Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Molly Houses

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

It’s hard to imagine London’s gay scene before vibrant night spots like Heaven and G.A.Y, but come back with us to the 18th Century to find out about where it all began: Molly Houses. This was when to be gay in England was a crime punishable by death, and so a network of secretive gay gatherings in the backrooms of ale and coffee houses - known in the community as Molly Houses - were the place to go and meet other gay men. Where did this term come from? And what took place at great risk behind these closed doors? Kate is joined by the legendary gay historian and author Rictor Norton to find out. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer Charlotte Long. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith. Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello for Twixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair do's warning. To protect you from yourselves. To protect you from me. To protect you from this podcast. I just want to protect you from everything.

Life in general, I want to wrap you up with cotton wool and make sure that nothing ever assails your delicate shell likes again. All right, that's a bit extreme. But you do need to know that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way. and you should be an adult too. We are actually getting a bit tasty today because we're talking about sex in 18th century London,

gay sex to be specific. And you might not want to listen to that today, although if you don't, I don't know what you're doing here in the first place. But if you're someone that didn't want to listen to a conversation about gay sex in 18th century London, this is your chance to get out now while you still can. And if you hang around and if you're offended,

tough tits, because fair do's, you were warned. Picture the scene betwixters. You are in the back of a coffee house. On the edge of a criminal slum in 18th century London and a wedding is taking place. But not just any wedding. Oh no, no, no, no. It is a gay wedding.

Of sorts. This is a molly house. What's a molly house? Well, it's not quite a gay brothel, it's not quite a gay bar, it's not quite a gay cruising spot. It's somewhere in, between all three of those things. It is a space where gay men come together to meet in secret,

to talk, socialise and indulge in a bit of hanky-panky. Why not? And the reports on the Molly Houses of the day tell us that behind the closed doors, rowdy drinking songs are sung, that the guests mimic the ways of women, that they give each of the cute nicknames and dance into the night to music played on a fiddle. I think that they were supposed to be outraged by this, but I think this sounds like a smashing time. And the ceremony that you are witnessing takes place with friends dressed as bridesmaids, with a priest officiating, not a real priest, obviously,

and then the groom and groom retire to a bedroom at the back of the pub to consummate the wedding. Truly, an act of defiance at a time when gay men or mollies, as they were known, were not only criminalised, but faced the death penalty if convicted. Hmm. And you are in the most famous Molly House of all,

the establishment that belongs to the notorious mother clap. But the good times are not to last, because the authorities have their informants, and in the early 18th century, the property was raided. Some 40 men were dragged out into the street in various stages of undressed and hauled away to the jails. Today, on Betwixt the Sheets, we are looking into the fate of those men,

and hearing more about the gay subculture of 18th century London, including some amazing individuals, like Princess Serafina and the Duchess of Camerile. I am ready to do this if you are Betwixtors. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect coppents of whatever my boss needs

by just turning a knob and putting the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. If you were a gay man in 18th century London, well, in 18th century anywhere, really, but we're thinking about London today, how would you meet other gay men? There is no 18th century grinder to be had. There's no internet. You can't

post Lonely Hearts adverts because you're risking the death penalty here. But despite all of that, as we're going to find out today, there was a thriving gay subculture in 18th century London. There was a secret network of gay clubs, pubs, bars and molly houses where men could gather in secret. And today I am joined by the legendary historian and author Richter Norton, who is an expert in the history of gay culture and especially the history of the molly houses. We're going to explore the world of the molly houses, find out where that word came from, who was attending these parties, and what was.

What were they risking to be there? Hello and welcome to Bertwix the Sheets. I'm only talking to Richter Norton. How are you? Very well, thank you. I am so thrilled to be talking to you because anybody that has studied any part of sex history

will have come across your work, especially Mother Molly's Claphouse. Mother Clap's Molly House. Especially Mother Clap's Molly House. I always mix those two up. I get them the wrong way around. but that was such a trailblazing book to have written. How did you feel about that now?

Because it was one of those game-changing books, definitely. Yes, I had done research on gay history and literature in the Renaissance as part of my PhD at Florida State University. But I came over and developed court records and so forth in the London Metropolitan Archives. And this history of ordinary gay people really are trying to. acted me rather than the history of elite writers and Shakespeare and what have you. Additionally, I started writing articles for the gay press. I would find a trial record, for example, and write it up and publish it in soft gay porn magazines.

