Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Sex Work in the American Revolution

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Where the American War of Independence raged, the camp followers...followed.Among them were sex workers, for both the American and British troops. What was life like inside army camps where sex workers mixed with wives, soldiers and generals? How did race and slavery factor into sex and sexuality in this time? And how did each side view queerness in the camps?Joining Kate today is the wonderful historian and author, Professor John McCurdy, to take us back to this time.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign 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.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. 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, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you? It's so nice to see you again. Welcome back to Betwix the Sheets. The podcast where we get smutty and naughty, but we all pretend that we're learning things at the same time,

so it's fine. But before we can do any of that, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults, about adult things, an adult to wake-ofing arrangement of subjects. You used to be an adult, too. Right, proceed at your own caution. It's 1776, and I've snuck into a British Army camp,

just outside of New York. The Revolutionary War is raging, and it seems like these Americans don't really want to be ruled by a king. That's me just pausing here to let you fill in your own punchline. But here amongst the British camps, as well as the men packed in tents, there are a few women here too.

These are the camp followers. Some are the partners and wives of soldiers, some are here to do laundry, some are here to wash socks, and some are here to sell sex. Sex work is a common and often under-talked-about-about-of-war, except for me. I talk about it a lot. And there was a lot of it in the War of Independence.

Let me tell you. And we shall be exploring that and finding out more. Let's do it. Welcome back to betwixta-sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Kate Lester. Sex and war go together, like, well, war and killing people, really. It's an incredibly common pairing throughout history. Wherever you find war, you're going to find sex. And I imagine that there's something about impending doom that will make you rethink your position on casual sex that would do it.

But how was sex and sexuality a feature of the American War of Independence? How did American and British attitudes to queerness differ at the time? And why was the New York Red Light District called the Holy Ground? Well, today we're joined by the marvellous John McCurdy, Professor at Eastern Michigan University, who was a specialist in sexuality during America's War of Independence. And he is going to help us find out more. And whilst I'm here, wanting to let you know one more time about the two Betwixt the Sheets live shows that are happening in May,

there's one in Edinburgh. I think that we're running out of tickets for that one, so you'll have to be quick. And another one in London, and they're getting a bit thin on the ground too. But tickets are available at feign.com.com. Just search for Betwixt the Sheets, and we will see you there. Right, without further ado, let's crack on.

Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Professor John McCurdy. How are you doing? I'm wonderful. Thank you for asking. How's everything stateside? Oh, a little complicated, but we're carrying on the best we can. I ask that because, well, one of your areas of specialism is the American War of Independence, and that's what we're here to talk about today.

Just give us the nod, John, and we can probably send the king over to take back control. Well, I think we kind of have the king thing covered, so currently. Oh, no. For anybody that is listening, well, you know, we have so many listeners in America, so they will certainly know what the War of Independence was, but it's not something that's widely covered on the British curriculum. So could you, before we get into the smutty, naughtiness of it all, could you just give us a bit of an understanding of the War of Independence what that was?

Sure, sure, yeah. So, you know, just to give you a really brief sort of a review, so historians say there's really sort of two ways of thinking about it, one, it's a long-term separation, and one, it's short-term effect. So on the one hand, the colonies were never really a New England. They were a plantation economy. They had much more racial and religious diversity than England. There was no real central government. There wasn't a very powerful army. There's already changes going on, going back to the 17th century. But specifically, there's a series of events that we know will precipitate what we call the American Revolution. And this comes at the end of the Seven Years' War, as Britain has racked up a great

deal of debt from fighting France in the war and also has realized that the American colonies are doing their own thing outside of the constraints of the empire. And so there's an attempt to sort of bring everybody back in line with laws like the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, which the Americans hate because they see this as an infringement on their rights and also say, well, Parliament has never legislated us before. And now Parliament is stepping in to do this. So this will begin in 1765, this sort of what we might call misunderstanding or certainly changed in parliamentary law. And it takes about 10 years from that to progress to a full-scale war. So this is Britain attempting to run the American colonies

