Nowadays people talk about "sugar babies" and "sugar daddies" as if they are a new development of the 2010s, but the practice of keeping a paid relationship is actually quite ancient - in Europe at least, nobles, monarchy and rich bourgeois would keep paid mistresses whose only job was to be a partner for the (usually) married man who paid for their livelihood.
The key difference is that a "sugar baby" arrangment is almost always low class, and both parties involved don't seem to have a minimum of etiquette - while the kept woman wasn't paid exclusively to look pretty, but was often required to be well-read and cultured, and a big deal was that she was also to be a good conversationalist and overall an engaging company.
Finally, unlike the "Sugar babies", which are usually kept by desperate and/or unappealing lonely men, the kept woman was "employed" by an alleway married man and it was more a status symbol than anything else.
