by Neil McKenna
There was growing concern and complaint about the increasing visibility of masculine women and effeminate men. ‘There is not the slightest doubt’, a carefully worded editorial in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine announced, ‘that England is hastening towards the border which divides the sexes; already persons have over-stepped and stand alone, hated and despised.’ The Pall Mall Gazette launched a lengthy diatribe against the ‘unsexed’ masculine woman who seeks to ‘usurp’ the place of men:
She has probably learned to smoke, and she takes kindly to a little strong drink; she talks slang, perhaps she bets, perhaps dabbles in the share market. She pants for excitement of a fierce and manly kind – for excitement that will stimulate her, that will satisfy her – for excitement that will unsex her.
As early as 1857, The Times was fulminating about a new breed of smirking and ‘respectable young men who serve in drapers’ shops’: ‘For our own part we would far rather see any son of ours wielding the saw or the trowel, or even standing side by side with navvies on parade, than mincing and bowing and rubbing his hands to “carriage people” during the best days of an effeminate life.’
‘Smirking, mincing and effeminate’: it was clear that the Thunderer’s ire was directed at what it saw as the emergence of a new class or type of young men, men who were neither one thing nor the other, neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat, not men and not women, in-between men, ‘mistakes’, androgynous, effeminate men, sodomites by instinct and inclination, young men in fact very much cast in the mould of Fanny and Stella.
It was not for nothing that in 1851 the Registrar-General described the shortage of men over twenty years of age as ‘unnatural’. Marriage was waning, healthy young men were in short supply and yet androgynous, epicene young men seemed to be on the increase. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
There was a widespread feeling of unease that sodomy was spreading. ‘The increase of these monsters in the shape of men commonly designated as Margeries, Pooffs, &c, of late years, in the great metropolis, renders it necessary for the safety of the public, that they should be made known,’ The Yokel’s Preceptor warned in the 1850s.
After the arrest of Fanny and Stella, simmering public anxiety and indignation at the spread of sodomy reached a crescendo. Fanny and Stella were, it seemed, the tiny, visible tip of a vast iceberg. For every sodomite ‘who is known, innumerable persons unknown offend in a similar way’, reported the Daily Telegraph. The Saturday Review heartily agreed. ‘It is certain that the numbers are far more numerous than it is pleasant to imagine.’
Not only was sodomy on the increase, but rather more seriously, sodomites were becoming more visible, and more flagrant. ‘A certain form of iniquity has, within the last year or two, been thrust more openly than of old on the attention of the public,’ claimed the Daily Telegraph. Sodomites were organised and confederated. They were a gang; they were part of ‘a doubtful fellowship’; they formed a ‘clique’, and, most worryingly of all, a class.
The newspapers worried where it all might end if left unchecked. ‘Vice,’ the Daily Telegraph warned, ‘emboldened by impunity, will at length stalk forth boldly from its secret haunts, and flaunt about in public places in a way that must compel attention.’ The Times went even further: ‘There is no saying how far things might go in a year or two,’ it prophesied. ‘“Drag” might become quite an institution, and open carriages might display their disguised occupants without suspicion.’
What was to be done, what could be done in the face of this tidal wave of sodomy? Reynolds’s Newspaper drew an explicit comparison with Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘This London of ours is as foul a sink of iniquity as were certain Jewish cities of old, which, for their flagrant wickedness, met with retributive destruction by fire from heaven.’ Clearly, the fate of London, of Britain, and of its empire-in-all-but-name hung by a sodomitic thread. The only solution was to root out and destroy sodomy before ‘fire, brimstone and smoke’ engulfed the nation.
That the contagion of sodomy had spread, was spreading, and had infected all levels of society was not in doubt. The question was how far had it already spread, and how much further might it spread. There was, the Pall Mall Gazette thought, a strong sense of ‘organisation and concert’ involved in this sodomitic ‘conspiracy’. Sodomites were essentially vampiric. In order to survive, they were driven and compelled to corrupt the innocent and, in so doing, create even more sodomites. ‘It is essential for its continuance that it should go on enlisting fresh members,’ the paper warned.
