Hellfire club Stories

England, 1753. One would not be too surprised by the number of individuals who probed the relationship between life and death through portraiture in the eighteenth century. Psychologically, 'the haunted portrait' inflamed the imagination as an aesthetic concept that allowed for the exploration of the past within the present. Thomas Wingfield had been haunted by an apparition of Lady Beatrice Alderton, whose portrait had c...

"It was during the 18th century that a new form of British male began to populate high society. The 'Rake' was the term used to describe the usually aristocratic type of gentlemen who were in lustful pursuit of a harder sort of pleasure to be gained at the expense of the gentler sex. These 'creatures' who were normally peers of the realm, noblemen, and other gentrified lords, had little respect for the law or traditional...