THE HELLFIRE CLUB

FOUNDED: The first incarnation of the club was established in 1719.

STATUS: Disbanded by the early 1800s, though other unrelated groups that go by the same name exist in England and Ireland to this day, and a fictional Hellfire Club incorporating some actual club lore exists in the Marvel Comics Universe.

EXCLUSIVITY FACTOR: High—membership consisted mainly of high society rakes who had money to burn and plenty of time to do it.

SECRECY FACTOR: Medium—the club took pleasure in publicizing the fact that they were a secret society, but never revealed the nature of their secrets.

THREAT FACTOR: Perhaps the biggest threat they posed was to the prostitutes they cavorted with, or to their own bank accounts, since gambling was one of their favorite pastimes.

QUIRK FACTOR: In the 18th century, pretty high. These hell raisers rejected the social mores of their time in favor of raucous drunken behavior, orgies, parodying Christianity, and possibly even devil worship.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

Suppose it’s the mid-1700s and you’re a listless, horny guy sitting on a pile of inheritance money and longing for some fun that takes place outside of the drawing room. There were plenty of gentlemen’s clubs to join at the time, each focusing on particular interests such as politics, literature, or sports. But what if your interests were a bit more . . . perverse? Then the Hellfire Club might be just the place for you.

The first Hellfire Club was founded in 1719 by Philip, first Duke of Wharton, a prominent English politician and notorious rake. The purpose of the club was to ridicule religion and conventional morality, achieved by the duke and his aristocratic friends by performing mock religious ceremonies and having dinners where they dressed as characters from the Bible and consumed dishes such as “Devil’s Loin” and “Holy Ghost Pie.” Wharton’s club disbanded in 1721, when King George I condemned their immorality. Wharton was removed from Parliament as a result and ended up joining the more respectable Freemasons.

But the Hellfire Club was not extinguished entirely. Sir Francis Dashwood, who had founded many other gentlemen’s clubs, revived the Hellfire Club in the 1730s, though it was then known by the Order of the Knights of St. Francis, or eventually the Monks of Medmenham Abbey. These monikers were purely satirical, for Sir Francis and his fellow members were anything but saintly. In addition to mocking Christianity and drinking a lot of booze, they allegedly indulged in more illicit activities, such as orgies and Satanic masses. Unfortunately, details of these scandalous sessions remain a mystery, for the official records of the club were, quite appropriately, burned.

MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS

The Hellfire Club was an aristocratic institution—its mischievous members included British nobles, such as the Earl of Sandwich, inventor of the eponymous foodstuff, and prominent politicians, including US founding father Benjamin Franklin. The club also admitted women, which was unusual for the era. Since respectable ladies were not supposed to hang out in taverns where the club often met, meetings were also held at members’ homes, where their lewd antics could commence unchecked.

There were about forty members of Dashwood’s club, with an inner circle of thirteen, most of them long-time buddies of their lascivious leader. They were allowed to bring friends to meetings—preferably loose women, but select men could also sit in, if they were sufficiently depraved and possessed a title and/or a reputation to ruin.

INSIDE THE HELLFIRE CLUB

Most folks don’t appreciate others gossiping about them, but Sir Francis Dashwood and his fellow hell raisers seemed to get a kick out of outsiders buzzing about their secret society. Since official records of the club were destroyed, most of what is known about them is based on hearsay and conjecture.

It is a fact that Sir Francis enjoyed dressing in costume—he even commissioned portraits of himself styled as a Franciscan monk and the pope to lampoon Catholicism. Special outfits were also required at club meetings: white jackets, trousers, and caps for the “brothers” of the society, and the same ensemble in red for the “Abbot,” who led their mock religious ceremonies. It’s unclear what the ladies wore—apparently, in some cases, not a whole lot.

None other than the Devil himself was purported to be the president of the Duke of Wharton’s Hellfire Club, and members referred to each other as “devils,” too—but there is no evidence that they actually practiced Satanism. Not so with Dashwood’s more controversial crew. They were rumored to celebrate black mass and participate in drunken orgies. They even pioneered the “body shot” by sipping wine out of the navel of a naked young woman at their gatherings.

Not surprisingly, Dashwood’s “prudish” wife was not a fan of her husband and his pals partying at their country home at West Wycombe, so Dashwood leased nearby Medmenham Abbey to accommodate their antics. It was there that the group became known as the Monks of Medmenham Abbey. As deliciously decadent as it must have been to carry out occult rituals in this formerly sacred environment, the Monks were destined for an even more unique headquarters—one that was much closer to hell.

