After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Gay Sex Scandal that Outraged the Georgians

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

What price might a man pay for sex in the 18th century? Well, if it was with another man, he might pay with his life.In this episode, Anthony introduces us to 43-year-old milkman Gabriel Lawrence. Together, he and Maddy take us inside the Molly Houses of Georgian Britain, and through the criminal system from arrest, to imprisonment, to sentencing and execution.This story can be found in more detail in Anthony's new book, 'Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers'!Edited by Amy Haddow. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everyone. It's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more. If you could vote for us in the listeners choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email. You need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30. If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are doing

right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. Looking for your perfect place to call home, Lethbridge Land is shaping the future of our city with incredible communities like crossings, riverstone and watermark. Each neighborhood is designed with innovation, passion and responsibility to enrich your life today and strengthen Lethbridge for tomorrow. From vibrant urban hubs to serene, coolie views, there's a community waiting for you. Discover the lifestyle you've been dreaming of in a Lethbridgeland community. Visit lethbridgeland.ca and take the first step towards your new home today. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Today, we have one of two very, very, very special episodes.

I'm so excited about them, but I'm not going to tell you. Instead, I'm going to hand straight over to Anthony. One Sunday night, February 1726, Gabriel Lawrence is making his way purposefully towards Field Lane in Hoburn. The winter darkness has transformed familiar London streets into something altogether and more perilous, despite the intermittent grid of oil lamps. Flames, feeble and odorous, struggle to light the clogged arteries of the great city. As he walks apace, street musicians lift their fiddles to offer a bawdy song, their bows slashing back and forth by their necks. The music they make underscores the continuous din from nearby alehouses, taverns and coffee houses. Laughter, screams and shouts burst through doors left momentarily ajar.

18th century London is never quiet. Tonight, Lawrence seeks the comfort and camaraderie. of an establishment located on Field Lane, a molly house, which goes by the name of Mother Claps. There he will re-acquaint himself with one Martin McIntosh, an orange cellar in Covent Garden. Amongst this particular group of friends, however, Macintosh goes by another mouth-watering name,

Orange Deb. Perhaps Lawrence will encounter the other all-male regulars of Claps too, dip Candle Mary a candlemaker, or the Duchess of Camamile, a resident of Camamile Street. Perhaps Old Fish Hanna, a fish cellar, will be out tonight, or indeed, Susan Guzzle. Incidentally, the origin of Ms. Guzzle's maiden name is unclear, but I very much encourage you to use your imaginations. But of course it is Martin or Deb that Gabriel Lawrence wishes to see most.

When last they met, Lawrence and Orange Deb, being very fond of one another, had hugged and kissed and employed their hands, as some sort, in a very vile manner. Lawrence hopes his hands might yet be similarly occupied tonight. Lawrence turns right now. He's back to the city and finds himself on Field Lane, a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. Here, as ever, amidst the filth and stink of Butcher's Waste

is his destination. As he pushes open the heavy wooden, door of the premises, unseen moralistic observers hiding like cowardly rats in the dark laneways outside, silently confirmed that this man, Gabriel Lawrence, belonged to the house. He was one of the regulars. Lawrence, unaware of their shadowy presence, then slips inside, allowing the door to close behind him. In that moment, unbeknownst to himself, he seals his fate and the noose beckons. This is after dark,

and this is the gay sex scandal that rocked 18th century London. Okay, I am a little bit giddy with excitement to be doing this episode and another one that we have on the same topic because these histories are from a little book coming out imminently called, who may have heard of it, queer Georgians, a hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers, and homemakers, what a title. Yeah, it's my book, Maddie.

You wrote it. You wrote a thing. I can't believe we're actually here. I mean, you and I've not been talking about this for literally years, like literally years. And now it's time. And I was just saying to Maddie before we started recording, it's weird because now I feel like a guest on the podcast where I'm just like, I'm here to promote my book and to talk about that. I've taken over the podcast. You are just a guest.

You've been really engaged. It's been my final episode. Yeah, no, it is weird. It is weird. So it's out on Thursday the 4th of September if we're in the UK and Ireland. I think Australia and other places too. And then with a different title, queer Enlightenment's on the 7th of October in North America. So it's very exciting.

It is very exciting. And it's bloody beautiful as well, the cover. Yes, please. Somebody was like, oh, your Fortnam and Mason book. And I was like, oh, it is quite co-Fortenomaida co-coded. I feel that's very appropriate for a book that's so much about sort of gorgeousness and domesticity and kind of hopefulness as well as some bleak histories as well. Becky Kelly, I did not design it. Shout out to Becky.

Now, listen, usually I will give the, if I'm leading an episode, I will give the context. But I'm going to be talking so much in this episode. I have requested that. And Maddie, you know, Maddo you're an 18th century expert too. So, like, I would like you to do the context of this. I will be explaining all of Antony's book. No, it's just the time period is going on. But yeah, I was just like, or else I'm just going to be talking all episode. Okay. So the context is this. We are starting, in my opinion, at the wrong end of the 18th century. This is Andonis. I knew you were going to do that. This is Anthony's end of the 18th century. We're in 1726. George I first is on the throne. He's the first Hanoverian king of Britain. He speaks very little English. People are pretty pissed off when he comes to the throne. Robert Walpole is the prime minister at the time and the king leaves a lot of the governing of the country to him. So there's a little bit of tension there straight away. Important for this story though is the buggery act of 1533. Why is that still relevant in the 18th century? Because it's still in force. So sex between men and importantly just between men, right? We'll talk about that across these episodes, I think, is illegal under

this law. It's classified as a capital crime and it is punishing. by death in the 1720s. Remarkably, this act is not just still in place, but enforcement is increasingly aggressive. In the first part of the 18th century, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the stakes are high, yeah. The stakes are really high. And I'm so fascinated by this and appalled by it. So I'm really excited to get into this discussion. Now, the other thing that's happening is this moral reform sweeping the country. And there's a group called the Society for the reformation of manners. I hate them already. Well, you'll hate them even more once we start discussing them further into the episode. But the thing to bear mind is about them, it's not one