I didn't know that. That's amazing. I thought it was important to reach a gay audience, really. Yes. And that was the whole point of the book in a way. But I certainly didn't exclude a straight audience, perfectly happy, to appeal to historians and whatever. But I thought I want to appeal to the understanding of the gay community today to show them what the gay community was like 300 years ago. Wow. We should probably start with a really basic, obvious question, but for anyone that's listening that isn't familiar, what is a Molly house?

What is a Molly? Yes. A molly was really one of the most common terms for gay man in the 18th century. The official term was Sotomite, but that was only used in the pulpit and in a trial. But the man in the street would very often refer to gay men as Mollies, and gay men themselves would refer to themselves as Mollies. Technically, it comes from the Latin term Mollus, which means soft. I didn't know that.

And it's sort of the meaning. sissy or something like that. One Molly had the nickname Molly Soft Buttocks. Generally, it was applied to sort of camp effeminate men, and the expectation was that a gay man was an unmanly man. It's very much like the equivalent of the modern terms, queer or fairy or pansy, something like that as the vernacular term. Is Molly still in use? Is it in use anywhere today? Not very much. In the later 19th century, the term became Mary and Marjorie. And we still have references to nicknames involving Mary, but not so much Molly. That's more of a older term. I thought that maybe the Molly was the name Molly, because I know that Moll has got associations with

sex work. It's a naughty person, Moll. Yes. People regarded Mollies as male hores. Ah, there we go. Yep. And of course, a lot of the prostitutes in London were actually Irish immigrants, and their real name was Mollie. Mollie. Wow. Oh, my good. So what's interesting there is that this, I mean, it sounds like it could have been a term of abuse, but it was also used within the community themselves, like the gay men would refer to each other as Mollies. That's right. They wouldn't call each other sodomites. No, no, I suppose. No, they wouldn't, would they? And so they used it as an affectionate nickname and as a simple designation, a straightforward simple designation.

I would call myself a friend of Dorothy, for example, in early 20th century. It had no particular sense of shame or criticism. So what is a Mali house? They really emerged in the early 18th century a thriving gay network, which involved cruising grounds and men would use Mali slang, a limited amount of gay slang amongst themselves. And more particularly, they developed a series of gay clubs. Most of the Mali houses were pubs or ale houses. some of them were coffee houses, some of them were small back rooms behind a small gin shop, for

example, where six or seven men could meet one another and make assignations for going somewhere to have sex later. But the social club really was a place where gay men could go to socialize with one another. The sex was always in the air, but it wasn't a brothel. It wasn't a brothel. It was not a brothel. They would sing. together, sing body songs together, dance together while someone played on the fiddle, and they would mimic the ways of women and play with one another and sit in one another's laps and so forth. Sounds like quite good fun. It was really a disorderly house. It was what it was. Unlike a brothel, it didn't have a sharp division between buyers and sellers. There's hardly

any reference really to buying and selling in the Mali houses. It was a place to go to have a time. It was a place to go to let down your hair. A lot of the places were real pubs, and they would have exclusively men, and they would actually be known in the neighborhood. That's because the neighborhoods where they developed were mostly slums or criminal areas, areas just outside the city wall, for example, or areas just near a park. So a lot of these Molley houses You know, they weren't really reported to the police because the people in the neighborhood were pretty disorderly themselves and they don't want the police around. Right. So I was just about to ask you, it seems like they must have had to walk such a fine line because on one hand it's a disorderly house, but it can't be disorderly enough to attract attention because the penalties for sodomy were severe at this time, weren't they? Yes, of course. Sodomy was a felony punishable by death.

any other sex between men was treated as a misdemeanor called attempted sodomy or assault with intent to commit sodomy. So in other words, groping a man or soliciting sex from a man, this is treated as an assault with an intent to commit sodomy. Was that punishable by death as well? And that was punishable by usually a pillory, standing in the pillory, once or twice, and a fine and imprisonment for usually six months to two years, maximum of two years. So even indecent kissing, lascivious kissing, was punishable as something with an intent to commit sodomy. Usually, of course, you couldn't prove sodomy.

