 Good evening, my name's Rebecca Adil and I'm the director of HISTFest who are delighted to have partnered with the British Library to bring you tonight's special event, Molly Houses and Madden's Unraveling Georgian Subcultures. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. Should you wish to submit questions to any of the speakers? Please feel free to do this using the question box below. Also below the video, you'll find social media links. Should you wish to continue the conversation on other platforms? If you could submit some event feedback using the menu above, that would be marvellous. It really does help the British Library plan future cultural events. You can donate to the library there as well. Also in the menu above, you'll find a tab to the bookshop where you can explore a range of titles from Gaze the Word, looking at LGBT plus history. Now, without further ado, I am delighted to introduce award-winning playwright Mark Ravenhill, best-selling author and historian, Professor Kate Williams and award-winning tour guide, Dan Vo. Well, how do you do, everybody? Welcome to this wonderful HISTFest event in collaboration with the British Library. And of course, it is the middle of LGBT plus history month. So a very merry LGBT plus history month to do. Now, over the next hour, we're going to be talking about Georgian life in London and we're going to unravel the Georgian subcultures that existed in the 18th century. And we're going to have to think about how that shapes the city that we know of today and how it sort of still has an impact in our society today as well. But I am joined by a couple of amazing speakers. So thank you so much to Kate Williams and also to Mark Ravenhill for joining me tonight. So thank you both. Thank you. I mean, for me, of course, I need to just get everybody to do a very quick shimmy as well, because you're all looking fabulous as well. Look at all that sparkle. So you've grasped for the occasion. So Mark, I wanted to start with you because I wanted to kind of get everybody into thinking about what Georgian London was like. And I've got to say, it's about 20 years now. This year will be the 20th anniversary of your fabulous play, which is Motherclaps Molly House. But I thought if you could set the stage for us by sort of describing to us what you think Georgian London was like, you know, where did people go shopping? Where did they go to have a drink and make merry? I think it's it does when when I read the research, I think for me, it's sort of the beginning of our of our age. I could feel myself quite close to that culture. I think the sudden explosion of news and gossip and scandal sheets, all that sudden access to to printed information and the hunger for for news. I feels, you know, very much like our our internet hungry age. The explosion of the arrival of women on the women on the stage and the return of the theater and a theater that looks much more like our theater. The Prasenium March theater based in the West End came arrived for the first time in a theater that's been closed down and Shakespeare's theater was configured very differently from ours. And it was largely written in blank verse and suddenly you've got comedy written in prose on on the stage, a busy mercantile place. And as you say, shopping, you know, none of these things happen overnight. Obviously, the Elizabethans had their shopping, but I think shopping in the sense that we have it starting to become actually a past time and a and a pleasure for certain sections of society. An unruliness. I mean, the problem trouble with apprentices, which does actually go back to the Elizabethan Elizabethans, but the sense that there's there's youth, particularly young men who don't really have any ties and quite can quite easily become discontented. You know, has that sort of mods and rockers sort of quadrophenia sort of feel about about the apprentice culture. So when I started to read about the period, it didn't feel so much of a stretch as to have, you know, there's a great pleasure in stretching your imagination and trying to imagine the Elizabethan period. You know, or imagining even the Civil War, but suddenly and the interregnum. But once we're into this century into the 1720s, I sort of thought, I don't feel so far away from that. So I think it's got a lot that's that's of us of now. And of course, in the title of the play, Molly House features and I'd like you to maybe just give an idea of what the Molly House was. What was the purpose of a Molly House? That was an incredible realisation when I started to read about the Molly houses. I'd seen little references to them in various just sort of sweeping queer histories. And Rick to Norton had produced a fantastic book called Motherclaps Molly House, which is the proper scholarly work. I mean, you know, mine is I'd approached as a as a theater maker. But and then I went back to the to the primary sources, which we can talk a bit more about maybe later. But it was a real eye opener. And I think to people who you tell about for the first time, it's still a real eye opener. So there were a number of houses, houses, sort of in the literal sense, but also houses being used in a remarkably similar way to the way that the term house is used in New York ballroom culture. If anybody's watched the TV series pose, you become a member of a house and you identify with the house. And I doubt whether any of those gay and trans people who form those New York houses in the 80s. I doubt whether they were deliberately referencing the Molly houses. But it's interesting that they came up with a very similar complex construct that you found your house you identified as being a member of your house, and your house had a mother. You named somebody your mother and often the mothers often do seem to have been cis women, but around them would gather queer men and some queer women and binary people. They would adopt house manners, they would adopt names. Again, very reminiscent with 80s queer culture, but also punk culture that you know you might become Sid Vicious or whatever in punk culture that here you might rename yourself Hardware Nan, or Princess Seraphina, or something like that. And you would attend the house, there would be dancing, quite a lot of love making. But also there were mock marriage ceremonies. There were mock birthing ceremonies and a couple of the Queens, they would often identify themselves with the word Queens, would adopt a wooden baby that would be first presented in this birthing ceremony and hold actually afternoon sometimes implied sort of tea parties for their families. So there was a whole sort of playing out sort of parodic playing out of the heterosexual world. All happening probably from the end of the 17th century for 20 or 30 years until there's a real clump down towards the end of the 1720s and the culture seems to more or less disappear underground or disappear completely and start to transmogrify. And not only all of that, it seems to be a largely working class culture. I think when we think about queer cultures, we have two sort of cliches which have some reality to truth. We either think of the sort of loose aristocrat culture, maybe finally epitomized in the sort of Oscar wildlife, the sort of places that Oscar Wilde would go to where queer culture was something dominated by American men. And then obviously we have more contemporary way queer cultures very much defined by sort of American terms and and the whole vocabulary of contemporary queer and gay identities very much come from America but he was in London at the beginning of the 18th century. I think a very widely publicly acknowledged working class gender fuck, if I may use the word at the British Library, gender