1700 - 1749
1700 Love Makes a Man: or, The Fop’s Fortune by Colly Cibber contains a character who says: “I
love to kiss a man…In Paris, we kiss nothing else.”
The Constant Couple by George Farquhar is a success, especially Peg Woffington playing the
male character Harry Wildair.
Ottoman prisoners of war to be returned from Vienna were thought to have included several
handsome German youths, who had been induced to go with the senior official Ibrahim
Pasha.
Before this date in Denmark & Norway only 5 trials for sodomy are recorded. In Sweden there
were 4, and in Scotland only 2.
In Brussels & the surrounding areas there were only 7 convictions for sodomy in the previous
century.
In 6 large cities of S.Netherlands in the preceding 300 years 181 sodomy trials were held. 305
individuals were convicted, and of those 234 were executed.
In France in the preceding 160 years the Parlement dealt with 131 men convicted of sodomy.
This is the year according to Randolph Trumbach that a shift in same-sex behaviour occurred.
After this date these men wanted sex entirely with males. However, there had been
changes before then, but this was the date chosen for the shift.
c.1700 The London Spy by Ned Ward contains the first known reference to “Mollies Clubs.”
1701 A Parisian police report mentions missing 17-18 year-old boys being seduced by an Irishman,
who had sold them on to the sieur de la Guillaumie.
Summer. The English Post reported on “a woman, in the habit of a man, was lately seized at
Soho in the act of coining & was sent to Newgate.”
Phillipe, duc d’Orleans dies, and his widow burns all his letters from the boys.
1702 The pamphlet appears: The Sodomites’ Shame and Doom: Laid Before Them with Great Grief &
Compassion by a Minister of the Church of England. There is no compassion and the
punishment was hanging.
Aaron Hill prevents a 14-year-old being sodomised by a middle-aged Turkish man by
threatening him with a gun.
A Parisian police report described a male prostitute (25-6) as having an attractive face, and
inviting numerous men to his lodgings for sex, which he had been performing for many
years.
Again, in Paris, Lebel (24), a good-looking young man was seen in an area which was
frequented by many men. He admitted to being debauched at the age of 10. He named
6 clergymen & 5 others who had been seducing and selling youths.
In The Hague a male prostitute/blackmailer was tried. He gave away many of the signs used by
sodomites to recognise each other.
The ‘Mard Brothers’ performed a ‘Night Piece’ in which a “counterfeit male lady is delivered at
last of her 2 puppets, Harlequin & Scaramouch.”
1703 Tunbridge-Walks by Thomas Baker is staged. The play contains a critique of an effeminate
man, called Mr Maiden.
A Lisbon shoemaker masturbated a youth (17) before preparing to penetrate him.
A Parisian police report mentioned a man who had been involved in sodomy since a youth and
that he was a male prostitute.
A supposed autobiography of Geneviève Prémoy, who lived her life disguised as a man appears
with the title: Histoire de la Dragone: contenant les actions de Geneviève Prémoy.
London Spy described an event at the Royal Exchange, which occurred to a group of tourists,
they: “jostled in amongst a parcel of swarthy buggerantoes, preternatural fornicators, as
my friend called them, who would ogle a handsome young man with as much lust as a
true-bred English whoremaster would gaze upon a beautiful woman. Ned Ward in the
same publication argued those “in the black-school of sodomy are call’d by learned
students in the science of debauchery, flogging-cullies.”
A satiticial squib was circulating about James Stanhope, the future Earl Stanhope. He was one
“Who thinks no pleasure like Italian joy / And to a Venus arms prefers a pathic boy.”
1703-10 Naval prosecutions for sodomy increased to 12 cases in this period, with 6 death sentences.
1704 15 June. Prussian Soldiers, Ludwig LeGros & Martin Schultze are executed for having sex with
each other.
A Parisian man (30) acted as a pimp, when he could no longer attract older men to pay himself
for sex. Thereby admitting he had been a male prostitute. [see 1702].
Abigail Masham, through her cousin, Sarah Churchill, obtains a place at Queen Anne’s court. She soon becomes the Queen’s favourite, replacing Sarah Churchill in the queen’s
affections.
