Madame Claude

Fernande Grudet (6 July 1923 – 15 December 2015), also known as Madame Claude, was a French brothel keeper. In the 1960s, she was the head of a French network of call girls who worked especially for dignitaries and civil servants. Biography Born on 6 July 1923 in Angers, France, there are conflicting accounts of Grudet's origins, ranging from an aristocratic father in politics and an education by nuns to a father who ran a small cafe and early work selling food from a pushcart. Another unverified tale about her past includes work as an agent of the French Resistance during the German Occupation of France during World War II and imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. After the war, she worked as a prostitute but claimed she "was never pretty enough" and was better suited to management. By 1961, she had set up what became the most exclusive prostitution network in Paris for the next decade. At this time she ran a brothel in the expensive 16th arrondissement of Paris. "There are two things that people will always pay for: food and sex. I wasn't any good at cooking", she is reputed to have said.