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January 16, 2025 37 mins

On today’s episode, Karen and Georgia cover the story of Irish courtesan Peg Plunkett. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, we have some exciting podcast news. That's right.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
You might remember that a few weeks ago we had
to say goodbye to our beloved movie podcast I Saw
What You Did.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
But what we couldn't tell you at the time is
that Millie de Cherico is coming back with an all
new movie podcasts called Dear Movies I Love You. Her
co host, Casey O'Brien, was the producer of I Saw
What You Did, and the two became friends through their
shared love of movies.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And now on their new show, they'll be talking about
the latest blockbusters, cult classics, and everything in between. They're
going to have guests, they're gonna play games, they're going
to chop it up.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
So after this episode, stick around so you can hear
the trailer for our newest oscar worthy podcast, Dear Movies
I Love You.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
And after you listen to the trailer, head over to
the Deer Movies I Love You feed and click follow
so you don't miss the world premiere on January twenty eighth.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
And don't forget to follow Deer Movies I Love You
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Get ready to obsess over all things movies. Yay, yay,
good bye bye listener. Note today's episode was recorded on
October twenty seventh, twenty two, twenty four. Hell Loo, and welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
To My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark, That's Karen Kilgariff, and.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
We're about to podcast into your ears?

Speaker 1 (01:27):
You ready for this one? I bet you are? Our
question mark prestplay, I hope. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
You know you started it?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, you started it.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, we're going to finish it, finish. Are you ready?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
All right? Today's a shorty episode.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
That's right. I mean not to immediately get in your
face listener, but we have spoiled you over the years
of doing these twenty five fucking minute intros just to
entertain ourselves. But most podcasts just start.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
But sometimes we need to do just a podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, yeah, And I think that's what we're going to
do today. And I will tell you right now a
story that I think you're going to like. It's about
a badass eighteenth century sex worker from Dublin, Ireland, who
challenged both gender norms and social norms at a time
when doing so was completely unheard of. This is the

(02:22):
story of Irish Cortisan peg Plunket Peg Yes get Ready.
Main sources used for today's story are an article published
on a word press blog called f Yeah History by
a writer named Natasha Tidd, and the article is called
the Brilliant and Ballsy life of Ireland's favorite Cordisan, Peg Plunket.

(02:45):
And also another source is an article from the Women's
Museum of Ireland website entitled Peg Plunkett Brothel Madam, and
that article was written by Karen moynihan. And the rest
of our sources are in our show notes. All right,
So Margaret Plunkett, who goes by the nickname Peg, plays

(03:08):
it close to the chest about the details of her
life overall. So basically there's a real good ending that
I won't spoil. But she is the reason we know
so much about her life. But of course she doesn't
basically tell her anybody her exact date of birth or
exactly how old you know she is anything like that.
She controls the narrative in a very empowering and mysterious

(03:31):
way in terms of her age, So we don't know
the exact year of her birth. It's believed to be
sometime between seventeen twenty seven and seventeen forty two. But
her memoirs do give some insight into her upbringing. She
was born to a pair of first cousins. She's one
of eight surviving children out of twenty two. Holy shit, Yeah,

(03:55):
that's how we like to do it, the irate out
of twenty two and eight surviving, which is like the
grief of losing more than half of your children is
just like how did people do it back then? So
Peg grows up as a witty, fun loving girl in Westmeath,
in the Irish countryside. It's the time of famine, but

(04:17):
her father is a wealthy landowner, so Peg actually gets
to enjoy a nice life and gets a good education.
She is expected, of course, to find a suitable husband,
was a stable job, move out of the family home,
and then you know, with her husband, raise some children
and builded her own family. Not a particularly exciting plan

(04:37):
to Peg. She's not necessarily all that into it, but
she has watched her two older sisters follow this path.
It doesn't seem that bad, so she accepts the trajectory
basically because she doesn't have any other choice. Like that,
that's what it was for women. But all that changes
after a fever infects her family. Peg manages to avoid infection,

(04:58):
so her father sends her to live with an uncle
until everyone hopefully recovers, but by the time she returns,
the illness has taken both her mother and her older brother,
and her grief stricken father is left in shambles. He
is too emotionally and mentally unwell to care for his family,
so he appoints his next oldest son, Christopher, to become