How did you prove that? It required proof of penetration and emission. Okay. Most of the convictions we have are either people looking through a keyhole and observing what's going on in the back room of a pub, or in a number of cases, one of the partners turning King's evidence to protect himself and then his testimony convicts the other partner. That was fairly common. But even in that case, you still needed a lot of circumstantial evidence to support whether or not he was telling the truth. But as I say, most trials that began as a trial for sodomy would halfway through be changed to a trial for attempted sodomy

because they knew they had no chance of proving us. And you just think about just these poor people of what they were facing is horrendous. I mean, how well-known do you think these clubs were? Was it sort of like you have to know someone who knows someone? A lot of them were quite well-known. They were known outside of London even, and people would come from outside of London. It was only in London that you had these organized clubs.

Nowhere else. But people would come from a far away as Birmingham. They were fairly well known, but there's no particular crime that you can ascribe to the men who went there. You know, you'd have to build up a huge case, and it's not worth anyone's while to do it. Remember, prosecutions in the 18th century had to be initiated by private individuals. even a prosecution for sodomy had to have a private individual arranged the prosecution. It wasn't paid for by the state. So it's not in anyone's interest to go out of the way to line up Mollies

and to arrange people to support your testimony and take a day off work to go to court and so on and so forth. You wouldn't know about it, but you wouldn't take it to court. Just a bit earlier that you said that inside the Mali houses, they were singing bawdy songs and speaking in the language of women. You've got a lot of very detailed knowledge of what happens inside these clubs, which I've always so surprised when I first read your book. Where does that come from? Where is that evidence from that we know what happened there?

Well, as I say, some agents of the Society for the Reformation of Manners pretended to be Mollies themselves. And who was the Society for the Reformation of Manners? They sound like so much fun. This was an evangelical moral reforming. society that was formed very late in the 17th century and operated up through about 1730. And the man who founded it was Thomas Bray, who was the householder for a lodger who was solicited for sex by a man.

And Thomas Bray went out deliberately to catch this man, who was entrapped while he was set up anyway with constables hiding in the room next door where the assignation took place and so forth. Anyway, this man, Thomas Bray, he organized systematic surveillance of the Mali houses, and he worked with members of the Society for the Reformation Manners, who many of whom were actually magistrates so they could issue a warrant for the search for Saddamites. And they prosecuted, well, they claimed to have closed down basically most of the Mali houses. And of course, their main name actually was female prostitution. So they paid for the prosecution.

It was them paying to take these cases to cause. They was them offering the money to offer people to help them. So this made all the difference in gathering evidence. And they prosecuted actually many, many thousands of female prostitutes. The Mali houses were just a sort of a small part of their activity. And men were put to death, weren't they? This isn't like they were just raiding these houses and just wagging their fingers at people? Men were hanged for this.

The most famous Molly House was Mother Clap's Molly House. This was owned by Margaret Clap and her husband John Clap. That's her real name. I always thought that was an alien. That was her real name, but people loved it and, of course, used Mother Clap as a term of affection and humor as well. and her husband operated a straight pub somewhere else in the city, and she operated a coffee house. And this coffee house was located in Field Lane, which was leading on to Holborn. And Field Lane is just at the end of Saffran Hill.

It was really a criminal slum. Saffron Hill, for example, is the site of Fagan's Kitchen in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. There actually exists a early or mid-19th century photograph of Field Lane, full of decrepit houses all falling down and so forth. Today the site is buried under Holborn Viaduct. But anyway, there was an argument amongst two men who frequented her Mali House, and they eventually, one of them took vengeance upon the other by exposing them and getting the Society for the Reformation of Manners. involved. But at Mother Claps Molly House, it was a coffee house, but there was a pub next door, so she would go out next door to fetch liquor. But about 30 men would assemble in her large front room every day of the week. And she also had two rooms upstairs where she had Molly

lodges. And the men would get together and sing and dance and sometimes engage in bitch fights. we know what they did because of the infiltrators. They would say, for example, to one another, oh, where have you been, you saucy queen? I swear I'll cry out, how can you serve me so? Oh, you bold pullet, I'll break all your eggs. It sounds oddly modern to me. Yes.

They would sit in one another's laps, mimic the voices of women, curtsey, and generally behave indecently. And Mother Clap, next to this room, had what was called the marrying room. The marrying room, okay. This was a room with a large double bed in it, and one man operated as the doorkeeper and would let two men in at a time to get married, as they called it. Wow.