It was this idea of a deliberate and purposeful conspiracy to spread the contagion of sodomy, to infect – and by infecting, recruit – new sodomites which so frightened the authorities. The very words used in the indictment against Fanny and Stella – conspiring, confederating, combining, agreeing ‘with divers other persons whose names are unknown’ – revealed the fear of a contagion that was turning into an epidemic, a veritable plague.
As sodomites, especially as effeminate sodomites, disguised as women, and prostituting themselves, Fanny and Stella and everything they stood for touched some of society’s deepest and darkest fears of dirt, degeneration, syphilis, excrement, poverty, violence and effeminisation.
Sodomites had to be identified and stopped, though where to start? The arrest of Fanny and Stella was just the beginning. With the sanction of religion, law and custom, and with the support of a modern and powerful police, the lines of battle were drawn. It was nothing less than a crusade, a great and grand design to discover, defeat and destroy the dark Kingdom of Sodom, to banish it, once and for all, from this green and pleasant land.
26
The Ship of State
‘Herald, read the accusation!’ said the King. On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:
‘The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
‘All on a summer day:
‘The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
‘And took them quite away!’
‘Consider your verdict,’ the King said to the jury.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
‘T o judge from the crowd assembled in Westminster Hall at an early hour,’ the Daily Telegraph reported, ‘there has been no falling-off of the public interest in this twice-told tale.’ It was almost a year to the day since the arrest of Fanny and Stella in drag outside the Strand Theatre, and a large crowd had gathered in Palace Yard this brilliant May morning to catch a glimpse of the defendants as they arrived. Many of them were hoping to squeeze into the public gallery to watch what they hoped would be the trial of the decade, if not the century.
The trial of the Young Men in Women’s Clothes was a trial that some had predicted would never take place, especially after the Attorney-General himself had suddenly and dramatically intervened in early July 1870 and withdrawn all charges of sodomy against Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park. Fanny and Stella (along with Louis Hurt and John Safford Fiske, against whom charges of sodomy had also been withdrawn) were released on bail quietly and without fanfare, and it was generally assumed that that was that and the entire dismal and disturbing affair would gently fade from public memory, like a photograph left out in the sun. The Porcupine was confident that ‘the public are not likely to be troubled much further in this matter’. The Penny Illustrated agreed: ‘It is thought nothing more will be heard of the Young Men in Women’s Clothes.’
To all intents and purposes, Fanny and Stella had vanished off the face of the earth. There had been neither sight nor sound of them since they were released on bail in July 1870. The months had gone by and not a squeak, not a whimper, not a whisper had been heard from them or about them. It was, perhaps, too much to hope that they were dead. Too much to hope that they had done the decent thing and died by their own hand. Or that they were dead from natural – or rather, unnatural – causes, from the foul contagions that their course of life must necessarily have inflicted upon them. Or �
�� vain hope! – that they had died from shame and remorse (though neither of them had yet exhibited the least bit – not a morsel, not a scrap, not a crumb – of these worthy Christian virtues).
If not death, then it was profoundly to be hoped that their disappearance was for good (in every sense of the word), that they had had the sense to flee these islands, never again to return and so disturb and upset the nation’s equanimity. More prosaically and more probably, they had gone to ground and were merely lying low. Even if they wanted to flee, or ‘scarper’ as their slang talk had it, good Inspector Thompson and his team of detectives were no doubt alert to that possibility and would be watching their every move, just as they had watched their every move for a year or more before their arrest.
All that might be said by way of mitigation and by way of compassion was that the families of Boulton and Park had exercised and demonstrated the most Christian charity and forbearance in giving these hunted and cornered beasts shelter and food, though a sound birching and a fatal dose of prussic acid might have been more to the point.
