Dr Kat and the Molly Houses

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat and it's already February which means that it's also LGBT plus History Month in the UK so with that in mind I've decided to look at the topic for today's video the Molly houses of the 18th and 19th century let's go if you were to find yourself plopped down in 18th or early 19th century London maybe you might have a mind to go in search with the mollies and their houses but to do so is not going to be an easy task because at least without knowledge you're going to see regular houses coffee shops Inns and taverns at street level it will not be clear what you have sampled upon you need to be in the know and once you go inside perhaps you need the requisite introduction or to pass the correct tests but should you do so you will be inducted into a semi clandestine world the world of the Molly the Molly should not be confused with the mole moles were traditionally lower-class females occasionally they were thought to be sex workers certainly by the stands of the day they were thought to be lacking in morality in class if you look at my video that I made on Mary Fritz which I will leave linked in a cart she was accused of being a cup purse occasionally of being a sex worker but most famously she broke boundaries by cross-dressing she is the figure in the play the roaring go where her character's name is changed to mole cut verse she is a mole but we are here today to talk about Molly's there is a suggestion that the name Molly may connect with mole like the moles these men were seen as being morally questionable sexually voracious however others state that it comes from the Latin Molly's to mean soft or effeminate then the Molly houses some if not all of the men would be dressed in women's clothing the Molly house is like the brothels may have had the opportunity for men to rent these clothes just as sex workers could rent for example a costume like Little Bo Peep to entertain their clients it seems that these costumes could do double duty for moles and for Molly's within the walls of the Molly house men would socialize form relationships fall in love have sex they would act out courtship rituals engage in marriage ceremonies and also in some cases mock births in the White Swan on vir Street an ordained minister was on hand he was fittingly named John Church and he was willing to officiate marriages between Molly's what is unclear is whether these marriages were expected to last a lifetime or a night for the esteemed academic Richard Norton these Molly houses are evidence of the existence of a thriving gay subculture he says the following the legal records document investigations into about 30 Molly houses during the course of the century considering that the population of London was only about 600,000 in the 1720s having even just a dozen Molly houses at that time is a bit like having 200 gay clubs in the 1970s in some respects the 18th century Molly subculture was as extensive as any modern gay subculture in some cases the Molly house was owned and operated by a Molly themself this was the case with Miss muffs Molly house which was operated out of Black Lion Yard in Whitechapel miss mouth was the alias for one Jonathan moth however this was not always the case in the case of arguably the most famous Molly house ever exist mother claps Molly house the owner/operator was one Margaret clap mother claps Molly house was based in Field Lane near Holborn the contemporary fame that is enjoyed by mother claps Molly house today is perhaps explained by the fact that it forms the title of Rick to Norton's seminal book mother claps Molly house the gay subculture in England 1700s to 1830 first published in 1992 and then republished in a second expanded edition in 2006 in addition Richter Norton's book inspired the creation of this play by mark Ravenhill also called mother claps Molly house from 2001 which was directed by Nicholas Hytner I mentioned earlier that if you made your way inside a Molly house you would find many if not all of the men cross dressed in women's clothing now cross dressing today is a loaded and very difficult term but but if certainly what some of these men may have been doing these were simply what we recognize as homosexual men who dress up in women's clothing to enact love relationships with other men in certain cases there would be people in there who will classify more as drag queens people who enjoy the performativity of wearing female clothing while still identifying as a syst male however there certainly would have been people there who we would now recognize as trans women but the issue is that isn't how they would have recognised themselves simply because they did not have that language in the same way that we may refer to somebody as being homosexual that's not a term they would have used for themselves because it didn't exist for them in the time when they lived they had access to terms such as Molly and the far more negative and dangerous sodomites for some the Molly house would be the closest they could come to a safe space a place of sanctuary however real that safety and security was it would be the only place that they could live out their true identities dress in the way that felt right love and act in the way that felt true and so when they left the doors at the Molly house they were put back on their men clothes they would wear their male gender identity and go about their life as normally as possible but for others this was not the case and there is one figure that I want to talk about who was known as Princess Serafina Princess Serafina was the alias for the butcher John Cooper who lived on the Strand and while it seemed clear that those around her were aware that she had been born an 8 they still refer to her by using female pronouns including her royal highness indeed princess sarafina's neighbor one merry pop let herself the landlady of an establishment knows the two sugar loaves in Drury Lane gave this account of her friend saying quote I have known her highness a pretty while she used to come to my house for a mr. Tull that's princess sarafina's official employer to inquire after some gentleman of no very good character I have seen her several times in women's clothes she commonly used to wear a white gown and a scarlet cloak with her hair frizzled and curled all round her forehead and then she would so flutter her fan and make such fine curtsies that you would not have known her from a woman she takes great delight in balls and masquerades and always chooses to appear at them in a female dress that she may have the satisfaction 