society, that's the umbrella, and then there's loads of individual societies. There's pockets everywhere of this feeling of like morally cleaning up vice and things like gambling, public drunkenness, sex, and of course, same sex, sex is all becoming an issue. And Molly Houses in particular are going to become a problem for these people. The wider context, of course, is that the Enlightenment is taking place. And I mean, I'm always fascinated by the term enlightenment, this idea of the Enlightenment. It's something that I look at in my new book coming in spring, not competing with Anthony. It's by them both. Purposefully so. And then this idea of the world is suddenly a scientific, rational place,

there's salons and universities opening up. There's philosophers, there are scientists, There are artists all moving towards this idea of exploring what human nature is at its core, what is true, what is right. But of course, all that light of the Enlightenment comes with its own shadows and its own darkness and this idea that really it's only a certain set of predominantly male, predominantly white men, predominantly straight men, who are involved in this Enlightenment, not exclusively, but that is mainly who is setting the parameters of this. And on the boundaries of that, on the edge of this world, are people who are being active. oppressed by the ideas of enlightenment as well. So there is your context and you're worried about doing it. You've nothing to be worried about. You know exactly what you're doing.

It's almost like I spend a lot of time in the 18th century. Almost like you did a PhD on the 18th century. Yeah, who knew? So let's get into the story and this is something that I don't know now. So I am very much looking forward to this. Please introduce your main characters. Who is the cast? So these are chapters one and two of the book.

So there's only two stories that go over multiple chapters and this is one of them And it's the opening chapters because I felt like it was a good way to set the scene about what's coming then as the century kind of progresses. So we have Gabriel Lawrence, first of all, that's the man that we met in the narrative section at the top where he is making his way to Mothercliffe's Molly House. And we'll explain exactly what a Molly House is in just a second. But he is a working class milkman. He is 43 years old at the time of this story. He is a widower. He has been married, but his wife has died.

he has a 13-year-old daughter, we know that, and he's really close to his neighbours, his extended family and his friends, and he's actually really well-liked. He's a popular figure amongst those people. In his community, he's not necessarily someone who would be suspected of committing a so-called capital crime. No, no.

And this is a question they're forced to ask themselves in his trial, which again we'll get to, and the support they offer him is really lovely, actually, to read. So it's really, really nice. That's already surprising. Yeah, yeah, no, they really come to his defence. And this is, I suspect this is going to be a thread throughout the book, right, of there is obviously an almost relentlessly bleak nature to telling some of these histories, but also there is a lot of joy. There is.

Now, look, some of them will still end bleakly, but. Can't promise happy endings for everyone. No, but some of them have incredibly happy endings. And actually, despite the endings have incredibly happy lives, and that's kind of what I've tried to zone in on. but most people survive it these histories but some people

don't and we'll see how that unfolds we'll see so who else have we gone us? We've got Margaret Clap and she is

married to a man named John Clap she is also known as mother clap and she kept a public house now there is a bit

of debate as to what exactly the nature of her house was the coffee house was it a public house

was a drinking house was a place where people could come and pay to stay and I

just reckon it was a bit of all of those things she was doing everything to survive, basically. Yeah, and I find that generally, and this isn't just true of molly houses, but also of public houses across the board in the 18th century, the lines are blurred. And you can go and drink alcohol sometimes in a coffee house, or sometimes it will be exclusively a coffee house.

You can go and have a hot chocolate somewhere. You can, you know, and the function, how people are meeting in those spaces, who is in them really varies across. Here, we're just talking about the city of London, right? So, you know, even within that relatively small space, there is huge variety. So I'm not surprised that you don't know the exact nature of the house. And it's also because she's unlicensed. So there are

loads of unlicensed, coffee houses, taverns, whatever it might be in this part of the 18th century. They're trying to regulate it at this time, but there are still so, so many. But one thing we definitely do know about Mother Claps is that it is a Molly House. And I have an explanation from 1709 as to what a

molly house is here. So I'm going to share that with you. It says. Within Mollie Houses, there are a particular gang of sodomitical wretches in this town who call themselves the Mollies and are so far degenerated from all masculine deportment or manly exercises that they rather fancy themselves women, imitating all the little vanities that custom has reconciled to the female sex, affecting to speak, walk, tattle, curtsy, cry, scold, and to mimic all manner of effeminacy. Wow. I mean, that's a really fascinating, yeah. And this, by the way, is coming from Ned Ward, who's a great sort of chronicler of the underbelly of London at the time. And I think you can read

a lot of his writing on lines. Yeah, loads, loads. You can spend a lot of time in early 18th century London. It's very interesting to me this, because obviously Ned Ward in this context is talking about this in derogatory terms. There's no getting around that. But also there's a huge amount of detail in here. There is. Now, caveat that detail. he has probably never set foot inside a Molly House, realistically. Now, we know people did breach the doors and the walls that weren't supposed to be in there, but probably Ned is not one of those people. What we have a doubt over now, this was always formally accepted,

is this idea of the extent to which femaleness and femininity was part of the Mollyhouse culture. Certainly was part of it, without shadow of a doubt, but Ward and others give the impression that almost every man who walked across that boundary, assumed female dress or was being whatever. That's, we don't now think that that's necessarily the case. I'm sure there's some of that happening in there. Yeah, because I was only a small manifestation of homosexuality, right? There's a whole spectrum and presumably everything would be represented in this house.