Sir Francis was obsessed with Paganism, and the caves under a church in West Wycombe were reportedly once the sites of pagan rituals. So, Dashwood had the network of caves excavated and expanded, a six-year project that was finished in 1752. From then on, the secret society performed their rites by candlelight in their subterranean lair.

You can visit the Hellfire Caves and Sir Francis Dashwood’s extravagant estate and gardens. For more information, visit www.hellfirecaves.co.uk and www.westwycombeestate.co.uk.

SINNERS!

These Hellfire Club members pulled some stunts that very well might have led them to eternal damnation.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: ADULTERER

He claimed to live by thirteen virtues, including chastity and temperance, but it seems that Benjamin Franklin strayed from that righteous path as part of the Hellfire Club, which he joined thanks to his close friendship with Sir Francis Dashwood.

In addition to his more wholesome achievements, including the discovery of electricity and the publication of Poor Richard’s Almanac, this all-American statesman scored quite a few notches in his bedpost. Having a wife at home didn’t curb his womanizing ways. His conquests included a mother and her daughter, and possibly his maid, who may have been the mother of his illegitimate son.

So expert was Franklin in the care and keeping of mistresses that he once penned a piece called “Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress.” In it, he advises the reader to satisfy his raging libido by getting married— and barring that, sleeping with more experienced older women, “because it is impossible to tell a young woman from an old woman in the dark.” Perhaps he learned this in the darkness of the Hellfire Caves.

WILLIAM HOGARTH: HYPOCRITE

Famous for his paintings and engravings that vividly portrayed the ills of 18th-century English society, William Hogarth was one of the few non-aristocratic Hellfire Club members. He was born to a poor, middle-class London family, and even spent a few years in debtors’ lodging as a young boy. This background inspired the gritty realism and biting satire of his work, evident in engravings like Gin Lane, a condemnation of the evils accompanying the drinking of spirits. It’s ironic that Hogarth would produce this and other “modern morality” paintings when he was one of a group of people who weren’t exactly upright citizens.

In 1757, Sir Francis Dashwood commissioned Hogarth to paint his portrait, dressed as a Roman Catholic clergyman. In Sir Francis Dashwood at His Devotions, the Hellfire leader is depicted in a friar’s robe with a halo over his head, leering at a naked, prostrate woman. Two of Hogarth’s most popular works, A Whore’s Progress and A Rake’s Progress, reflected just the kind of “progress” that was probably going on down in the Hellfire Caves.

PAUL WHITEHEAD: FIXER

A minor poet, Paul Whitehead’s contributions as secretary and steward of the Monks of Medmenham Abbey were major. His love for wine and women drew him to the club’s inner circle—and possibly men, as well. There is speculation that he and Sir Francis Dashwood were lovers.

Whitehead’s various duties included the procurement of prostitutes; political advisor; speech writing; keeping the wine inventory; master of the minutes; and even blackmail, when it was required to keep the activities of the club’s powerful members from becoming public knowledge. Whitehead made sure those secrets went with him to the grave. Three days before his death in 1774, he lit a bonfire in his garden and burned all the books and papers relating to the Monks, a conflagration that went on for seventy-six hours. Once he finished that last duty, he took to his bed and died, likely having committed suicide using opium or arsenic.

But Whitehead didn’t leave the Hellfire Caves for good. He had his body donated to science and bequeathed his heart to Sir Francis, who kept it in an urn in his mausoleum until it was stolen. Legend has it that the ghost of Paul Whitehead now stalks the caves and will do so until his heart is returned.

JOHN MONTAGU, 4TH EARL OF SANDWICH: GAMBLER

This sleaze might have been the rakiest of the rakes. He held the lofty position of First Lord of the Admiralty, but was far more interested in gambling, flagellation, and young girls. One of these young lovers was 17-year old Martha Ray, who moved in with the earl and bore him five children after his wife was declared insane in 1767.

But the earl was nothing if not excessive in his endeavors: he also had other mistresses, and other children, and a very dirty mouth. Poet Charles Churchill wrote of the earl:

Hear him talk, and you would swear
Obscenity herself was there
And that Profaneness had made a choice
By way of trump, to use his voice . . .
Blasphemy, making way and room
Had marked him in his mother’s womb

His profanity could surely be heard at the card table, for the earl was a profligate gambler. According to legend, his reluctance to take a break from one of his games to eat is what led to his invention of a more convenient meal: the sandwich. But it was his other appetites that earned him the nickname “The Insatiable Earl.”