So it had come as a shock and a jolt after all these months to discover that Fanny and Stella and their confederates – eight of them in all – still had a case to answer and were to answer that case in the Court of Queen’s Bench, the highest court in the land, before the highest judge in land, the Lord Chief Justice, and a special jury.
J ust before ten o’clock Fanny and Stella made their way with some difficulty through the crammed courtroom towards the plain and simple wooden bench where defendants and counsel alike would sit for the duration of the case. Both Fanny and Stella had flowers – ‘a bouquet of flowers’ – in their buttonholes and both were dressed, according to one of the witnesses, ‘somewhat more tastily’ than was quite common with young men.
‘Boulton was scarcely altered in looks since his appearance at Bow Street and, except for the faint shade of a moustache, he might still easily have been taken for a girl in boy’s clothes,’ the Daily Telegraph breathlessly reported. ‘Park, on the other hand, has grown stout, and his large whiskers have so altered his face as completely to deprive it of the feminine look which it wore a year ago.’
If Fanny and Stella were nervous, they did not show it. But they were subdued. Indeed, their demeanour was quite different from that bravado, that defiant jocularity which had so characterised – and in the opinion of many, so disfigured – their many appearances at Bow Street a year ago. Now, they had every appearance of being sober, serious and dignified young men. Fanny’s stoutness and luxuriant dark whiskers proclaimed her masculinity, and even Stella had made her nod to maleness with the ‘faint shade of a moustache’ that dear, dull Louis Hurt had begged her, in vain, to grow.
Gone, too, were those ‘campish’ ways of theirs: the constantly darting eyes, the cocked eyebrows, the pursed lips and the theatrically expressive faces. There was no more playing to the gallery. There was no more giggling or flirting or ogling or chirruping. There were no more hissing sibilants; no more contemptuous snorts; no more withering looks; no more tossings of actual or imaginary curls; no more flutterings of eyelashes; no more swishings of metaphorical bombazines. Every detail of Fanny and Stella’s outward appearance in the Court of Queen’s Bench that morning proclaimed them to be elegant, educated and civilised young gentlemen. This transformation, this miraculous migration from vicious effeminacy to virtuous manhood, was the work of one man: their new solicitor, Mr George Lewis.
Mr George Lewis was a very different kettle of fish from the beleaguered Mr Abrams who had single-handedly and with great gallantry acted as the Forlorn Hope of Fanny and Stella’s defence from the moment of their arrest, but who, it had quickly become apparent, was floundering badly in the face of the magnitude and complexity of the charges levelled against them. Mr George Lewis was ferocious and formidable. He was a force to be reckoned with, provoking fear and love in equal measure. He was an implacable prosecutor and a determined defender, and he had a growing reputation as the man to turn to when scandal threatened. The Prince of Wales himself had consulted him when he was named as a lover – as one of several lovers – of Lady Harriet Mordaunt in the sensational action for divorce brought by her husband, Sir Charles Mordaunt. Mr George Lewis had advised His Royal Highness to go into the witness box and had, by all accounts, so perfectly coached him in what to say and how to say it that he was credited with saving not only the Prince’s tattered reputation, but also the institution of the Monarchy itself.
Mr George Lewis was a different sort of a solicitor from the commonality of solicitors. More of a general: a Marlborough or a Wellington or a Napoleon. He was obsessed with each and every detail of a case. Nothing, however small, however insignificant, escaped his notice, and yet he always kept his eye on the great game. He would tell his clients what to wear, what to say, how to act – in court and outside court. His clients were his puppets, they were putty in his extraordinary hands.
In person, Mr George Lewis was quiet, polite, unassuming. Indeed, most of those present in Westminster Hall for Fanny and Stella’s trial hardly noticed this young-looking, slightly built man, prematurely grey and with abundant Dundreary whiskers who accompanied them into court. He looked like a clerk and he liked it that way. He did not want to stand out from the crowd. He liked to be unobtrusive and self-effacing. He liked to beaver away behind the scenes, delving and digging, dissecting and directing.