John Norton took hold of John Coyney’s privates “putting them into his mouth and sucking
them.”
1705 June. Gian Gastone de’ Medici meets and falls for Giuliano Dami, who becomes his lover,
servant and pimp.
Julie D’Aubigny’s lover, Madame la Marquise de Florensac, dies. D’Aubigny gives up
her opera career as La Maupin, and retires to a covent, where she dies 2 years later.
Duc de Vendôme defeats Prince Eugène of Savoy at Cassano. Vendôme retained his status as
Louis XIV’s finest general despite being a notorious passive sexual partner.
1706 James Ball, quartermaster of the Swallow, was given the death penalty for forcibly buggering a
minor (13).
Catherine Walsh served in male disguise with the Royal North British Dragoons or Scot Greys
& was wounded at the Battle of Ramillies. She was known as ‘the Chelsea Amazon.’
c.1706 Gian Gastone de’ Medici (35) is struck by the beauty of a groom, Giuliano Dami (23), & he
becomes his page and lover. Dami stays with him for 16 years.
1707The Lady’s Last Stake by Colly Cibber has Sir George Brilliant saying: “Kiss and kiss again, my
dear…By Ganymede here’s nectar on thy lips. O the pleasure of a friend to tell the joy.”
A pamphlet, The He-Stumpets: A Satire on the Sodomite Club by John Dunton is issued, boasting
40 arrests and 3 suicides. It was remarked that some “doat on Men, and some on Boys.”
Gonosologium Novum by surgeon John Marten makes some generalisations about penis sizes: “in
short men it is generally observed to be longer than in tall men. In half-witted people it
is generally pretty large, the length of the largest being commonly, when erected, nine
inches long, and four inches in circumference.”
Cardinal Pamphili (50+) fell in love with George Handel (22) and wrote a love poem to him.
Handel set the poem to music to make the oratorio, Il trionfo del tempo.
A monk from Vicenza had denied that sodomy was a sin, but a natural act done for natural
pleasure.
William Huggins, a porter at the Royal Exchange, accosted Richard Hemmings & Thomas Jones
offering to put his hand in their breeches at the same time as exposing his penis. 6 days
later Thomas Lane, a soldier accosted Richard Hemmings & Samuel Baker on London
Bridge, exposing his penis and offering to place it in Hemmings’ hand. Hemmings was
an agent provocateur for the Society for the Reformation of Morals.
Daniel Defore said sodomy cases should be dealt with secretly & privately.
1708The Rival Duchess or the Court Incendiary by Arthur Maynwaring has Abigail Masham admitting
to “having too great a regard for my own sex.”
The New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley describes a cabal of sapphic lovers, mentions rites and
“unaccountable intimacies.”
Gian Gastone de’ Medici abandons his wife and returns to Florence with his page-boy lover,
Giuliano Dami.
February. William Hollis asked for directions from Skelthorp, who promptly said he was a
sodomite and tried to steal his rings, but was prevented by locals who heard Hollis’ cries
for help. Skelthorp was an experienced blackmailer who had done this many times
before.
1709A Treatise of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease, in Both Sexes by John Marten
revealed that the ‘distemper’ may be contracted by “a man’s putting his erected penis
into another person’s (man or woman’s) mouth using friction etc between the lips.”
A Complete & Humorous Account of the Remarkable Clubs & Societies in the Cities of London &
Westminster by Ned Ward. An exposé of the molly house culture.
September. The Female Tatler brought attention to “the young lady in the parish of St Laurence,
near Guildhall, that lately went to the coffee-houses in man’s clothes with the two
‘prentices, called for a fish of Bohee [tea], smoked her pipe, and gave herself abundance
of straddling masculine airs.”
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, celebrated polymath, picks up Pietro Trapassi (11), teaches him Latin &
Greek, develops his poetic and dramatic talents, makes him his catamite, and changes
his name to ‘Metastasio’.
Aaron Hill noted after 4 years in the Ottoman Empire that pashas were attended by their catamites
and splendid numbers of young male prostitutes.
