Secret sodomy and entrepreneurial initiative

A favourite topic in Rictor Norton's talk The Gay Scene in 18th-century London: Continuities in LGBT History that we attended as part of Camden and Islington LGBT History Month in Hampstead] was the fascinating world of the Molly House - and in particular, that of the notorious Mother Clap.

Between 1724 and 1726, Margaret Clap - Mother Clap - ran a coffeehouse in Holborn, London that was a popular gathering for gay men. Known in the parlance of the day as a “molly house,” it was one of many such places, most of them ale houses and inns where the men drank, danced and had sex in private or semi-private rooms, often taking part in mock marriage ceremonies that ended in a “wedding night” in rooms designated for the purpose (called the Chapel or Marrying Room).

Unlike most such places, Mother Clap’s Molly House did not seem to be a brothel. She provided beds for some 40 men, had security at the door to ensure that the men who came in could be vouched for as sodomites. She provided drinks from a tavern across the street or next door, and in the main room there was room for dancing or "fiddling". She reputedly was good-natured and served her clientele well, even testifying on behalf of a man named Derwin and succeeding in getting him acquitted from sodomy charges.

Sunday evenings were often its busiest night, when sometimes close to fifty customers filled her rooms. Men there often dressed in women's clothing, took on female personae, and affected effeminate mannerisms and speech. Some mollies simulated marriage and performed mock births. Mollies even played the roles of the gossips or other women who typically assisted the childbearing “woman.”

The molly-house was a safe space because, like the brothel for female prostitutes, it provided an enclosed space. Mollies could go to the molly-house to socialize with other mollies, but they could also leave the molly-house and troll the streets for straight boys or soldiers to have sex with, who they then could bring back to the molly-house.

In February 1726, Margaret Clap's molly house was raided, and more than forty people were arrested. This house and others like it had been under surveillance by agents from the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, an organization that had formed to rid London of sodomites, prostitutes, and breakers of the Sabbath. The arrests led to a series of trials, after which several of those arrested were hanged for sodomy.

At a trial in July of 1726, Samuel Stevens, the agent who had spent a number of Sunday evenings at Clap's house, described the sexual activities that took place there:

"I found between 40 and 50 men making love to one another, as they called it. Sometimes they would sit in one another's laps, kissing in lewd manner and using their hands indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women . . . . Then they would hug, and play, and toy, and go out by couples into another room on the same floor to be married, as they called it."

Constable William Davison testified:

"in a large room there, we found one a fiddling, and eight more a dancing Country-Dances, making vile Motions, and singing, Come let us bugger finely."

The song was censored in the court reports, and the full text is lost, which is a shame...



Rictor Norton published the definitive work - Mother Clap's Molly House: Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830 back in 1992.

Surprisingly, copies are now changing hands for £90, such is the appeal of the era of the molly house!

One of our fave gay playwrights of recent years Mark Ravenhill produced a play based upon Norton's work that debuted in London's National Theatre in 2001.

More about Mother Clap in the GLBTQ encyclopaedia.

She would so flutter her Fan, and make such fine Curt'sies

Portrait of "Mrs Allen" by John Singleton Copley, NOT Princess Seraphina, who would have been a lot rougher

"I have known her Highness a pretty while, she us'd to come to my House from Mr. Tull, to enquire after some Gentlemen of no very good Character; I have seen her several times in Women's Cloaths, she commonly us'd to wear a white Gown, and a scarlet Cloak, with her Hair frizzled and curl'd all round her Forehead; and then she would so flutter her Fan, and make such fine Curt'sies, that you would not have known her from a Woman: She takes great Delight in Balls and Masquerades, and always chuses to appear at them in a Female Dress, that she may have the Satisfation of dancing with fine Gentlemen. Her Highness lives with Mr. Tull in Eagle-Court in the Strand, and calls him her Master, because she was Nurse to him and his Wife when they were both in a Salivation; but the Princess is rather Mr. Tull's Friend, than his domestick Servant. I never heard that she had any other Name than the Princess Seraphina."

The above is an extract of the testimony at a trial in 1732 in which John Cooper (also known as "Princess Seraphina") prosecuted Tom Gordon for stealing his clothes. Gordon had left Cooper with the words that if he 'charged him with Robbery, by and by', he would in turn tell the authorities Cooper had given him the 'Cloathes' as payment for 'Buggery'.

The following is an extract from the introduction to the full published transcript of that trial, by the esteemed LGBT historian Rictor Norton [font of all knowledge on such matters, and whose talk The Gay Scene in 18th-century London: Continuities in LGBT History we attended last night as part of Camden and Islington LGBT History Month in Hampstead]:

Princess Seraphina was a gentleman's servant, and a kind of messenger for mollies (gay men), and a bit of a hustler. More to the point, she was the first recognizable drag queen in English history, that is the first gay man for whom dragging it up was an integral part of his identity, and who was well known by all his neighbours as a drag queen or transvestite "princess": everyone called him Princess Seraphina even when he was not wearing women's clothes. And he does not seem to have had any enemies except for his cousin, a distiller who thought that his behaviour was scandalous.

Molly houses - pubs and clubs where gay men met, especially on Sunday nights - were very popular in the 1720s in London. On special "Festival Nights" many of the men would wear drag, and sing and dance together, and engage in camp behaviour. For example, on 28 December 1725 a group of 25 men were apprehended in a molly house in Hart Street near Covent Garden and were arrested for dancing and misbehaving themselves, "and obstructing and opposing the Peace-Officers in the Execution of their Duty." They were dressed in "Masquerade Habits" and were suspected of being sodomites because several of them had previously stood in the pillory on that account; but they were dressed in a range of costumes, not all of which were female, and the date suggests a special holiday event rather than a familiar practice. It is interesting to note that they did not submit sheepishly to their arrest, but put up a show of resistance. None were prosecuted.

At one molly house in the Mint (in the City of London), according to a contemporary witness: "The Stewards are Miss Fanny Knight, and Aunt England; and pretty Mrs. Anne Page officiates as Clark. One of the Beauties of this Place is Mrs. Girl of Redriff, and with her, (or rather him) Dip Candle-Mary a Tallow Chandler in the Burrough, and Aunt May an Upholsterer in the same place, are deeply in Love: Nurse Mitchell is a Barber of this Society." James Dalton the highwayman was a witness to molly Festival Nights, which he described in his dying confession published just before he was hanged in 1728, and he briefly mentions John Cooper (Princess Seraphina), who at that time Dalton implied was a butcher. So Seraphina was "on the drag scene" for at least four years before the trial at which she comes dramatically to public notice.

Read the full transcript of the trial on Rictor Norton's website. It's a fascinating and sometimes hysterical read!

More on the fantastical stories of gay life and the "molly houses" in 18th century London to follow, no doubt...