as if it's part of Britain, but it's definitely not. It's American. And they're trying to like levy taxation and things like that as well. And that's what's making people a little bit testy. Yes, yes. So there's a there's frustration and control and then a sense, again, the sense that the American colonies had pretty much been on their own, what Edmund Burke calls. called salutary neglect, that the colonies did their best when they were sort of left alone. Okay. And no taxation without representation. No taxation want their representation. Yeah, exactly. So the Americans would say, Parliament is taxing us, but we don't have any seats in Parliament. I mean, it's fair play. I have to say that I can see that they had a point there. So how

the things come to a head? Because it doesn't start with a war, does it? But it gets pretty bloody. It gets pretty bloody. So again, they're about 10 years of back and forth before shots are fired at two small towns in Massachusetts, Lexington and Concord. The British have sent large army to Boston, and they're trying to round up weapons and ammunition on the countryside, and this knowingly leads to a confrontation and an exchange of bullets. It takes about a year and a half, for less maybe about a year, from those shots, those shots are in April of 1775 to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia declaring independence.

Of course, 250 years ago this year on July 4th. Then this begins a very bloody war, which lasts for eight years. So we were trying to take your weapons. Why were we trying to do that? We just didn't want things getting out of control. There was a sense that if these colonists have weapons, they're going to start using them against British soldiers, which they do. So it's not really a, you know, crazy idea to go take those weapons.

Okay. All right. So things are like they're getting aggressive and then these shots are fired. The war itself, because it's not just the British, and the Americans, is it? France gets involved in this too. Right, right. So it starts off pretty localized. And there's a significant British defeat at what we call the Battle of Saratoga in upstate New York. And at that point, it looks like the British aren't nearly as strong as everybody thought they were. They're not going to be able to put down this revolt easily. And at that point, France comes in and says, we will formally recognize the United States and provide you with money, weapons, army, navy, and then this translates the war for independence into a global war. Why did they do that? Well, the French were looking to, I think, take Britain down a peg.

So Britain had become so six. You know, exactly, a longstanding dispute, certainly. But also this, Britain was so successful in the seven years war, right? It had success as not just in North America, it made in Europe, but Africa, India, the Caribbean, France and Spain as well. We're also sort of thinking Britain could lose a few colonies and not really suffer. And it would be okay. Yeah. But when you think about it, like, you know, the Britain at this point, it's, well, never since,

because military was pretty well-structured and they've been doing it for a long time and they know how to fight wars and they know how are trained soldiers. How was America doing at this point? Did they have their own army? I mean, not really. So this is one of the challenges, right? So the British have a professional army. They have trained soldiers.

They have the Bank of England so they can pay soldiers. And the Americans have none of this. So they have to put together an army on the fly. They're relying on the states to draft men or to encourage men to volunteer through balance. Or payments. That is impressive. To not have an army and to go, right, we're going to take you on. Yeah.

That's impressive. Right. Yeah. Well, and, you know, and luckily the Americans have George Washington because there's really not a lot of other military expertise to lead this army. So a lot of the officers have not been in a war before on the American side. Was it, I don't know, popular is the right word, but were the American people, were they behind this cause or whether people there going, hang on a minute.

I want to remain British. Let's not go. Let's not start a fight. Both. There's probably a lot of popular support. There's also, we think there might be a very strong well of loyalism, maybe one in five Americans were still loyal to the king throughout this. And then there were a lot of people who I would say, didn't care or would change their positions back and forth. This is one of the problems the British run into. When the British army goes through the South, the southern colonies, initially there's a great deal of support for the British, but then the soldiers start demanding quarters and supplies and recruits, and suddenly they're not quite so well-loved anymore. Wow. Okay. So this is, it's not a civil war, but it's

certainly like it's happening on American land. And it sounds like it's kind of, like it's happening in people's towns and cities. This isn't something that's far away. It's right there. It's immediate. Yeah. Yeah. We're spreads across the continent in many ways. So all the major American cities, which are all pretty small by our standards or even by British standards at this point are occupied or see fighting in the war. Almost every colony will have troops marching through it. So it's a great deal of participation. It was a great deal of pain felt across the board. And how bloody was this conflict? I mean, all conflict is particularly nasty, but like what are we talking about here, the sort of the losses and the casualties?

