Helen Gahagan

Illeana Douglas is her grand-daughter. She was buried in the Church of St Martin's in the Fields, at the corner of Trafalgar Square, London, after a funeral in which Thomas Tenison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, preached a sermon on the text of Luke 15:7 "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.". In 1950 she ran for the United States Senate, but was defeated by Richard Nixon in a race considered by her supporters to be a prototypical smear campaign. She died, two years later, of apoplexy, aged 37, at 79 Pall Mall, in London. In the 1940s she enterered politics, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives from California for two terms. James II, obeying his brother's deathbed wish, "Let not poor Nelly starve," paid most of them off and gave her a pension of 1500 pounds a year, a huge sum in 1685. Gahagan starred in one Hollywood movie, She, in 1935, playing The Ice Goddess ("She who must be obeyed"). Nell, however, accumulated enormous debts.

She became a well known star on Broadway in the 1920s. In 1931 she married actor Melvyn Douglas. It is thought to have been Nell who persuaded the king to build the Royal Hospital, Chelsea in London for ex-servicemen. Gahagan was born in Boonton, New Jersey. Nell was the only one of Charles II's many mistresses to be genuinely popular with the English public.
Helen Gahagan in the 1920s. Charles was the first Duke of St Albans. She was also known as The Pink Lady. By Charles, Nell had two sons, Charles Beauclerk (1670-1726) and James Beauclerk (1671-1680).

Helen Gahagan (25 November 1900 - 28 June 1980) was a United States actress and (under the name Helen Gahagan Douglas) a politician. Find something else to fight about.". She broke up the fight, saying, "I am a whore. Nell is also famous for another remark made to her coachman, who was fighting with another man who had called her a whore. The particular Catholic whore (of the moment) was Louise de Keroualle, the Duchess of Portsmouth.

This appeal to British bigotry made her immensely popular. Nell is remembered for one particularly apt witticism, which was recounted in the memoirs of the Comte de Gramont, remembering the events of 1681:. When she was 19 she became the king's mistress, having previously been the mistress of Lord Buckhurst. Having first made a living selling oranges, she became an actress (not at that time a respectable profession) when she was fifteen.

(Her mother died because she passed out from too much brandy and drowned in a brook.). Her mother ran a bawdyhouse, where Nell grew up. The daughter of Thomas Gywnne and his wife Rose, Nell Gwyn was probably born in an alley near Covent Garden (though sometimes said to have been born in Hereford) and never learned to read or write. Nell Gwyn (or Gwynn or Gwynne), (February 1650 - 14 November 1687), the most famous of the many mistresses of King Charles II, was called "pretty, witty Nell" by Samuel Pepys.