My question as well is, Ned Ward in 1709 is writing about this quite openly. Yes. So how secret, how private were these establishments, considering the criminal implications at the time? They were known to those who needed to know them. Okay. So there was a network, a community of men who would have known where the different Molley houses were and what the different Molley Houses offered. But, and this brings me on to the next people in the story, the Society for the Reformation of Manners, or the various societies for the Reformation of Manners, they had underagents. And those underagents would try to identify just in the street people that they thought would be linked

to molly houses they would follow them they would bribe them they would say well we know you're a molly so we're going to blackmail you or we're going to take you to the justice unless you yeah they're like spies in a way yeah so they they are finding out where these they're uncovering where these molly houses are they and there is there is a definite tension within the molly houses going who are you bringing with you into these you know into these you these four walls because we need to be sure that we can trust everybody that's coming in and they can't trust everybody. I have a question before we move on to the next people in this story and that is about how as a historian you go about uncovering this history because so

far we're talking about secrets, we're talking about secret networks, people being in the no but not necessarily leaving a written record of this. So how on earth do you begin to trace something like this? So the thing is that we are left in this particular case with trial transcripts. So this has all come to light because there is a trial coming further down this story. The way in which we find out of anyone from the lower classes or the edges of society in the 18th century. Yeah. So there's a trial coming. We get details in the trial.

There are then people just writing peripherally about Molly Houses, not connected specifically to this trial. And so you can then start to layer the information that you have and color the world a little bit more. But we know definitely that there are spies because we know their names. We're going to meet them shortly that have infiltrated motherclaps. and we even know the person that they attach themselves to and he brought them into Mother Claps. And they are suspicious of him within Claps. They know this guy can't be trusted.

There's something going on here. But whatever he does, we don't know. Whatever he does, he manages to placate the suspicion. And he goes, it's fine. These two are genuine people that they're supposed to be here, but he's lying. Okay, so we have Mother Clap with her Molly House. We have Gabriel Lawrence, who is a regular punta there. Yes.

And he's heading there in this evening. Then we have people from the Society of the Reformation and Manners trying to infiltrate it. The tension is high. The stakes are even higher. Who are the next characters? So those are kind of the main people that we have. But I just want to concentrate on a couple of people from within the Society of Reformation of Manners, right? Because they're about to kind of blow this whole thing open, unfortunately.

And they are Samuel Stevens and Joseph Sellers. And they are the undercover agents that the society have infiltrated. and they have gained entry to the molly house by promising payments to one of the mollies who's also a sex worker and his name is Mark Partridge. Now, they're going to be supporting characters in this, but their names will come up. And so we know that there is not so much suspicion

around Samuel Stevens and Joseph Sellers, but definitely around Mark Partridge, but he was their way in. So they have been infiltrated on the night that Gabriel Lawrence arrives at that molly house. Oh, I dread to ask what's going to happen next, but you better tell us. Tonight, as Gabriel Lawrence settles amongst his friends, Stevens and Sellers watched on from a table nearby.

Only Mark Partridge knows they are preparing to spring their trap. Outside, acting on the intelligence Stevens and Sellers had gathered, with the reforming constables who have gathered their supporters about them in anticipation of a raid. These invisible adversaries arranged themselves strategically in order to cut off all possible escape routes when the Molly's inside are ambushed. Whether Stevens and Sellers within or Williams and Willis without make the first move in the early hours of the morning is undocumented. Either way, a burst of men and performance of morality forced their way into the Molly House, voices raised, Stevens and Sellers on mask

revealing their true identities, chaos ensues. Upon realizing they have been betrayed, the Molly's run for their lives. Although the accomplices of the society's hidden along the Field Lane attempt to block their escape, some of the luckier men managed to push past. them and evade capture. They abscond across the cobbles. But not everyone is so lucky. Approximately 40 men, including our milkman, Gabriel Lawrence, are violently rounded up that night alongside the dynamic mother clap. The captured men, like Lawrence, will no doubt have been concerned about the consequences of their discovery, as well as casting about desperately to see which of those who had been present managed to escape. They themselves, however, would

now be delivered to London's notorious prototype of hell as magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding called Newgate Prison. There, they would await their fate. Henry Fielding's always cropping up in my research all the time. Historical fiction thing and he's there as well. So I'm just like, Christaulm, might you... Can't escape him. I mean, it's incredibly dramatic. It's quite violent. It must have been very frightening for the people in the Molly House at the time. Obviously, a space that they have understood to be private as much as they can hope to be, to be a space where they can express themselves and their sexuality and their sociability as well.

This is a space for people to come to be some version of themselves and to inhabit some kind of authenticity in their lives. when they can't outside of that. That is all broken down. The doors burst open. There's this raid. And now suddenly these men who are ordinary men from across London living, ordinary lives, who happen to have been in this place in this moment,

now find themselves in Newgate prison, arguably the bleakest, vilest prison in London at this time. And a prison that comes up again and again in the history, but also in people's imaginations in this period. I mean, Newgate really is bleak. So tell me a little bit about what? they're going to experience once they pass through those doors. So this new gate, because there are many iterations over the centuries, but this...

I should say that this is where the old Bailey is now, right? Yeah, like adjacent. And we're going there as well. So, like, we have all of these stops on the way. But this one was rebuilt after the Great Fire in 1666. So that's what we're looking at at this point. It was built for about 150 inmates, which is quite small, actually, if you think about it, relatively. Yeah, and surely it gets bigger over the course of the 18th century, I think, by the end of the century, it's... Oh, yeah, yeah. By then it's much, much bigger. But even by now, it's harboring far more inmates than 150. Yeah, there aren't necessarily rules about how many people you can fit into a cell at any one time, right? There's no regulation.

No, they're just cramming them all in. It is filthy. It is overcrowded. As I said, it is lice infested. And this is where the city's most dangerous and hardened criminals are coming. One of the things that I remember reading when I was trying to get a bit of the atmosphere of this, is that somebody who had been in there. I'd said the smell is one of the worst things, that it's a weird kind of mix of sour milk and feces. And there's the sewer running through one of the parts of it as well. So this is a really sensory place, but very negatively so, obviously. And a dangerous place as well, right, in terms of disease

and the absolute squalor that you're living in, but also in terms of the people who are in there, like you may have ended up in here because you happen to be in a Molly House on a night of a raid, but there are also murderers, there are all kinds of criminals or thieves. They're really violent, dangerous people in here. Yeah, this ain't fun. Yeah, it's not fun.

