Irish Courtesan: Margaret Leeson (1727-1797)
Born to a wealthy landed family in Killough, Co. Westmeath, her birth name was Peg Plunkett, one of her mother’s twenty-two children. Because of her mother’s death and to escape an abusive brother she went to Dublin. She was abandoned by several lovers before turning to prostitution. She became pregnant as a teenager and was kept by the child’s father until the child died. At this point she lost everything and took to being unmarried and relying on the…