fuck community. You know when you find that out you just go oh my God my mind has just been blind is this. It's true and it's true. You've broken the floodgates now so we can all use it now but if I could turn to you Kate now in terms of we've talked about the molly houses if we could talk about the other half which is the madams of the we're talking about molly houses and madams tonight. But also the monarch as well be great for me to kind of get from you an idea of, you know, let's populate the stage that Mark has created for us now so who is living and who is the ruling monarch and then most importantly I think is who is the society for the Reformation of the Madams and why were they so influential in this world over these subcultures that we're talking about. Well this is it's so fascinating isn't it I just loved Mark bringing it to life there was really marvellous and you know what you have really is when Charles II comes to the throne. When he sets up the theatres and says there can be theatres in Covent Garden, this changes everything Covent Garden becomes a completely new type of area, and around it grow up all kinds of places where you can really express yourself in so many different ways there are there are banyos which we will call brothels that you know you might think they're actually got some Turkish bars or something but they're generally just we will call brothels. I know there are these houses that Mark was talking about the incredible figure of Molly Claff I mean she's amazing isn't she she gives false testimony to someone to so he doesn't hang for sodomy she's you know she's she's such an incredible figure and the and and loved by everyone and so and you have all kind of people who are very you know Princess Seraphina as Mark was talking about you know she's a fantastic figure that everyone is you know everyone talks about everyone sees that she has these fabulous clothes and it is rather sad that we tend to know about these people through the report the court reports in which we you know it's it's the raid on Mother Claff's Molly House that we tend to know about it's the it's the prostitutes when they get caught for what you see. So Charles II brings back the theatres women are on the stage for the first time and it's an incredible moment that socializing happens and Covent Garden the brothels start nightclub start what we will call a nightclub many many taverns coffee houses and there really is a sort of a stuff a thin line between a lot of a lot of the places do say for example one of the most successful Covent Garden coffee houses mall King mall King and Tom King and that was very well known for being a place where prostitutes couldn't sex workers could meet their clients and discuss so but it was impossible to raid so you have a huge surge in sex work in sex work of all of all varieties in London but particularly of young women looking for sex work many of these women come from all over the country. Some of them come from all over the world it's really seen as the biggest sort of nightclub destination and many of these women of course you know sadly exploited the men in the Molly houses they are men wishing to meet up with each other and these are these are women who would say they were trafficked they are many of them very very young women and really it's a consequence of two things it's a consequence that there are London is surging as a city there are huge amounts of people moving to London and particularly huge amounts of illegal men who are required to work there who leave some the wealthier ones leave their families in the country and the country estates the poor ones as a banking together when when when they need to earn money. There are sailors and soldiers so women houses brothels grew up to service these men and also really reflects the female and female employment at the time how insecure it was how women had very few options. And a service which was the main destination for young women young women of the really every class apart from the upper middle and upper. You could be it wasn't you could be thrown out on your ear if you're mad if you're mad if you just really thought she didn't like you anymore. She could literally that was it you were out without a reference and without a reference called a character, you were never going to find another job so you do find women flocking to Covent Garden because there's no other way to earn. They work their part time to supplement their income. And what is surprising is to the level of activity we think there is their house comparatively few prosecutions there were. And it's definitely seem to be the case that sometimes they literally imagine it's turned a blind eye it was thought that, especially the younger girls hopefully they will turn off, turn to the good and really as a as a madam. If you're not doing extra gambling or any other extra activity that is seen as black market activity you can usually get away with it although there are sometimes raids. And the society for the formation of manners they, they are the antithesis of the Molly houses the expression the fun the brothels that nightlife, they really are set up after William and Mary come to the throne in. And after so we have Charles seconds then his brother James second who is very hated, and he is deposed from the throne by his son in law William and his daughter, Mary, and they are seen as the beginning of a new morality and there is a lot of anti Catholic prejudices and the feeling that, you know, Britain could be condemned by having been ruled by someone who had Catholic sympathies. Therefore, we must go the other way and these societies are set up by respectable gentlemen. And what they are trying to do is stamp out homosexual activity, extramarital sex brothels gaming swearing drunkenness anything that they might see as bad I mean, we always have these societies, but usually what these kind of societies do are. They just go around and lecture people and they put on sermons and they published pamphlets, but they felt the society in the 1690s that wasn't enough. So they were going to actually prosecute people and what they do is they employ officers to go out there and seize people and arrest them, and many of these are the thief takers the typical guy who works as a thief taker. And this is actually incredibly unpopular lots of people in the communities are very distressed by these arrests by the behavior of these thief takers but also some people in general feel that it's going too far and that these thief takers, these virtue officers are really working on commission as it were the they arrest them or they earn. And so there is corruption. So you, you, you see this battle between one, two types of London, the reformation, society reformation and protection of banners and the London's nightlife. But the line isn't clear. There are a lot of people who would see themselves as you are very, very respectful people who would never go near Covent Garden and say I'm very respectable, but they felt that the societies were going too far and they really, you know, they felt that when in the 1730s when the gin, they try to crack down on gin drinking, there becomes it becomes, you know, incredibly controversial and many of their officers find themselves chased out of of the areas so you know Covent Garden is both this incredible place of nightlife, a place of exploitation for young people in particular, and a place as some have pleasure and some suffer for it, and also a place in which these sort of people are stalking it trying to cut shut it down and failing every time. Well, in terms of the placement of Covent Garden on the very cusp of that is Tottenham Court Road where in 1920s there was a molly