And the whole prison kind of operates on this weird economy, right, of like bribes and swapping things, I guess, a little bit like prisons today. But we have absolutely corrupt staff as well. It's not like, if you are in any danger, you can go to a guard and be like, help me. They're not going to help. They'll be like, we will help you for 40 pounds. And you'll be like, I have half a guinea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't do that. There is no recourse. There's no, you know, there are no human rights in Newgate, put it that way. It's not a good place. Please read the quote about the lice because I can't be doing with that. Yeah, this was one of the things that I was like, it really does, again, talk about sensory. Like, we have the smell. I'll talk about sights in a minute, but here's the sound.

This is a quote from somebody who had spent some time in Newgate. Prisoners like Gabriel would, quote, lie upon ragged blankets, the lice crackling under their feet make such a noise as walking on shells which are strewed over garden walls. And I've never, I know what that's like. I've walked on those shells in some of those periods. Oh, no, not walked on the lights. But it, you know, it gives an idea, the light or the ground essentially. And you can feel it almost where it's like, oh.

You can just picture the floor constantly moving. Yeah. The wall's dripping constantly. Like you say, there's kind of open sewage going on. like this, oh. And bear in mind, you know, these people are in, they have a rusty collar that's put around their neck. This is cutting into their flesh as well. The wrists are restrained with manacles and shackles at the ankles. Once he got in there, you're sorted into different sides. So there's a master's side and a common side. Now, Gabriel would have been on the common side

because he was working class and he was a milkman. That's all he could have afforded. So you have to pay to be on either one of the sides. See, I didn't know this. So Newgate is organized according to social class? Yes. Or at least wealth. Yes. Yeah, exactly. As long as social class, yeah, if you could pay it, but like Gabriel could, there's no way he could have paid it. So we know that he was on the common side. And it was described as the most terrible, wicked and dreadful place. So we know that he would have been in darkness an awful lot. We have these lice. But in the book, I was like, I want to know what life is like for a sodomite, particularly, and I'm using the term that it used at the time.

I want to know what life was like for a sodomite in Newgate. So I was searching, searching, And as far as I'm aware, this hasn't appeared anywhere else. But I discovered a thing called the buggering hold in one of the primary source documents. And the buggering hold is described as this. It says, some coffined there may be or have been addicted to sodomy. But what degree of latitude this chamber is situated in I cannot possibly demonstrate, unless it lies 90 degrees beyond the Arctic Pole. For instead of being dark here but half the year, it is dark all the year around.

So what we're seeing for the first time, as far as I'm aware, is that sodomites were held separate to other, especially in the common side, were held separate to other inmates. And sort of actively punished, right, to be placed in, I mean, coffined, as they're saying here, in an always dark space and segregated from everyone else, that's quite, you know, we have to think about 18th century prisons aren't necessarily a punishment in and of themselves as they became in. the Victorian period, and as they're considered now, going to prison is your punishment. Prisons in the 18th century are holding pens, essentially for people who are going to be executed, people who are going to be deported around the empire, or eventually who can pay their way out if they have debts. But this seems like a form of particular punishment, but it's a particular kind of treatment going on here. And as you're kind of picking up on there, it's really specifically associated with same-sex desire. that form of punishment. Between men. Yeah. So it's like you can't even be with the other prisoners. You have to be held over there. I think it's, I'm not sure how hard and faster rule it was, but the fact that somebody in the early 18th century is saying that part of Newgate on the common side was known as the buggering hold and then gives this example. There's definitely something there. There must have been some pattern of incarceration that they were seeing to say that. Yeah. So someone like Gabriel Lawrence goes

into Newgate. You have this infested, squalid place. You might have open wounds from the manacles that are placed on you. They're cutting into a flesh. So there's all kinds of infections going on. You might be put into this buggering hold, in which case you're segregated, you're in almost total darkness all of the time. How on earth are you going to survive this, even to the point of getting to your trial? I mean, you might not, actually, because typhus is rampant. Like, it is notoriously bad in there. It's bad in London at this time anyway. Yeah, you're taking your chances if you're on the street. But this particularly, you know, these enclosed, filthy spaces, it is everywhere.

And we know, for instance, so it's worth pointing out here that I said at the beginning, there was about 40 men that were taken up on the night of the raid. By the time they're actually incarcerated, that is much fewer because they've been processed. There is a process that they have to go through with the justice of the peace who says, is there going to be enough evidence here to hold this person? a lot of them were dismissed at that point because to be incarcerated for sodomy it has to be provable

that you penetrated another man so that's the burden of proof yeah that's quite a high bar actually so not just being in the molly house that's not necessarily a problem but just being there was enough for the bloody stupid society for reformation of manners to be like

well I'm going to take you over to a JP and like have you but for the men of law they were like I need to see evidence of penetration and then I can process these people. So a lot of them were let go. Gabriel Lawrence was obviously not, and he was held. Other people were held too.

But by the time we get to their trials at the old Bailey, which we'll come on to talk to the moment, we know that some of those people that were held for sodomy had already died. So they didn't make it to the trial. Gabriel does. He's there. He's still alive. But some of them don't. And that's not unusual. That's not just in the bugging hold. That's Newgate throughout. So this is, you know, sweating, sickness, diarrhea, vomiting. You are devoid of all your humanity. It is the worst possible thing you can about. From a modern perspective, we would imagine that people arrested for a crime for which you could be executed. The biggest fear would be the execution, that verdict. But actually, I don't know if that's the case.

