← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts, Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.
- [00:04]
B
But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds.
- [00:08]
A
Of your time if you're enjoying After Dark. And we love you if you are. We would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards.
- [00:18]
B
So go to the Show Notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm they will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30.
- [00:30]
A
Seconds if you've already voted. We are so, so grateful if you haven't stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show.
- [00:40]
C
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- [02:10]
A
Hello and welcome to After Dark. Today we have one of two very, very very special episodes. I'm so excited about them but I'm not going to tell you. Instead I'm going to hand straight over to Anthony 1.
- [02:26]
B
Sunday night, February 1726. Gabriel Lawrence is making his way purposefully towards Field Lane in Holborn. The winter darkness has transformed familiar London streets into something altogether more perilous. Despite the intermittent grid of oil lamps, flames feeble and odorous struggle to light the clogged arteries of the great city. As he walks apace, street musicians lift their fiddles to offer a bawdy song, their bows slashing back and forth by their necks. The music they make underscores the continuous din from nearby ale houses, taverns and coffee houses. Laughter, screams and shouts burst through doors left momentarily ajar. 18th century London is never quiet. Tonight, Lawrence seeks the comfort and camaraderie of an establishment located on Field Lane, a Molly house which goes by the name of Mother Claps. There he will reacquaint himself with one Martin McIntosh, an orange seller in Covent Garden. Amongst this particular group of friends, however, McIntosh goes by another mouth watering Orange Debt. Perhaps Lawrence will encounter the other all male regulars of Claps too. Dip Candle Mary, a candlemaker, or the Duchess of Camomile, a resident of Camomile Street. Perhaps Old Fish Hannah, a fish seller, will be out tonight. Or indeed, Susan Guzzle. Incidentally, the origin of Ms. Guzzle's maiden name is unclear, but I very much encourage you to use your imaginations. But of course, it is Martin or Deb that Gabriel Lawrence wishes to see most. When last they met, Lawrence and Orange Deb, being very fond of one another, had hugged and kissed and employed their hands as some sort in a very vile manner. Lawrence hopes his hands might yet be similarly occupied Tonight. Lawrence turns right now he's back to the city and finds himself on Field Lane, a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. Here as ever, amidst the filth and stink of butcher's waste, is his destination. As he pushes open the heavy wooden door of the premises, unseen moralistic observers, hiding like cowardly rats in the dark laneways outside, silently confirm that this man, Gabriel Lawrence, belonged to the house. He was one of the regulars. Lawrence, unaware of their shadowy presence, then slips inside, allowing the door to close behind him. In that moment, unbeknownst to himself, he seals his fate and the noose beckons. This is after dark, and this is the gay sex scandal that rocked 18th century London.
- [05:51]
A
Okay, I am a little bit giddy with excitement to be doing this episode and another one that we have on the same topic, because these histories are from a little book coming out imminently called, you May have Heard of It, Queer A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers. What A title?
- [06:09]
B
Yeah, it's my book.
- [06:10]
A
Maddie, you wrote it. You wrote a thing.
- [06:13]
B
I can't believe we're actually here. I mean, you and I have been talking about this for literally years. Like, literally years. And now it's time. And I was just saying to Maddie, before we started recording, it's weird because now I feel like a guest on the podcast where I'm just like, I'm here to promote my book and to talk about.
- [06:26]
A
I've taken over the podcast. You are just a kiss guy. You've been relegated.
- [06:29]
B
This will be my final episode. Yeah, no, it is weird. It is weird.
- [06:32]
A
So.
- [06:33]
B
So it's out on Thursday, 4th September, if you're in the UK and Ireland, I think Australia and other places too. And then with a different title, queer enlightenments, on the 7th of October in North America. So it's very exciting.
- [06:44]
A
It is very exciting. And it's bloody beautiful as well. The COVID Yeah, Nice little blue.
- [06:48]
B
Somebody was like, oh, your Fortnum and Mason book. And I was like, oh, it is quite Fortnum and Mason.
- [06:53]
A
I feel that's very appropriate for a book that's so much about sort of gorgeousness and domesticity and kind of hopefulness, as well as some bleak histories as well.
- [07:03]
B
Becky Kelly. I did not design Shout out to Becky. Now, listen, usually I will give the. If I'm leading an episode, I will give the context, but I'm going to be talking so much in this episode. I have requested that. And Maddie, you know, Maddie is an 18th century expert too. So, like, I would like you to do the context.
- [07:18]
A
I will be explaining all of Anthony's books.
- [07:21]
B
The time period is going on. But, yeah, I was just like. Or else I'm just gonna be talking all episode.
- [07:25]
A
Okay, so the context is this. We are starting, in my opinion, at the wrong end of the 18th century.
- [07:30]
B
This is Anthony's end. I knew you were gonna do that.
- [07:33]
A
This is Anthony's end of the 18th century. We're in 1726. George I is on the throne. He's the first Hanoverian king of Britain. He speaks very little English. People are pretty pissed off when he comes to the throne. Robert Walpole is the prime minister at the time, and the king leaves a lot of the governing of the country to him. So there's a little bit of tension there straight away. Important for this story, though, is the buggery act of 1533. Why is that still relevant in the 18th century? Because it's still in force. So sex between men. And importantly, just between men. Right. We'll talk about that across these episodes, I think is illegal under this law. It's classified as a capital crime and it is punishable by death. In the 1720s. Remarkably, this act is not just still in place, but enforcement is increasingly aggressive.
- [08:22]
B
In the first part of the 18th century. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the stakes are high.
- [08:26]
A
Yeah, the stakes are really high. And I'm so fascinated by this and appalled by it. So I'm really excited to get into this discussion. Now the other thing that's happening is this moral reform sweeping the country. And there's a group called the Society for the Reformation of Manners. I hate them already.
- [08:46]
B
Well, you'll hate them even more once we start discussing them further into the episode. But the thing to bear in mind is about them. It's not one society that's the umbrella and then there's loads of individual society.
- [08:57]
A
So there's pockets everywhere of this feeling of like morally cleaning up virus and things like gambling, public drunkenness, sex and of course same sex sex is all becoming an issue. And Molly Houses in particular are going to become a problem for these people. The wider context, of course, is that the Enlightenment is taking place. And I mean, I'm always fascinated by the term Enlightenment. This idea of the Enlightenment, it's something that I look at in my new book, Coming in Spring, not competing with Anthony, it's by them both purposefully so. But this idea of the is suddenly a scientific, rational place. There's salons and universities opening up, there's philosophers, there are scientists, there are artists, all moving towards this idea of exploring what human nature is at its core, what is true, what is right. But of course, all that light of the Enlightenment comes with its own shadows and its own darkness. And this idea that really it's only a certain set of predominantly male, predominantly white men, predominantly straight men who are involved in this Enlightenment, not exclusively, but that is mainly who is setting the parameters of this. And on the boundaries of that. On the edge of this world are people who are being actively oppressed by the ideas of Enlightenment as well.