In London a broadside published details of 8 men recently convicted for sodomy. [see 1707]. It
claimed that there were some sodomitical gangs. A soldier’s evidence led to 9 men being
arrested, some at a brandy-shop in Jermyn Street. Among them was a foot-boy to the
Duke of Ormonde.
Young men employed in Ludgate Hill shops were well-known for their effeminacy.
1710Mary Kendall & Lady Catharine Jones are buried together in the chapel of St John the Baptist in
Westminster, so that even their ashes, after death, might not be divided.
In Utrecht a man years later confessed to belonging to a society were mutual masturbation was
practiced once a week.
Marriage of Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme, despite being notorious as a same-sex lover.
1711Joseph Addison wrote of a young man who is “a wonderful critic in cambric and muslins, and will
talk an hour together upon a sweet-meant.” Addison himself was called an
hermaphrodite by Alexander Pope.
1713In Sweden a man found guilty of attempted sodomy was flogged in secret. He was secretly
acquitted of sodomy & punished with 3 years’ hard labour.
In Japan the first anthology of same-sex erotic literature was published.
1714 In Sweden over several years a dragoon & a corporal had sexual relations.
In Amsterdam a blackmailer revealed details of the sodomitical cruising grounds in Amsterdam,
Rotterdam and The Hague.
Dudley Rider confides to his diary that it was: “dangerous sending a young man that is beautiful
to Oxford…sodomy is very usual and the master of one college has several handsome
young men that way.”
1715-16 Dirk van Wanrooij (14-15) was sodomized several times by a schoolmaster didn’t complain to
his parents, as he hadn’t realised there was anything wrong with it.
1716 Hagakure by Yamamoto Jocho. “Same-sex pleasure must never be pursued at the same time as
pleasure with women.”
A Gloucestershire farmer sodomized a young agricultural worker. Locals held a “Mock
Groaning”. The sodomized youth was dressed in female clothes & paraded outside the
farm-house, where he “gave birth to a straw baby”.
Alexander Pope writes: “The fops are painted butterflies,/That flutter for a day;/First from a
worm they take their riser,/And in a worm decay.”
1717In Rotterdam a man was arrested for soliciting in a latrine. It was so dark he couldn’t tell if the
object of his attentions was a youth or an adult.
Vittore Ghislandi is elected to the Milan academy – he obsessively painted his favourite disciple
from 10 to young adulthood.
1718A Treatise of Hermaphrodites by Giles Jacob mainly focussed on female examples. Theodora &
Amaryllis are involved with each other using an instrument for added pleasure.
Memoirs [in Latin] by Pierre-Daniel Huet – one of Huet’s Jesuit tutors became deeply infatuated
with him, to the point of illness. His proclivity for older man was obvious.
In N. Carolina 2 brothers falsely accused a citizen of attempting to sodomise them.
Eunuchism Display’d is published by the pornographer Edmund Curll. Some of his future
publications sometimes described male bodies with topographical metaphors.
A watchman catches 2 men having sex against the railings of Covent Garden Church. John
Bowes claimed he had the right to do what he wanted with his own body.
1719In Sweden 17 soldiers & a servant complained about Captain Johan von Hoen who attempted
mutual masturbation & interfemoral sex. The case was kept confidential and he was
banished, by way of a foreign ship, so news of his crime was concealed.
In the previous 50 years there were c.100 sodomy cases in the Zurich area.
1720Sarah Ketson in the guise of John, attempted to cheat Ann Hutchinson into marriage.
1721The Conspirators: or, The Case of Caitline by ‘Britannicus’ was published. ‘Britannicus’ was
Thomas Gordon, the amanuensis of John Trenchard, a political writer. It included a
barely disguised dedication to Charles Spencer, the Earl of Sutherland, Catiline “married
several times, but chiefly as people suspected for the convenience of strengthening
himself by Alliances with Great Men, rather than out of affection for the Ladies…some
of his Ganymedes were pampered and supported at a high Rate at his Expense.”
Catharina Linck & Catharina Mühlhahn are put on trial in Halberstatdt, Germany for living as
man and wife. Linck wore a fake penis & testicles, and dressed as a man. Linck was
beheaded & Mühlhahn was imprisoned for 3 years, and then banished.