I'm not saying that Gabriel Lawrence is facing the news here thinking, oh, it's fine, it's grander be okay. But I do think a lot of that fear, a lot of that panic upon the moment of arrest would be about the thought of going into a prison like Newgate. I think you could be right, actually, because one of the things that people are doing to occupy themselves when they're being held in Newgate and we know this and we see patterns of this repeating itself not just in the sodomy trials is that they prepare themselves

because they're going to be offering their own defense by the way so the inmates are preparing themselves for their trials when they're in there so if there's a group of them together they are bouncing defenses off one another they are sharing potential defense strategies because there's no lawyers in this situation they are going to be standing up themselves

So, yes, to that extent, I think you might be right, because it's a case that they might survive the noose if they can defend themselves, but they already find themselves at Newgate. There's no hope of that, well, apart from maybe getting out. But right at that moment in time, it feels quite lost, I would imagine. So take me to the old Bailey and the moment of trial then. Okay. Before we go to the actual trial, I have an image for you, which I just, I loved this when I saw it. because I'm going to ask Maddie to describe this image. It's a rendering of Newgate around the time, as Gabriel Lawrence would have known it. And so, yeah, Maddie, over to you.

Okay, so we're looking at a sort of sprawling early 18th century building. It looks, it's got the sort of, you know, very symmetrical frontage, and it's got these wings coming off either side and sort of older chimneys, maybe chewed a chimneys, like in the background. And you get a sense of this is a big complex. At the front there is a wall, which looks like it has almost spikes on it, actually, interestingly, that is separating the street from the old Bailey itself. But what is most striking is, at the centre of this building, the whole lower floor in which the courtroom is, has no exterior wall. It is open to the elements, and you can see whether Justice of the Peace would sit, the judge, you can see.

where the prisoners were brought, you get a sense of that courtroom. And this is absolutely incredible to me. There may even be seating, actually, in the sort of courtyard that's formed outside of it. There looks like there's even some ventures for people to sit in. Tell me why this is the case. Why is a courtroom open to the elements, to the sky, to the public? It's so obvious when you hear this, we're like, of course, but it's because they deliberately took off that side of the building to encourage the circulation of fresh air, because they knew that prisoners coming from Newgate could be infected with typhus or any other kind of jail fever and they wanted. And it didn't always work. People, like judges died, you know, jurors

died. So it was a real threat. Yeah. And how hypocritical this system is, these people are prepared to send potentially innocent people who have, let's remember, not been charged, well, they've been charged with the crime. They're willing to send these people into a situation where they could easily die of any number of diseases or just the absolute horror of being in there but they're not prepared to sit with them in a closed room because of the same risk. Yeah, so they know that putting people in new game means people are going to die

even before they've had their trial. They know that and they're okay with those. Of course the other thing about having no wall, right, is that this is public, it becomes a show. It's a performance. Yeah, well that holding space you kind of said where you thought there might have been seats. There is seats there because that's where everybody who was awaiting

trial that day is going to be held. So they're milling around in that kind of holding area. so you're seeing other trials going on and then you're called up and you have to go in there as well. In some ways, handy because if you've been practicing those defences you can be thinking, right, okay,

well, that didn't work. That guy's gone to take the gallows. I'm not going to do that. Oh, that really worked for that guy. I'm going to hand that up as well. But, I mean, you wouldn't want to be in that situation. No, I know, just waiting, waiting, waiting, can you imagine?

Waiting and watching and thinking, how is this going to turn out for me? Yeah. But it's also chaos once you get in there, though, because it is not a courtroom like we know today. So there is no lawyers, as I said already. Judges do the cross-examinations themselves. There are jurors, but the jurors, if they want to know a clarification,

like now they'd have to wait and ask a question after the day is whatever, and then they might get a break, they might get an answer, blah, blah, blah. They just shout out now. They're just like, wait, but you said earlier that this was happening and blah, blah, blah, but there's just people kind of shouting everywhere. And because of that, it has been referred to as managed mayhem. I don't know how managed it is, but it certainly mayhem. Like, it sounds like mayhem.

And his trial, and we're going to talk a little bit about the details of his trial, his trial would only have lasted about 30 minutes. So, like, this isn't a four-day trial. This isn't, at this time, that's not happening. It's not how trials are committed. And this is for a crime that someone can be executed for a 30-minute situation. Wow. So he is indicted.

Gabriel Lawrence is indicted for feloniously committing with Thomas Newton, age 30, the heinous and detestable sin of sodomy. Interesting, that's a sin there rather than crime. Because do bear in mind that what is now law has come to us from ecclesiastical law. So it's bringing that in there as well. I mean, it's actually amazing to me that whilst this is a terrible situation and very, very tragic, as a historian, you said the bar of the burden of proof is quite significant and that it has to be penetration. Here we have that he's committing this act with Thomas Newton, age 30.

So we have the names and the ages of two men here who we know have had sex in this molly house. It's an amazing pinpointed moment in history and such an intimate human moment that is in the written record. I mean, it's incredibly tangible. It is. Is it true? Here's the thing. It could very well be. I think it could, it stands every chance of being true. But what we do know is that Newton was definitely a molly.

But have the societies bribed him and said, we'll expose you if you, well, I mean, he's already exposed, but, you know, you'll be on trial. But if you act as evidence, then, you know, you can go. Listen, there's probably every chance, I think, most likely that they had had sex. And we're going to hear his testimony in a minute. But just bear in mind the conditions of the trial. So Thomas Newton is not on trial himself, but he's giving evidence. Okay, now I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah. I don't trust him now. He would have been on trial if he hadn't turned evidence, basically. Yeah. So here's his testimony. And we can see, I actually, funnily enough, despite me saying that and casting a thing of doubt over him, I think I might believe him. But I'm just saying as context for the conversation.

Also, can I ask another technical question? Oh, yeah. And this is maybe, you know, quite an intense one. The crime has to be provable by penetration of another man. Yes. If you are the man being penetrated, are you guilty of sodomy? You are, yes, yeah. You sodomized, so yes.

Okay, so it's still an offence. Yes, still an offence, yeah. Okay. This is Newton's testimony. And by the way, when you say proof of, when I say, proof of sodomy. Yeah, you didn't say anything. That, you don't need to necessarily show that physically. You just need somebody to say it happened.