- [10:11]
B
So there is your context and you're worried about doing it. You have nothing to be worried about, sd you know exactly what you're doing.
- [10:17]
A
I spend a lot of time in the 18th century.
- [10:19]
B
Almost like you did a PhD on the 18th century. Yeah. Who knew?
- [10:22]
A
So let's get into the story and this is something that I don't know now. So I am very much looking forward to this. Please introduce your main characters. Who is the cast?
- [10:31]
B
So these are chapters one and two of the book. So there, there's only two stories that go over multiple chapters and this is one of them. And it's the opening chapters because I felt like it was a good way to set the scene about what's coming then as the century kind of progresses. So we have Gabriel Lawrence first of all. That's the man that we met in the narrative section at the top where he is making his way to Motherclaf's Molly house. And we'll explain exactly what a Molly house is in just a second. But he is a working class milk. He is 43 years old at the time of this story. He is a widower. He has been married, but his wife has died. He has a 13 year old daughter. We know that. And he's really close to his neighbors, his extended family and his friends. And he's actually really well liked. He's a popular figure amongst those people in his community.
- [11:19]
A
He's not necessarily someone who would be suspected of committing a so called capital crime.
- [11:25]
B
No, no. And this, this is a question they're forced to ask themselves in his trial, which again we'll get to. And the support they offer him is really lovely actually to read. So it's really, really nice.
- [11:36]
A
That's already surprising.
- [11:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. They really come to his defense.
- [11:40]
A
And this is, I suspect this is going to be a thread throughout the book. Right. Of. There is obviously an almost relentlessly bleak nature to telling some of these histories, but also there is a lot of joy.
- [11:51]
B
There is. Now look, some of them will still end bleakly, but can't promise happy endings for everyone. But some of them have incredibly happy endings and actually despite the endings have incredibly happy lives. And that's kind of what I've tried to Z zone in on. But most people, most people survive it, these histories, but some people don't.
- [12:10]
A
So we'll.
- [12:11]
B
And we'll see.
- [12:12]
A
We'll see. So who else have we got?
- [12:14]
B
We've got Margaret Clapp and she is married to a man named John Clapp. She is also known as Mother Clapp and she kept a public house. Now, there is a bit of debate as to what exactly the nature of her house was. Was it a coffee house, was it a public house, was it a drinking house? Was there a place where people could come and pay to stay? And I just reckon it was a bit of all of those things she was doing everything to surv.
- [12:37]
A
Yeah. And I find that generally, and this isn't just true of Molly Houses, but also of public houses across the board in the 18th century that the lines are blurred. And you can go and drink alcohol sometimes in a coffee house, or sometimes it will be exclusively a coffee house. You can go and have a hot chocolate somewhere. You can, you know. And the function, how people are meeting in those spaces, who is in them really varies across here. We're just talking about the City of London, right. So, you know, even within that relatively small space, there is huge variety. So I'm not surprised that you don't know the exact nature of the house.
- [13:08]
B
And it's also because she's unlicensed. So there are loads of unlicensed coffee houses, taverns, whatever it might be in this part of the 18th century. They're trying to regulate it at this time, but there are still so, so many. But one thing we definitely do know about Mother Claps is that it is a Molly house. And I have an explanation from 1709 as to what a Molly house is here, so I'm going to share that with you. It says within Molly houses there are a particular gang of sodomytical wretches in this town who call themselves the Mollies and are so far degenerated from all masculine deportment or manly exercises that they rather fancy themselves women imitating all the little vanities that custom has reconciled to the female sex affecting to speak, walk, tattle, curtsy, cry, scold and to mimic all manner of effeminacy.
- [14:03]
A
Wow. I mean, that. That's a really fascinating. Yeah. And this, by the way, is coming from Ned Ward, who's a great sort of chronicler of. Of the underbelly of London at the time, and I think you can read a lot of his writing online.
- [14:14]
B
Yeah, loads spend a lot of time.
- [14:16]
A
In early 18th century London. It's very interesting to me this, because obviously Ned Ward in this context is talking about this in derogatory terms. There's no getting around that. But also there's a huge amount of detail in here.
- [14:27]
B
There is now caveat, that detail. He has probably never set foot inside a Molly house, realistically. Now, we know people did breach the doors and the walls that weren't supposed to be in there, but probably Ned is not one of those people. What we have a doubt over now, this was always formally accepted is this idea of the extent to which femaleness and femininity was part of the Molly house culture. Certainly was part of it, without shadow of a doubt. But. But Ward and others give the impression that almost every man who walked across that boundary assumed female dress or was being. Whatever that's. We don't now think that that's necessarily the case. I'm sure there's some of that happening in their life.
- [15:08]
A
Yeah. It's certainly a small manifestation of homosexuality. Right. There's a whole spectrum, and presumably everything would be represented in this house. My question as well is ned ward in 1709 is writing about this quite openly.
- [15:22]
B
Yes.
- [15:23]
A
So how secret, how private were these establishments, considering the criminal implications at the time?
- [15:32]
B
They were known to those who needed to know them.
- [15:35]
A
Okay.
- [15:36]
B
So there was a network, a community of men who would have known where the different Molly houses were and what the different Molly houses offered.
- [15:43]
A
But.
- [15:44]
B
And this brings me on to the next people in the story, the Society for the Reformation of Manners, or the. The various Societies for the Reformation of Manners, they had underagents, and those underagents would try to identify, just in the street, people that they thought would be linked to Molly Houses. They follow them. They would bribe them. They would say, well, we know you're a Molly, so we're gonna blackmail you or we're gonna take you to the justice.
- [16:08]
A
So they're sort of undercover.
- [16:10]
B
Yeah, they're like police, in a way.
- [16:11]
A
Yeah.
- [16:12]
B
So they. They are finding out where these. They're uncovering where these Molly Houses are. And there is. There is a definite tension within the Molly Houses going, who are you bringing with you into these, you know, into these four walls? Because we need to be sure that we can trust everybody that's coming in, and they can't trust everybody.
- [16:32]
A
I have a question before we move on to the next people in this story, and that is about how, as a historian, you go about uncovering this history, because so far, we're talking about secrets, we're talking about secret networks, people being in the know, but not necessarily leaving a written record of this. So how on earth do you begin to trace something like this?