And then they would come out and sometimes tell what they've been doing and so forth. Wow. The police kept this coffee house under surveillance for about, a month quite systematically, and then they eventually raided it. It was one of the big party nights in which 50 men would come to the club rather than just 30. It was on Sundays were the party nights. Extra, extra sticking it in there, isn't it, to do it on a Sunday. And this was the night when people would come from far away. They arrested 40 men and brought them in to jail. Eventually, by the end of the trials and so forth. Three of the men were hanged for sodomy. One was a milkman who regularly

brought milk into London and then would stop by Mother Clapp's. One was a woolcomer. And two of the men were transported. One man died in prison and five or six men were put in the pillory and sent to prison for two years. And Mother Clap herself was put on the pillory and sentenced to six months in prison. She was charged with keeping a disorderly house for the entertainment of sodomites. And when she was put on the pillory, she was treated very, very severely by the mob who gathered around her. And she fainted a couple of times. The pillory was set up on a platform raised above the crowd. Is a pillory like stocks? A holes you can put your head and hands through and you're immobilized there.

And as you stand there, people throw dead cats at you and rotten eggs and so forth. And rocks, stones. She was treated so severely that she collapsed in a convulsive fit and was taken away and presumably died. The newspapers reported that she was likely to die from her injuries. Do we know how old she was when this happened? Is there any sense of that? No, records aren't very precise about ages, but I imagine she was 40 or something in that area.

Yeah, in my mind's eye, I imagine looking like Pat Butcher from EastEnders, like a big matronly woman, and I don't know why I think that about her. Yeah. Is there any sense of why she was doing this? Was she motivated by money? Was there finance in this?

Well, there's not much indication that The only money she took was for the liquor and the coffee and so forth. There's not much money in that, is there, in a slum in a home? There isn't much money. The indication is that she enjoyed it. One of the police said that the customers talked all manner of gross and vile obscenity in her hearing, and she was wonderfully pleased with it. I like Margaret Clap.

She liked her customers. She at one point appeared as an alibi for a man who was accused of sodomy, and through her testimony got him acquitted. So she went out of her way. And after the raid took place, one of the men who was basically a hustler, Thomas Newton, went around to the other Mollies and collected money to pay her bail and get her out of prison.

So she was really part of the community. I'll be back with Richter and Mother Clap after this short break. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to solve the biggest mysteries of the men. medieval age. So many of these travellers who went out looking for Presta John, what did they think they were hearing? Using science to identify our buried ancestors. Genetic signatures found in present-day Ashkenazi Jewish populations were shared by the genetic

ancestries we found in these individuals. And reveal the answers to centuries-old riddles. I stand up straight in a bed, I'm hairy at my base and I make the ladies cry. The solution is an onion. I'm Matt Lewis and every Tuesday and Friday you, you're a man. can join me to travel the medieval world in search of the stories you haven't heard and to get under the skins of the ones you have. Gone medieval from history hit, twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wasn't Thomas Newton one of the, maybe the villains of the piece, because he'd given evidence that resulted in people getting hanged? Well, when he brought the money, he was about 30 years old, a bit old for a hustler, I think, but anyway. When he went to to the authorities to pay the money in, he was arrested himself. And they said, we will charge you with sodomy unless you help us. Right. Okay. So he agreed to help the police in order to get immunity from prosecution. I suppose he would, wouldn't you? Oh, dear.

And so he would actually help the police entrap men. Even later, for example, there was one area of London. There were several cruising grounds in London. One was Morfields, which is a large open area just north of the city walls, and it has a wall across the middle walk. And this was so well known that it was called the Sodomites Walk. The general technique was for a man to sort of stand up against the wall, pretend to make water, and wait for someone to come along and strike up a conversation about the weather or what have you. And Thomas Newton helped two constables lay in wait.

behind this wall, while another man was entrapped by responding to him. It's interesting that when the police brought this other man in for when they arrested him, when they asked him, what do you think you're up to? He was not ashamed to answer. I did it because I thought I knew the man. He thought he knew Newton. And because I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body. Wow. Okay. Which is a very interesting justification. In fact, it's not a one-off. There was another instance in which two persons were seen by a night watchman, apparently making love to one another against the railings in front of Covent Garden Church.