house that was run by a free black man truly see the tailor who, who was rated that early the 1920s and by the 1926 this is when the mother clap house which is roughly close to Holburn at the moment. That's when that particular molly house is rated and take you've already said that you know her case is incredibly important it's in the old Bailey papers we can read it. The testimony on that and also on top of that we've also got the fascinating case of Princess Seraphina and if I can turn back to you, Mark, because Princess Seraphina is a character in your play, but it's based on based on rather than being you know a direct lifting of history so how did you come to find the history and then how did you fill in the gaps because the thing is is when we read court cases with we only kind of get a very skewed view it is a very very narrow view of what's recorded. I think Princess Seraphina is mentioned in a few different sources because she was such a public, public figure, so I get the sense with a lot of the molly houses that most but not all of the men at the molly houses would would cross dress. But I get the sense that most of them. Mostly quite young, mostly in working class professions or apprentices in working class professions. I get the sense that they they dressed up when they arrived at the at the house and possibly even hired the clothes because for us now I think to conceive how expensive clothes clothes were. So, I think quite a lot of prostitutes income would would would be spent on hiring clothes they wouldn't own very many clothes, because the materials and labor were were just so you know they're just so expensive. There weren't no prior mark. It was the complete opposite of these incredibly cheap clothing that we have now. So I think I think also. I think there's some evidence for this but I may just be putting this together from supposition that probably the money part of money house activity was also hiring hiring clothing and dressing when you arrive. Seraphina was a very public figure in Covent Garden and would walk around all day long, it seems, wearing her drag and would be greeted with fondness and friendliness it's reported by she was sort of a character of Covent Garden and Princess Seraphina hello Princess Seraphina. I think she was probably famous as that man who stood on Oxford Circus for 30 years eat no meat, eat no meat, eat no fish and if you lived in London for a certain period you knew that man. And I think I think it would have been the same with Princess Seraphina that just almost a London sort of landmark and I've read no evidence of, I'm sure there was some but I've read no evidence of a regression or unfriendliness towards Princess Seraphina that people were glad it was the highlight of your day there's Princess Seraphina how do you do how do you do. So she sounds rather fabulous. I think she was also it's she often seems to me a bit, because obviously there were no, it was not we didn't have fashion magazines and there was no way of really understanding fashion and she's sort of an example of this to walking fashion plate because she's such a leader, I think that you know I do think that people got real sort of style ideas from her I think we could even call an early influencer if that's not going too far. And I think, you know, we've talked about these two areas of the of the Molly house and the madams if we put it that that was a crudely. I think throughout history there's always been an interweaving of the experience of sex workers and gay men. The Molly houses weren't sex for sale, even when I wrote the play and the events were in the play. There was no sex for sale in the Molly house in the play but still many critics and stuff sort of wrote about it set in a brothel, and somehow something in the popular imagination thinks oh they're dressing up they're having sex they come to this place that there must be prostitution involved. And actually, there's none but I think, you know, I think queer people and prostitutes have often found in similar marginalized spaces and often shared similar marginalized spaces and shared their stories and histories together nicknames for one group or the other seem to flow backwards and forwards quite readily so I think both queens and mollies at different periods and time had also been applied to female sex workers. Yeah, queer people often get given the same nicknames or for derogatory names as, as, as sex workers. So I think, you know, partly just through supposition because that's what tends to happen I sort of wanted to reflect that in the play as well, that in some ways, there's some sort of rivalry and sort of street battle between the founding of the money houses and the sex worker culture, but also the sex workers and the queens of the money houses actually find that they have a lot of a lot of shared experiences and, you know, I think that I think that's particularly sort of heightened in this molly houses and madams period but that comes right up pretty much to, you know, the modern day that that alliance and sometimes misaliance and sometimes fictions, but I think there's always a parallel history in any period that you look between queer people and sex workers. And I think, and I think that, you know, having the Society of Reformation for Manners who often were undercover kind of undercover agents, you know, you could pass that around in the sort of Covent Garden intelligence that there's this guy going around and he's pretending he's this he's this or that he's pretending he's a client or he's pretending he's a molly but he's not he's an informer so I think that there was that sort of whisper network by which they all tried to keep themselves safe against the sort of advent of respectable what these thief takers who are doing the dirty work of these respectable societies. Yes, so really the primary source material that I had was when the cases were brought to court, there would be popular pamphlets that we would be produced. So, you know, I think there's somebody in there, rapidly writing is very much like sort of tabloid newspaper stuff. There's somebody in there writing down the events of of the court, highlighting the most salacious bits, and then rushing it out into print to sell on on on street corners just a side or so of a four. And obviously, when the Society for Moral Reform really got going in the second half of the 1720s I think the real height of this is sort of 1726 2728 is it when the real rush of sort of court cases come. You know you can imagine it's on street corners by this paper. It's a very mangled history that you have to sort of unpiece. It's a bit like having our own history of the gay experience of the 1980s being copies of the Sun newspaper of the time. You have to sort of read between the lines. But even so there is unintentional comedy with those moral reformers they're sort of saying well in these court cases that are then, you know, reported by the leaflets. Well I went once and I wasn't sure exactly what was going on so I went twice. And that time I actually somebody, you know, performed for Lacia and I thought no no I think this is a, you know I think this is a place where sodomy happens and went back for a third time put on the dress and just to make sure you know and that there is some unintentional humor and that sense that you always get from the from the snoopers. That they go just a bit too often. And actually I think there were a few molly informers as well who's who sort of turned, turned informant but I don't know that was that doesn't seem to have been a massive phenomenon it was largely some of the lopers, but who would often, you know, would actually don it seems on the few records that we have would actually don