Biography
She was born around 1690-1692 and given the name Sarah Pridden. Her father was a bricklayer. At the age of nine she was apprenticed to a seamstress in Aldgate. After losing a valuable piece of lace she ran away and took to life on the streets of the slum district of St Giles. Here she turned to various forms of street trading. She became well known in London as "the beautiful little wench who sells pamphlets to the schoolboys and apprentices...in Pope's Head Alley in the City of London", but her pamphlet sales were merely a sideline to her more lucrative trade, charging the boys half a crown for an hour of her time. The notorious roué Colonel Francis Charteris made her his mistress, but abandoned her when she was 14, after which she was taken in by the bawd, Mother Wisebourne, whose house in Covent Garden was among the most exclusive and expensive brothels of the time. She adopted the name Salisbury from one of her lovers. After Wisebourne's death she moved on to the house of Mother Needham in Park Place.
Read more about this topic: Sally Salisbury
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