Historians have looked at this and said in terms of participation and death rates relative to the population in the colonies at the time. This is equivalent to what the United States suffers in, the civil war, which is our bloodiest conflict, or maybe even what the U.S. suffers in World War II. So it touches everyone's life in one way or another. Okay. Now, one thing that I have learned from doing this podcast speaking to lots of historians is wherever there is war and soldiers, there is sex as well.

The two seem to go. Hand in hand, foot and glove, etc., etc., etc. Is that the case here as well, or did everybody behave themselves? Well, that's never true, right? People never behave themselves. Never, never, ever happens. I mean, we're talking about soldiers. So on both sides, whether we're talking about the continental or American army or the British Army,

these are going to be mostly young, single men. Most come from humble backgrounds. They don't bring a lot of money with them. They have little education or family connections. And, you know, being away from home as an opportunity to, get into trouble. And we know this is true, again, on both sides. And it's pretty common in most wars.

I mean, one of the issues that soldiers run into, again, on both sides, is going to be boredom. So if you're not in battle, what do you do? Well, what do you do? Yeah. And most of these soldiers will get up to no good, right? They drink. Drink is very easily accessible.

On the British side, drink is part of the rations, daily rations. For the Americans, they have to acquire it other ways. But there's lots of alcohol around. And so young men getting drunk, being bored, get up to no good. They get into fights with each other. They get into fights with civilians. There's quite a bit of problem caused by these armies. And that gets the heart of a sort of a conflict that seems to surround most wars throughout history

is that social attitudes to sex and promiscuity have long been, no, you shouldn't do that. Please behave yourself. Don't do that. But also there seems to be an awareness on the part of the leaders and the generals and the people who are actually organizing the war. that sex is actually quite an important part of this. I can't remember which British general it was in World War I that said basically, if they don't fuck, they won't fight, which very crudely putting it.

But it's this idea of like we're supposed to outwardly condemn this, but also we understand there is an intrinsic value to letting these young men have sex and enjoy themselves. Right. And I think this is a struggle in the 18th century, as we see later, right? So on the one hand, the army is bringing in chaplains, it was morality lessons, they're telling the men, you know, reserve yourself, save yourself, remember what will happen when you go home. At the same time, they really look the other way.

The officers really look the other way unless the sex causes a problem. And it does sometimes. It does sometimes. It does sometimes. And it seems, and throughout history, it's caused a huge problem for the army in terms of disease, mostly. Right. So this would be the biggest issue that both sides have is men having sex, fine. you're not going to be able to stop it, but they're going to contract venereal disease.

I mean, primarily it's going to be gonorrhea and syphilis or the common ones at this point in the 18th century. And there's no cure for them, right, until the 20th century. So you might give them in mercury would be your best bet on something to do. But, yeah, and the concern is, of course, that if they become sick with venereal disease, this is going to take them out of the fight. That's the biggest issue is this could be, makes them casualties of war in many ways. I'm not sure how they were dealing with it in the 18th century, but certainly by the First World War, the treatment, because they didn't have any antibiotics, tended to be that they would be taken to a specialist hospital or makeshift lock hospital. And then basically they'd have their genitals scrubbed with disinfectant and genitals. And they would have water and disinfectant put into the urethra until their bladder filled out. And then they would pass that again. They'd do that several times. Yeah, so really nasty. But also it would keep, yeah, sorry everyone who's listening. to this.

But also it was kind of designed to be punitive as well. It was like to try and discourage, this is the First World War. But if it's anything like that, I mean, it could take a soldier out for a couple of weeks at least. Yeah, no, there's a story. I think in my research, the most interesting story I came across was that it's a British soldier, and this is right before the war begins, the revolution begins, but his name is Thomas Madison. He's a private. And he has a woman that he was bringing into the barracks in New York.

And everybody agrees this is not his wife. And in fact, they get into this conversation of, well, we know he's not bringing this woman into the barracks for lascivious reasons. And they say, well, how do we know this? And they said, well, he's lost his private parts to venereal disease. Oh, dear. Do they expand anything more on what that means? No, that's the quote, had lost his private parts to venereal disease. So I don't know exactly.

