The Hell-Fire Clubs

I am wondering if anyone on ATS knows whatever happened to the old Hell-Fire Clubs that were prevelant until at least the ealy 1800's.
I know that Ben Franklin was a member of one when he was in Britain for a while trying to work with the British before the Revolution broke out. The Hell-Fire Club he was a member of met in a cavern underneath a Castle near London.
And it is also known that many of the individuals associated with both the Revolutionary War and the Founding of the United States were either members of the Hell-Fire Clubs or other Masonic type organizations. People like George Washington and Lafayette.
I would be grateful for anything anyone a member of ATS could tell me about the current activities of these Hell-Fire Clubs.

reply to post by Wally Conley


I frankly doubt the clubs exist anymore. They were in my opinion simply a way for the extremely rich to do something with their time. A cheap thrill for those people who literally had EVERYTHING else..

I would of course also point out there is no connection between these clubs and masonry (which the later part of your post tends to suggest).

Thanks for your honest feedback.

reply to post by Wally Conley


Benjamin Franklin was reportedly a member of the Hellfire Club (mainly due to his connections with various aristocracies and his insatiable lust for and skill with women...and his love for beer...mmmmmmm...beer).

However, George Washington was NOT a member.

And I believe that the Hellfire Club is still in existence.
Drunken debauchery just doesn't get old.
Y'know?

reply to post by Wally Conley

There's a really good band, called the Electric Hellfire Club ( former members of My Life In The Thrill Kill Kult ). I don't know of another current usage of the name. There used to be what Charles Gatewood described as " A dingy S/M basement bar on Ninth Avenue ", NYC, under the name The Hellfire Club, 25 years ago...pre-AIDS, so I bet it's not there now( but if it is, there's probably a listing for it in "SCREW", I'd look there before the phone book). Neither of these are really relevant to your question, but, maybe they might help for disambiguation.

Originally posted by wu kung
reply to post by Wally Conley

 

Drunken debauchery just doesn't get old.

How else to explain Girls Gone Wild videos?

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread.

[edit on 7-1-2008 by Fitzgibbon]

reply to post by wu kung


Just to clarify, Franklin was never actually a member of the Hellfire Club, although he attended one of their meetings after having been invited.

Also, the HF Club was not a "Masonic type" organization. In fact, it was sort of a bordello.

Originally posted by Masonic Light
Also, the HF Club was not a "Masonic type" organization. In fact, it was sort of a bordello.

Bordello, lovely choice of words...isn't amazing just how many terms exist in the English language for a 'house of ill-repute'.

I agree, from what I have read of Freemasonry I would hardly describe the Hell Fire Club as Masonic, quite the opposite. The Hell Fire Club were hedonists and their natural progeny were people such as the Bloomsbury Group and the white colonialists as depicted in films like White Mischief. In many ways the antithesis of what masonry stands for (unless all the stories are true). The Hell Fires certainly weren't sexually segregated, though unlike the later Bloomsbury set, they did not have female members as such I believe instead they - ahem- employed the company of ladies of the night to aid in their debauchery. Bordello is as good a term as any.

I have just consulted a book I've had for a while called 'The Hell-Fire Clubs,' by Geoffry Ashe.
Ben Franklin was invited, as someone else had pointed out, to one meeting of a Hell-Fire club at Medmenham, England.
Thanks to every one who posted a reply to my thread. It is much appreciated.

Hellfire members were Libertines. Masons cannot be libertines.

I think they all broke up after that thing With Dark Phoenix. Where can you go from there?
I'm kidding, just a Marvel geek strutting his stuff
Here's the link



[edit on 7-1-2008 by kthulu]

reply to post by nine-eyed-eel




Dude, I saw the EHC a while back when they opened up for GWAR, they were AWESOME!
I was hanging out with the first girl back-up singer after their set.
What a sweet young lady...we seemed to hit it off real well too...until she was swarmed by teenage boys and had to scurry off.
Too bad too, because she was really cool.
They're a pretty cool band too.
Okay, now back to the issue...




[edit on 1/7/2008 by wu kung]

Originally posted by Fitzgibbon

How else to explain Girls Gone Wild videos?

Right place, right time I guess.
Hahahahaha

As an aside, I seem to remember a club with that or a similar name in Detroit, Michigan in the 80s. Hedonism was also the goal.
I can only guess it was a take-off on the earlier and wondr if clubs existed in other US cities.

As mentioned earlier, there were several clubs with that name.
Most of them were fetish or life-style oriented and located in or around the major night-spot cities: LA, NYC, Detroit, Chicago and Miami.