Okay. That's counted as proof. Wow. Yes. So this is what he says. This is what Newton says. At the end of last June, one Peter Bavage, who is not yet taking, So Bavage must have escaped on the night.

And someone Eccleston, we don't have his first name, in brackets, who died last week in Newgate. So here's one of these men that didn't make it to trial. And his fate just included in those tiny little brackets as an aside. So he was one of them. He's another Gabriel Lawrence. He's taken up. I could be telling his history, but he's died, so I'm not. Yeah.

Carried me to the House of Margaret Clap. And there I first became acquainted with the prisoner. He's talking about Gabriel Lawrence now. Newton testified that he had first met Lawrence at Claps on the 20th of July 1725, and then he goes on. I was conducted up one pair of stairs, and by the persuasions of Bavage, who was present all the time, I suffered the prisoner to commit the said crime. Now, this is key to understanding Newton, because the next thing he says is, I have reformed my ways. I will never do this again.

I know I was wrong. But you have to believe me because Lawrence has not. And he then goes on to give the actual details. He says, he and one Daniel have attempted the same since that time, but I refused, though they bust, which means kissed me, and stroked me over the face and said I was a very pretty fellow. So he's looking for compliments here. He's like, I am actually a bit of a ride.

They said I was stunningly fit and gorgeous. But, you know, I'm just above that. I didn't get involved. Can you imagine if he wasn't and if he's on the stand saying these things, And everyone's looking at him going, really? So he must be actually. He must have been for people to believe him. Yeah, exactly.

That's so, so interesting. Okay, I mean, from everything you said now, I don't trust Newton at all, clearly. Even though I love how he's like, I suffered the prisoner to commit this crime against it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's like, you know, oh, it was so terrible for me, but I still did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I never do it again. I never do it again, but I did do that one.

Yeah, just once. And now look at it. Oh, well, for me. But this is all happening, by the way, but this is all happening, by the way, over the course of 30 minutes or thereabouts. So next up we have Samuel Stevens. So he was one of the underagents for the reforming society. He had kind of infiltrated. He was one of the two that had infiltrated. He was part of the raid. Got it. And he spoke as follows. He said, Mrs. Clap's house was notorious for being a Molly house. In order to detect some that frequented it, I have been there several

times. All right, Samuel. And seen 20 or 30 of them together, making love, as they called it, in a very indecent manner. Then they used to go out by pairs into another room, and after their return, and they would tell what they had been doing together, which they call marrying. Oh, my God. Okay, I have so many questions. First of all, making love, as they called it. Good for them. Yeah.

What's this about marrying? This is something. So I was flabbergasted by this, and we've kind of known about it. But when I did the course of the whole book, marriage talk among same sex attractive people and gendered on conforming people in the 18th century is all over the shot. And bear in mind, this is before 1753. People measure relationships, right? That's just built into society in a way that it's not now necessarily.

And they are not right. Marriage is not regulated before 1753. People are living in common law marriages. People can go and have their friends do a ceremony or whatever. Absolutely. So you can just be like, we're married now. We're married now. Yeah.

And that can kind of stand up in court to a certain extent. Yes, yeah. And so we see that the mollies are doing this too, to certain. Now, people used to think that marrying meant having sex. But here, as much as we can trust Samuel Stevens' testimony, and I think in this case we can, he's making a distinction between when they go and have sex and when they go and have this marriage ceremony type thing. Yeah, you're saying these are two different events that happen.

Now, are they understanding this marriage as performative and it exists within the Molly House and the kind of the sociability of that? Or is this people actually cementing their relationships and these will exist in their minds at least outside of that space? And two, is this two men as men as they have to exist outside of this Molly House? marrying each other or is this going back to

what Ned Ward was saying this performance of femininity is this a performance of a heterosexual marriage where someone

is playing the bride in a vertocomers I think they're really good questions I'll answer the second one first we don't know

when you see these things I've seen it once depicted on screen marriages in Molly houses and one person is dressed as a

bride and one person is more masculine presenting we have no archival evidence that that was the case So we don't know whether somebody assumed that gender performance, just for the sake of it, we really don't know.

In terms of whether or not these were seen as actual unions beyond the Molly House, we know for certain that two men that got married also lived at the Molly House together so that they were living together at Mother Clafts at the time of the raid. We don't know if they were taken up. We don't think they were because their names just aren't known. So we feel like if they had been taken up, their names would be known. Yeah. So they were living together and had gone through a marriage. process. For other people, I would hazard a guess because we don't know for sure, but I would hazard a guess that they felt that they were married within their community, but they may

have had a wife at home. And big of me happened in the 18th century. Like that was because of the nature of marriage. It was one of the reasons they needed to regulate in 1753 is just because people had multiple marriages going on. So it was certainly acknowledged within this proto-queer community and probably, as you say, they took it beyond that, but not necessarily. necessarily were they forming households at this social level? Those some were. We know some were because they were living at the Molley House together. And we know that. We have that in the record. Wow. There's so much variety here and so much, so much of human nature.

It's not just one box fits all. There's so much diversity in terms of people making commitments in terms of the way people are having sex, in terms of the way people are meeting these Molley houses, what they're using them for. Is it a domestic space? Is it a brothel? Is it just a sociable meeting place? it can be all of these things to all people on different visits. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what we've been missing about Molly Houses. People think Molly Houses were a place that men who had sex with men went to have sex. Yeah, there's so much more than that. They're just sort of gay brothels, basically.