(05:20):
the head.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Of the household.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
But where PEG's father was a kind and respectable man,
Christopher is a power hungry monster. So instead of using
the family's money to take care of his siblings or
for the dowries his unwed sisters need to find prospective husbands,
he just spends it all on himself. He indulges in
fancy clothing, food, drink all of it, and then at

(05:44):
home he is a tyrant, especially to Peg and her sisters,
who are now forced to do all the household work.
When any man tries to ask for one of their
hands and marriages, Christopher shuts them down. He keeps the
dowry money from himself, and also he wants to keep
the sisters in his home basically to be his servants.

(06:07):
So one day Peg goes to visit a friend, and
when she comes home, she finds all the doors locked,
and this is Christopher's way of punishing her for leaving.
He leads her outside, stranded in the cold and rain
for an hour before letting her back in. So finally,
one of PEG's sisters runs off to Dublin, where she
meets a man who's willing to marry her without a

(06:29):
dowry and so teenage Peg is desperate to escape Christopher,
so she runs off to join her sister in the
city she absolutely loves Dublin, spends all her time out
and about, flirting with the local lads, and soon the
proposals start rolling in for Peg. Men are lining up
to be with her, but she needs Christopher's permission that fine,

(06:55):
and she needs the dowry money. He refuses. He forces
Peg to come home to Westmeath, and he's not happy
that she left in the first place. He doesn't like
that she started her own life. He begins to beat her.
He whips her, constantly covering her and bruises so she
manages to escape again. She nearly lopes with the man

(07:16):
behind her brother's back, even though that man is already
engaged to another woman, but before they can seal the deal,
Christopher and two of his friends break into the inn
where Peg and her fiance are staying, and they're armed
with guns. They scare off the fiance and they drag
Peg back home to Westmeath, where Christopher gives her yet

(07:37):
another terrible beating. He is so abusive to Peg and
her younger sister, But where Peg is rebellious and tries
to escape, her sister has a harder time avoiding feelings
of despair and hopelessness about the situation. She falls into
a deep depression, She stops eating, and she eventually dies

(07:57):
of malnutrition.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
So yes, horrible situation, like in a horrible turn where
it's like you grow up in one way and then
all of a sudden it all just goes so dark.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, but the dad, Like where's the dad? I know,
like he's still alive.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
You know, Like, yeah, I mean chances are knowing how
we Irish do it. He's just an alcoholic and he
just kind of like can't be in the real world. Yeah,
that's an assumption on my part. I don't know what
Pig's father was really doing. Allegedly allegedly allegedly Allegedly, alcoholism
is a disease. Okay, After her sister's death, Peg gets

(08:36):
the worst beating of her life. She's whipped so badly
she vomits blood and loses consciousness. It takes three months
of bed ridden recovery, but she survives, and once she does,
she decides she's getting away from her abusive brother once
and for all. She convinces her father, who as we

(08:58):
just said, is still letting Christopher in the household. But
she does convince her father to give her enough money
to pay for a carriage ride back to Dublin. And
when she gets to Dublin, she moves back in with
her married sister, and she slowly regains her health and
her confidence and her enthusiasm for life. She's still traumatized
and in a fragile state. So when her brother in

(09:20):
law introduces her to his friend, who she in her
memoirs identifies as a mister Dartis, Peg is easily swept
up in his kindness. He sympathizes with all the hardships
she's been through, and of course that makes her swoon
and the two begin a romance. Do you think it's
going to happen next I'm good. Peg makes a very

(09:43):
risky eighteenth century decision. She decides to have sex with
mister Dartis before marriage. Yep, but she's sure he's going
to marry her, so she isn't concerned about ruining her reputation.
She's basically been led along to believe this is like
both of them are in this together. So she does,

(10:04):
and then she discovers she's pregnant, and when she tells him,
she now knows. Now, well, now we have to get married.
But suddenly mister Dartis has cold feet. When she tells
him he's ruined her reputation. He agrees to put her
up in a brothel so she can deliver the baby
in secret. My god, so she agrees. She continues to