At the Old Bailey Nicholas Leader testified that George Duffus had made a sexual assault on him.
Duffus escaped a sodomy conviction because he emitted in his own hand not in
Leader’s person.
November. John Law receives a royal pardon for murdering ‘Beau’ Wilson [1694].
1722In Macareta (E.Italy) 3 Carmelite friars coerced a boy to have sex with them, by saying Christ
approved of sodomy. The allusion is to a sodomitical club, catering to higher ministers &
courtiers, some of whom are supposed to have dressed as women. The whole thing may
have been fictitious.
A robbery victim just off the Mall was informed that if he cried out that the thief would claim that
the victim had been making sodomitical advances.
April. John Meeson, delivery boy was accosted by John Dicks, and in a private room in an inn
kissed him, put his hand in his breeches & placed Meeson’s hand in his breeches. He
then undressed the semi-conscious boy & sodomized him. The delivery boy was
unconscious, so couldn’t be certain he’d actually been sodomized, so Dicks couldn’t be
hanged for sodomy.
Zacharias Wilsma (15) was invited by a servant (18) to bugger him. [see 1830].
31 July. The young duc de Boufflers attempted to sodomise the Marquis de Rambure, but could
not manage the task, so his brother-in-law, the Marquis d’Alincourt completed the job.
Rambure made no attempt to stop the attempts. This was recorded with disapproval, but
not outrage, by Mathieu Marais. In all 6 aristocrats were involved close to Versailles.
They were exiled back to their estates, but one was sent to the Bastille.
1723 March. Nicholas Burgess (15) was accosted in Wood St by Charles Banner who trapped him by
a gate & placed his hands in the boy’s breeches. Burgess refused to go to a pub with
him. The following night the boy returned with his father and 2 men, and the attacker
was taken. Charles Banner kept a school in Smithfield.
October. A married man (35) said he did not like women at all, and he knew several young men
who were of his persuasion. In the same month a lace merchant went to a cabaret with a
page, and had sex with the page and a waiter. Dupuis also claimed that he had recently
buggered the duc de Richelieu 3 times, earning himself 3 gold louis. In September a
soldier said he would perform any act for money.
In History of his Own Time by Bishop Burnet he said that “William [III] had no vice but of one
sort, in which he was very cautious & secret.”
Love-Letters Between a Certain Late Nobleman & the Famous Beau Wilson were published. The late nobleman was Charles Spencer, and Wilson was a handsome, vain army captain.
The letters have been claimed to be fictitious. [1693-4].
1724 April. In Paris Dupuis (24), a lackey offered a pinch of tobacco to a mouche & then exposed his
penis. A military officer told a mouche he wanted to bugger him, then 2 companions
held him down while he was buggered. In June Dupuis again said a week earlier that the
duc de Villars-Brancas had organized a meeting of 6 of the most strapping buggers in
Paris. All 6 sodomized the duc, and then the duc sodomized Dupuis. In July the abbé
Garaine asked a mouche if he preferred the active or passive role. July. A former lackey
(28) tried to procure a mouche to attend a dinner with the Marquis de Tressay the
following evening.
Abbé Desfontaines, journalist & translator, was imprisoned on accusations of sodomy. His
name was cleared with the assistance of Voltaire.
Louis XV (14) became enamoured of the Duc de la Trémoille. The latter was married off &
exiled.
Klaas Blank (19) was seen committing sodomy with Rijkhaart Jacobz (24) when they should
have been collecting seal blubber, but the sergeant in charge of Robben Island turned a
blind eye.
1725 February. In the Tuileries gardens a priest sits next to a mouche & immediately asks if he has an
erection. April. In the same place an infantry captain when caught claims this is his
first time, but he is aware of all the sodomites’ tricks. The following month in the same
place a man after pretending to urinate approaches a mouche saying he had an erection,
& asked if the mouche also had one. During February – April Paris police arrested 2
marquis, 2 comtes & a chevalier. The comte d’Autry told a boy (16) he would have sex
with him in his coach, in the mouth the following day & his backside the next.