- [16:49]
B
So the thing is that we are left in this particular case with trial transcripts. So this has all come to light because there is a trial coming further down this story, the way in which.
- [17:00]
A
We find about anyone from the lower classes or the edges of society in the 18th century at this time.
- [17:04]
B
Yeah, so there's a trial coming. We get details in the trial. There are then people just writing peripherally about Molly Houses not connected specifically to this trial. And so you can then start to layer the information that you have and color the world a little bit more. But we know definitely that there are spies, because we know their names, we're going to meet them shortly, that have infiltrated Mother Claps. And we even know the person that they attached themselves to and he brought them into Mother Claps and they are suspicious of him. Within Claps, they know this guy can't be trusted. There's something going on here. But whatever he does, we don't know. Whatever he does, he manages to placate the suspicion and he goes, look, it's fine. These two are genuine people that they're supposed to be here, but he's lying.
- [17:46]
A
Okay, so we have Mother Clapp with her Molly House. We have Gabriel Lawrence, who is a regular punter there.
- [17:54]
B
Yes.
- [17:54]
A
And he's heading there in this evening. Then we have people from the Society of the Reformation of Manners trying to infiltrate it. The tension is high. The stakes are even higher. Who are the next characters?
- [18:04]
B
So those are kind of the main people that we have, but I just want to concentrate on a couple of people from within the Society of Reformation of Manners. Right, because they're about to kind of blow this whole thing open, unfortunately. And they are Samuel Stevens and Joseph Sellers, and they are the undercover agents that the Society have infiltrated. And they have gained entry to the Molly House by promising payments to one of the Mollies who's also a sex worker, and his name is Mark Partridge. Now, they're gonna be supporting characters in this, but their names will come up. And so we know that there is not so much suspicion around Samuel Stevens and Joseph Sellers, but definitely around Mark Partridge. But he was their way in. So they have been infiltrated on the night that Gabriel Lawrence arrives at that Molly House.
- [18:49]
A
Oh, I dread to ask what's gon next, but you better tell us tonight.
- [18:54]
B
As Gabriel Lawrence settles amongst his friends, Stevens and Sellers watched on from a table nearby. Only Mark Partridge knows they're preparing to spring their trap outside. Acting on the intelligence Stevens and Sellers had gathered. Wait. The reforming constables who have gathered their supporters about them in anticipation of a raid. These invisible adversaries arrange themselves strategically in order to cut off all possible escape routes when the Mollies inside are ambushed. Whether Stevens and Sellers within or Williams and Willis without make the first move in the early hours of the morning is undocumented. Either way, a burst of men and performance of morality force their way into the Molly House. Voices raised, Stevens and Sellers unmask, revealing their true identities. Chaos ensues. Upon realizing they have been betrayed, the Mollies run for their lives. Although the accomplices of the societies hidden along Field Gleane attempt to block their escape, some of the luckier men manage to push past them and evade capture. They abscond across the cobbles. But not everyone is so lucky. Approximately 40 men, including our milkman, Gabriel Lawrence, are violently rounded up that night alongside the dynamic Mother Clap. The captured men, like Lawrence, will no doubt have been concerned about the consequences of their discovery, as well as casting about desperately to see which of those who had been present managed to escape. They themselves, however, would now be delivered to London's notorious prototype of hell, as magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding called Newgate Prison. There they would await their fate.
- [20:44]
A
Henry Fielding's always cropping up in my.
- [20:46]
B
Research and I'm reading a historical fiction thing and he's there as well, so I'm just like, christ Almighty.
- [20:51]
A
Can't escape him. I mean, it's incredibly dramatic, it's quite violent. It must have been very frightening for the people in the Molly House at the time, obviously, a space that they have understood to be private as much as they can hope to be, to be a space where they can express themselves and their sexuality and their sociability as well. This is a space for people to come to be some version of themselves and to inhabit some kind of authenticity in their lives when they can't outside of that. That is all broken down. The doors burst open, there's this raid, and now suddenly, these men who are ordinary men from across London living ordinary lives, who happen to have been in this place, in this moment, now find themselves in Newgate Prison, arguably the bleakest, vilest prison in London at this time. And a prison that comes up again and again in the history, but also in people's imaginations in this period. I mean, Newgate really is bleak. So tell me a little bit about what they're going to experience once they pass through those doors.
- [21:55]
B
So this new gate, because there are many iterations over the centuries, but this.
- [21:58]
A
I should say that this is where the Old Bailey is now, right?
- [22:00]
B
Yeah, like, adjacent. And we're gonna. We're going there as well. So, like, we have all of these stops on the way, but this one was rebuilt after the great fire in 1666, so that's what we're looking at at this point. It was built for about 150 inmates, which is quite small, actually, if you think about it, relatively.
- [22:16]
A
Yeah. And surely it gets bigger over the course of the 18th century. I think by the end of the century, it's.
- [22:22]
B
Oh, yeah. By then it's much, much bigger. But even by now, it's. It's. It's harboring far more inmates than 150.
- [22:29]
A
So there aren't necessarily rules about how Many people you can fit into a cell at any one time. Right. There's no regulation.
- [22:34]
B
No. They're just cramming them all in. It is filthy, it is overcrowded. As I said, it is lice infested. And this is where the city's most dangerous and hardened criminals are coming. One of the things that I remember reading when I was trying to get a bit of the atmosphere of this is that somebody who had been in there had said the smell is one of the worst things, that it's a weird kind of mix of sour milk and feces and there's the sewer running through one of the parts of it as well. So this is a really sensory place, but very negatively.
- [23:06]
A
So obviously a dangerous place as well. Right. In terms of disease and the absolute squalor that you're living in, but also in terms of the people who are in there. Like, you may have ended up in here because you happen to be in a molly house on a night of a raid, but there are also murderers, there are all kinds of criminals, there are thieves, there are really violent, dangerous people in here.
- [23:26]
B
Yeah, this ain't fun.
- [23:28]
A
Yeah, it's not fun. And the whole prison kind of operates on this weird economy, right, of bribes and swapping things, I guess, a little bit like prisons today, but we have absolutely corrupt staff as well. It's not like if you are in any danger, you can go to a guard and be like, help me. They're not going to help. They'll be like, we will help you for £40. Give me money.
- [23:48]
B
Yes.
- [23:48]
A
And you'll be like, I have half a guinea.
- [23:51]
B
Yeah, Yeah.
- [23:51]
A
I can't do that.
