Cynthia Payne Cynthia Payne Cynthia Payne (24 December 193215 November 2015) was an English brothel keeper and party hostess who made headlines in the 1970s and 1980s, when she was acquitted of running a brothel at 32 Ambleside Avenue, in Streatham, a southwestern suburb of London. Payne first came to national attention in 1978 when police raided her home and found a sex party was in progress. Men paid with luncheon vouchers to dress up in lingerie and be spanked by young women. Police found 53 men at her residence, in varying levels of undress, which included "a peer of the realm,
Cynthia Barnett Cynthia Barnett Cynthia Barnett is an American journalist who specializes in the environment. She is the author of the water books "Mirage" (2007), "Blue Revolution" (2011), and "Rain: A Natural and Cultural History" (2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the 2016 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing from the PEN America Center. Barnett was born in Fort Myers, Florida, and raised in Florida and California. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in American history with a specialization in environmental history, both from the University of Florida, and has