Summer. Étienne-Benjamin Deschauffours (36), a fake nobleman was arrested. He routinely
kidnapped & drugged boys & youths – perhaps 200 in all. He sodomized them some-
times with accomplices and often sold them on to rich patrons. One boy even died from
a beating he gave him. A young Italian was castrated to see if that would make him
more compliant.
Voltaire attempts to obtain the release of the abbé Pierre-François-Guyot Desfointaines, who was
imprisoned for seducing adolescent boys. A cleric accuses Voltaire of the same
proclivity.
One boy talked to a priest, and was shocked to discover that sodomy was a grave sin and a serious
crime.
Several molly houses are under investigation in London by Constable Joseph Sellers & the known
sodomite Mark Partridge. An orange-monger nicknamed ‘Orange Deb’ propositioned
Sellers and made sexual advances. Deb was found guilty & put in the pillory.
Thomas Gray studies at Eton where he meets Horace Walpole, Richard West & Thomas Ashton
with whom they formed a Quadruple Alliance. Gray becomes particularly close to West
& Walpole.
c.1725Dirk van Wanrooij, a young Dutchman attested 5 years later about the activities in an English
molly house.
1726 February. Mother Clap’s molly house is raided in Holborn. 40 clients were arrested & 3
executed. The first to be prosecuted were William Griffin, an upholsterer, and Gabriel
Lawrence, a milkman. 3 aristocrats tried to prevent an execution of 1 individual, but the
Bishop of London ensured an execution took place.
William Brown is fined, sentenced to the pillory and two months in prison after being decoyed at
“The Sodomites Walk,” Moorfields, by a Thomas Newton (30) – a police agent
provocateur. Brown believed he should be allowed to use his own body as he wanted, a
libertarian sentiment more common 250 years in the future.
In Connecticut Rev. Stephen Gorton has attempted sodomy charges dropped. [see 1756].
April. George Whittle was indicted for committing sodomy with Edward Courtenay on 1
December 1725.
24 May. Étienne-Benjamin Deschauffours is burned at the stake.
November. Lord John Hervey (31) falls in love briefly first with Henry Fox (21).
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. In the final section Gulliver says: I expected every moment
that my master would accuse the Yahoos of those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so
common among us.”
Zacharias Wilsma (19) moved to Jacobus Backer’s [c50] quasi-brothel in The Hague.
A Parisian lawyer said that public punishments of sodomy would bring it to the attention of
groups, such as the common people, who were unaware of it.
1 October. Thomas Doulton was placed in the pillory for attempting to discover the “Windward
Passage” of a sailor he picked up, a Joseph Yates.
Lord John Hervey
1727January. Lord John Hervey on a health cure in Bath meets Stephen Fox (23), older brother of
Henry for the first time. They have a love affair which lasts more than a decade.
March. Hervey seriously ill, but Stephen Fox nurses him well.
Spring. Charles Hitchen, under-marshal for London, took a young man, Richard Williamson to
bed in the Talbot Inn. Williamson was unwilling, so he came back to spy on Hitchen
with a relative. They caught him in the act with another young man. He was placed in
the pillory, and despite being protected by a screen of carts & carriages by friends he
was so badly injured after 30 minutes, that he was consigned to Newgate. He did not
live very long afterwards.
In May, a servant (45) said his only inclination was for male-male sex.
1 June. Lord John Hervey (31) writes to Stephen Fox (23) a letter which implies that they may
have had rough and tumble intercourse, as Hervey’s limbs still bear the bruises of Fox’s
fingers.
June. The London Journal reported on York Horner & Robert Whale being placed in the pillory
for keeping a House of Entertainment for sodomites.
July. In Paris René Desprez (28), a maths teacher, made a sign with a handkerchief to a mouche to
follow him. In August the marquis de Grave offered the high sum of 2 gold louis to
sodomize the mouche.
20 September. The Rev. Robert Woodrow confides to his diary: “the abomination of sodomy is
too publick”…”the Earle of Sunderland was the first to set up houses for that vile sin,
and when this was like to break out, poisoned himself, to prevent the discovery.”