- [23:52]
B
This is. There is no recourse. There's no, you know, there are no human rights in Newgate. Put it that way. It's. It's not a good place.
- [23:58]
A
Please read the quote about the lice, because I can't be doing with that.
- [24:02]
B
Yeah, this was one of the things that I was like. It really does. Again, talk about sensory. Like you, we have the smell. I'll talk about sights in a minute, but here's the sound. This is a quote from somebody who had spent some time in Newgate. Prisoners like Gabriel would, quote, lie upon ragged blankets, the lice crackling under their feet, make such a noise as walking on shells which are strewed over garden walls. And I've never. I know what that's like. I've walked on those shells in some. In some of those periods. Oh, no, I've not walked on the lice, but it it, you know, it gives an. It's the. The light or the ground.
- [24:39]
A
You can hear, essentially. Yeah, yeah.
- [24:41]
B
And you can feel it almost where it's like.
- [24:42]
A
Oh, you can just picture the floor constantly moving.
- [24:45]
B
Yeah.
- [24:46]
A
The walls dripping constantly. Like you say, there's kind of like this.
- [24:51]
B
Oh, and bear in mind, you know, these people are in. They have a rusty collar that's put around their neck. This is cutting into their flesh as well. The wrists are restrained with manacles and shackles at the ankles. Once he got in there, you're sorted into different sides. So there's a master side and a common side. Now, Gabriel would have been on the common side because he was working class and he was a milkman. That's all he could have afforded. So you have to pay to be on either one of the sides.
- [25:17]
A
See, I didn't know this. So Newgate is organized according to social class.
- [25:20]
B
Yes.
- [25:20]
A
Or at least wealth.
- [25:22]
B
Yes. Yeah, exactly. As long as social class. Yeah. If you could pay us. But like, Gabriel could, there's no way he could have paid it. So we know that he was on the common side and it was described as the most terrible, wicked and dreadful place. So we know that he would have been in darkness an awful lot. We have these lice. But in the book, I was like, I. I want to know what, what life is like for a sodomite, particularly I'm using the term that I used at the time. I want to know what life was like for a sodomite in Newgate. So I was searching, searching, searching. And I was, as far as I'm aware, this hasn't appeared anywhere else, but I discovered called the buggering hold in one of the primary source documents. And the buggering hold was. Is described as this. It says some coffins there may be or have been addicted to sodomy, but what degree of latitude this chamber is situated in I cannot possibly demonstrate unless it lies 90 degrees beyond the Arctic Pole. For instead of being dark here, but half the year, it is dark all the year around. So what we're seeing for the first time, as far as I'm aware, is that, that sodomites were held separate to other, especially in the common side, were.
- [26:28]
A
Held separate to other inmates and sort of actively punished. Right. To be placed in, I mean, coffined, as they're saying here in an always dark space and segregated from everyone else. That's quite, you know, we have to think about 18th century prisons aren't necessarily a punishment in and of themselves as they became in the Victorian period. And as they're considered now, going to prison is your punishment. Prisons in the 18th century are holding pens essentially for people who are going to be executed, people who are going to be deported around the empire or eventually who can pay their way out if they have debts. But this seems like a form of particular punishment. It's a particular kind of treatment going on here.
- [27:11]
B
And as you're kind of picking up on there, it's really specifically associated with same sex desire, that form of punishment between men. Between men, yeah. So it's like you can't even be with the other prisoners. You have to be held over there. I think it's. I'm not sure how hard and fast to rule it was, but the fact that somebody in the early 18th century is saying that part of Newgate on the common side was known as the boogering hold, and then gives this example. There's definitely something there. There must have been some pattern of incarceration that they were seeing to say that.
- [27:44]
A
Yeah. So someone like Gabriel Lawrence goes into Newgate, you have this infested, squalid place. You might have open wounds from the manacles that are placed on you. They're cutting into your flesh. So there's all kinds of infections going on. You might be put into this boggling hold, in which case you're segregated. You're in almost total darkness all of the time. How on earth are you gonna survive this, even to the point of getting to your trial?
- [28:14]
B
I mean, you might not actually, because typhus is rampant, like it is notoriously bad in there. It's bad in London at this time anyway.
- [28:22]
A
You're taking your chances if you're out on the street.
- [28:24]
B
But this particularly, you know, these enclosed, filthy spaces, it is everywhere. And we know, for instance, so it's worth pointing out here that I said at the beginning, there was about 40 men that were taken up on the night of the raid. By the time they're actually incarcerated, that is much fewer because they've been processed. There is a process that they have to go through with the justice of the peace who says, is there going to be enough evidence here to hold this person? A lot of them were dismissed at that point. Because to be incarcerated for sodomy, it has to be provable that you penetrated another man. So that's the burden of proof.
- [28:56]
A
Yeah, that's quite a high bar, actually not. So not just being in the molly house, that's not necessarily a problem there.
- [29:02]
B
But just being there was enough for the bloody stupid Society for Reformation of Manners to be like, well, I'm going to take you over to a JP and like have you. But for the men of law, they were like, I need to see evidence of penetration and then I can process these people. So a lot of them were let go. Gabriel Lawrence was obviously not and he was held. Other people were held too. But by the time we get to their their trials at the Old Bailey, which we'll come on to talk to in a minute, we know that some of those people that were held for sodomy had already died. So they didn't make it to the trial.
- [29:55]
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- [32:29]
A
Now.
- [32:39]
B
Gabriel does. He's there. He's still alive. But some of them die. And that's not unusual. That's not just in the bug ring hold. That's Newgate throughout. So this is, you know, sweating sickness, diarrhea, vomiting. You are devoid of all your humanity. It is the worst possible thing you can imagine.
- [32:56]
A
From a modern perspective. We would imagine that people arrested for a crime for which you could be executed, that the biggest fear would be the execution, that verdict. But actually, I don't know if that's the case. I'm not saying that Gabriel Lawrence is facing the noose here thinking, oh, it's fine, it's grand, it'd be okay. But I do think a lot of that fear, a lot of that panic upon the moment of arrest would be about the thought of going into a prison like Newgate.
- [33:23]
B
I think you could be right, actually, because one of the things that people are doing to occupy themselves when they're being held in Newgate, and we know this and we see patterns of this repeating itself, not just in sodomy trials, is that they prepare themselves because they're going to be offering their own defense, by the way. So the inmates are preparing themselves for their trials when they're in there. So if there's a group of them together, they are bouncing defenses off one another. They are sharing potential defense strategies because there's no lawyers in this situation, they are going to be standing up themselves. So. So yes, to that extent, I think you might be right, because it's a case that they might survive the noose if they can defend themselves. But they already find themselves in Newgate. There's no hope of that. Well, apart from maybe getting out. But right at that moment in time, it feels Quite lost, I would imagine.
