Mabel Grey

A carte de visite portrait of the courtesan Mabel Grey.

Her career wasn’t all drunken brawls and ignominious appearances in the dock. Before she reached that point, there were a few short, glory days when she managed to parlay her fame into a successful career that, for a while at least, involved diamonds and perfectly matched chestnut mares to pull her carriage in Rotten Row. At one point, in November 1868, she almost got the young scion of a noble house to the altar, but was headed off at the last moment by his frantic relations. One newspaper named the would-be groom as ‘young Milbank,’ the ‘heir to the Duke of Cleveland.’ Another newspaper, some three years later, reported on the appearance in court of William Harry Vane Milbank, who owed a dressmaker and milliner the sum of £500. He plaintively informed the court that he had spent the money on Mabel Grey, who at the time was living under his protection.

For one of her appearances in court for assault, she was charged under her real name, Hannah Maria King. A report on the festivities on Derby Night in 1871 at Cremorne Gardens, a louche haunt in Chelsea frequented by shady people, described her as ‘a quondam draper’s assistant in an Oxford Street shop.’

Photographed by Elliott and Fry of 55 Baker Street, London.