Katherine Bovey died, and her memorial in Westminster Abbey was erected by Mary Pope “who
lived with her near 40 years in perfect friendship.” It seems Bovey may have disguised
her true nature by leading on several bachelors and dropping them at the last minute.
1728 Prussia. Crown Prince Frederick (16) becomes intimate with his father’s page, Peter Keith (17).
January. Richard Smallbroke, Lord Bishop of St David’s, congratulates those who have purged
the streets of sodomites.
12 July. Hervey & Stephen Fox leave England for a Grand Tour and for Hervey’s health. They
are 6 weeks at the Ostend Spa, then Paris.
In October they leave for Italy.
4 November. They arrive in Turin.
29 December. They leave Turin for Naples.
Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy was an anonymous pamphlet. “When I see two ladies
kissing and slopping each other in a lascivious manner, and frequently repeating it, I am
shocked to the last degree.”
2 men previously pilloried together underwent a mock-wedding in a molly house.
9 men were arrested in Black Lion Yard, Whitechapel.
‘Two Kissing Girls of Spitalfields’ was a ballad of the time: “She kisses all, but Jenny is her dear, /
She feels her bubbies, and she bites her ear: / They to the garret or the cellar sneak, /
Play tricks, and put each other to the squeak.”
Montesquieu refers to sodomy as the “philosophical sin.”
c.1728While in England, Voltaire is supposed to have remarked: “Oh! Those damned Jesuits…buggar’d
me to such a degree that I shall never get over it as long as I live.” A joke?
17299 April. Hervey & Fox leave Naples for Rome. Early June. They leave Rome for Florence where
Hervey has an operation to remove a fistula from his chin.
August Hervey 7 Fox travel to Pisa. Followed by Genoa & Turin.
11 October. They leave Lyons for Paris. They meet Voltaire & visit Versailles.
25 October. They arrive back in England.
15 November. On their return from the Grand Tour, Hervey writes to Fox “I must see you soon; I
cannot live without You.”
9 December. They meet up again in Bath.
In Leiden in the previous 200 years only 2 male-male sex convictions took place.
In Cape Town 2 Indian slaves were sentenced to death for sodomy.
Stephen Fox, Lover of Lord John Hervey in later life
1730May. Isaac Broderick schoolmaster was accused of sodomising several pupils aged 10 & 11.
June. In Amsterdam judgement against 4 sodomites was announced from the town hall balcony,
and the bodies were on public display before being thrown in the river.
August. Hervey proposes to Fox that they should live together. He arranges that Lord Bateman
should lend his Windsor house to Fox, when Hervey is based at Windsor Castle. The
frequency of letters between the pair are at their height in September. They spend the
next two months together.
October. Gilbert Lawrence was hanged at Tyburn for sodomy on a 14-year-old apprentice.
Crown Prince Frederick (18) falls in love with Hans von Katte (24), a lieutenant. They planned to
escape Prussia for England or France with Peter Keith, but were caught. Keith escaped
to Holland. Frederick was forced to watch Katte’s execution on 6 November. He is
released from his prison cell on 18 November.
14 November. A lease for a house in Burlington Street is assigned to Stephen Fox, where he &
Hervey are able to share a house.
Mary East married James How, who was actually a female in disguise. They lived in Poplar, east
London and kept an alehouse for 36 years.
A tour guide for St Paul’s Cathedral found 2 men in a “very indecent posture”, locked them in a
side-aisle, and went for the authorities. Huggins & Holliwell were put in the pillory
and died shortly afterwards from their injuries.
In Utrecht a chance arrest of a well-travelled & promiscuous sodomite revealed a whole
underworld of sodomitical behaviour & connections. January. The 1st arrest occurred
in Utrecht’s cathedral beween a man (52) & youth (19). The older man had performed
active & passive roles with several men. One of these a tailor (25) named other
individuals, including Zacharias Wilsma (22). He named 144 sexual contacts. May.
warrants were sent out to 8 other towns & 2 military courts. Early confessions were
made freely as the participants didn’t believe it was a serious crime.
