The incredible life story that inspired the forthcoming new musical, Tiger Woman Versus The Beast Dancer, singer, gang member, cocaine addict and sometime confectionist, Betty May's autobiography Tiger Woman thrilled and appalled the public when her story first appeared at the end of the roaring twenties. 'I have often lived only for pleasure and excitement but you will see that I came to it by unexpected ways' Born into abject squalor in London's Limehouse area, May used her steely-eyed, striking looks and street nous to become an unlikely bohemian celebrity sensation, a fixture at the Cafe Royal, London, marrying four times along the way alongside numerous affairs. 'I wondered why men would not leave me alone.
They were alright at first when they offered to show one life, and then at once they became a nuisance' She elbowed her way to the top of London's social scene in a series of outrageous and dramatic fights, flights, marriages and misadventures that also took her to France, Italy, Canada and the USA. 'I learnt one thing on my honeymoon - to take drugs' Her most fateful adversary was occultist and self-proclaimed 'Great Beast' Aleister Crowley, who intended her to be a sacrificial victim of his Thelemite cult in Sicily, but it was her husband - Oxford undergraduate Raoul Loveday - who died, after conducting a blood sacrifice ritual. Betty May's vitality and ferocious charisma enchanted numerous artistic figures including Jacob Epstein and Jacob Kramer. A heroine like no other, this is her incredible story in her own words, as fresh and extraordinary as the day it was first told.