They don't detail more than that. But, I mean, they do chase the woman out of the barracks, which then causes this man to desert. In your research, have you found the data on levels of venereal disease in the wars of independence? Like, what are we – obviously, it's all very hush-hush, and I don't know if this is something that people actually wrote about. But like, what kind of numbers are we talking about here? I mean, it seems from what I'm able to find – it's – again, you're right. We don't have good numbers. Its report is sort of irregularly.

But among the American Army, they'll talk about, you know, 20 men show up at Fredericksburg, New York, and in October of 1778 have venereal disease. 42 cases, a couple months later. So, I mean, they report a different place. I think the best information I found was there's a general return of the sick and wounded in the military hospitals from February of 1780, and this is the Continental Army. And they report 115 patients who have venereal disease for whom it's so severe that they're hospitalized. So we want to add to that all the ones who are not hospitalized yet are probably carrying it around. The ones are going, I'm fine. I don't need to go at the hospital and have that done to me.

I'm fine. Thank you. So, I mean, this sounds like this is a big problem, and it usually is in any kind of war situation. What measures were being taken to try and curate this? Were any measures being taken? I mean, I think, again, officially there's sort of a morality lesson, right? This would be similar to World War I, right? Just shout at them and try and get them to stop it. Exactly. And I'm sure that works to an extent, but it is not highly effective.

There's really no cure. And then even worse to tell you an even more horrifying story is there's a story that goes around in the 18th century that if you have a venereal disease, a way to cure yourself is to have sex with a virgin. Oh, no. Yeah. So this becomes, this becomes right. There are several cases of men forcing themselves on young women in theory to cure themselves of venereal disease. Did they target sex workers, the authorities of like your George Washington's and your generals?

Because that is normally something that comes up in warfare. There's this idea of like, look, we'd love to try and stop the men doing it, but they really like, like it. So we're going to try and stop the women having sex with them at all. So the army will always have camp followers, right? Whether the army is stationed in a city in barracks or is moving from place to place and, you know, making makeshift tent cities. You always have women coming after. So some are coming as wives, girlfriends, because many of the soldiers are married with wives and children who just sleep with them in the barracks or in the tents. Were they supposed to do that? Were they supposed to be there, like officially? It's always one of these things that's sort of a, you

know, it's a, I guess there's two sides to it. On the one hand, the Army doesn't like it. So on the American side, George Washington really hates it at the beginning of the war. And he tries to stop this. Yeah. And he eventually has to concede that, one, the women aren't going to go away. And then two, he realizes what the British had realized, you know, many years before, which is these women provide valuable service to the Army because they'll do the work, they'll do the work that men don't want to do. They'll wash, they'll clean, they'll do the laundry. Right. And even, you don't have to pay them. So it's not just sex then.

They're providing domestic labor for the troops. Right. And there's also a sense that, of course, if the men are going to be more happier to move along if they have their girlfriends and wives coming with them, yeah. I'll be back with John after this short break. Get paid. What do they get? What's in it?

Like, if I'm a woman in 18th century America, why would I want to become a camp follower if there's no money in this for me? Why would I want to follow someone around to say, I can wash your socks and we'll have sex occasionally. Well, of course, if you're married, you know, you... Oh, yeah, I forgot you said that, yes. You're sort of attached.

And the Army does. The British Army, at least, will set aside so many rations per company for the women. So they are being fed. They are being housed. I mean, other women, I think, are going for adventure. I mean, it's the same reason men join the war, right? Adventure, see something other than your hometown. Maybe you'll meet someone.

Maybe you won't. Do we have any records of these women, like names or anything like that? These people tend to be those that kind of just disappear from the records. But I'd love to know if you knew of any notorious camp followers. There's a woman named Polly Robinson who is drummed out of the core, and this is drummed by the Continental Army, by the American Army in 1778. Polly Robinson, she's drummed out along with a woman named Marcy because there's a suspicion that these women are engaging in prostitution.

