Sophie Dawes (29 September 1790 – 15 December 1840), Baroness de Feuchères by marriage, was an English "adventuress" best known as a mistress of Louis Henry II, Prince of Condé. Early life Dawes was born in 1790 at St Helens, Isle of Wight, the daughter of an alcoholic fisherman named Richard Daw (or Dawes) by Jane Callaway, whom he probably did not marry. A blue plaque at her birthplace reads: Daughter of Richard Dawes Fisherman & Smuggler known as was born herein 1792 Dawes was one of ten children, of whom only four grew up. In 1796 the whole family moved into the workhouse at Newport, where Dawes remained for nine years. After a short period of employment with a local farmer, she worked as a chambermaid in Portsmouth, then went to London, where she was seduced and fell into great poverty. An army officer took her as his mistress, and when they split up he settled an annuity of £50 a year on her. She sold this and in 1809 placed herself at a school in Chelsea. Dawes later worked as a servant in a high-class brothel in Piccadilly, where the valet of the exiled Duke of Bourbon, afterwards Louis Henri, Prince of Condé, pointed her out to his master. In 1811, the duke took a house for her and her mother in Gloucester Street, off Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and she became his mistress. There she pursued her studies, learning modern languages and reading Xenophon and Plutarch in Greek, as later shown by her surviving exercise books. Career Condé took Dawes to Paris after the fall of Napoleon. To prevent scandal and to qualify her to be received at court, in 1818 he had her married to Adrien Victor de Feuchères, a lieutenant-colonel commanding the 6th Infantry Regiment of the Royal Guards. By a license dated 25 July 1818, they were married on 6 August 1818 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster (Church of England), and also in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Paris on 26 August 1818, and the duke settled 72,000 francs on them. As the parish register at St Helen's had no record of her baptism, Sophia had received adult baptism in 1817, when she reduced her age by three years. For her marriage licence she described herself as a widow, and in her marriage contract she said she was the daughter of a Richard Clark and the