(10:25):
see him. He comes to the brothel to see her,
but of course she's like, hold up there, she can't leave.
So she's very unhappy there, very anxious, and she's isolated
from her family and friends. So now PEG's sister starts
to wonder where she is, and then the word gets
out that Peg had Dartis's baby. So before Peg gets

(10:47):
a chance to explain everything, her sister disowns her come
because it's all about reputation in the seventeen hundreds, it's.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Just like just bad fucking it's bad vibes, bad night,
bad cloud.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
So not only is PEG's sister disgusted by the fact
that Peg had sex out of wedlock, which so did
mister Dartis. It's like that thing of like, hey, she
didn't do it by herself.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Right, and she got pregnant because there's no fucking birth control,
I mean.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Right, and she was a teenager, so she kind of
didn't know, like she was like this is romantic love totally.
But her sister's also horrified. Peg lived in a brothel
during her pregnancy. So Peg tries to go visit her
sister to hash things out and beg her for her forgiveness,
but her sister calls her a quote vile wretch and

(11:37):
slams the door in her face. So of course PEG's
completely destroyed by her sister's rejection. It's like, if it
weren't for mister Dartis and the baby, Peg would be
completely alone in the world. But shortly after this, the
baby passes away. So now mister Dartis feels absolutely no
obligation to take care of Peg anymore, and he kicks

(12:00):
her out of his house. Penny Lissen, homeless Pig, finds
the cheap is boarding room possible and moves in, and
with no means of income, she's left selling her own
belongings piece by piece until she says, quote she's reduced
nearly to nakedness end quote God. And then here's another
quote from her memoirs. Peg writes, quote, I remained in

(12:23):
that boarding room till I had nothing but what covered me,
not one single article wherewith to change what I wore,
And for eight days had lived only on one pound
of hung beef and a few potatoes, using the water
in which they were boiled as the only diluter of
my wretched scanty meals. So now she's desperate, and she

(12:44):
does the unthinkable. She returns to her family home and
begs her abusive brother to take her back oh ma'am,
but her destroyed reputation precedes her and her horrible, controlling
brother refuses to let her back in the house, and
with nowhere left to go, she has to turn around
and walk back to Dublin Jesus. So on this long

(13:06):
walk back from the country into the city, Peg runs
into two men who offer her a meal and tea.
She declines them at first, She's very wary of their intentions.
She's been through this now she's a little wiser. But
then when she runs into them a second time, she
decides to take them up on their offer. They lead
her to a teahouse and they introduce her to a

(13:28):
wealthy wine cellar named mister Thomas Cowfield. Mister Caffield takes
an immediate interest in Peg. She's really pretty, by the way,
there's like an etching I can show you, And she's like,
it just makes me sad. It's like she didn't have
anybody in her early teens, in her adolescence to kind
of be like, hey, keep an eye out for this.

(13:49):
He'll do this, wait for that, I say, no guidance.
So mister Caffield takes an immediate interest in Peg. He
asks her all about her life while she's eating her
hot meat, and he's shocked to hear about the conditions
in which Peg has been living. He wants to see
where she lives, to see if she's really telling the
truth about this tragic situation. She agrees to show him,

(14:12):
and they start walking to PEG's boarding room on the
way mister Cawfield quote slips too Guinea into PEG's bosom,
and he tells her that if she indeed is as
poor as she says she is, he'll take care of her,
protect her, and personally see that she never goes hungry again.
So yeah, of course, from our vantage point, it's clear

(14:35):
mister Cawfield is going to take advantage of Peg. But
she's Pig's young, She's in dire straits. And this is
what she later says in her memoirs quote, there are
many virtues which, when carried beyond their due bounds, degenerate
into vices. One of those is gratitude. The miseries I
had undergone were present to my mind, and he had

(14:56):
promised he would screen me from their future approach. All
these thoughts rushed at once into my mind, awakened my
sincerest acknowledgments, and I esteemed it but a grateful return
to promise all he requested. So that's just a fancy
way of Haig saying that she just decided to exchange
sex for financial support from a man, And why shouldn't she.