the sort of cross testing identity to get in. And you know that and that sort of history of pretending to for entrapment essentially, I mean that that comes up comes up until I don't know when it stops but it certainly was still very present in the 80s when I first moved to London. I was a pretty policeman and policeman who dressed themselves up as gay men and solicited men in public spaces and then could charge them with active growth and decency or whatever the charge was the pretty policeman is is a recurrent figure right up until our age and in a sense these were sort of undercover pretty policeman although of course police force doesn't establish. You know I think what Kate saying that everybody's on the make I think that's another thing that seems so sort of contemporary to me that it was sort of pre almost any sort of state really apart from the state for war to make war. Everything doesn't really exist it's more or less individual sort of vigilante forces trying to make a bit of money and the prison system is so sort of market ties, which is satirized deliciously engaged the beggars opera. It's you know it's expensive to stay in a prison and there's a bill of charges for everything. It's an incredibly market driven culture and there's really minimal law and and minimal appearance of the state and the actual act of sodomy is illegal. There's no sense of a whole identity, a whole gay identity or queer identity or homosexuality. All those things come a lot later. The thing that is criminal and theoretically as criminal as an actor between a man and a woman and a man and a man is the act of sodomy. But actually, it seems that the occurrence of sodomy was was very high with heterosexual couples as well. How are you not going to get pregnant. One of your options for a heterosexual couple was anal sex and obviously option for gay men as well was was anal sex. And legal in law as Kate said with prostitution. There were hardly any convictions of sodomy for for for decades. It was punishable by death I think by hanging by this stage that we've done away with the hung drawing and quartering by now but but it's like a handful of cases in the whole country until this wave of moral reform happens. One of the most famous cases in terms of somebody being tried for sodomy is deep take a child kitchen, but I think with very famously he straddled both the law and also the world of the Molly House and was very successful made a lot of money from it, but then ultimately was met with was that he was found out as well as being a sort of my straddling. I want to turn to you Kate to talk about. Let's come to the idea of sensual pleasure again. And let's talk about female sensual pleasure because I think there's a writer who's in we're still in the 1720s and there's a writer who effectively will have their writing and theater impacted by a law and act the licensing act in 1937 but in the 1920s she's probably at the height of her creative power she's writing a prolific rate and so can you tell us about Eliza Haywood please. It's fascinating down because we had just as Mark was saying about these pamphlets going out onto the onto the onto the streets you know immediately the court case would happen out goes the pamphlet you know it's almost like you know live tweeting that everyone wants to see this sensational news you really do see a surge in the written word as well in the in the early 17th century and a real sort of fascination with buying with books with pamphlets and there's lots of. There's lots of gatekeeping from authors saying oh you know they're just they're just hacks you know sending off stuff and we're real authors but and it's that that's really that kind of dialogue of some people like fielding has really really obscured to us who Henry fielding off of Tom Jones he was very much like I am an author you are not as really obscured to us I think a lot of the people are writing about real life London and real life Covent Garden and there's this author I'm fascinated by Eliza Haywood I've just been writing on her and she was very active she was an actress then she became a writer and she was in this coterie in the big very beginning of the 1720s she kind of she and her friends male and female swapped sort of very highly sexualized writing and it really came into her actual writing so she her first book is love in excess which is a complete blockbuster huge bestseller I think a fantastic title all about Count Delmont and his adventures with Meliora who keeps resisting him and the kind of eroticism of the of the love scenes is is really intimate you know she she her her heart is beating in her breast the frosted round heart is about to shatter and you see this real surge in erotic writings for women and it's fascinating because we're talking very much about what life was like for young men who moved to the city who wants to explore their sexuality young men who who you who had this great safe place in the mollyhouses to to to engage to have love to be in love with another man and do that freely and you know wonder what's what's happening with the women and it's of course lesbian activity has never been you know cracked down on so hard and it's often I think sort of particularly in this time kind of forgiven because you know she's not hanging out someone's daughter she's not hanging out with a boy he's not going to get a pregnant she's just cuddling up with another girl and that's just female friendship so a lot of what you see is codified as close female friendships we we might look at now and say how how close is that getting it's obviously Queen Anne who was on the throne at the turn of the century the beginning of the 18th century she was very was very celebrated and very and very attacked for having a too close friendship with Sarah Duchess of Marlborough and then with Abigail Hill who was Sarah's relation really seems very low class relation and replaced Sarah in Anne's affections and the film Queen Anne was it last year film last year last year time the year before time goes you know now was all about the the closest and lesbian relationships but it really interests me that Mary the second who was William and Mary's as a William Mary she had a very she was and sister of course had a very close female friendship with a with a female friend before she got married incredibly if you see if incredibly emotional and it really is very interesting to me where where the activity is and certainly what Hayward does is create this huge amount of emotion of sexual activity of sexual feeling her books really are about sexual emotion and some of them you know they're just astonishing what she's writing about and they were incredibly successful so these kind of books are really not what the Society of Reformation Manus wants they're the absolute antithesis where women and men can really read about sexual feeling sexual pleasure and certainly the people who hated the most thought that she and other female authors who who go for you know plough the same furrow because it's a very lucrative one are pushing people to immorality and vice and I I think that this moment she she had a shop much later at Covent Garden is that after 1720 she was she wrote these massive blockbusters then she went to the theater then the licensing act really pushed her into books and she wrote post Simon Richardson's Pamela Ray moralistic books and she was a chameleon and she had a bookshop as well in Covent Garden I think that you know she really shows us how there were women working and living and sort of capitalizing on sexual pleasure but so many of them have been lost to us and luckily she kept on writing but she also there's also the you know her people go to banyos and there's