| The Hellfire Club originated in England in the 1760s as a social organization for the elite of British society. The Club not only provided its members with pleasures, often of sorts that violated moral standards at the time, but also sewed as a means for the members to consolidate their Influence over British economic and political matters.A number of the Club's most important members, led by the wealthy trading company owner and former Member of Parliament Sir Patrick Clemens, and his mistress, the renowned actress Diana Knight, emigrated to the colony of New York in the 1778, where they founded the new American Hellfire Club. The Club's headquarters was an abandoned church that stood on the site of the present day Hellfire Club mansion, located at what is now Fifth Avenue on Manhattan's East Side, only a few blocks away from the Avengers Mansion.
Today's Hellfire Club counts among its members the wealthy, the powerful, and the celebrated from virtually all over the world. Membership by Invitation only, but such Invitations are rarely turned down, for membership in the Hellfire Club Is universally regarded as the ultimate status symbol.
As far as the general public and, indeed, moat or the Club's members are concerned, the Hellfire Club is a thoroughly respectable upper class social organization principally devoted to giving spectacular parties. It is also generally known that these parties serve as a means for members of the social, economic, and political elite to meet unofficially to discuss matters of mutual interest, and to strike political or business deals.
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