Rhia Charles, high class escort in London

The Cockney Courtesan with a Sweet Tooth

Ive just bought this great book.  Its called London’s Strangest Tales
and in amongst all the many, many tales are a few wonderful stories regarding us ladies.  I will post the ones of interest over the next few days.  Here’s one that caught my eye…

The huge popularity of marzipan in Victorian England (it was far more popular than it is now) is entirely attributable to a cockney girl who became one of the best-known and most sought-after Courtesans in Paris.

Born in Stepney in 1760, Eliza Marchpane grew up in abject poverty – with  no schooling and no other way to earn a living, her only option was prostitution. She began by working the pubs along the notoriously dangerous Ratcliffe Highway, but she quickly realised that once her looks were gone her income would dry up.

She set off for Paris knowing nothing of the city or the language. How she lived after arriving we do not know but within a few years she was certainly known to the aristocracy – she dined regularly at the houses of the nobility under the assumed title Marquessa de Marchpane.  Her cockney French simply made her sound exotic to the Parisian nobility, who admired her good looks and vivacity.  In memoirs of the time she is described as extraordinarily attractive and her fame quickly spread far beyond Paris – she became the darling of the aristocracy in Vienna where it is said she seduced the young Mozart.

Gifts of houses, jewellery and lavish clothing from her admirers had made her rich and when she returned to England in about 1800 she brought with her the recipe for an almond paste she had first tasted in Austria.

Her large house in the West End became a fashionable centre and at every party she gave there were always cakes and other sweets made from almond paste.  Eliza ended her days in Brighton where she was for a time the lover of the Prince Regent, whose enormous girth no doubt could be attributed to Eliza’s almond paste.  She died in 1830.

High Class London Courtesan