It's rare to have sort of professional prostitutes following the army. at least on the American side, right? So if you're a woman who's a sex worker, you want to target British soldiers because the British soldiers are being regularly paid, and so they have cash. American soldiers are notoriously not paid

during the revolution. So if you're doing sex for money, that's not a very good... That would be a terrible business strategy, wouldn't it? So they're going to head over to the British camps. I wonder how that went down after the war, because, you know, there are cases of when wars, like in France after the Second World War, when women that had sex workers who'd been sleeping with German officers,

they were publicly, they had their head shaved and were really shamed. Is there, was there, have you found any records like that? Or when everything had calmed down and America got independence, they just go, well, don't do it again, but we're fine. Yeah, no, the most interesting story I found, and this is going to, I might be jumping ahead a bit here, but there's a story of a man named Captain Jackson. He signs a con, he's a British officer. he signs a contract with the British Expeditionary Force to supply the British soldiers in New York City with women, with sex workers.

No. He takes a contract at 7,000 pounds, and he agrees to a deliver some 3,500 women to New York. The story is he fills 20 transports or 20 ships full of women, sends them across the ocean. Most of these are women coming out of Liverpool and British cities, but one of the transports doesn't make it. It gets caught in the, you know, not all ships make it across. Atlantic and 50 women lose their lives. Captain Jackson doesn't want to lose this money. And so he sends a ship to the Caribbean, to the West Indies, to find black women to bring

them to New York to work as prostitutes. And so the story is that these women set up in a place called the Meadows, which is now in New York City and Tribeca. They set up a stockade. These women are placed in huts with a barricade, a stockade around it, primarily. for these British soldiers to come and use. They even acquire a name. They're known as the Jackson Whites or the Jackson Blacks,

depending on which race of women you desired. And then to your question, to your point, what happens at the end of the war? Because this happens sometimes, the British occupy New York City from 1776 until they finally withdraw at the end of the war in 1783. So I'm not sure exactly when they arrive. But when the British withdraw at the end of 1783,

there are these women left and the British have no intention to helping them transition to peacetime or find other work or certainly they're not going to help them go home. So these women find themselves driven out of the city because, of course, the New Yorkers don't want them there. And so they're driven out of the city along with other maybe British deserters. They're driven mostly north of the city. And as the story goes that both black and white will leave the city and go up into the Ramapo Mountains, which is north of New York. York up into New Jersey and southern New York State. And they become a population. Apparently, Jackson White is a term that as late as the 20th century is a reference to this mixed grace group of people who are driven out of the city who are these, you know, descendants of these

prostitutes, these sex workers from revolutionary New York. John, oh my God, that's the most insane story. Right. So the British paid a guy to supply their army. with women, did they know that they were being supplied? These women, like, taken from Liverpool or whatever, did they have any idea what was going to happen to them? Well, you know, in this time period, many times you would be either enticed onto a ship or forced onto a ship, right? I mean, being Shanghaied is, you know, or being Barbados, as they would call her, right?

You're just being sort of captured. So I don't know how much agency, I assume, very little these women have, yeah. And then they're driven out of New York. York and form a collective somewhere in the mountains and their offspring and their kids, oh, my heads, John, that's the most mad story. You mentioned there about- I thought he'd like that. Well, that's just wild.

You mentioned there enslaved people, so I suppose we should talk about how, I mean, you know, none of this sounds like there's much agency at all, but that can only be compounded when we're talking about enslaved people. how did they factor into this kind of world? Right. So, I mean, it's one of these things. If we're talking about African-Americans, we know that there is certain African-Americans

who will engage in sex work, which makes sense, because if you're a free African-American woman, you're going to be at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, right? Women in general don't have a lot of other employment opportunities. So this is one way of making money. In terms of enslaved women,

they're being prostituted without being prostitutes, right? So they're not receiving money for any of their work. sexual or otherwise. And slavery is really based upon this idea of exploitation, physical exploitation, as well as labor exploitation. And so we have stories of that, you know, young men will help themselves to the bodies of enslaved women as a practice, right? And this becomes more notorious in the 19th century as the Civil War approaches. And of course, the enslavers or the masters will be helping themselves with the bodies of the women because this produces offspring,

who can either be employed on the plantation or sold. I mean, in terms of beyond that, I mean, we do know, you do have a few stories of sort of interracial sex, that it becomes very taboo in the early 19th century in the United States for obvious reasons, which, of course, when something becomes really taboo, it becomes, you know, really desirable and everybody, you know, starts fantasizing about it. So there's an erotica that emerges at this point.