- [34:11]
A
So take me to the Old Bailey and the moment of trial, then.
- [34:14]
B
Okay. Before we go to the actual trial, I have an image for you which I just. I loved this when I saw it because I'm gonna ask Maddie to describe this image. It's a rendering of New, around the time as Gabriel Lawrence would have known it. And so, yeah, Maddie, over to you.
- [34:30]
A
Okay. So we're looking at a sort of sprawling early 18th century building. It looks. It's got the sort of, you know, very symmetrical frontage, and it's got these wings coming off either side and sort of older chimneys, maybe Tudor chimneys, like, in the background. And you get a sense of this is a big complex. At the front, there is a wall which looks like it has all those spikes on it, actually, interestingly, that is separating the street from the Old Bailey itself. But what is most striking is at the centre of this building, the whole lower floor in which the courtroom is, has no exterior wall. It is open to the elements, and you can see where the justice of the peace would sit, the judge. You can see where the prisoners were brought. You get a sense of that courtroom. And this is absolutely incredible to me. There may even be seating, actually, in the sort of courtyard that's formed outside of it that looks like there's even some benches for people to sit in.
- [35:33]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:34]
A
Tell me why this is the case. Why is a courtroom open to the elements, to the sky, to the public?
- [35:41]
B
It's so obvious when you hear this, you're like, of course. But it's because they deliberately took off that side of the building to encourage the circulation of fresh air, because they knew that prisoners coming from Newgate could be infected with typhus or any other kind of jail fever. And they wanted. And it didn't always work. People like judges died, you know, jurors died. So it was a real threat. You know, it was a real thing. Yeah.
- [36:04]
A
How hypocritical this system is. These people are prepared to send potentially innocent people who have, let's remember, not been charged. Well, they've been charged with the crime. They're willing to send these people into a situation where they could easily die of any number of diseases or just the absolute horror of being in there, but they're not prepared to sit with them in a closed room because of the same risk.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah. So they know that putting people in Newgate means people are gonna die even before they've had their trial. They know that.
- [36:29]
A
Wow.
- [36:30]
B
And they're a. Okay with those.
- [36:31]
A
Of course, the other thing about having no wall. Right. Is that this is public, it becomes a show, it's a performance.
- [36:37]
B
Yeah, well, that holding space you kind of said where you thought there might have been seats. There is seats there because that's where everybody who was awaiting trial that day was, is going to be held. So they're milling around in that kind of holding area. So you're seeing other trials going on and then you're called up and you have to go in there as well.
- [36:53]
A
In some ways handy because if you've been practicing those defenses, you can be thinking, right, okay, well that didn't work. That guy's gone towards the gallows. I'm not going to do that. All that really worked for that guy. I'm going to ham that up as well. But I mean, you wouldn't want to be in that situation.
- [37:04]
B
No, I know. Just waiting, waiting, waiting.
- [37:06]
A
Can you imagine waiting and watching and thinking, how is this going to turn out for me?
- [37:10]
B
Yeah, but it's also chaos once you get in there though, because there it is not a courtroom like we know today. So the, there is no lawyers. As I said already, judges do the cross examinations themselves. There are jurors. But the jurors, if they want to know a clarification like now, they'd have to wait and ask a question after the day is whatever. And then they might get a, when there's a break, they might get an answer, blah, blah, blah. They just shout out. Now they're just like, wait, but you said earlier that this was happening and blah, blah, blah. But there's just people kind of shouting everywhere. And because of that it has been referred to as managed mayhem. I don't know how managed it is, but it's certainly mayhem. Like it sounds like mayhem. And his trial. And we're going to talk a little bit about the details of his trial. His trial would only have lasted about 30 minutes. So like this isn't a four day trial. This isn't at this time. That's not happening. It's not how trials are.
- [37:58]
A
And this is for a crime that someone can be executed for a 30 minute situation. Wow.
- [38:03]
B
Okay, so he is indicted. Gabriel Lawrence is indicted for feloniously committing with Thomas Newton, age 30, the heinous and detestable sin of sodomy. Interesting. That says sin there rather than crime. Because do bear in mind that these, what is now law has come to us from ecclesiastical law. So bringing that in there as well.
- [38:23]
A
I mean, it's actually amazing to me that whilst this is a terrible situation and very, very Tragic. As a historian, you said the bar of the burden of proof is quite significant and that it has to be penetration. And here we have that he's committing this act with Thomas Newton, age 30. So we have the names and the ages of two men here who we know have had sex in this Molly house. It's an amazing pinpointed moment in history and such an intimate human moment that is in the written record that, I mean, it's incredibly tangible.
- [39:02]
B
It is. Is it true? Wow, here's the thing. Like it could very well be. I think it stands every chance of being true. But what we do know is that Newton was definitely a molly. But have the societies bribed him and said, we'll expose you if you. Well, I mean he's already exposed, but you know, we'll, you'll be on trial, but if you act as evidence, then, you know, you can go, listen, there's probably every chance, I think most likely that they had had sex. And we're going to hear his testimony in a minute. But just bear in mind the, the conditions of the, the trial.
- [39:35]
A
So Thomas Newton is not on trial himself, but he's giving evidence. Okay. Now I'm thinking.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just. He would have been on trial if he hadn't turned evidence, basically. Yeah. So here's his testimony just. And we can see. I, I actually, funnily enough, despite me saying that and casting a thing of doubt over him, I, I think I might believe him. But I'm just saying as context for the conversation.
- [39:56]
A
Also, can I ask another technical question? And this is maybe, you know, quite, quite an intense one. The crime has to be provable by penetration of another man.
- [40:06]
B
Yes.
- [40:06]
A
If you are the man being penetrated.
- [40:08]
B
Yes.
- [40:09]
A
Are you guilty of sodomy?
- [40:11]
B
You are? Yes. Yeah. You sodomized. So, so, yes.
- [40:14]
A
Okay. So it's still an offense.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah, still an offense, yeah. Okay. This is Newton's testimony. And by the way, when you say proof of. When I say proof of sodomy, you didn't say anything that, that you don't need to necessarily really show that physically. You just need somebody to say it happened.
- [40:31]
A
Okay.
- [40:31]
B
That's counted as proof.
- [40:32]
A
Wow.
- [40:33]
B
Yes. So this is what he says. This is what Newton says at the end of last June, one Peter Bavage, who is not yet taken. So Babbage must have escaped on the night and someone Eccleston, we don't have his first name in brackets, who died last week in Newgate. So here's one of these men that didn't make his and his fate just.