(15:20):
She's already been taken advantage of by mister dartis suffered
the miscarriage of their child was discarded by him. Yeah,
she has been rejected by her own shitty abuse of family.
She literally has nothing to lose. She's in her twenties,
so she's like, why wouldn't I. So if she hooks

(15:41):
up with mister Cawfield she gets pregnant, he vows to
continue taking care of her and the baby even after
he marries a different woman. He actually sticks to this promise, though,
he provides for Peg and their son. But now Peg
is considered a quote unquote fallen woman. So she's been
turned night's visiting Dublin's many taverns and music halls, she

(16:03):
meets other quote unquote fallen women and they teach her
the ropes of becoming a professional high end sex worker.
And just like that, Peg starts making her own income
on top of the financial support that she's getting from
mister Cawfield. But in a tragic echo of her past,
this baby that she has with mister Cawfield also passes away.

(16:25):
And when that baby dies, mister Cawfield cuts her off.
He learns that she's been seeing other clients and he's
basically like, that's that. So yet again, Peg is alone
in the world. But unlike last time, she now has
her own way of making money. So she keeps working,
and she keeps partying at pubs and looking for new

(16:45):
John's to keep herself afloat. And one day she meets
a well to do man she identifies as a mister Leson.
It's Niam's great.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Great grandfatherson me and Lison Liah, not Neam li Liam Liam.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Mister Leson becomes infatuated with Peg, and so he moves
her into his lavish country estate in Kildare where you're right,
things are looking up. He makes her feel like royalty.
And because he does all this for her, she sees
fewer and fewer clients, and this kind of helps her
maintain the image that she's just keeping herself only for

(17:23):
mister Leeson. At one point she even takes his last name,
going by either Peg or Margaret Leeson. But she is
not in love with him. She, like many of us,
has fallen in love with Dublin's nightlife. That's what she's
really about. She's grateful, of course, for everything this man's
done for her, but their relationship is purely transactional to her,

(17:46):
it is not romantic. Pretty soon her partying and her
meetings with other john's increase, and when mister Leson catches on,
he is furious. He demands she stops sleeping with other men.
But at this point life Peg has had enough of
listening to men. She's a businesswoman now, and she's sick
of the double standard that women have to remain chaste

(18:08):
while men can just go out and do whatever they want.
When she expresses this to mister Lison, he proposes to her,
hoping that marriage will set Peg straight, but she turns
them down, and she'll later write quote, I looked upon
marriage merely as a human institution, calculated chiefly to fix
the legitimization of children and oblige parents to bring them

(18:30):
up and provide for them to ascertain the dissent of property,
and also to bind two persons together, even if they
might be disgusted and heartily tired of one another.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yikes, m hmm.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
And then I wrote, sounds like PEG's been on my
side of TikTok. But like having this opinion, and especially
writing about it in the eighteenth century, being bold enough
and brave enough to put it on paper is revolutionary.
She is truly about us, which is like kind of
the result of tragedy, like when you go through bad shit.

(19:05):
Yes it's hard, Yes there's trauma, and also your spine.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Gets real thick, you get real brave resiliances. Motherfucker.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah. So, of course, when Peg turns down mister Leeson's
marriage proposal, their business relationship ends too, and so Peg
goes back to her old routine, trying to see as
many john's you know, as she wants, basically earning her
own money and partying in dublin, and then she ends
up meeting a john that is named Buck Lawless Damn,

(19:38):
which is hot and old. Buck becomes one of PEG's regulars,
but she actually soon finds herself falling head over heels
for him, and it's actually the real thing this time.
In the initial bliss of their relationship, Peg remains faithful
to Buck and she stops sex work altogether, but her

(19:59):
past is too much for Buck to handle emotionally. He
starts getting jealous anytime he sees Peg, even talking to
another man, which then leads to bickering, which turns into
intense fighting, and soon Buck starts physically abusing Peg and
it doesn't stop even after he knows she is pregnant

(20:19):
with his baby, and at one point he beats her
so badly that she has a miscarriage.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
But she stays with him because this is kind of
what she knows, right, and she ends up getting pregnant
with him again. So it's just seems like she is
in another impossible situation with a man. But luck strikes
when Buck Lawless, who is seeking new financial opportunities, decides
to set out for America, and so he leaves her