And we know that in places like at least New Orleans, there's what's called the fancy trade. So light-skinned black women would fetch a higher price as prostitutes in New Orleans. Didn't the British also offer to pay enslaved people to come and fight for our side? Oh, yeah. And I'm not sure what the payment is, but there are various times the governor of Virginia and then later one of the generals in the British Army will offer proclamation saying, if you're enslaved and you come to fight for the British Army, we will guarantee your freedom. I bet we didn't, though.

Well, no, I mean. That doesn't sound like us. Well, this is one of the, we know when the British evacuate in New York City, again, the last place they evacuate in what becomes the United States. I think it's about 3,000 African Americans will go with, many of whom were runaway enslaved people from the south from other places. And they will be taken to Nova Scotia where they're settled there. And, of course, Nova Scotia's lovely, but also cold and hard to farm. And, of course, it's out of this colony that the colony of Sierra Leone has formed. Was there any kind of proclamation for the women, for enslaved women, that we will come and fight for us?

I don't think that there will have been. Yeah, that's a really good question, which means I have no answer. Yeah, no, they're interested in men because they want them as soldiers, but I don't know what the guarantee is for women. I assume these black soldiers or black veterans are bringing wives and children with them. It would be surprising if they didn't. New York seems to have been a particular hotspot for sexual labor and sexual. sexual exploitation. You touched on it there. Is that the case? I mean, what did they call it the holy ground in New York? Was it? Yeah, yeah. So New York, apparently by the middle of the 18th century,

has a reputation for prostitution and sex work. We seem to find evidence in Boston, Philadelphia. I mean, any major city that would have a seaport as sailors is going to have a, and later soldiers is going to have an interest. But yeah, New York, we have records of reports at Dockside, at the Battery. Some women even working. on ships, going on ships looking for work. But yeah, probably the most notorious is a place called the Holy Ground, which if you know New York City today, it would be the area around St. Paul's chapel. And it's called the Holy Ground because Trinity Church, which is the oldest Anglican or now Episcopal Church in the city, owns great swaths of Manhattan. In fact, it still does.

It's the richest congregation in the United States, I believe, because it still owns so much property in Manhattan. But this was an area that was, it's sort of interesting because at the time it's it the city's filled in so at the time it was on a main walkway to go from the east river to the hudson river so a number of sailors and others are going to walk down these streets past this area it's also in the immediate vicinity of kings college which at the time was in this neighborhood uh not too far from where city hall is now of course later it moves up to morningside heights and gets renamed columbia university uh so you have both sailors soldiers and college students so those are yeah yep those are your customers

That'll do it. Should we talk gay, John? Should we talk about the gays? Because the other thing that happens is that obviously there's going to be lots of women who are displaced and disenfranchised and selling sex being forced to sell sex is very lucrative. But the other thing that happens is when you get all boys together is you do get instances of same sex relations cropping up. And in fact, this is the subject of one of your books, vicious and demoral, homosexuality in the American Revolution. Yeah. There probably aren't professional. professional male sex workers in the days of the American Revolution, the way there would be women, professional female sex workers. But we do know we have different reports. So, yeah, I wrote this book. And I looked at Robert Newberg, who's a chaplain or was a chaplain in the British Army in the 18th Regiment. And he arrives in Philadelphia in 1773 to join his unit, again, as the religious leader, as the chaplain. But when he arrives, rumors are following him that he had had sex with a male servant back in Ireland. He was Irish. And so he writes. So this rumor gets around and spreads throughout his regiment and all the enlisted men and officers. And nobody will then talk to him. They won't go to him for spiritual advice. And he becomes very angry about this. And so he demands justice. So he demands a court marshal to clear his name. And then. Who's putting on court martial though? Like what? Oh, it's it's quite a case. I mean, this is this is how I got a whole book out of this. You know, this seemingly simple case. Because it's, it's. You know, the story arrives with him that he's been having sex with a man or possibly men. But the concern becomes he seems to fit a model, right? So he has flamboyant clothes. He's very argumentative. He's very elite and effet.