And the watchman went up to them and realized they weren't a man and woman but two men and started calling them filthy sodomites. But one of the men with his trousers around his ankles said, Sirah, what's that to you? Can't I make use of my own body? I've done nothing but what I will do again. Wow. I mean, these weren't proto-gay liberationists,

but there was in the air this idea of bodily self-ownership. There must have been, right, for people to be voicing that? In the community, there must have been a sense of why does anyone else care about this? The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke had written that everybody has a property in his own body. This no one has a right to accept himself. Well, this is really the basis of the women's movement eventually, a campaign for the rights to abortion and so forth. So it's part of the long history of sexual liberation. In fact, in France, in the late 18th century during the revolution, they published several sodomitical, satirical pamphlets,

justifying sodomy specifically on this ground, saying, my cock and my balls are my own property and I can do with them as I like. You can't argue with that, can you? That's like the basis of all gay right liberation that is threaded through that is that we're consenting adults. Why does anyone else care? Absolutely, absolutely. The more common justification was often when Ben were caught, they would simply say, no harm, nothing but love.

It's strange that a lot of them were not aware of this huge criminal event that could overtake them, the consequences. One of the things that I noticed through your research and through studying this is that persecution of the mollies and gay culture, it seems to come in waves. It seems to bubble up and there's a real ferocious persecution in raids and executions, and then it kind of like quietens down again. Yes, as I say, the activities of the society for the Reformation manners were very important, really, to the visibility of the gay culture. You wouldn't have known much about this, were it not for their activities. And their persecution took

place up until about 1730 when people were getting angry. General population was getting angry at their use of informers for all kinds of things and so forth. I was just about to say, did people start to question? Because I mean, if you're saying to somebody, look, we're going to execute you unless you help us entrap people, that's a terrible tactic. They didn't like people interfering with them using blasphemy, for example. The societies were very much against the use of blasphemy. Right. Okay, so they're casting a wide net here, aren't they?

And as I say, they more or less disappeared around 1730. And that's when the persecution of the Mali houses disappeared as well. So you don't hardly hear anything more about Mali houses that might be because they've been eradicated by this activities, or it might just be because no one is investigating them anymore. Well, in the 1720s, about 17 Mali houses were officially investigated, and there were only about another dozen during the rest of the century. And you haven't found them anywhere outside of London? I'd love to know if there was a Leeds Molley House, that's where I am,

just a bunch of Yorkshire gays, just a-up, love, how are you doing ducks? No, I'm afraid not. There was a sort of club in Lancaster in which men would meet in a private room, and they met there quite regularly, a dozen men or so. Another feature of this is that the same men meet one another constantly. And they actually had friends coming down from London on the train or up from London to Lancaster to meet them. There was possibly another one of that nature, a private meeting house in Bristol.

These people must have had money then. I mean, if they get in the staging coach from one end of the country to the other, and there must have been networks. I suppose they are in slum areas, but this isn't just a case of people passing. This is an actual destination. People are coming from all over the place to attend these events. Yes.

One of the person in Leeds was a doctor, so he had money. The Mali houses were frequented mostly by exclusively working class individuals. This doesn't mean they don't have money, but you can pay for your pleasure at a very cheap rate at this time, a glass of gin cost a penny. That would still win me over, to be completely honest. Yeah. So it was really not a great expenditure.

It's interesting that hardly any gentleman actually attended these smally houses. Really? That's interesting. They were men of the working class and small-time artisans, small-time traders, publicans, wool merchants. We have some upholsterers. We have some wig makers, milkmen, a lot of butchers, because some of the Mali Houses were near markets where there were butcher stalls, a telo Chandler, a lot of servants, and at a certain period, a number of soldiers anyway, from the Grenadier guards coming. Well, that makes sense. What were the parties like? You touched a little bit earlier that there were rooms it went into and marrying, but you said that Mother Clap's house was raided on one of the big party nights. What was a party night at a Mollie house?

How often did they happen? The Mollies engaged in a fair amount of effeminate behavior, camp behavior amongst themselves. And this could include dragballs. For example, there was one house run by a man, Jonathan Muff and Whitechapel. Oh, that's a spectacular name. Who rejoiced in the nickname Miss Muff.

