Born at Hartshead 1813, Agnes was the first legitimate fruit of the union between Patrick and Maria Bronte.A sickly child, Agnes was never a scholar. Indeed most of her childhood was spent in bed in the nursery at Thornton, eating gruel and studying the patterned carpet.

Upon moving to Haworth in 1820, Agnes found that there was more to life than hypochondria, and when she came of school leaving age (despite hardly ever having attended), she became a child prostitute in Stanbury. She never made a great fortune from this career, and at the age of 20, in 1833, moved to Whitby, where she soon became the mistress of William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery campaigner. They used to spend Tuesdays together in his small fishing boat in Whitby Bay, when he used to demonstrate how slaves were kept in chains on the long Atlantic crossing. It is believed that Agnes Bronte's lifelong love of bondage derived from this period.

In 1859, following a disagreement with Wilberforce, she left him and Whitby forever, moving to London where she set up a brothel for the upper strata in 19th century England. "The Bronte Dungeon" was an immediate success, and amongst her many clients were prominent figures of the day, including Peel, Disraeli, Palmerston, Gladstone, Trollope, John Stuart Mill, Lord Derby, Charles Kingsley, Lord Salisbury, but never General Gordon. (He used to patronise an establishment of a different kind three doors away, next to Dr Bensons Boys Home.)

Agnes never became romantically linked with her customers, indeed she remained aloof and some would say distant from them. However, there was one exception, and Agnes could often be seen walking out with Lord Randolph Churchill in between sittings at the House of Commons When the House was in recess, Agnes and "Randy" (as she called him) used to steal away to a thatched love nest near Market Rasen for weekends. (The Hamlet of Rand still exists.)
It was during one of these illicit sojourns that Agnes is believed to have become pregnant. For the next nine months the lovers must have agonised over the future of the child. What was to become of it? Eventually, it seems, a solution must have been reached, and in 1874, Agnes probably gave birth. It is arguable that the child was smuggled into Blenheim Palace, for "The Times" carried an announcement next day which proclaimed the birth of Winston Spencer Churchill.

Was the great man the son of Agnes Bronte? We shall never know. Shortly after this episode in her life, Agnes received a huge sum of money, on the condition that her dalliance with Lord Randolph Churchill was kept a secret. It was, and Agnes returned to the day-to-day running of her establishment in London.

Agnes died in 1892, a wealthy, happy and well-liked old lady, who had, in her own way, spread a lot of happiness and disease throughout the land.
She never married.