one of the most it's quite interesting to me one of the most famous Covent Garden courtesans in the early 1720s were called Betsy careless she was terribly successful apparently her legs were marvellous and the thing is that it's a legs that matter in the 18th century for women it's legs that's it no one bothers about boobs it's legs and there are some courtesans who make a huge amount of money just walking up and down St James is flashing their ankles because you never see a woman's legs and she had these marvellous legs and someone said they were so perfect they were like twins and she said no they're not twins had too much between them but she Betsy careless is one of the major famous sex workers courtesans and this is before Covent Garden ladies the Harris's Book of Covent Garden ladies in 1760 started describing them and but Eliza Hayward comes back and writes this terribly moralistic novel but she's about Betsy this novel is called Betsy comparatively not moralistic novel and she's about Betsy thoughtless and I was saying Betsy thoughtless Betsy careless is there something but but yes you know a sex worker with good legs she could earn a lot of money I mean Eliza Hayward was set by some to be able to seduce by prose alone did that therefore put her you know was she at loggerheads quite regularly with the society or did she evade their their attention somehow I think she was consistently at loggerheads there was consistently arguments that her books were shocking her books were bad her books would persuade young people into into sexual activity horrors and you and you really see just as Mark was saying you such see a surge at post 1720s of prosecutions you really see a surge against her and other writers like her and of course by the 1740s it's all about the moral novel it's about Samuel Richardson who steals all her ideas but says he doesn't and says he's he says oh the idea for Pamela just popped into my head and the idea for Clarissa in which he's constantly using her her her tropes and her work just popped into my head and and so the novel becomes becomes male it becomes about more it becomes about teaching people the right way it becomes middle class it becomes respectable respectable but in the early 1720s you really see this surge of the idea that women are the ones who can write about sexual feeling and women are the ones who understand the sexual feeling and I certainly think that scene is too dangerous and we have to remember of course at this point that the majority of people believe that to conceive you both the man and the woman need to have sexual pleasure that they don't understand spontaneous female ovulation until fully understand it to a much later in the century and the whole phrase lie back and think of England is you know you know very complicated to even says that but you know that you know certainly not but in the 18th century you know you it's about so you have much later in the 18th century Dr James Graham sets up his celestial bed in in the strand in which it costs 50 pounds a night and it's full it's about pleasure and it's about you know and it's about you know wonderful electricity electrocuting you into pleasure and about girls dancing around it in beautiful outfits like Emma Hamilton who was one of his goddesses and that's the idea behind that is that sexual pleasure will produce an air so you really you see this you see this alliance of women and sexual feeling that that starts to be stamped down on very much partly by the society but I'd say much more by writers such as Richard who who who say she's a disgrace who say she's a shock you know shocking person and try and scrub her out of literary history. Okay I want to stay with you just a moment to talk about that idea of gal pals but we will be coming to Q&A from the public as well so if you've got questions please do put them into the question section and we'll come to those in about that hey that idea of gal pals or you know what we might now call lesbian relationships how much of that is available to find from the time you know it's not something that really went through the old Bailey or as much did it. So how can we find and sorry second part of the question was Eliza Hayward you know can can we read her her text in a queer context as well can we clear her text in a queer lens. Yes I think that you're absolutely put your finger on it there Dan you know how do we find out about this activity if it's not prosecuted if it's if there's a blind eye turn to it and we only we of course only have married the second letters to her this beloved female friend and she was devastated to leave her behind when she had to go off to Holland to marry William you know heartbroken and William himself had many male favourites. And it may it may definitely be the case that that was that was a sort of obviously it wasn't arranged marriage it was a war marriage that they were very fond of each other as friends but they they were else. They both their minds were elsewhere in terms of personal pleasure that's that's an interesting question. And so we it's very hard to know it's very hard to locate obviously for wealthy women such as analyst are much later that's something that obviously was found very very much later in the archives. Because, you know, it's, there's a, I mean it was a very high burner prosecution on sodomy I believe I've got this right you had to prove penetration you had to have witnesses. So, many prosecutions failed, and so sodomitical intent was much more often what they could manage to prosecute for, and with women. And I think it's, it's, it's seen as, you know, I think it's often very much dismissed as sort of harmless female friendships it's simply not taken seriously by the patriarchy the patriarchy just think oh well that you know that you know that doesn't that doesn't matter that's not a threat. And certainly there have been some fantastic queer readings of Eliza Hayward Catherine and grassy grassy has been very strong about the queer readings as a book called the British recluse where these two two women meet in a motel really and they find out that they've both been seduced to betrayed by the same guy. And that's really interesting because you can read it very much in a queer context that they are on one hand they're pouring out their hearts about this idiot guy. But on the other hand they're creating a sexual bond together as a bond of sexual emotion, and that certainly, I think that what what is often being read as female friendship is, is can be read as much more so, and certainly can be inserted into a into a into a queer reading in a time when it really wasn't understood but I mean, whether or not we have evidence of whether or not there is, you know, how it's, you know, the evidence that we've got it's it's so it is sadly partial and, but I think that there is definitely more to be found. Thank you. And in terms of staying with that idea of seduction by prose back to you Mark. I have the power. I mean the idea here of Eliza Hayward, a person who effectively was writing plays for theater and effectively was stopped from being able to have their works performed because 1937 the licensing act comes along. I mean in your time you've probably seen British theater completely change and the idea of censorship being being one of the most censored theater worlds plot to the world. It's incredible how long that theater ship, theater censorship lasted for so it gets introduced in this in this period, you know, this isn't just the one society for moral reform I think there's a whole wider movement which largely comes from the sort of mercantile middle they both want to clamp down on on on the aristocratic class and gain power from them. Essentially, you