Betty May

Betty May (born Betty Marlow Golding 1893, died after 1955) was a British singer, dancer, and model, who worked primarily in London's West End. She was a member of the London Bohemian set of the inter-war years, claimed to have joined a criminal gang in Paris, was associated with occultist Aleister Crowley, and sat for Augustus John and Jacob Epstein. She became known as the "Tiger Woman". She adopted the name Betty May early in life, for reasons that are unclear.

Betty May was born Betty Marlow Golding in Tidal Basin, Canning Town, London, in 1893. She was born into poverty. The only known account of her early life is her autobiography Tiger Woman, in which May writes that her father left the family when she was very young, leaving her mother to raise four children on the ten shillings a week she earned working long hours. The family had little furniture and no bed, so they slept on bundles of rags at night. May's mother was half French and was described as good-looking, with an olive complexion and dark eyes, features May claimed to have inherited. May described her grandmother, who lived nearby, as a formidable character who influenced May's life.

According to May, when the struggle of supporting four children became overwhelming, her mother sent May and her brother to live with their father. It was the first time May had ever seen him. He was an engineer by profession, but was living a life of idleness, drink and violence in a brothel run by his girlfriend in Limehouse. May wrote that she and her brother left the house after her father was arrested by his grandfather, an inspector of police, and later jailed. She first stayed with her paternal grandmother and then with her aunt and uncle on a barge, where she was washed frequently, taught the Lord's Prayer, and had her hair brushed more than she thought necessary but was otherwise ignored. She described herself as a "little brown-faced marmoset ... and the only quick thing in this very slow world." Her aunt described her as "a regular little savage". May earned pennies singing and dancing for sailors on passing vessels. Some time later she was sent to live with another aunt who had a farm in Somerset where May attended the village school.

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