So much more than that. We actually don't even know for sure that people are being paid for sex at Molly Houses. We know sex workers are frequenting them, but we don't know if they're necessarily conducting their business there. I think they probably are. It is varied. There is a lot going on. Molly Houses are also domestic spaces. Molly Houses are places of just friendship and camaraderie. These are important sites for these gender non-conforming men at the time. Just to say that after Stevens has given his testimony, Joseph Sellers, who was his accomplice, gets up and confirms everything he said. And then the judge turns to Gabriel Lawrence. This is when we get Lawrence's testimony. He doesn't talk for very long himself. What he does

is he calls witnesses, but he does give this. He acknowledges that he had been several times to collapse house, but never knew that it was a rendezvous for such persons, which is kind of sad, right? because what else is he going to say, yeah, I have sex with men? No, he's not going to say that. But it's so sad that faced with the gallows, he has to say this in order to try and save himself. He still can't be his authentic self in this situation. No, no, no, no. And wouldn't even have understood the concept of what that meant.

You know what I mean? He lives in a world where his life is at risk. So that authenticity is something that's sitting uncomfortably with him. It's not an option for him. No, exactly. So he calls numerous witnesses. he calls his father-in-law, who says, no, this man had a child with my daughter.

She's 13. He couldn't be doing this. So they very much saw that these two things can't live side by side. So the fact that you'll see, we talked about this exchange of defences, you'll see so often that they use, I'm married with a child. This can't be true of me because of that. So they're playing up that kind of binary mindset. That's so interesting.

I'm working as one at the moment who was mentally ill and permitted to crime. and all of the witnesses called, in his defence, are like, he goes to church on a Sunday, he can't be mad, or he has a child, he can't be mad, he has a wife, he goes to work. He turns up for work, guys. We are normal in the verdict on a regular basis. He's not mad. Yeah, so that absolutely chimes with what it's saying,

okay, give me the verdict. The verdict after all of this, you know, the brother-in-law comes and said, I've shared beds with him, which is not unusual in the 18th century. He never tried anything on with me, which I always think is a really funny defense thing, but it comes up again and again. That's like that. I'm so beautiful. Yeah. How has he managed to not turn on me? Anyway, his neighbor, one woman, she comes in and she says, I would never have let, he comes to my house all the time and I would never have allowed him come past the door if I thought for a second, this was him. And it's just, you know, it's just like, you know, they're providing this defense. But, you know, anyway, it doesn't work because the jury deliberates and they deliver their verdict in two words, guilty, death. That's it. To the point. That's what's recorded.

Wow. So poor Gabriel Lawrence has to go to the gallows. He's going to the gallows, and he does so on Thursday, the 9th of May 1726. This was a particularly busy hanging day. There is a thought that up to 100,000 people attended this hanging. Wow. I mean, that's significant, even for this period when, you know, hanging day was a good old romp and people would, you know,

the bell would be ringing outside of the church opposite. Newgate and the Orbelian, the procession would start and all of that. And, you know, people really love this festival atmosphere, but 100,000 is a lot. Tell me this. On this particular day, is it just so-called sodomites who are being hanged? No. There are at least two sodomites, maybe more, but at least two. But there's also a very notorious murderess who has had two of her lovers decapitate her husband. So this is, you know, these are high profiles. So no wonder there's so many. and they've come to see the sodomites because both of these trials have been in the paper

and it just so happens that they're being hanged on the same day. And that's quite an interesting day actually in terms of people behaving outside the norms of their expected gender and sexuality a murderess and two sodomites. And like

obviously all of these hangings are to enforce control but these as you are saying are very closely linked to the control of gender and sexuality and going you Step back in place. Do not step out of that line. These people have all done some weird stuff and not done what they were meant to be doing.

Let's go and watch them get hanged. So we know we have this, as you said, festival atmosphere on the route. They're heading towards Tyburn, which I actually didn't necessarily, I hadn't cottoned onto this before I was researching this book. But Tyburn is where Marble Arch is now. So I didn't, you know. We did a whole episode on Tyburn? Did we know was that Marvel Arne? I'd already done the book by then.

That was your episode and you confidently told you. I had already done the book by then. So hopefully, no, I had. I had done the book by then. So I knew that I must have known for that episode. I just can't remember doing the episode. But they're all heading towards marble arts. You know, this can take hours, by the way. And there are young girls throwing flowers. This is all arranged. It's all part of the performance. And the prisoners are stopping to drink alcohol along the way. People bring them out beers and brandy and whatever else from different public houses. Right. This is a whole festival. Oh, I remember the episode now because we talked about this as well. Yeah.

And we talked about this idea of they're being seating around the scaffolding that people could pay to sit and watch the people. Anyway, because there was 100,000 people that day, people are shoving, there's a lot of crush going on. And they ram into the scaffold. The scaffolding starts to fall apart. It comes down. It hits people on the head. So the bystanders are injured. So then the whole thing has to be stopped.

Can you imagine? Like it's painful enough. Yeah. Then the scaffolding has to be repaired before they are brought up to actually. actually be hanged. So I mean, as if it's, it wasn't bad enough this was happening. But anyway, eventually Lawrence is moved on his harsh drawn cart beneath the gallows and he delivers his final words. They are recorded, but I'm not even going to bother sharing them with you here. You can look them up online because they are not real. They're as so often as the case.

In the, in the recorded version, he admits to being a sodomite. He says he has a wayward life. But we know it's not real because it gets so many biographical details wrong. They say he's of Church of England. We know he's a Catholic, which by the way is also interesting because of the links between Catholicism and sodomy. And we do know that he did, as they all did, publicly forgive the hangman who was Richard Arnett on the day. And that was standard, wasn't it? That's why we know, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was part of the procedure, the performance of a hanging. You say your prayers, you say, I forgive you to the hangman, and then you go off to meet your maker. Doubtless, I would say, he denied that he was a sodomite and that he begged forgiveness for

his other sins before he died, basically. And he will have been assigned the ordinary of Newgate, of course, who will have helped him with that in the journey, where they will have been praying. They will have been trying to save his soul. But after all that is done, the cart moves away, and Gabriel Lawrence drops downwards, and he is then violently caught by the rope and suspended above the ground.

