Mary Frances Jeffries (1819 – 1891) was a madam and procuror in London's underworld during the late 19th century.
[1] Among her brothels in Church Street and Kensington as well as a flagellation house in Hampstead, included a "chamber of horrors" in Gray's Inn Road where a room was designed for the purposes of sado-masochism as described by journalist William Thomas Stead in a series of articles for the Pall Mall Gazette exposing prostitution in the city during the Eliza Armstrong case.
Although never proven, she may have operated a white slave house along the river near Kew, from which women were abducted and smuggled to foreign countries (see sexual slavery and human trafficking).
In 1884, Alfred Dyer's London Committee obtained evidence of a high class Chelsea brothel operated by Jeffries.
Although unable to charge Jeffries with any serious offence apart from keeping a disorderly house, the Commission expected much publicity from the case when presenting their evidence.