#I know it's a long quote but it's sooooo interesting and dispels so many myths that get circulated on this hellsite

[nellygwyn]

The Georgian period in London saw the development of modern gay sexuality. Men and women identified themselves as homosexual and succeeded, to varying degrees, in establishing a network of friends, acquaintances, locations, and establishments which served their sexual needs. The 'typical homosexual of the 18th century was a respectable tradesman rather than a fashionable libertine,' and the vast majority of people who lived gay lives in London were ordinary men and women. The Buggery Act, as it was known, had been passed in 1533 by Henry VIII, making the 'detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind or beast' punishable by hanging. It was, however, rarely brought to court. After the Restoration, literature on the act of sodomy proliferated, largely due to licentious poetry by the new breed of libertines, such as John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. 'Sodomy' became taboo - the act of the debauched and diseased - and just as there were groups which protested against the low morals of theatres and alcohol, the Society for the Reformation of Manners was established in 1690. The group went around forcibly shutting pubs, taverns and coffee shops on Sundays. By 1701, there were almost twenty spin-off societies in London. They set up a network of busybodies known as Reforming Constables, for in each ward of the City, and two in each parish outside. It was their responsibility to act as hubs of knowledge, finding out information about those who offended decency and keeping a tally of evidence. These 'sly reforming hirelings' rose to have a quasi-legal power within the community, and it behoved everyone to keep on their right side. Their first victim was Sea Captain Edward Rigby in 1698, who had picked up a young man at the fireworks on Bonfire Night and was later entrapped by the boy and members of the Society. Rigby was sentenced to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross and Temple Bar. He also had to pay a fine of £1000 and spend a year in prison, but he was not executed. By the early 18th century, the Society was actively targeting gay cruising grounds. In 1707, in a ten-day campaign, they succeeded in arresting over forty men suspected of being active sodomites. The fear of accusation created a brisk trade of blackmailers, who ingratiated themselves with their targets before informing them that they would report them to the Society if they did not pay up. At the same time, molly houses at become a fixture of the London male gay scene. They were essentially pubs or taverns catering for gay clientele, rather than gay brothels, though sex often took place on the premises. During the 1720s, there were at least twenty active molly houses in London. In February 1726, on a Sunday evening, the constables gathered for a raid on the molly house of one Margaret, or 'Mother Clap,' in Field Lane, Holborn. Margaret Clap was married to John Clap, who ran a nearby pub but rarely visited her coffee house. In many rooms of the coffee house were beds for the use of the clientele, at a price, although they all made use of the large central room for drinking and dancing to fiddle music. There was also a 'marrying room' where men could be 'blessed' before having sex. In the early hours of the Monday morning, forty homosexual men were arrested, taken to Newgate and held for trial. Significantly, none were discovered having sex, although some were found in a state of undress. For those arrested, there were fines imprisonments, time to be spent in the pillory and three hangings. The raid on Mother Clap's house was prompted by a customer-turned-informer, Mark Partridge, who had fallen out with his lover and who decided to take the Society on a tour of London's molly houses. The prosecutions themselves were facilitated by a thirty-year old prostitute named Thomas Newton. Newton decided to visit Mother Clap in gaol to pay her bail. There he was apprehended by two constables who coerced him into becoming an informer. It appears there were few corners of gay London Newton was not familiar with, and he was very effective for the society, particularly when used as a familiar face to entrap men cruising in Moorfields, along 'Sodomites' Walk:' 'I was no stranger to the Methods they used in picking one another up. So I takes a Turn that way, and leans over the wall. In a little time, a Gentleman passes by, and looks hard at me, and at a small distance from me, stands up against the Wall as if he was going to make Water. Then by Degrees, he sidles nearer and nearer to where I stood, till at last he comes close to me - "T'is a very fine night," says he. "Aye" says I, "and so it is." Then he takes me by the Hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little (to which I showed no dislike), he conveys it to his Breeches, and puts his Privities into it. I took fast hold, and call'd out to Willis and Stevenson, who coming up to by Assistance, we carried him to the Watch house' William Brown, the married man apprehended by his penis, was indignant at being arrested and responded to questioning with 'I did it because I thought I knew him, and I think there is no Crime in making what use I please with my own body!' His defence echoed the words of the philosopher John Locke, who posited that: 'Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man had a property in his own person: this no body has right to but himself.' Despite Brown's high-minded assertion of his right to use his own body as he wished, he was sentenced to stand in the pillory where he was pelted with rotten eggs, dead cats and turnip tops.

Georgian London: Into the Streets // Lucy Inglis

on “gay London” (mostly situated in Holborn)  in the early 18th century, and the moral societies that attempted to, unsuccessfully, quash it.