know, the people with money from trade before the people with money from land and inherited wealth, but also they obviously want to reign in the working class as well. We propagate moral reform is in much much wider ways. Well, one of the things that comes out of that is is is theater ship censorship, and that same theater ship censorship with the role being given to the Lord Chamberlain who must read all plays before they're produced and decide what's appropriate for the stage that lasts until the end of the 1960s. And it's really through the a lot of the push for the end of that theater censorship towards the end of the 1960s comes comes on the Royal Court Theater, which is where I had my first play produced, not at the end of the 60s, nearly 30 years later, but still very much, you know, in the longer span of history, still within that first generation or two that was finally benefiting or experiencing the ending of that theater censorship that had lasted for what's that 250 years or something. Thanks to the 20th anniversary of mother claps molly houses then how was the play received when it first premiered at the National Theater. It was. I mean very well received. I think people just I mean a I think just you know even just a few nuggets of facts about the money houses is incredible so I think that makes people hungry for it. I think it felt naughty that somewhere called the national it still felt sort of naughty that somewhere like the National Theater was was presenting something which was sort of from from another culture. And I think what was interesting was that we had such a diverse audience in terms of age, but also in terms of heritage and ethnicity that that I think people identified with the, with the sort of queerness of it so it's I think actually the most diverse audience that I've ever had for one of my plays so that was exciting. I'd like to just ask you one more question to do with a recent production that you did which was the boy in the dress and there's a clip that you've got which is you know we've got more vocabulary now for gender fluidity and trans issues and so revisiting with motherclubs Molly houses and having think about different ways of ways that we talk about gender now how how might you re approach it now. Yeah, no I mean that that's what's so exciting is that the language, the sort of toolkit that that's been developed over the last decade or so at least you know more available to more of us in the in the last decade it would be great to go back to that material and explore it. I'm watching the TV show pose, which I've caught up with over lockdown. And that all the issues there to do with that that trans identity in New York in the 80s and black trans identity and stuff. You know there's a whole language there that has so much in common with the money houses and I'd love to go back and revisit the material, maybe on screen with in the scholarship but also just general awareness that we all have now about about gender fluidity and non binary and trans and languages that were still pretty crude or non existent when you know even when I read the play 20, 20 years ago, I'm still fascinated by the material and I'd love to go back and revisit it in some shape or form. I think I think it'd be I think it'd be a fantastic TV series you know all the different stories you could look at all the individual lives and it would just you know all the different people who came and what they, what they, you know I just think it would be a wonderful TV series if It would, it would. So let's make it happen. Yeah. And we'll all make an argument to be cast in it as well. Yeah, I'd be a really good extra. Yeah. A Molly or Madam. Um, well, I mean, I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I could I think I could play all kinds but I think that I think that I'm up for any role that Mark's going to offer me I'll take anything he'd like. I'll do and you can and you can invent your you can invent your own Molly name. I mean Princess Seraphina sort of slightly different quite often it was actually a sort of some variation on a craft or or or trade, followed by so if anybody at home wants to make up their Molly name. So, you know, you have the second part as no no or Nancy or mall or something like that. So, so, you know, you can quite often put pig botch pig butcher nan, or something like that. If anybody at home wants to play the game of naming people in their household with their Molly names, sort of a combination of aside quite a sort of macho sounding trade, followed by by quite a sort of feminine name is quite a good way of anybody would like to start identifying as a Molly after this evening. Some from your place China Mary Primrose Mary Garter Mary Orange Mary. I think they were mentioned in yeah they're all people mentioned in the records I didn't make any of those up yeah China, Mary Primrose Mary. Yeah, I think Mary respect I think Mary is quite popular in and still in in gay slang up until quite recently Mary, you know, and that goes right back there lots of those men, then we're calling each other Mary, and remained until quite recently quite just a popular capital nickname for gay men to call each other. I do think mother claps an amazing figure I mean she doesn't seem to have made much money out of this business it's a, you know she just clearly did it because I think out of love for the people for the people around her. She's actually building this sense of the house the home, you know that that idea that came became so popular in the 1990s of creating your logical family rather than your biological family, it does, you know, maybe we're romanticizing it, but it does feel like that was one of the reasons of somebody like mother clap was to form a sort of logical family with an element of parody about it as well both a logical family and a sort of parody family. Very subversive very playful thing to do. I'm going to go to question but I do think that you know there's very strict gender gender rules in the 18th century and very strict dress rules I mean obviously women can't wear trousers and men can't wear dress but you do see fascinating fluidity within this there's a brilliant example and people wearing the clothes that as Mark was saying you know there's no way that anyone own these clothes they had to hire them, but you know you see so many fascinating women crossed women dressing as men going, going to war going as sailors and people are fascinated by these stories and women women's identity within this you know are they trans masculine are they are they trans men you know are they what what are they it's really interesting question you know, and there were all these fascinating identities that that are really that are really kind of accepted so you see women dressing as men and going to war for a variety of reasons some of them. Many reasons and I think something because they do want to live as men and often they are accepted when they are discovered they are they are accepted and I think that we sometimes see the past as as more unforgiving than it than it was I think. Well I've got a question from Claire Mead who was a historian on women and swords so an act. And parts now to take to Claire's question which is Kate what sort of evidence do we have of lesbian and bi women taking part in culture in and around Mully house either as mullies or otherwise were there women who were sex workers for women, for example. It's an interesting fascinating question and yes, there must be but we don't have so many records of them, but there must be women who are working as absolutely the evidence. We need much more evidence I think much more research in this but certainly in Covent Garden you could get whatever