Teresia Constantia Phillips

In November 1722 she married a bigamist at the Anglican church of St Benet's, Paul's Wharf. This man assumed responsibility for her debts. Less than two years later she married at the same church a rich merchant called Henry Muilman in February 1724. The marriage did not last long. It has been speculated that the marriage was ended after her past was discovered.[3] Muilman refused to pay her the money that had been agreed as part of the separation and a dispute began.[2] During the long court case she was said to have had seven other affairs. The men involved included her surgeon and the Tory M.P. Sir Herbert Pakington, 5th Baronet.[3] In 1727 she began a relationship with the gardener Philip Southcote.[4]

Published from 1748

Phillips went abroad to France a number of times to avoid her creditors, but this was not always successful and she served time in the debtors' prison from 1742 to 1744.[3] The long-running court case between her and Muilman was settled in 1748.[5]

Phillips wrote scandalous memoirs which had thinly hidden descriptions of her liaisons. Her main work was An Apology which was published in eighteen parts making up three volumes from 1748 through to 1749.[6] Michael Mascuch notes that the tone changes from a self-effacing apology to a proud justification for her victory over adversity and ill treatment.[2] These potentially libellous works led to Henry Fielding casting "Mrs Fllps" as a whore in a puppet play he wrote and he later urged the full force of the law of libel to be used against people like her and Paul Whitehead. Whitehead was presumed to be her accomplice in her publications.[7]

Phillips' descriptions were not always complimentary as she made out Philip Southcote to be self-obsessed and effeminate. The books themselves were so scandalous that the academic, Elizabeth Carter's, reading was described as so charitable that it would allow "her to read sympathetically even the scandalous memoirs of Teresia Constantia Phillips". It has been speculated that the books may have been published in serial form to encourage blackmail of her previous lovers.[8] The book described her five marriages and affairs with seven well-known men and the double standards that applied to her own life and bigamy.[5]

In 1751, Teresia Constantia Phillips settled in Jamaica with her lover, the wealthy Clarendon planter Henry Needham. Upon the instigation of Needham's friend, governor Henry Moore, she became singular as the only woman to be given an official government post when she was appointed by the governor with the office Mistress of the Revels, an office with the task to supervise and organize the official celebrations and entertainments in the colony, a task she performed and for which she was given a salary from the government.[9]

Phillips died in Kingston in Jamaica. She was said to have made three additional marriages in Jamaica and she was said to have died without mourners.[3]