Lavinia Fenton

[2] One of her biographers describes her as having "a vivacious, lively spirit, and a promising beauty", displaying "some singular turns of wit, which shew'd her of an aspiring genius".

She then joined the company of players at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she earned "the not very magnificent salary of fifteen shillings", but her success and beauty made her the toast of the beaux.

The critic Mrs Charles Mathews noted: "The abilities of Miss Fenton cannot be disputed; the universal panegyrics of the time, and the anxiety of the managers to monopolise her services, assure us that no actress or singer could at any period of the drama be more popular".

[1] It was in John Gay's Beggar's Opera, as Polly Peachum, that Miss Fenton made her greatest success; she debuted the role on 29 January 1728.

After her last appearance as Polly on 19 April 1728, she ran away with her lover Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton, a man 23 years older than herself, who, after the death of his wife in 1751, married her at Aix-en-Provence.