page_title: Teresia Constantia Phillips
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Teresia Constantia Phillips / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: St Benet Paul's Wharf, Queen Victoria Street, London EC4
context_page_description: Teresia Constantia Phillips or Con Phillips was a British courtesan and bigamist who published a scandalous autobiography.
context_section_description: Phillips was born in Chester in 1709. Her early life is not reliably known as the major source is her autobiography. Her education was said to have been paid for by her godmother, Catherine Powlett, the Duchess of Bolton. She attended Mrs Filler's boarding-school in Westminster until her father remarried to a servant. It has been suggested that the choice of step-mother may have led to her godmother removing the source of funding. She was raped at the age of 12 or 13 (or 15) by a character known as "Thomas Grimes". This was thought to be the assumed name of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, but more recent research identifies her attacker as Thomas Lumley-Saunderson, 3rd Earl of Scarbrough. Phillips herself never realised who her attacker was and intriguingly her autobiography was dedicated to the man who attacked her, the 3rd Earl of Scarborough.
caption: Phillips' first two marriages took place at St Benet's, Paul's Wharf in 1722 and 1724.
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