Sally Lodge

She had a high-class clientele and knew Alexander Pope and John Gay but lost everything in a confidence trick and ended her life as a barmaid in a public house in Wapping.

He then paid £7 for her to be apprenticed for five years to a dressmaker but she complained that the work was drudgery and she was treated like a slave, so at the age of 14 she ran away and eventually started her own brothel in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields near Strand in London.

Around 1720, an encomium, attributed to Alexander Pope,[3] praised Lodge's establishment but lamented that age prevented the writer from enjoying it as he had in the past.

[1] According to the 1735 epistle, Lodge lost all her money when she was conned by an Irish confidence trickster and, older now, she was unable to reestablish herself as a prostitute or a madam.

[1] The poet and dramatist John Gay, who knew Lodge, summarised her life in this way: Servant, Prentice, Whore, Mistress, Thief, Deserter Dupe, Derelict, Emigrant, Nabobess - final Failure.