Betty May
Published: 2014-07-17
Total Pages: 171
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Dancer, singer, gang member, cocaine addict and sometime confectionist, Betty Mays autobiography Tiger Woman thrilled and appalled the public when her story first appeared at the end of the roaring twenties. I have often lived only for pleasure and excitement but you will see that I came to it by unexpected ways Born into abject squalor in Londons Limehouse area, May used her steely-eyed, striking looks and street nous to become an unlikely bohemian celebrity sensation, a fixture at the Café Royal, London, marrying four times along the way alongside numerous affairs. I wondered why men would not leave me alone. They were alright at first when they offered to show one life, and then at once they became a nuisance She elbowed her way to the top of Londons social scene in a series of outrageous and dramatic fights, flights, marriages and misadventures that also took her to France, Italy, Canada and the USA. I learnt one thing on my honeymoon to take drugs Her most fateful adversary was occultist and self-proclaimed Great Beast Aleister Crowley, who intended her to be a sacrificial victim of his Thelemite cult in Sicily, but it was her husband Oxford undergraduate Raoul Loveday who died, after conducting a blood sacrifice ritual. Betty Mays vitality and ferocious charisma enchanted numerous artistic figures including Jacob Epstein and Jacob Kramer. A heroine like no other, this is her incredible story in her own words, as fresh and extraordinary as the day it was first told.