June. An Irish newspaper reported that Dutch sodomites fled Holland only to be arrested for
soliciting in St James’s Park. 400 Dutchmen were believed to have fled to England or
Ireland.
17 December Lord Hervey joins Stephen Fox at Redlynch.
c.1730Baron Ludwing Christian Gunther von Appel was acquitted for multiple sodomising of his
farmhands, and those accusing him were punished instead. The same occurred 2 years
later.
1731 August. The Lord Chancellor toasts the health of Stephen Fox, causing Hervey to blush with
pride. That same month Stephen & Hervey have a lover’s tiff over Hervey’s wish to love
Frederick, Price of Wales, as much as Stephen. Fox in a letter is clearly jealous & piqued.
In Holland more than 250 men and boys were put to death for sodomitical practices after the
initial investigation the previous year. The magistrate seems to have used sodomy as an
excuse to eradicate his personal enemies.
In Surinam, Mathijs de Goijer (41), Dutch quartermaster approached at least 5 men for sex. One
of these was executed with de Goijer.
Pulteney publishes an attack on Lord Hervey.
1732Alexander Pope’s first Imitation of Horace contains a veiled attack on Lord John Hervey. Hervey
is thought to have responded with Verses to the Imitator of Horace.
John Cowper [Princess Seraphina], butcher, took a man to court for stealing his male attire. The
thief counter-sued claiming that Cowper as Seraphina gave him the clothes, while he
offered to be sodomized. Cowper lost his case, but was not prosecuted.
Ebenezer Knight is suspended from communion with the first church of Marblehead, Mass, for a
“long series of uncleanness with mankind”. He was restored 6 years later after convincing
the authorities that he was reformed.
The Beggar’s Benison, a secret society in Anstruther, Scotland, is formed. Collective mastur-
bation formed part of the initiation ceremony.
Joseph Powis, burglar, confesses to picking a lock in the Chancery Office and finding letters
arranging an assignation at Covent Garden between ‘Sukey Tooke’ & ‘Molly Soft-
Buttocks.’
In the Hague Cornelius Wijingraef told a court he was thought female at birth and christened
Lijsbeth & married at 14, to a man who could not have sex with her. She was locked up
in an asylum for 6 months, and then examined & declared to be male. However, three
qualified doctors examined her and found: “she is constituted as any other female…no
part or members have been found contrary to this.”
1733Lord John Hervey writes Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity,
which scoffs at Pope’s deformity and humble birth.
November. Fox informs Lord Hervey that he feels too rustic, and decides he will live in the
country. Their correspondence begins to tail off.
In Cape Town 2 young Indian slaves accused of sodomy were flogged & sent back to Asia.
1734A case of sex in prison in Sweden occurs.
In Savannah, Georgia a man was convicted of sodomy and inciting others to commit the act. He
was sentenced to 300 lashes under the town gallows.
A Soho clergyman refused to sign a marriage certificate for John Mountford, tailor, & Mary
Cooper, spinster, because he suspected they were both women.
17352 January. Alexander Pope caricatures Lord John Harvey as Sporus in his ‘Epistle from Mr Pope
to Mr Arbuthnot.’
A second case of same-sex activity in a Swedish prison occurs.
In Batavia [Indonesia] 2 men were sleeping on a ship. One accused the other of stealing; the other
of attempted sodomy.
Mary Hamilton (14) began to dress as a man in her brother’s clothes. She was an apprentice under
2 doctors.
Catterina Vizzani takes on the guise of a man, Giovanni Bordoni, which she uses to chase after
women. She wore an artificial leather penis; and menstrual blood on her male clothing,
was excused as the results of a venereal disease.
Klaas Blank (30) & Rijkhaart Jacobz (35) were executed by drowning in Table Bay, South Africa
– 1st persons executed for sodomy in South Africa.
Francesco Algarotti - beloved of Lord John Hervey, Frederick the Grear & Thomas Gray
173615 March. Stephen Fox (36) marries secretly and the romance with Lord Hervey is over.
Late March. Francesco Algarotti (24), known by Voltaire as ‘The Ventian Socrates’ or ‘The Swan
of Padua’ visits London he is adored by Lord Hervey (40), Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu (47) & later-in-life by the poet Thomas Grey.