He's not sort of a traditional manly man of the army. So there's reputation going on here. He demands a court martial and he gets one. And so to your larger point or getting back to the point, during the court martial, the army is really interested in this issue. of the relationship he had with a soldier in the unit, an enlisted man, a man named Private Nicholas Gaffney. And Gaffney had run into some legal trouble, and Newberg, as the chaplain in the unit,

said, well, I'll help you. I'll do the best I can to get you some legal advice. But this required Private Gaffney to go to Chaplain Newberg's quarters late at night. Right. And there were reports that he was in his dressing gown as opposed to being in his proper uniform. And so this leads to the speculation

that there's been seduction going on. And the army never comes out and says these two have had sex because if they were to make that argument, you possibly are looking at the death penalty for both of these men. Yeah, of course. But instead the army gets into this sort of idea of, this man has been seduced.

This young man is being manipulated to attack the army to take down the British Empire, to take down the king. And the piece here, it's interesting, is it does build upon sort of speculation at the time. So, servant. could be a euphemism for sex worker in this time. Okay. And we do know, again, I have never found stories of this in the American context,

but there's many stories in the European context of young soldiers would sell their bodies to older officers for money. You know, it's like whip, like women. It's a way of making a quick buck. So what happens then? So he takes, what, the army? He has the whole army court-martialed because they think he might be gay. goes on trial and what do they find? Yeah, it's a long trial. It takes place in New York in 1774, so not that long before the, you know, the shots are fired at Lexington and Concord.

It's a long, complicated trial because by the time it gets to this court martial, there are several other cases are all converging into this one. And so it's, it's really interesting because the army has to, you know, says, we're not going to prosecute this guy for sodomy. That's too complicated and they don't have proof. So instead they get into all these insinuations. inferences. This is where they talk about his character, his clothing, how he relates to other men. And ultimately, they sort of split the deal. I split the difference, right? The Army orders him to receive no pay for six months. Reverend Newburgh gets to receive no pay for six months, which is pretty gruesome, but an officer can't be disciplined sort of more harshly than that.

The worst thing you can do when officers take his commission away, which they don't do. So he kind of won but kind of didn't. Like, did he lose the case completely? He doesn't lose the case completely. The court is clear. They say, well, there's been all the speculation about what may or may not happen. We are going to take no position on that. That's not been proven.

But they do find that he's been disrespectful to his commanding officer and other officers. This sounds like a fabulous use of army time and resources. Right. What happens to him afterwards? Does he just vanish in the records? Where does he go? He transfers to another unit and he fights in the, or, you know, is a chaplain in the British Army in the 15th Regiment for another couple years. Ends up in the Caribbean ministering to troops down there.

And I think it's in 1779 when he retires. So back in the day, if you were an officer in the British Army and you retired, you would get half pay for life, which I really would like to have a retirement plan like that. So he retires. He goes back to Ireland, lives out of long life, dies in the 1820s. Do you think he was gay? He took he was a gay man. I researched this guy for several years. I could never find incidents of marriage or children.

You know, he kind of disappears from the record after this court case, but he fits a profile. This is the number one rule in PR relations is don't start a court case or do an interview if you know you're guilty. Just don't do that. That's what happened to Oscar Wilde, wasn't it? He tried to take a guy to court for saying that he was gay. Like all of his mates were going, Oscar. but like you definitely are. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll be back with John after this short break. So we've got court cases of people going, look, I'm definitely not gay and them going, well, you kind of are a bit. But like, was there a wider recognition of homosexuality within the soldiery? So it's interesting. So as Newburgh's case is advancing, right? He has to, in order to get the court martial, this has to be approved by the commanding officer,

Thomas Gage in New York. And Gage and several other officers will write about this and say, I really wish this wouldn't go to trial. This is just going to stir up a lot of bad feelings. You can't be proven one way or the other. It's going to, to your point, it's going to waste everybody's time. And so I think that's in many ways the Army's official position and probably, you know, in many ways, you still is. If this isn't disrupting the Corps, we're going to let it go. Yeah.

