Peg Plunkett

Peg Plunkett (c. 1727 – 1797) was an Irish brothel keeper in Dublin who wrote her memoirs in three volumes.

Life Margaret Plunkett was born in the Irish county of Westmeath around 1727. (Her date of birth is not accepted by all who have written about her: Francis Leeson believed she was born about 1736 and Julie Peakman, the author of Peg Plunkett: memoirs of a whore, prefers a birth date of about 1742. ) She was one of eight of her mother's 22 children who survived childhood. Because of her mother's death and brother's abuse she moved to Dublin. In Dublin the teenage Plunkett became pregnant and she was kept by the child's father until the child died. This was the first of six of her children who died. At this point she lost everything and took again to being unmarried and relying on the support of men.

Plunkett became head of her own household when she started her first brothel with a friend, Sally Hayes, in Drogheda Street in Dublin. Plunkett was successful in court against Richard Crosbie, the leader of a notorious gang known as the Pinking Dindies. Crosbie was sent to jail for an attack on Plunkett that ended a pregnancy and caused another of her children to die; it was said that Crosbie could have faced a murder charge.

The business had other addresses but finally occupied premises in Pitt Street

Plunkett retired after thirty years to Blackrock. She was said to have had a secret pension from the Irish government at one point.

As her income reduced she began to write her memoirs. It is presumed that the motive was to profit by threatening to name her former lovers. and her obituary was published in the Dublin Evening Post on 17 May. Her original memoirs have also been re-published in edited form.