- [40:52]
A
Included in those tiny little brackets as an aside.
- [40:54]
B
So he was one of them. He, he's another Gabriel Lawrence. He's taken up. I could be telling his history, but he's died. So I'm. Yeah, carried me to the house of Margaret Clapp and there I first became acquainted with the prisoner. He's talking about Gabriel Lawrence. Now, Newton testified that he had first met Lawrence at claps on the 20th of July, 1725. And then he goes on, I was conducted up one pair of stairs and by the persuasions of Babbage, who was present all the time, I suffered the prisoner to commit the said crime. Now, this is key to understanding Newton because the next thing he says is, I, I have reformed my ways. I will never do this again. I know I was wrong, but you have to believe me because Lawrence has not. And he then goes on to give the actual details. He says he and one Daniel have attempted the same since that time, but I refused. Though they bust, which means kissed me and stroked me over the face and said I was a very pretty fellow. So he's looking for, he's looking for compliments here. He's like, I am actually a bit of a ride.
- [41:58]
A
They said I was stunningly fit and gorgeous, but you know, I'm just above that. I didn't go, can you imagine if he wasn't?
- [42:05]
B
And if he's on the stand saying these things and everyone's looking at him going, really? So he must be actually, he must.
- [42:11]
A
Have been for people to believe him. Yeah, exactly. That's so, so interesting. Okay. I mean, from everything you said, now I don't trust Newton at all, clearly. Even though I love how he's like, I suffered to commit this performance.
- [42:26]
B
Right?
- [42:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. But he's like, you know, oh, it was so terrible for me, but I still did it.
- [42:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I never do it again.
- [42:32]
A
I never do it again. But I did do that one.
- [42:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, just once. And now look at him. Oh, well, poor me.
- [42:55]
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- [43:57]
B
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A
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- [44:45]
A
Was part of the raid. Got it.
- [44:46]
B
And he spoke as follows. He said Mrs. Clapp's house was notorious for being a molly house house. In order to detect some that frequented it. I have been there several times.
- [44:57]
A
All right, Samuel.
- [44:59]
B
Yeah. And seen 20 or 30 of them together making love, as they called it, in a very indecent manner. Then they used to go out by pairs into another room and at their return they would tell what they had been doing together, which they call marrying.
- [45:14]
A
Oh my God. Okay. I have so many questions. First of all, making love, as they called it, good for them.
- [45:20]
B
Yeah.
- [45:21]
A
What's this about marrying?
- [45:23]
B
This is something. So I was flabbergasted by this and we've kind of known about it. But when I did the course of the whole book, marriage talk among same sex attractive people and gender non conforming people in the 18th century is all over the shot. And bear in mind this is before 1753.
- [45:39]
A
People measure relationships, right. That's just built into society in a way that it's not now necessarily.
- [45:44]
B
And they are not. Marriage is not regulated. Before 1753, people are living in common law marriages. People can go and have their friends do as ceremony or whatever as well.
- [45:52]
A
As people in same sex relationships. So you can just be like, we're married now.
- [45:55]
B
We're married now. Yeah. And that can kind of stand up in court? To a certain extent, yes.
- [45:58]
A
Yeah.
- [45:58]
B
And so we see that the Mollies are doing this too, to a certain. Now, people used to think that marrying meant having sex, but here, as much as we can trust Samuel Stevens testimony, I think in this case we can. He's making a distinction between when they go and have sex and when they go and have this marriage ceremony.
- [46:13]
A
Yeah. He's saying these are two different events that happen now. Are they understanding this marriage as performative and it exists within the Molly House and the kind of the sociability of that, or is this people actually cementing their relationships and these will exist in their minds at least outside of that space? And two. Is this two men as men as they have to exist outside of the Smalley house marrying each other? Or is this going back to what Ned Ward was saying, this performance of femininity. Is this a performance of a heterosexual marriage where someone is playing the bride.
- [46:52]
B
In a. I think they're really good questions. I'll answer the second one first. We don't know when you see these things. I've seen it once depicted on screen marriages in Molly houses and one person is dressed as a bride and one person is more masculine presenting.
- [47:05]
A
Interesting.
- [47:06]
B
We have no archival evidence that that was the case, so we don't know whether somebody assumed that gender performance just for the sake of it. We really don't know in terms of whether or not these were seen as actual unions beyond the Molly house. We know for certain that two men that got married also lived at the Molly house together. So that they were living together at Mother Cloughs at the time of the raid. We don't know if they were taken up. We don't think they were because their names just aren't known. So we feel like if they had been taken up, their names would be known.
- [47:35]
A
Yeah.
- [47:36]
B
So they were living together and had gone through a marriage process for other people. I would hazard a guess, because we don't know for sure, but I would hazard a guess that they felt that they were married within their community, but they may have had a wife at home. Home and bigamy happened in the 18th century like that because of the nature of marriage. It was one of the reasons they needed to regulate in 1753 is just because people had multiple marriages going on. So it was certainly acknowledged within this proto queer community and probably, as you say, they took it beyond that, but not necessarily were they forming households at this social level, though? Some were, we know some were because they were living at the Molly House together. And we know that we have that in the record.
- [48:18]
A
Wow. There's so much variety here and so much, so much of human nature. It's not just one box fits all. There's. There's so much diversity in terms of people making commitments, in terms of the way people are having sex, in terms of the way people are meeting in these Molly houses, what they're using them for. Is it a domestic space? Is it a brothel? Is it just a sociable meeting place? It can be all of these things to all people on different visitors. It.
- [48:41]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what we've been missing about Molly houses. People think Molly houses were a place that men who had sex with men went to have sex.
- [48:48]
A
Yeah, it is. There's so much more than gay ruffles, basically.
- [48:52]
B
So much more than that. We actually don't even know for sure that people are being paid for sex at Molly houses. We know sex workers are frequenting them, but we don't know if they're necessarily conducting their business there. I think they probably are. It is varied. There is a lot going on. Molly houses are also domestic spaces. Molly houses are places of just friendship and camaraderie. These are important sites for these gender non conforming men at the time. Just to say that after Stevens has given his testimony, Joseph Sellers, who was his accomplice, gets up and confirms everything he said. And then the judge turns to Gabriel Lawrence. This is when we get Lawrence's testimony. He doesn't talk for very long himself. What he does is he calls witnesses, but he does give this. He acknowledges that he had been several times to collapse house, but never knew that it was a rendezvous for such persons. Which is kind of sad. Right? Because you, you. What else is he going to say? Yeah, I have sex with men? No, he's not gonna say that like.