Perfect. Oh, my God. Look at that. His house was. raided once, and nine men were arrested as participating in dragball. One of the men played the fiddle for the others who danced with one another, and a few of them dressed up as ladies. Two of the men were sent to prison. One man tried to kill himself in prison by cutting his artery, and the man who played the fiddle who protested to the judge that he wasn't a molly, he just went to Jonathan

in Muff's house to learn how to play the fiddle. He was unfortunately sentenced to death. How did that get pinned on the fiddler then? Like everyone else got sent to jail and the guy playing the violin got hanged? They decided that he had actually picked up one of the Sotomites and took him home one night. Fortunately, well, sort of fortunately,

a month later, the sentence was reprieved and he was transported, but that would have been not very pleasant either. No, oh my God. One of the things that I love is the names that you managed to recover, like Miss Muff, that sounds so modern. That could be at a drag show today. But there was also, was it Princess Serafina?

Have I got that right? Yes. There were a number of names like the Duchess of Camomile, the Duchess of Devonshire, Princess Serafina, Queen Irons, and so forth. At one Mollie House in the Mint in Zotherg, there was, for example, a gay wedding. And this was in which two men got married. married, and other men dressed up as friends. Aunt England was one of the men who were there. Miss Kitten was there, was one of the bridesmaids, and Princess Serafina was one of the bridesmaids.

This event is described in a pamphlet, so you might think there's a certain amount of journalistic license going on, but we can actually trace the real names of these men through court records in other instance in which they were involved. The two men who got married, one Thomas Coleman, was a butcher, and the other man called Queen Irons. His real name was John Hyens. He was a French immigrant. And extraordinarily, in the year previous to this marriage or wedding,

these two men had been arrested and convicted of attempting to have sex with one another, and they were put in the pillory and sent to prison for three months. So fairly soon after they were released from prison, served their sentence, they actually got married to one another. This to me seems an act of real commitment here. That really does, doesn't it? It's not just a fun thing to go into a room and get married, and an act of defiance as well, to show the authorities that, well, you've punished us,

but here we're going to celebrate our relationship. As I say, one of the bridesmaes was Princess Serafina. She appears about four years later, in which his real name was John Cooper, he was an unemployed gentleman's valet. He decided to prosecute another man for stealing his clothes. He said this other man had assaulted him in Chelsea Fields and took his very smart suit of clothes because John Cooper dressed as a dandy, apparently. but it was a bad thing for him to take the prosecution to court.

He got into an argument with the other man in a pub after the event and wanted his clothes back. But when the man testified, he testified that Cooper had offered to exchange clothes in return for sex. This was pretty convincingly demonstrated in court. This is actually what happened. and a number of women who knew Princess Serafina appeared in court. One was his neighbor and shared the same dressmaker and would loan dresses to him. He apparently very frequently dressed in a white gown with a scarlet cloak

and his hair would be frizzed up all around his forehead and he would curtsy so fine that you really couldn't tell him from a real woman. He apparently went to the first, open masquerade ball given in Vauxhall Gardens. He acted as a sort of a pimp between other gay men. And everyone in his neighborhood referred to she and her quite normally, naturally. And one publican, for example, who operated the club that she went to said she never heard of him being called anything other than Princess Serafina. So I think in this case, I'm fairly easy about referring to him as a transgender woman because he very much likes dressing as a woman. Although he's interested

in sex with men, his gender identity is quite important to him. Yeah. And what surprises me is that the pronoun she was so widely used to the point where people in pubs were saying, I never heard of anything other than she. Yes, it was quite normal. And when this appeared in court, the judge said, who are you talking about? This is she. Who's who is this? Well, it's Princess Serafina, who else. So a bit of a local celebrity then? Yes. He lived in a house in an alley off the Strand.

And he was noted, for example, as nursing, a male, female couple who had an illness and he took care of them and so forth. So he was sort of a nurse as well as an unemployed valet. Do we have any sense of what happened to these people? Because the problem, if it is a problem, is that when you're dealing with mostly with law records, with prosecutions and court, sort of this flash in the pan and these people are in the records, but then they kind of disappear after that. They tend to disappear.