you wanted, and there was someone to offer you whatever you wanted. And the, and many women I think, you know, the, the, the great thing Mark was just saying about you know the the great thing, the great terror of anyone in the in the 18th century. For women it's pregnancy, because how are you going to support your child, we have the Founding Hospital of course you know, a little bit later but the Founding Hospital, it's very hard to get in there, you know, you very lucky. And also the venereal disease is spreading there are all kinds of crap doctors selling venereal disease cures on the corner. And there is definitely, you know, obviously so you women feel that they're not going to catch venereal disease and they're there is feelings that you're not going to catch venereal disease from anal sex as well. So they are, you know, that we need we do need more evidence but there are, you know, there, you know, there are, there are women who work for women who are sex workers for women and for many women, that was seen as really an activity which was less likely to get your pregnant and less like or have to use those douches, you know that they might use or any types of, you know, there were rudimentary condoms but they weren't very effective. And, and, and venereal disease as well which is everyone's terror, everyone's terrified of venereal disease because once you have that. That's not only can you not work but really it is a, some people do get better but it is really generally a death sentence. Dominic has actually sent in a question as well related slightly to that, that point which is Dominic's been reading about Madame Four Cards on Lither Lane and Mercury Bards and Pox houses and these are places where people might go to when they've got the first signs of STDs are you able to speak any more on that So Mercury, so Mercury is what is seen as the place to cure an STD, STD, so that's, so that's going to clear, cure syphilis, I mean syphilis and gonorrhea are the main other diseases at this time, and they are spreading like wildfire they spread, they spread through particularly through the forces, Mark was just saying how the state at the time doesn't really have much, what it does is wage war and it wages war continually, it wages war continually throughout the period and into the 19th century So of course, in the 19th century you have the lock, the contagious diseases act, the locking up of prostitutes because it's their fault that men in port towns in army towns have got venereal disease so they're the ones who get locked up and, you know, subject to horrific investigations. But in the early 18th century what you have in this fear, of course the great fear is that a man's going to catch venereal disease and bring it home to his virtuous wife, it is the mercantile class trying to protect what they see as their morality and that he's going to catch it, so you can go yes and have these early mercury baths, mercury is thought to be a cure, so the majority of cures are mercury baths are actually drinking, you know, in piping the stuff, and you know you see it quite interesting in caricatures at the time, if mercury is around, there's any kind of suggestion of mercury that all automatically is saying that this is a person with venereal disease And James Graham, who I was talking about a little bit earlier, who has this celestial bed, which you can use for 50 pounds a night which guarantees you an air with all the sexual pleasure, he also deals in what he, they are very euphemistically described what he's dealing in he electrical ether and electrical pills and electrical cream, but they are definitively cures for venereal disease, you can, you're supposed to take this ether and venereal disease can be cured because of course there were no cures for syphilis and gonorrhea at the time and people suffered greatly and they were always looking for the signs of the pox on people because just like the horrific pandemic we're in the in the midst of people could have syphilis and gonorrhea without showing symptoms and without thinking they're infectious and could continue to do what they did and infect it so they are very effective viruses is to brutally effective viruses in that sense and they are the constant fear of those who are living there particularly the sex workers at the very bottom because the top ones can insist on precautions they can insist on condoms and proportions and what they feel they won't get it from but the ones at the bottom really can't and it's suffering so so people make a lot of money. People do make a huge amount of money out of cures quack cures mercury bars mercury cures so as Mark was saying everyone's on the make and including mercury you know curing the diseases on the make as well. Well to mark I might put a question from Susie which is to ask is this the most debauched era in London history. And we got such a simple reading of it you know nice ladies and bonnets. I don't know about the most debauched it's certainly true that you know the proportion of sex workers remains very very high in London obviously right what you know way into the 19th century. And I can't remember exactly what the figures are for this period but it's an incredibly high percentage of female population. It's often said in what one in eight isn't it one of the workers so I don't know whether you whether one regards sex sex workers as debauched. I mean there's quite a lot of records of open air gay cruising as well as well as the indoor money houses. There's quite a lot of places that Lincoln's in fields and stuff I can't remember these locations but there's there's quite a lot of records of of open air gay gay cruising areas as well. And I think what's incredible is, as we were saying, it's the strange thing is with so much queer history, it becomes visible when it's made illegal. And that is why so much lesbian history is so invisible, because because the law never even bothers to make. Yeah, actually, he didn't care. Lesbians illegal. But when crackdowns legal, illegality is applied to sort of me and then the gay identity queer identity, then suddenly it's something becomes visible. So there is a sort of, you know, sense in which Foucault was right about that that we get these sort of strange histories made by the law you make it, you make it illegal but at the same time you, you make it visible. So what's incredible is that that moral reform in these court cases and the visibility happens in the second half of the 1720s. But for as far as I can tell this money house culture the cruising culture, everything about it was at least 20 or 30 years. And I don't we're just talking about two or three molly houses I think we're talking like about 20 or 30 in a considerably smaller city. I think every neighborhood must have had a molly house and probably had an open air cruising I think, although we sort of love to tell the history and I suppose rightly of oppression. Actually, I think what's interesting is the long period unrecorded period before the oppression came when Londoners must have been so familiar either turned a blind eye or maybe through their arms open wide. But I think there was a very acknowledged and out there, queer culture before it gets recorded because it becomes oppressed. Speaking of open air in the old Bailey at the time was an open air court. So in the early 18th century, they would have had in the open air which is remarkable because to prevent the spread of disease. They were hardier than us standing outside all day. These are times when the Thames froze over it was seriously chilies. We were obviously not as hard. There's a question from Lynn Marie for you perhaps Kate which is what was the punishment for people who were