Fanny Murray

Most sources agree that Murray was born in Bath in 1729 to a musician called "Rudman", a friend of the influential dandy Beau Nash.

According to her memoir, she had become a mistress to Beau Nash by 1743, at the age of just fourteen, and soon moved to London, where she became a "dress-lodger"[3] — an indentured prostitute who had to work to pay for the expensive clothes that she wore to solicit customers.

Harris supposedly had a surgeon examine Murray to verify her claims that she was free of disease, and made her pay a £20 deposit on the accuracy of her information.

[12] She is even mentioned in the memoirs of Giacomo Casanova as the guest of honour at a party held by the British Ambassador to Venice, John Murray (no relation) at his casino,[13] and it has been suggested that she is at least in part an inspiration for Fanny Hill, which was published in 1749 at the height of her fame.

[14] She became mistress to a string of leading British politicians and celebrities, while her fashion sense — in particular, the broad-brimmed "Fanny Murray cap", supposedly invented to hide the imperfections of her "handsome though somewhat awry" face[15] — became all the rage on the London scene.

If Fanny shews the coral centre of her snowy orbs—miss, to outstrip her, orders the stays to be cut an inch or two lower; and kindly displays the whole lovely circumference"For a long time, she was the mistress of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was so deeply enamoured of her as to hang a large nude portrait of Murray in his apartment, proudly showing it to guests.

Already accused of seditious libel for criticising the king in The North Briton, Wilkes fled the country and was expelled in absentia from the House and branded an outlaw.

Records from the era suggest that the very next night, Sandwich went to see The Beggar's Opera, which featured a similar act of betrayal by the character "Jemmy Twitcher".

When an anonymous poem besmirching Ross as an actor appeared, Murray offered twenty guineas (£21) of her own savings to anyone who could find the author.