Betty May
Betty May (born Bessie Golding 1894, 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. Early life Bessie Golding was born in Tidal Basin, Canning Town, London, in August 1894. She was the second of five children born to George Golding (1871–1915) and Ellen Theresa Golding (née James; b. 1872). 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 (erroneously) identified her mother as being half French and described her as good-looking, with an olive