put on trial and they were you know put in trouble being a settlement. Well, that was hanging. So it was the ultimate punishment that you would that you would be hanged for sodomy. But obviously, and so you were taking a risk but at the same time, just as we were saying, it seems like the level of activity that seems to be going on really was not reflected in the amount of actual success or prosecutions. Now some failed. For example, Mrs. Clap. She she gave evidence so that one of the men that she was so that was friendly within our house that he would not go. He would not go down. She said it's just not true. And you had to, and I believe some I think this is case that you have to prove penetration, which is obviously quite difficult. You have to have to have witnesses and therefore the majority of times you cannot prove that what two men could say if they were in a house together we were just having a chat. You know, we're just talking about talking about football and you can't. So so so it is, you know, the the the ultimate but you know, of course, in the 18th century, all all crimes that they perceived as crime many crimes that we perceived as crimes. You would it was very severe punishments hanging for quite minor levels, potentially for quite minor levels of theft. So it was a brutal punitive regime. Well, we're coming to the end now so I think I'm going to turn to you for the last your last thoughts in just a moment and then we'll have a goodbye from Rebecca but I just wanted to point out that there's a few there's lots of questions that have come up and so I'm sure we you know we can turn to social media and help answer some of those. But, you know, if you want to find out, for example, Susie wants to know where the name Molly came from and we've got Sam who would like to know some about about some of the relationships in the ceremonies that happened and there's another question in there about about dancing and what happens. I mean, you can read Mark's play. That's available. You can also read Victor Norton's book of the same names and mother claps Molly House recommend both of those. But if I could turn to Mark first and then Kate, you know what what would you like people to walk away with thinking about George in London and these subcultures that we've been talking about today. Yeah, I think the main thing for me is this incredible period that must have been of tolerance and acceptance, actually, that I'm more or less repeating my last point really but that when it's when it's when the law comes down that it's being invisible, but to imagine that that period of tolerance and acceptance I think is quite is quite interesting. And although, yeah, it confirms some of our sense of what of things that we would like to be where we find a very happy place to be I think it's always imagining that we are imagining a lot of it in between a few a few facts and figures. I think there's some things that are so different as well I mean the sense of the and that the equation of the gay man with a Feminacy was not really such a thing. A Feminacy was associated with men who had had too much sex with women. And this is this is something that flips our modern heads because bond. Yeah, yeah. There's the character of the FOP in the restoration play very well dressed very elegantly spoken. They're nearly always played now, as though they were they were a feminine gay men. The idea of the FOP was that they had slept with so many women that they have absorbed femininity and become become feminized. And I'm going to throw that in at the end because it sort of flips so many of our associations we assume just naturally now or not we assume but we said it's the cliche, the more women you've slept with the more masculine you must be but this notion that the more women you slept with the more you absorb their femininity and and ended up as a FOP. I think really flips around all our sort of female fluids they just absorb I think there was a sense of absorbing the fluids. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know so that just flips plays around with our sense of I don't think gay. There wasn't gay or there wasn't homosexual but men having sex with men was not associated with a Feminacy is it so often is sort of interesting. About you came. Oh, well, I mean I agree that there was so much more acceptance than we would have thought of of of of of so many LGBTQ behaviors and lifestyles that people people's I think Princess Seraphina many examples the women who went to war many examples and and and and these this really fascinates me just as Mark was saying this at this, the way in which we impose I think Victorian morality on the 18th century when there was a I think a greater concept of gender fluidity than certainly there was in the Victorian times, and the other thing of course is the society for information and how much you know it was the opposite of helping and protecting those, you know they like to talk about the innocence swept up in the in the in the sex trade and sex workers and young girls who were suffering and taken by boards but of course that was just their excuse really under it all it was about seizing power and seizing because they really weren't there to help these young trafficked women these women who were who were suffering and they were really what they what they of course wanted was these the sex workers who are out and proud and we're just going to do it and those are the ones they wanted to push inside and and what you do see of course at the end of the 18th century, the progress in the 19th century is that prostitution sex work in particular goes behind closed doors and that actually becomes much almost much more dangerous than what you see WT Stead writing about how these houses suburban houses are places of horrendous suffering because these women are trafficked can't escape they're imprisoned and and certainly I think that the moral crusades did nothing to help young sex workers in Covent Garden in the 18th century or in the 19th century but yes I think it's a fascinating period and I can't I can't imagine what it must have been like just to walk through it and see all the activity or the hustle and bustle of course it seems impossible now for us to go out anywhere but but it was it was both a place of danger and a pace of danger and terror and a place of great beauty and friendship as well. For me I suppose if I can just fix it on that idea of friendship I'd love to return to the idea that Mark set up which is sort of the molly house as a place where chosen family is is found and or in the words of Mark's words in the play is it's a place for the global disco family. So I think if we can leave that as a as a lingering and happy thought I think that's where we can come to a close so Mark Kate thank you so much for tonight it's been an absolute. Thank you. It was really fascinating. I've learned a lot. And I've learned so much and we just we all now need to get you know get Mark on the Netflix next next Christmas yeah we're gonna watch yeah I'll be I'll be in it and yeah thank you so much for everyone at home who's been watching and all your questions and it's been. It's just been wonderful to be in such a privilege to be in your homes when we can't be together but such a privilege to be being into your homes and talking to you about that history. Thank you and back to now for the studio for Rebecca. A huge thank you to Dan, Mark, Kate and you our audience. Please remember to submit feedback if you can and also do check out the what's on pages on the British Library's website for more cultural events. If you'd like to find out more about HIST Fest you can find HIST Fest via the website which is www.histfest.org. Thank you.