Sybil Bruncheon’s “Celebrity Birthdays In History”... January 7th, 1846...

... Prudence "Poo-Poo" Charmondeley. Although she seemed to live on the streets of London, no one was ever really able to figure out exactly WHERE! Her great sense of humor and her ability to play five different instruments and sing clever little ditties, romantic ballads, and popular songs kept her constantly busy with a frying pan in front of her filled with coins from her devoted following.

Prudence apparently had perfect pitch and a savant's ability to remember perhaps over 15,000 songs according to musicologists who came under her spell. She was offered contracts at prominent theatres and music halls, but she remained out on the sidewalks with assorted "buskers" and "pearlies" whom she often paired with in impromptu "Musical-Ettes" as she called them.

In addition to all her other talents, she had an uncanny knack for composing both poems and songs on the spot when audience members would provide her with a word or a name to build all her rhymes and meters on... Scientists from Oxford, Cambridge, and the Filbert Academy for Exceptional Ladies & Their Deportment measured her intelligence at a "genius level".....comparable to Dickens, Dante, and Sir Gyrus Quzzizzleton.

She died at a very great age, although it was impossible to determine exactly what at the time. She was buried in Potters' Field in a grave marked by a simple wooden cross. It wasn't until 3 months later when her butler and several of her 34 servants and employees finally discovered her fate and tracked her down. Prudence Charmondeley had in fact been a great lady of noble birth. Her estate lay just a few miles out of the city, and she was known by her staff to go on what she called "little jaunts to friends" for days at a time. They never suspected that she spent her "away time" on the street or in basements, sheds, and abandoned shops... She also had been building her already considerable fortune with weekly bank deposits of hundreds of pounds!!....all made in small change!! Her butler told the press that it had always puzzled him when he would help her carry little paper bags filled with coins....

After all the legal rigamarole, she left vast amounts of money to her loving servants, to various friends of hers on the street, and finally to the building of a luxurious sanctuary for wayward cats and stray dogs who had been her trusted confidantes and dinner companions through the years! The townhouse in Belgravia still stands and has a bronze plaque on it inscribed "The Charmondeley Foundation For Four-Legged Friends Of Humans"....

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