(20:49):
and suddenly she's free from his tyrannical reign and she's
left with their daughter and to live the life she
wants to live. Buck has prom that he's going to
send money once he gets to America. No money ever comes,
so she goes back to the one thing she can
depend on, sex work. But now Peg isn't just looking

(21:10):
for a stable income, she wants a higher income. So
this is now the mid seventeen seventies and she Peg
and her friend and fellow sex worker, Sally Hayes, decide
to team up and start their own high end brothel.
So instead of settling for cheap rent in a poorer
neighborhood to work out of, the women pull all their

(21:32):
funds together and spring for a nice place in a
wealthy neighborhood. Similar care is taken in selecting the other
ladies who will be working there. They all must be beautiful,
well dressed, have enough of an education to carry on
a conversation about either art or politics or music. When
John's visit the house, they're served champagne and treated to

(21:54):
a full night of partying and entertainment. So Peg and
Sally are offering a much more complete experience rather than
just cheap, fast sex, and their brothel immediately gains a
reputation among Dublin's wealthy men for being a cut above,
and business starts booming, and Peg and Sally spend their

(22:16):
money like crazy. They buy themselves the finest clothes, the
best food, all the drinks. They party together almost every
single night, and they have the time of their lives.
And then Peg gets a surprise. Buck Lawless returns from America,
and like any toxic X, he reaches out and asks

(22:37):
her to come visit him in Cork. She refuses it first,
but she still has feelings for Buck. He was I
can't say her first true love, but like she did
love him, so Sally convinces her just to go see him,
and she says she'll go along for protection. So the
two women get to Cork and Peg decides she and

(22:59):
Sally should take advantage of Buck the way he took
advantage of her, So they start partying in Cork on
Buck's dime, and they do it for a while, like
a couple weeks. But PEG's taste for revenge softens, and
soon she and Buck rekindle their relationship, and by the
time Peg returns to Dublin, she is again pregnant with

(23:21):
Buck's child. No so now she's feeling like things are
back on track. She's running a successful business. She has
a boyfriend named Buck Lawless. But in keeping with the
unfortunate cycles of PEG's life, trouble is right around the corner,
and this is awful. In November of seventeen seventy nine,

(23:44):
a gang of seven college boys calling themselves the quote
Pinking Dindies break into PEG's home and rape and beat
her mercilessly. Oh my god, and her two year old
daughter watches in horror. Her mom is incapacitated by this
monstrous gang of men. Peg survives the ordeal, but the

(24:07):
baby she was pregnant with does not, and soon after
her two year old daughter dies too. Oh my god,
And in her memoirs, Peg attributes her toddler's death to shock.
Oh horrifying.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
How much can one fucking person?

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Right?

Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's just awful?

Speaker 2 (24:27):
And yet Peg does not crumble where she absolutely could
have and maybe should have. Instead, she decides to sue
these men, yes, which is like unheard of, Yeah, like
this single woman, like out there alone, and she basically
sues them. The head of the gang tells her to

(24:47):
drop the lawsuit or he'll kill her, but she will
not be intimidated. She presses on. She wins the case,
so the perpetrators don't only land in jail, but once
their sentences are served, there banished from Dublin.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
So, as Peg is kind of going through all that,
Buck Lawless is making a plan to move to London
and he tells Peg he wants her to come with him.
Peg loves the life she's built for herself in Dublin.
She doesn't want to leave it or her business. She
certainly doesn't want to go to London, but Buck pushes her,
saying she needs a fresh start after all the things

(25:25):
that she has suffered, so she finally gives in. She
moves to London to be with the man she loves
and to recover, and once she gets there, she finds
out Buck has been sleeping with another woman Buck, so
of course she's angry, but she's also resilient and she's
determined to make the most of her time in London.
She finds British people to be uptight and too concerned

(25:48):
with pleasing local nobility, and this is kind of a
running thing in PEG's life. She doesn't like these upper classmen,
and probably for great reason. I mean, those men, these
rich men around her have failed her, have beaten her,
have used her, whatever. So she kind of was like,