- [49:44]
A
But it's so sad that faced with the gallows, he has to say this in order to try and save him. Of course, he still can't be his authentic self in this situation.
- [49:52]
B
No, no, no, no. And. And wouldn't even have understood the concept of what that meant. You know what I mean? This. He lives in a world where his life is at risk. So that authenticity is something that's sitting uncomfortably.
- [50:04]
A
It's not an option for him.
- [50:05]
B
Exactly. So he calls numerous witnesses. He calls his father in law who says, no, this man had a child with my daughter. She's 13. He couldn't be doing this. So they, these two things can't live side by side. So the fact that you'll see. We talked about this exchange of defenses. You'll see so often that they use. I'm married with a child. I can't. This can't be true of me because of that. So they're playing up that kind of binary mindset that's so interesting.
- [50:34]
A
I'm working on someone at the moment who was mentally ill and committed a crime. And all of the witnesses called in his defense are like, he goes to church on a Sunday, he can't be mad. Or he has a child, he can't be mad. He has a wife, he goes to work, he turns up for work.
- [50:46]
B
You are normal in a.
- [50:48]
A
On a regular basis. He's not mad. Yeah. So that absolutely chimes with what it's saying. Okay, give me the verdict.
- [50:56]
B
The, the verdict. After all of this, the, you know, the brother in law comes and said, I've shared beds with him, which is not unusual in the 18th century. He never tried anything on with me, which I always, always think is a really funny defense thing. But it comes up again. I get. That's like, yeah, like, how has he managed to not turn on me Anyway? His neighbor, one woman, she comes in and she says, I would never have let. He comes to my house all the time and I would never have let him come past the. If I thought for a second this was him. And it's just, you know, Karen. Yeah. And it's just like, you know, they're, they're providing this defense, but, you know, anyway, it doesn't work because the jury deliberates and they deliver their verdict in two words. Guilty, Death. That's it.
- [51:35]
A
To the point.
- [51:36]
B
That's what's recorded.
- [51:37]
A
Wow. So poor Gabriel Lawrence has to go to the gallows.
- [51:41]
B
He's going to the gallows. And he does so on Thursday 9th May, 1726. This was a particularly busy hanging day. There is a thought that up to 100,000 people attended this hanging.
- [51:55]
A
Wow. I mean, that is, that's significant even for this period when, you know, hanging day was a good old romp. And people would, you know, the bell would be ringing outside of the church opposite Newgate and the Old Bailey and the procession would start and all of that. And you know, people really love this festival atmosphere. But a hundred thousand is a lot. Tell me this, on this particular day, is it just so called sodomites who are being hanged?
- [52:18]
B
No, there are at least two sodomites, maybe more, but at least two. But there's also a very notorious murderess who has had two of her lovers Decapitate her husband. So this is, you know, these are. These are high profile, so no wonder there's so many. And they've come to see the sodomites because these. Both of these trials have been in the paper and it just so happens that they're being hanged on the same day.
- [52:41]
A
And that's quite interesting day, actually, in terms of. Of people behaving outside the norms of their expected gender and sexuality. A murderess and two sodomites.
- [52:54]
B
And like, obviously all of these hangings are to enforce control, but these, as you are saying, are very closely linked to the control of gender and sexuality. And going. You step back in place. Do not step out of that line.
- [53:07]
A
These people have all done some weird stuff and not done what they were meant to be doing. Let's go and watch them get hanged.
- [53:12]
B
So we know we have this, as you said, festival atmosphere on the route. They're heading towards Tyburn, which I actually didn't necessarily. I hadn't cottoned onto this before. I was researching this book, but Tyburn is where Marble Arch is now, so I didn't.
- [53:25]
A
We did a whole episode on Tyburn. Yeah, we did.
- [53:27]
B
We know.
- [53:29]
A
It was like.
- [53:30]
B
I'd already done the book by then.
- [53:32]
A
Right. That was your episode.
- [53:33]
B
And you confidently, well, no, I'd already done the book by then, so hopefully. No, I had. I had done the book. So I knew that I must have known for that episode. I just can't remember doing the episode. But they're all heading towards Marble Arts, you know, this can take hours, by the way. And there are young girls throwing flowers. This is all arranged, it's all part of the performance.
- [53:50]
A
And the prisoners are stopping to drink alcohol along the way. People bring them out beers and brandy and whatever else from different public houses. Right. Like, this is a whole festival.
- [53:58]
B
Oh, I remember the episode now because we talked about this as well. Yeah. And we talked about this idea of there being seating around the scaffolding that people could pay to sit and watch the people anyway, because there was 100,000 people that day. People are shoving, they're. They're there. There's a lot of crush going on and they ram into the scaffold. Scaffolding starts to fall apart, it comes down, it hits people on the head. So the bystanders are injured. So then the whole thing has to be stopped. Can you imagine? Like, it's painful enough. Yeah. Then the scaffolding has to be repaired before they are brought up to. To actually be hanged. So, I mean, as if it's. It wasn't bad enough this was happening, but anyway, eventually Lawrence is moved on his horse drawn cart beneath the gallows and he delivers his final words. They are recorded, but I'm not even going to bother sharing them with you here. You can look them up online because they are not real. They're as so often as the case in the, in the recorded version, he admits to being a sodomite. He says he has a wayward life, he. But we know it's not real because it gets so many biographical details wrong. They say he's of Church of England and we know he's a Catholic, which by the way is also interesting because of the links between Catholicism and so sodomy. And we do know that he did, as they all did, publicly forgive the hangman, who was Richard Arnett on the day.
- [55:15]
A
And, and that was standard, wasn't it?
- [55:18]
B
That's why we know.
- [55:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [55:19]
B
It was part of the procedure, the performance of a hanging.
- [55:22]
A
You say your prayers, you say I forgive you to the hangman and then you go off to me maker.
- [55:26]
B
Doubtless I would say he denied that he was a sodomite and that he begged forgiveness for his other sins before he died, basically. And he will have been assigned the ordinary of Newgate, of course, who will have helped him with that in the journey where they will have been praying, they will have been trying to save his soul. But after all that is done, the cart moves away and Gabriel Lawrence drops downwards and he is then violently caught by the rope and suspended above the ground. And that is the end of Gabriel Lawrence. So that is not one of the more upbeat histories in the book. I really have tried.
- [56:01]
A
You have really set the tone here.
- [56:02]
B
Good morning Everybody and welcome Dr. Dark. I, I've tried to zone in on joy in the book as much as possible.
