Sarah Prydden, better known under her assumed name Sally Salisbury, was one of the most famous prostitutes of the eighteenth century. Born around 1690 as the daughter of a Shrewsbury bricklayer, she worked herself up from the street corners of St Giles to the bedrooms of the nobility; it was said that she had been involved with the then Prince of Wales, the future George II, and that among her keepers were Viscount Bolingbroke, the Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Richmond. She worked for a time for the famous bawd Mother Wisebourn, but most of the time she seems to have been in business for herself, as a kept mistress and lady of pleasure. She apparently amassed a considerable fortune, being able to support a lifestyle that included being waited on by several servants, gambling for high stakes and lavish spending on fashionable clothes and other luxury goods. Late in 1722, however, her notorious temper got the better of her and she stabbed one of her clients, the Hon. John Finch, ostensibly in a quarrel over an opera ticket. Finch survived, and in the ensuing trial Salisbury was convicted of assault but acquitted of premeditation. She was sentenced to a £100 fine and a year in jail, but remained as popular as ever and was frequently visited in Newgate by her old admirers. Three months before her scheduled release in 1724 she died of ‘a fever, having been ill of a consumption of a long time’.