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THE DAILY EXPRESS London, England 12 February 1955 (page 3)
"Tiger Woman" Betty Sought Again After Twenty Years.
BUT NOBODY IS SAYING WHY.
"TIGER WOMAN" BETTY . . . Wild Apache dances
They are looking for the "Tiger Woman"—Betty May, an Epstein [Jacob Epstein] model who last appeared on the London scene in 1934. But nobody seems to want to say why.
Betty May, four times married, was the "Tiger Woman" of her autobiography.
She was the key witness in a sensational libel action of 1934 brought by the late Aleister Crowley against a woman writer who alleged he practised black magic.
Yesterday a newspaper advertisement put in by her publishers read:—
Said a spokesman of Duckworth: "The book is long since out of print. I could not tell you what it was all about. I imagine it might be possible to get a copy in some public library, but it is a long time ago.
Betty May was of Franco-Irish descent. She came to London from Paris in the early 'twenties, specializing in wild Apache dances.
In the Crowley libel action "Tiger Woman" described how she and her third husband, Raoul Loveday, a Frenchman, went to Crowley's house in Sicily [Abbey of Thelema].
There, she said, weird rites were enacted, a terrified cat was "sacrificed" on a "temple altar," and her husband was made to drink its blood.
She told how improper pictures hung on the walls, and niches in the temple held hashish, morphia, and ether. The jury stopped the case when part heard and gave judgment against Crowley.
Crowley, who called himself "The Worst Man in the World," and "The Beast 666," died in December, 1947. |