There are a few instances of repeat offenders so we can get a sense of, oh, this person has a history, continuity. But generally, certainly after a spell in prison, you disappear. Towards the late 18th century and early 19th century, transportation was used much more frequently than imprisonment. And of course the infamous death recorded. And yes, people were no longer hanged for sodomy after 1835. You were still sentenced to death, but this was a formal category,

and you were actually transported until eventually, I think, in 1861 or something, the penalty for sodomy was totally abolished, the death penalty. It's very interesting that because transportation was used now, You can actually trace the lives of some of these men who were transported to Tasmania. I found the record of a man who was a traveling, a strolling player, and I found the records of him. He retired from service and went to Chelsea Hospital for retired servicemen, and then he got involved in a sodomitical assault and was transported.

and I can find the records of his transportation, and during his spell in the penal colony, he would get involved in fist fights occasionally. Occasionally he would run away from the penal colony. It was captured, and then eventually he died in hospital. So you can actually trace their lives. I think only one instance have I found of a sodomite being transported and then being penalized again for sodomy. in the penal colony.

Wow. That's commitment. Yes. So this is certainly a desire that is part of one's identity. Absolutely. Your research focuses mostly on men having sex with the men and sort of that culture. In your research, have you got any kind of a sense that there was a thriving lesbian community at the same time? Or maybe they were just better at hiding it?

Well, I think there is none. No. As far as we can tell, lesbians would form small friendship networks. of friends amongst themselves. When you think about this isn't odd, I mean, it would be extraordinary for a group of women to get together in a pub. They would automatically be classed as prostitutes.

That is true, isn't it? And men would barge in and take over the thing. So Amali doesn't necessarily classify himself as a criminal when he goes to a gay club, whereas a woman going to a lesbian club would automatically become an outcast of some sort. I'm with you. Okay. There are only a couple indications of semi-networks, Anne Damer, who was Horace Walpole's descendant.

She was a sculptor. She would organize small theatrical parties, and she was believed to have a lover in one of the actresses. This is a small circle of friends. I think in France or in Paris, there was a club called the sect of the Anne and dynes, women who hate men. This was a secret society organized sort of like the Freemasons. And of course it was written up in a fantastic fashion. But there are indications that it really, really did exist.

But this, of course, was Paris. Paris was much more avant-garde than London. Lesbianism in England was called The Game of Flats. I love that. That's so bonkers. What is that? What's the game of flats? Apparently an allusion to flat playing cards being rubbed together and flat pedenda being rubbed together. The more ancient name for lesbians was Tribads,

which meant rubbers, people rub. The other common name for lesbians was Tommy. That was very frequent. in fact. Their love for one another would be called the sapphic passion. Actually, the word lesbian was used in the 1730s in exactly the same sense that is that's used today as a woman who loves women. I didn't know that. I thought that was later, right? No. The Oxford English Dictionary said it was in about 1895 that it was first used, but in fact, I found reference in 1732 saying she was a lesbian, and she loved women the way men love women,

which is as straightforward as you need to be. That is, isn't it? I could honestly, I could just sit here and just talk to you about it all day, but I can't. But my final question to you is, if I had a time machine and if I could transport you back to London, Holborn and the ear of the Mali houses, where would you like to go and who would you like to meet? I know they're in dangerous areas,

but let's just say that you're completely safe. You can have a night out on the town. Where would you go? Well, I would certainly go to Mother Clap's Mully House. This was used so frequently by a community. You would feel safe there. You would enjoy other men's company. Men who shared your inclination,

but you're not necessarily interested in having sex with them. But you're just enjoyed being part of a community. And I would enjoy the drinking and the dancing. And I quite enjoy the sort of camp behavior, find it exhilarating at times. You'd have to meet Miss Muff. That's just the best name ever. Yes, yes.

And Princess Serafina. Oh, Richter, you have been just amazing to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, I have a website called richternorton.com. com. UK, in which I've published a lot of trial records, a lot of newspaper reports, lots and lots of newspaper reports, because that's something I enjoy doing now. It's easier than going to the London Metropolitan Archives.

and sifting through the records. And I published really a lot of my book, which is now out of print. I published a lot of it on the website now. Brilliant. And are you on social media? Well, I'm on Facebook. I sometimes occasionally report new newspaper reports that I come across that are interesting. For example, I discovered the reference to someone saying,

I am the Queen of Camp, which was much, much earlier than the Oxford English Dictionary said. you would use the word camp. What date was that? 1830, about. Wow. I used to be on Twitter, but I've unsubscribe lately. Things aren't quite going right.

You have been amazing to talk to. Thank you so much for joining me. I've enjoyed it very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe

wherever it is that you get your podcasts. We have episodes. on the real Queen Charlotte and the rise of celebrity culture both coming your way. And as always, if you have any suggestions or if you just want to say hello, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sounds.