Rumors of human sacrifice pervaded much of the talk about the Hellfire Club.

First, there was the Deletunty Club, then the Devan Club, and finally, the Hell Fire Club,

all formed by Sir Francis Dashwood.

Dashwood came from a wealthy merchant family in London, and he apparently became the only Chancellor of the Exchequer to admit that he'd delivered his economic speech in the Houses

of Parliament while drunk.

He founded the Society Dilettanti in 1734, with friends, when they returned from their

European Grand Tour. Membership to this club was actually quite simple. Those who wished to

become members had simply to present themselves in a state of inebriation, proved that they

had travelled to Italy, and that they liked to drink a lot. However, there was a serious

side to the club. Its goal was to fund archaeological expeditions to Italy, and it was a supporter of Italian arts, including the operas,

and it had the intention of founding an academy for Italian culture.

Sir Francis Dashwood's second club was the Devan Club, founded in 1744, with the Earl of Sandwich,

attended for those who had travelled to the Ottoman Empire and their experiences of this exotic region. Both clubs lasted only a short while and we now come to the most notorious of his formations.

In 1752 Dashwood formed the Hellfire Club. To be accurate though,

this had already been founded earlier in London in 1719 by another wealthy politician,

the Duke of Wharton. But then it lapsed and was revived by Dashwood.

Wharton's Hellfire Club was a satirical gentleman's club,

founded in order to poke fun at religious figures.

Wharton was known as a drunkard, a rioter, an infidel and a rake.

He reveled in womanising, gambling, drunkenness in debauchery. It was said. The president of the

club was apparently the devil himself. The club met on Sundays in locations across London,

and its members, both men and women, had to dress as characters from the Bible to be allowed

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