And that is the end of Gabriel Lawrence. So that is not one of the more upbeat histories in the book. I really have tried. really set the tone here. Good morning, everybody, and welcome Doctor. I've tried to zone in on joy in the book as much as possible. But you have to set out what the stakes are and what people have to lose and this, it's their life. And that's why it's the opening chapters. Yeah. Because you need to know in all of these histories, I think, that life is at stake here, especially for same-sex attractive men, exclusively for same-sex attractive men. So that is,

that is Gabriel Lawrence's history as we know it, but it's not the only part of his history because He was part of this community. He was loved. He had sex with these men or some of these men. He had a child. He had a brilliant set of friends and neighbours. Yeah, and he had that home life as well with a wife and child that we don't know any more details about. And it could have been that that worked very well with what he did in the Molly House.

We don't know that he kept those parts of himself secret, actually. And he may not have gone to the Molly House until after his wife died. I mean, you know, one of those things to remember is the history of bisexuality, which so easily gets overlooked where it's like, oh, well, you're gay or you're straight and that's it. But no, I mean, people are bisexual. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and we'll never know with, in Gabriel's case,

because we don't have his words in terms of what he would actually say to us today. We don't have that access to that information. That's so interesting. But I think it's, what a sad. It is, well, that's, I was just about to say, it is so sad. Yeah. But I think if we can come away from this thinking about what would have been in the Molley House before happened. Yes.

And I think that people made their own lives, that they shaped them how they wanted. And for a short while, unless you were caught and punished by the law, you could exist in your own parameters to a certain extent. Yes, it had to be secret. It had to be, you know, moving around at night, going to the Molly House. It's not that people were free to live these lives out loud in the open. But to a certain extent, you could find joy. You could tailor make your own life. Absolutely.

Joy is there. It's written large in the archive. And even, and you have to remember, it must have been great crack. Because these archives are to try and damn these people. These archives are telling us, don't you ever do you. Sounds like great crack to me until they get raided. Like they're in there together. They're having fun. They're having these maiden names. You know, this is a real thing of belonging. And you know, an imagination. It's a place where you can imagine different possibilities for yourself. Yeah. And live it actually in some of the cases. And one of the things I want to point out is all. I really like is Margaret Clap, as I said at the beginning of the episode, was known as Mother Clap. And she was known as Mother Clap because she stood up for these men. She would give testimony. If anybody was suspected, she would come to their defense and be like, no, actually, he's a very nice man. And this idea of a straight woman being an ally, being known as Mother, persists. Yeah, but we're too, a bit emotional. But, like, we call, you know, all the pop stars that people that are like, oh, she's mother.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. Margaret was mothering. I think this is a legacy. I think that is a link the whole way up. So whoever one calls mother, Margaret Clap was mother to. She's the OG mother. But the good thing about Margaret, she was arrested too, remember?

She went to Newgate 2. She had a trial too. She was put in stocks, which is violent, by the way. So around Spitalfields, she was pelted. She fainted three times. And people used to throw, yes, rotten vegetables, but also, shit off, literally shit off the street, dead animals. And people died in stocks.

Yeah, yeah. You could go like a club by like a dead dog or something and break your neck in stocks. This is not getting off lightly. Yeah, yeah. And people can obviously come up to you and touch you and do all sorts of things. And if you're a woman in stocks in particular, you are open to all kinds of violations while you're stuck there. And for somebody like Margaret, who I imagine as really robust, you know, strong woman to be fainting three times. Quite dignified.

She's set up a business. She's a business woman in a world that doesn't want her to be a business woman. Yeah, yeah. but we do not know what happens after she's released from the stocks and she goes back into the world so we don't know if she lives we don't know if she goes back to Newgate

we don't know if she continues with the Molly House I take some hope in the not knowing I think Margaret Clapp is crafty enough that the fact we don't know what happens we don't have a trail for her She carried on She's gone somewhere and she's doing something else

She's still being an ally somewhere else She's doing something else She's doing something. Yeah, yeah, I think so I think we would know if someone like Margaret Clap, if they'd managed to obliterate her. I think she, you know, and this is why I want to make that period drama. So that's, that's, that's something I'm. Make your pitch, babe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just, you know, these are, these are such important histories. They don't appear on screen in the same way as, you know, we've had how many Austens more to come and I'll watch them and it's great. But come on, let's do this. Yeah, exactly. And this is, you know, as much as we all love a good Austin, and I know this is at the other end of this great long century.

Oh, 100%. I'll be watching that I've been enjoying it, my friend. But that world of politeness and pastel colors, as I always say, how we perceive that world, this was the stuff going on in the same cities that Austin is, I appreciate this is almost 100 years apart. But in this world, this long 18th century world, this is going on. This is the reality of how some people were living. And probably how we would have been living.

Exactly. Because I'm not going to be in a stately home, am I? I'm going to be selling oranges in Covent Garden probably. You absolutely are. What was she called? Orange Deb. Orange Deb. Orange Deb, there you go.

Where can people buy a book, please? Ah, in all good retail shops. It's out on the 4th of September or the 7th of October, if you're in North America where it's called Queer Enlightenment, just so people don't get confused with the state of Georgia and Georgians there. That's why that's called that. It's also available on audiobook. I am starting to feel sick because the book's coming out.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God, it's exciting. Yes, I know. Thank you so much to everyone listening along to this episode. There is going to be another episode coming from Anthony's book. So if you've enjoyed this, there is more. And we encourage you to listen to that. We love to hear from you about ideas for future shows. So if you have a suggestion about queer histories or anything else,

you can get in touch at After Dark at Historyhit.com. That's Afterdark at Historyhit.com. My name is Ryan. This is my best friend, Tony, and we host the Tony and Ryan podcast. People right across Canada listen every single day. Jared's in Alberta. How did you discover the podcast? Someone was just like, oh my God, you need to check out these two from Australia and I was hooked right away. I was like, oh my God, I was pissing myself laughing in my truck and like it just got worse from there.

Oh, well, but it's good. In a good way. It gets worse with how good it is and that's just the beauty of friendship. Tony and Ryan every day.