(26:11):
it's so funny, So she's a rebel. She decides to
have some fun. One afternoon, she sees the Prince of
Wales in a tailor's shop customizing a fancy waistcoat, so
she goes in after him, orders the same waistcoat and
then gives it to her shoemaker n So she's basically like, oh,
you think you're the one that only now there's two
of those dresses on the red carpet. Well yeah, And

(26:32):
then later on she's riding in her carriage down the
street and the Prince, that same prince comes riding along,
and I guess the thing they did was, like everyone
knowing it was, the Prince of Wales would clear off
the street like a fire truck so he can have
the street all to himself, not Pig. She rides right
along next to him and makes it clear to him

(26:54):
that she considers him to be just another person like
anybody else. But very Peg gets bored of London, so
she goes back to Dublin and she gets back into
her brothel business with Sally. She's finally back in her element.
She runs the business, she's partying with her friends. But then,
like really quickly and out of the blue, she marries

(27:15):
a man named Barry Yelverton. And Barry Yelverton isn't just
any guy. He's the son of a baron and he
is insanely rich. Okay, so marrying him means that now
people have to refer to Peg as quote, the right
honorable missus Yelverton.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah they do, and I want that title from now on,
right right honorable, right on honorable.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
So this is kind of like the perfect middle finger
to anybody who has disrespected her for being a sex
worker for all the shit she's gone through, and clearly
she's doing it for the money. Sadly, Barry actually has
feelings for Peg. She just wants the status. She just
kind of wants. She's basically like, don't hate the player,
hate the game, and it's all a game, So let's

(28:04):
do this thing. They actually go through with the wedding,
but very soon after, Barry's father goes to Peg and says,
I will pay you off to get out of here.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
And She's like, sounds good to me, and gets paid
off and leaves poor Barry. You know, Barry was one
goofy motherfucker. He's like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (28:23):
He was like an awkward mama's boy, goofball. He got played,
he got worked by his wife and father.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah. So at this point it's the seventeen nineties, Peg
figures it's time to retire. She has spent around thirty
years in the Cortison business, both as a sex worker
and as a brothel madam. She's amassed enough money to
live comfortably for the rest of her life. Wow, or
so she thinks. A large portion of her retirement funds

(28:54):
are IOU's left by the wealthy former clients that.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
She had credit, so basically everything on credit.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
They did it on credit, and she assumed that they
would pay because she knows they have money. But when
she goes and tries to collect on them, they won't pay.
And this is bad news for her because she's already
bought a beautiful country house outside of Dublin in the
city of Blackrock. So and she bought it on credit obviously,

(29:23):
So now all the money she is owed is not
coming in. Her debt catches up to her and before
she knows it, she's thrown in prison for failing to
make house payments. But life will not get peg plunket down.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
No, won't.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
You just won't. She's a warrior. Yeah, So, as she's
sitting in prison, she realizes there's one thing that she
still has on her side, and it's the truth. As
a court is on her discretion was a huge asset
in the success of her business, but now she has
no reason to keep quiet about her decades of salacious
interludes with the nobleman who will not pay her.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Now blackmail. It's something of blackmail, though it's like, oh,
you're not going to say anything that I'm sending it
to fucking collections, which in this case is your reputate.
I'm collecting your fucking reputation, bitch.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
That's right. She's been a person who has been made
to suffer by that concept of reputations all her life.
So she's like, fine, let's do the reputation thing. So
she writes to all the men, and she's I think
fair about this, where it's like it's blacknap mail, but
she's basically saying she's writing to all of them and saying,
you owe me money, and I plan to release an

(30:27):
intimately detailed tell all book about my life. So the
way you keep your name out of this book is
you pay me what you owe me.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Some of them take her seriously and hand over the money.
Others doubt her, suspecting either she's bluffing or she couldn't
even write a book if she wanted to. And those
men that doubted her lose big time because Peg publishes
not just one, but three tell all memoirs about about
her life, and in everyone, she publishes the names the politicians,