- [56:09]
A
You have to set out what the stakes are and what people have to lose. And this, it's their life.
- [56:13]
B
And that's why it's the opening chapters, because you need to know in all of these histories, I think that life is at stake here, especially for same sex attracted men. Exclusively for same sex attracted men. So that is Gabriel Lawrence's history as we know it. But it's not the only part of his history because he was part of this community, he was loved. He had sex with these men or some of these men. He had a child, he had a brilliant set of friends and neighbors.
- [56:40]
A
He had that home life as well with a wife and child that we, we don't know any more details about. And it could have Been that that worked very well with what he did in the Molly house. We don't know that he kept those parts of himself secret, actually.
- [56:52]
B
And he may not have gone to the Molly house until after his wife died. I mean, you know, one of those things to remember is the history of bisexuality, which so easily gets overlooked, where it's like, oh, well, you're gay or you're straight and that's it. But no, I mean, people are bisexual, so.
- [57:03]
A
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we'll never know with. In Gabriel's case because we don't have his words in terms of what he would actually say to us today. We don't have that access to that information. That's so interesting. Wow. What a sad.
- [57:17]
B
It is. Well, that's. I was just about to say it is so sad.
- [57:20]
A
Yeah.
- [57:21]
B
But I think if we can come away from this thinking about what would have been in the Molly house before happened.
- [57:27]
A
Yeah. And I think that people made their own lives, that they shaped them how they wanted. And for a short while, unless you were caught and punished by the law, you could exist in your own parameters. To a certain extent. Yes. It had to be secret. It had to be, you know, moving around at night, going to the Molly House. It's not that people were free to live these lives out loud in the open, but to a certain extent, you could find joy. You could tailor, make your own life.
- [57:55]
B
Absolutely. Joy is there. It's written large in the archive. And even. And you have to remember it must have been grey crack, because these archives are to try and damn these people. These archives are telling us. Don't you ever do. Sounds like great crack to me. Until they get raided. Like, they're in there together, they're having fun. They're having these maiden names. You know, this is a real thing of belonging and, you know, an imagination.
- [58:18]
A
It's a place where you can imagine different possibilities for yourself.
- [58:22]
B
Yeah. And. And live it actually in some of the cases. And one of the things I want to point out as well, which I really like is Margaret Clap, as I said at the beginning of the episode, was known as Mother Clap. And she was known as Mother Clap because she stood up for these men. She would give testimony if. If anybody was suspected, she would come to their defense and be like, no, actually, he's a very nice man. And the. This idea of a straight woman being an ally, being known as Mother.
- [58:47]
A
Yeah. Emotional.
- [58:49]
B
But like, that's. We. We call, you know, all the pop stars, the people there, like, oh, she's Mother. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [58:54]
A
And so Margaret was mothering.
- [58:55]
B
I think this is a legacy. I think that is. That is a link the whole way up. So whoever one calls mother, Margaret Clapp was mother to.
- [59:04]
A
She's the OG Mother.
- [59:05]
B
But the good thing about Margaret, she was arrested, too. Remember? She went to Newgate, too. She had a trial, too. She was put in stocks, which is violent, by the way. So around Spitalfields, she was pelted. She fainted three times.
- [59:21]
A
Yeah. And people used to throw. Yes. Rotten vegetables, but also shit off. Literal shit off the street. Dead animals.
- [59:28]
B
And people died in stocks.
- [59:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. You could get clobbered by, like, a dead dog or something and break your neck in stocks.
- [59:33]
B
This is not getting off lightly.
- [59:34]
A
Yeah, yeah. And people can obviously come up to you and touch you and do all sorts of things. And if you're a woman in the stocks in particular, you are open to all kinds of violations while you're stuck there.
- [59:42]
B
And for somebody like Margaret, who I imagine as really robust, you know, strong woman, to be fainting three times, quite dignified. She set up a business. She's a businesswoman in a world that doesn't want her to be a businesswoman.
- [59:53]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [59:54]
B
But we do not know what happens after she's released from the stocks and she goes back into the world. So we don't know if she lives. We don't know if she goes back to Newgate. We don't know if she continues with the Molly House. I take some hope in the not knowing. I think Margaret Clapp is crafty enough that the fact. We don't know what happens. We don't have a trail for her.
- [60:17]
A
She carried on.
- [60:18]
B
She. She's gone somewhere. She's doing something else.
- [60:20]
A
She's still being an ally somewhere else in a different part of London.
- [60:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, I. I think so. I think we would know if someone like Margaret Clap. If they'd managed to obliterate her. I think she. She. You know, and this is why I want to make that period drama. So that's. That's. That's something I.
- [60:36]
A
Make you pitch, babe.
- [60:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's. It's just, you know, these are. These are such important histories. They don't appear on screen in the same way as, you know, we've had how many. Austin's more to come, and I'll watch them and it's great, but come on, let's do this.
- [60:50]
A
Yeah, exactly. And this. This is, you know, as much as we all love a good Austen, and I know this is The I'll be watching Jack low century.
- [60:58]
B
Oh, 100%.
- [61:00]
A
I'll be watching that and enjoying it, my friend. But that world of politeness and pastel colors, as I always say, how we perceive that world, this was the stuff going on in the same cities that Austin is. You know, I appreciate this is almost a hundred years apart, but in this world, this long 18th century world, this is going on. This is the reality of how some people were living and probably how we.
- [61:21]
B
Would have been living.
- [61:21]
A
Exactly.
- [61:22]
B
Cause I'm not gonna be in a stately home, am I? I'm going to be selling oranges in Covent Garden. Probably.
- [61:27]
A
You absolutely are. What was she called? Orange Deb.
- [61:29]
B
Orange Deb.
- [61:29]
A
Orange Deb. There you go. Where can people buy a book, please?
- [61:34]
B
Ah, in all good retail shops. It's out on the 4th of September or the 7th of October if you're in North America where it's called Queer Enlightenments. Just so people don't get confused with the state of Georgia and Georgians there. That's why that's called that. It's also available on audiobook. I am starting to feel sick cuz the book's going out. Oh my God.
- [61:54]
A
Thank you so much to everyone listening along to this episode. There is going to be another episode coming from Anthony's book. So if you've enjoyed this, there is more and we encourage you to listen to that. We love to hear from you about ideas for future shows. So if you have a suggestion about queer histories or anything else, you can get in touch at after dark@historyhit.com that's after dark@historyhit.com.
- [62:44]
B
And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu.
- [62:52]
A
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- [63:00]
B
We say that may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [63:12]
E
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