Teresia Constantia Phillips

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TCP is one of the best-known of the courtesan memoirists of the eighteenth century, though it is still not unanimously agreed that she wrote her own text. Her letter to Chesterfield qualifies her as a feminist. While in Jamaica she turned to writing comment on local politics, some of it in verse.
Head-and-shoulders oval mezzotint of Teresia Constantia Phillips after a painting by Joseph HIghmore. She looks directly at the viewer, in a gown that crosses over at the bust with lace in the cleavage; her hair is arranged in tight curls on top and on her shoulders, decorated with strings of pearls. Her name is written below.

Milestones

2 January 1709
TCP was born, the second of five children, at West Chester in Cheshire.
Phillips says 2 January 1709. If she were using the full form of Old Style, in which the new year did not begin until March, she would mean 1708 in New Style.
Phillips, Teresia Constantia. An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips. Printed for the author, 1750.
1: 87
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
By August 1748-1749
An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips was published by instalments.
The English Short Title Catalogue remarks on the difficulty of distinguishing the first from the second edition of a work which altered in the course of production.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
18 (1748): 384
2 February 1765
TCP died in Kingston, Jamaica, on a Saturday. Since arrests for debt were prohibited on Sundays to encourage church-going, this timing probably saved her body from being seized by her creditors on the way to the churchyard.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Stone, Lawrence. Uncertain Unions. Marriage in England, 1660-1753. Oxford University Press, 1992.
242

Biography

Birth and Background

2 January 1709
TCP was born, the second of five children, at West Chester in Cheshire.
Phillips says 2 January 1709. If she were using the full form of Old Style, in which the new year did not begin until March, she would mean 1708 in New Style.
Phillips, Teresia Constantia. An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips. Printed for the author, 1750.
1: 87
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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