(31:01):
military personnel, clergymen, and you know, like fancy royal guys.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, oh, the scandal, the scandal. I want to be
in like a cafe when those get released on the
day of and everyone's just like did you see so
and so's in that?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
And like, I mean, it's like such a brilliant idea
and it's such a like oh yeah, fuck all the shit,
Like why would I ever go along with this idea
that I'm supposed to be the one with.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
The discretion and with yea holds all the keep those secrets.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
And it's like, oh, you're a scumbag that not only right,
you know, like cheats on your wife for all the
reasons that you think it's bad that you're getting caught
going to a sex worker. Why would I keep that secret?
You don't even pay your bills.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
You're paying for discretion and if you haven't paid it
for it, then it doesn't belong.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
To you, That's right, you know, then if you're going
to cheat and she gets to cheat. So the first
volume comes out in seventeen ninety five. It is a
massive hit. Of course, the people of Ireland cannot cannot stop.
It's selling out. People can't wait to get their hands
on what is basically the hottest piece of gossip of

(32:11):
their lifetimes.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Suck. Yes, I want to be there.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I know, the money Peg earns from the sales of
this book is more than enough to pay off her
debts to get her out of prison, but the success
is so massive she figures why stop there. Her second
volume of memoirs comes out a year later, in seventeen
ninety six, and it does just as well as the first,
so of course Peg decides to write a third book,

(32:37):
but before it hits the shelves in seventeen ninety seven,
Peg Plunket passes away at around seventy years old. We'll
never know, because she never would admit how old she was.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
That's kind of old for that time, right, Like that's
all like it's not now obviously, but for back then,
Like that's like an old lady, legitimate life.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
It seems like it. For yeah, when I would guess
median age was like around fifty or six, I don't know.
All three volumes of PEG's memoirs are in the public
domain and are available to read online for free. Historian
Julie Peakman has also compiled a condensed version of the

(33:16):
tell all with her own analysis and commentary, called Peg
Plunket Memoirs of a Whore. While PEG's story is filled
with tragedy. It's one that completely upends the expectations of
an eighteenth century quote fallen woman. Because Peg took the
time to write her own story in her own voice.
It gave her the chance to humanize her plight and

(33:38):
honor her own brilliance and fortitude on her own terms.
And that is the story of Irish Courtisan Peg Plunket.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Wow. Yeah, wow, I mean what resilience.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Also, imagine if like a man wrote her story and
how it would turn out. It's like that idea of
women actually being the ones to do it so that
it's preserved the way. Yeah, they get to represent themselves. Yeah,
pretty cool. It seems like agency was very important to
her and she was able to fucking create a life

(34:14):
around it. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, really good, great job.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Thank you for telling that the story.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Thank you for listening actively. We've done it again.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
We did it again. Thank you guys for listening to
this quote short episode. But like, seriously, it's never short.
It's never short.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
We are never brief. That's our promise to you.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
That's right, we promised, And never shut the fuck up,
stay sexy and don't get murdered. Cook to me Elvis,
Do you want a cookie? Do movies?

Speaker 3 (34:57):
You've seen them, but Havy loved them, like, really really
loved them. I'm Millie to Jericho. I'm a film programmer, historian, writer,
and former co host of I Saw What You Did.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
And I'm Casey O'Brien, producer of I Saw What You Did,
filmmaker and lover of movies.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
And now we're teaming up again to host our brand
new film podcast, Dear Movies, I Love You. We're two
unlikely friends coming together to pull off a big score.
It's not unlike John Pierre Melville's La circ Lar Rouge.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
Or like Film and Luise holding hands screening off a cliff.
The point is we want to talk about all the
movies we're crushing on, from hidden gems to blockbuster favorites.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Each week, Casey and I will talk about what's going
on in the world of cinema, from new releases in
the theater to what we're streaming in hope.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
There's going to be heated debates, flawless recommendations, and guest
luminaries from every corner of the film industry.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
And some of our funniest friends. So whether you're a
dedicated cinephile, or just someone who loves quote being mean girls.
This is the movie podcast for you.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Come obsessed with us over the one crush that actually
loves you back.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Dear Movies, I Love You. Premieres Tuesday, January twenty eighth.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts Becer.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Creighton.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalach.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my Fave Murder. Bye bye, and
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Hosts And Creators

Georgia Hardstark

Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

Karen Kilgariff

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