![The Velvet Coffee-woman: or, the Life, Gallantries and Amours of the late famous Mrs Anne Rochford, etc. (Westminster, printed for Simon Green, 1728), [2], 46pp.; 8°. BL: 12331.C.39. ESTCT100189. Hünersdorff](https://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/crclarge/978131509/9781315094632.jpg "The Velvet Coffee-woman: or, the Life, Gallantries and Amours of the late famous Mrs Anne Rochford, etc. (Westminster, printed for Simon Green, 1728), [2], 46pp.; 8°. BL: 12331.C.39. ESTCT100189. Hünersdorff")
ABSTRACT
A substantial coffee-woman’s biography, satirically describing the life of Anne Rochford, including the notorious occasion when she was presented to the king, George I, wearing a velvet dress, in the guise of a woman of substance. Anne Rochford was raised in Lambeth, the daughter of a waterman called Francis Woase. After some years in service in the City, when she was about twenty years of age, she took the name Rochford and, by some complicated financial engineering, completed the building and renovation of four houses in Stangate, Lambeth. After ‘some Vicissitudes of Female Affairs’ (p. 75) – never explained – she began a new life as a courtesan and coffee-woman in a coffee-house in the Royal Mews, Charing Cross, at some time before 1713.
