldier".

In his essay on Dr Johnson, Thomas Babington Macaulay portrays her as the archetypal courtesan, characterising the life of those of "literary character" as precarious, fortunate to be "sometimes drinking champagne and tokay with Betty Careless".

By early 1735 she had given up her house in Covent Garden (Jane Douglas took it over); she was drinking heavily and could not duplicate the success she had enjoyed as a prostitute when she attempted to run a brothel.

She announced that she would be opening a "Coffee House" in Prujean's Court at the Old Bailey, but she herself acknowledged that the place was ill-situated for her business and in her advertisement practically begged her customers to continue to visit her.