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 nursed to him and his wife when they were both in a salivation salivation was a mercurial cure for syphilis but the princess is rather mr. tolls friend than his domestic servant I have never heard that she had any other name than the princess Serafina in the case of princess Serafina I think it is all too easy to use her story as an example or even evidence that she inhabited a permissive culture her local community which included Mary popplets seems to accept her to recognize and respect her gender identity and the way she choose to present herself to the world in the case of Mary poplin she seemed to be celebrating the fact that princess Serafina enjoys going to masquerades and balls to dance with beautiful young gentlemen so perhaps this speaks to a safety and a security at the time people like Princess Serafina could live freely and openly expressing their gender and sexual identity with impunity well I think we need to be cautious of reading it in that way while it is certainly the case there is no evidence that princess Serafina was ever prosecuted for sodomy perhaps this is less permissiveness and more about proof there simply may not have been the evidence to prosecute her and if there had been she may well have been if people at the time had been able to prove that princess Serafina had engaged in sexual relationships with men or attempted to have sexual relationship with men then she may well have found herself up on a charge of sodomy she may have been prosecuted and even paid the ultimate price because as we will see as evidenced in the cases of both miss muffs and mother claps Molly house bees were not safe times and danger was abroad the principal danger came in the form of the societies for the Reformation of manners these societies would employ spies and double agents the double agents themselves being mollies perhaps people who had fallen out with their friends in one of the houses perhaps they were simply scared into working with these groups they would go with them take spies into these semi-secret spaces to gather information they would then relay this information back to the societies the societies within former mob groups who would go and raid the Molly houses they would take the people they found there before the magistrates and have them prosecuted some for sodomy some for attempted assault by sodomy and some for example in the case of mother clap for keeping a disorderly house mother claps Molly house was raided and dismantled in 1726 she and a number of her clients were brought before the magistrates prosecution while their evidence was heard against them in particular somebody of the evidence was a man named Samuel Stephens he we think was a spy working for the societies of the Reformation of manners and he says the following about his visit to mother claps on Sunday night the 14th of November I went to the prisoners house in field lane Holborn I found near 50 men there making love to one another as they called it sometimes they'd sit in one another's laps using their hands indecently dance and make curtsies and mimic the language of women Oh sir pray sir dear sir Lord how can you serve me sir ie little deer toad then they'd go by couples into a room on the same floor to be married as they called it the door of that room was kept by Eccleston to prevent anybody from balking there diversions mother clap and those being prosecuted alongside her were found guilty as punishment they were put in the pillory fined and then subjected to up to two years in prison for three of them however the punishment was to be greater still they were taken to Tyburn to be hanged for sodomy a milkman Gabriel Lawrence a furniture of Holstrom William Griffin and a fellow Molly housekeeper Thomas Wright all lost their lives in this way and for this cause unfortunately just two years later in 1728 it would be the turn of miss muffs Molly house to face a similar fate the weekly journal or British gazetteer holds the following accounts of the raid arrests and prosecutions on Sunday night last a constable with proper assistance searched the house of Jonathon muff alias miss muff in Blackline yard near White Chapel Church where they apprehended nine male ladies including the man of the house they were secured that night in new prison and Monday morning they were examined before justice Jackson in ælis Street John bleeped cooland was committed to Newgate he being charged on oath with committing the detestable sin of sodomy record show that nine people were arrested in the aftermath of the raid on Miss mouths Molly house we don't know what happens to all of them - fortunately were acquitted at trial two more were found guilty and sentenced to be whipped one found guilty and sentenced to a fine and another a gentleman called Thomas Mitchell apparently became so distressed that he attempted to take his own life while in prison there is an account of this attempt it is distressing so I'm going to leave a timestamp in this video if you want to skip it because this does require a trigger warning but the account of his attempt is as follows he attempted and had near accomplice destroying himself in cutting the great artery of his left arm almost asunder but by the immediate help of some eminent surgeons he was preserved though at the point of death through the great effusion of blood I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic of this video had you heard about Molly houses and if you had what you'd know about them before I made this video do you have any plans to mark lgbtq+ History Month and if you do what are you doing for it let me know all about it in the comment section down below or you can come and find me over on my social media as always I will leave the links to my Instagram and Twitter in the description box so you can follow me there and we can continue this conversation I do hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did then please let me know by hitting the thumbs up please also subscribe to this channel and while you're there why not hit the little belly icon next subscribe button so that YouTube tells you when I've next uploaded I hope you're gonna have a great day whatever you're doing and I look forward to speaking to you in my next video take care of yourselves / bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 24,860

Rating: 4.9213924 out of 5

Keywords: Molly House, Mother Clap, Rictor Norton, Mark Ravenhill, LGBT+, History Month, Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Georgian

Id: 4txwPcDiI-4

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020