Mr George Lewis was nothing if not rigorous. Rigour was the beginning, the middle and the end of his work as a solicitor. He left nothing to chance. He would devour depositions and scour witness statements looking for errors, anomalies, contradictions. And he made sure that he read everything himself. Indeed, shortly after taking on the case of the Young Men in Women’s Clothes, he had presented himself at Mr Pollard’s office at the Treasury and insisted on reading through each and every deposition and document, each and every letter and note and report connected with the case.
Mr George Lewis wanted to find out everything there was to know, and more besides. His methods were said to be as unorthodox as they were audacious. He had an extensive and unrivalled network of informants – ‘a spider’s web of narks and spies’, as one disgruntled observer put it – which he would use to devastating effect in turning up new evidence that the police would never have found in a month of Sundays. He revelled in theatrical flourishes, producing surprise new witnesses, like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.
Mr George Lewis disliked injustice in any shape or form. The case of Boulton and Park, friendless, despised and beleaguered, and with all the apparatus and power of a merciless State ranged against them, may have touched a chord of sympathy and compassion within him and prompted him to offer his services. That and the fact that the case was widely regarded not just as unwinnable, but also as toxic, a case that would infect and poison all those who had dealings with it. Whatever the reason, now that he had taken the case, Mr George Lewis let it be known to one and all that he would fight for Fanny and Stella with every fibre of his being. He would fight and he would win.
Of the eight men whose names were listed in the Indictment, only four were present in court. Lord Arthur Clinton was dead and buried, supposedly of scarlet fever, but there were many who thought he was merely playing dead, that he was comfortably ensconced abroad, cocking a snook at the police and at the public morals. Three of the defendants, Martin Luther Cumming (the Comical Countess), William Somerville and Cecil ‘Sissy’ Thomas, had never been interviewed, let alone apprehended, and were to be tried in their absence. That left just four defendants who were there in the flesh: Ernest Boulton, Frederick Park, Louis Hurt and John Safford Fiske.
Many if not most of those who had managed to push and squeeze themselves into the small courtroom found themselves not a little baffled and bewildered by the charges. It appeared that none of the defendants were charged with actual acts of buggery or sodomy, nor even with acts falling short of buggery or sodomy. No, they were charged with ‘conspiracy to sol
icit, induce, procure and endeavour to persuade persons unknown to commit buggery’. It struck many present that morning, from the highest to the lowest, that such a charge was somehow incomplete and rather lopsided. Was it really possible to convict persons for the thought but not for the deed? It was like bread without butter, cakes without ale, pie without mash. How could you prove the intention without the act? And where would it all end? If minds were now to be read, if private thoughts and whims and wishes and fancies were now constituted crimes, who then was safe from the long arm of the law?
Fanny and Stella (and the absent Comical Countess) were also charged with a second offence: that they ‘unlawfully and wickedly did conspire, confederate, combine’ to ‘openly and publicly pretend and hold themselves out and appear to be women and thereby to inveigle, induce and incite divers of the male subjects of Her Majesty improperly, lewdly and indecently to fondle and toy with them as women and thereby openly and scandalously to outrage public decency and to offend against public morals’.
(Not that anyone could ever have been fooled – even for a moment – by the Comical Countess. Miss Martin Luther Cumming might publicly pretend and hold herself out to be a woman until she was blue in the face, but, in her case, wishes were emphatically not kisses. She was and would always be a clownish and clowning fat young man, blowsily and badly dressed as a woman, an object of fascination, repulsion, ridicule and – strangely – sometimes pity.)
Here again, some of those present in Westminster Hall had the unworthy thought that when all was said and done, this second charge of conspiracy and confederation amounted to not much more than dressing up in drag and flirting with gentlemen.