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,
Sigismund Payne Best of the crematorium in Swindon. Sigismund Payne Best Captain Sigismund Payne Best OBE (14 April 1885 – 21 September 1978) was a British Secret Intelligence Service agent during the First and Second World Wars. He was captured by German Gestapo and "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) men on 9 November 1939 in what came to be known as the "Venlo Incident". Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and raised at 26, Strawberry Hill Road, Twickenham, Middlesex, Best was the son of Downing College, Cambridge (B.A. 1871, M.B. 1878) and St George's Hospital-educated physician George Payne Best (1844-1907), M.R.C.S., and his wife Catherine Sophia (née Allison).