You know, again, Robert Newberg could have had plenty of sex with plenty of soldiers and nobody would have cared. And nobody would have cared, Robert, you silly sausage. So it's kind of like things that happen in wartime, it's a strange environment. Like all bets are off. And I can completely understand like if you, you know, like the world feels very scary right now. And for most of us, luckily, but not for everyone, is you don't have the fighting in your front yard. You're not immediately confronted with it and it feels frightened enough. But I can completely understand how in the middle of a war zone, your attitudes around sexual moors might change quite substantially, actually.

if you think you're going to get blown up. Yeah, I'll have a blowjob, thank you very much. But it's sort of like, for what happens once it's gone? Like, once the war's over and all these people sort of have to, like, go back to their normal lives. It's this kind of like crazy hedonistic period for obvious reasons. And then suddenly everyone's got to go back and behave themselves again. Right. And it's, I mean, historians have written about this and they say, you know, the lead up to the American Revolution in the colonies is there's a great deal of print culture

an erotic print culture. And this is very interesting, right? And most of this is imported from England, obviously. It's not really printed here. Sorry about that. But after the war, after the revolution, there is a conservative turn in the United States. And partly this is political. So they write the U.S. Constitution, which gives a lot more power to the federal government,

takes power away from states, and, you know, gives the federal government power to do things like tax the Americans so they can pay off their debts from the war. But there's also sort of a cultural shift that as the, United States is becoming a nation to take its place among other world nations. It needs to have a moral code. And you want to impress upon your children that they need to be good Republican citizens. So don't drink, don't have sex outside of marriage, right? You need to be moral to create this much better nation. And so it's interesting. The first novels that are popular in the United States are seduction novels. So they're, they're mostly ripping off Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela.

Yeah, yeah. But it's Charlotte Temple and the coquette are. two books written and become bestsellers in the 1790s. And they both tell stories of young women who have been seduced, right? They're good, innocent, Christian young women. They meet a very dashing man. In one case, she meets a British officer who's arrived for the American Revolution and ultimately will give up her virtue and then all hell breaks lose, right? So once you give up yourself to one man, what's to stop you from giving yourself up to other men? Next thing, you know, the woman has a child. And they'll ultimately, the books end with the woman dying. Of course it does. Of course it does. I mean, the only real question is, does the child

die too? Or does the child live? That's the real question in these seduction novels. But these are read widely and are really seen as a way of impressing upon young people to preserve themselves and keep themselves virtuous and chaste before they marry. So as a final question then, and thank you so much. You've absolutely blown my tiny mind with all of this one. And I don't think you would want us to send the king over now to take back control after some of the things you've told me, we're awful. No, you're better off by yourself. But what did you think on a sort of a more micro level of the sexual behavior that occurred, that was spoken about, because one thing about war is it just forced people to talk about sex in new ways. Do you think that that had a lasting

legacy for the American identity and the American psyche? I know, that's a hard question. Because, I mean, in working and looking at homosexuality in this era, I was sort of interested that the obsession with, you know, men having sex with men, it seems to be, I don't want to see uniquely British, but is a very British concern. And we know there are moral panics going on in London and across England in the 18th century, which, you know, we'll continue ill to the 19th century. In the colonies, in what becomes the United States, there's really not much interest in pursuing these, these charges. And it's really kind of a live and let live, look the other way. we don't really want the government investigating attitude in the 19th century. Of course, this changes in the 20th century, right?

So I don't know. I do think, I don't know if that's a lasting effect of the war in how that happens. But, I mean, the war, I think does have this devastating effect upon the nation. And there is this deep interest in moving on and creating something new in separating who the American people are from who they were. John, you have been horrifying, frankly, to talk to, but fascinating. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? So I'm a professor at Eastern Michigan University. So if anyone's ever in Ipsilani, Michigan, which I can't imagine why anybody would ever be, other than my students, of course.

But you can find my book on Amazon. My book is vicious and immoral. Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the trials of Robert Newburgh. Thank you so much. You've been a treat. Well, thank you for having me. This has been lots of fun. You're delightful.

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to John for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we've got episodes on Sappho, the OG of lesbian history, and another taking you inside the brothels of Imperial Russia. And if you wanted us to explore a subject or if you wanted to say hello, then you can email us at Betwixt at Historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal, and See. Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.