16 August. Lord Hervey writes a tribute to Algarotti.
Early September. Algarotti leaves England.
In Cape Town a boy (16) admitted his brother introduced him to sodomy in the Netherlands, and
couldn’t see a problem with it.
1737A clergyman allowed a marriage to take place, even though he suspected John Smith to be a
woman in disguise.
Rev. Robert Thistlethwayte, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, was accused of attempting to
make sexual overtures to his student William French. Thistlethwayte absconded to
Boulogne.
1738The Societies for the Reformation of Manners were officially disbanded.
Summer. Lord Hervey commissions Hogarth’s Conversation Piece, featuring himself, the Fox
brothers & others. This has been interpreted as the depiction of an “all male pseudo-
family.”
Detail from William Hogarth’s ‘Conversation Piece’ showing Stephen Fox
1737 and accusations that Rev. John Swinton, another tutor of French, was a sodomite.
The Oeconomy of Love: A Poetical Essay by John Armstrong: “Be male and female still./Banish
this foreign Vice [sodomy]; it grows not here,/It dies, neglected.”
The future Frederick the Great of Prussia falls for the charms of Francesco Algarotti.
March. Algarotti visits England and Hervey moves him into his St. James’s rooms, but leaves for
Russia on 21 May.
Early October. Algarotti returns to England. 19 October. Algarotti & Hervey spend time
together.
1739-41 Horace Walpole & Thomas Grey embark on their Grand Tour. Some dispute arose
& Grey returned to London alone.
1739-44 Horace Walpole & Lord Lincoln exchange letters which have been seen as evidence
of a same-sex relationship.
1740Johann Joachim Winckelmann falls in unrequited love with a pupil, Peter Lamprecht.
April. In a letter to Frederick the Great, Voltaire jokingly said: “I dream of my prince the way one
dreams of one’s mistress.”
6 June. Algarotti leaves abruptly after he is summoned by Frederick the Great after the death of
his father.
Horace Walpole writes to Richard West about Florentine behaviour: “the same passions…exist
here and show themselves in Jesuits, cicisboes & Corydon ardebatin Alexin’s [a same-sex
passion in Virgil’s Ecologues”].
15 December. Voltaire jokes in a letter seeing “tender Algarotti strongly hugging handsome
Lugeac, his young friend, I seem to see Socrates reinvigorated on Alcibiades’ back.”
1741 Shamela by Henry Fielding. Miss Fanny is modelled on Lord Hervey.
John Chute & Francis Whithed travel to Venice as part of their Grand Tour. Chute was the elder,
whilst the other was considered extremely good-looking.
Horace Walpole & Henry Lincoln have companion portraits made in Venice.
May. Stephen Fox is created Lord Ilchester, largely thanks to efforts to Hervey.
1742 Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Beau Diapper is thought to be based on Lord John Hervey.
Horace Walpole passes for a woman at a masquerade.
Richard West dies, causing extreme grief in Thomas Gray, which was expressed in a series of
sonnets & elegies. ‘Sonnet on the Death of Richard West’ and ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect
of Eton College’ are memorials to the love Gray felt for other young men.
Charlotte Charke joins the New Theatre in St James’s in the guise of a man. She often appeared
as Charles Brown in public.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (35) falls in love with Peter Lamprecht (14), a pupil, and they live
together for 4 years.
Mark Akenside (21), poet & physician, meets Jeremiah Dyson (22), they become lifelong friends.
In Austria the only male-male sodomy case for 150 years is prosecuted.
20 November. Stephen Fox falls out with Hervey, after the latter insists he joins the opposition.
Relations between Frederick the Great & Algarotti cools, and the latter joins the King of Poland’s
court in Dresden.
1743 January. A Trial takes place after Constable Robert Pert discovers John Deacon & Thomas Blair
having sex near St. Paul’s chapter house. They were found guilty.
22 June. Horace Walpole writes a flirtatious letter to Henry Lincoln, which appears to have a
sexual dimension.
Catterina Vizzani (24) under the guise of Giovanni Bordoni was mortally wounded after
eloping with the niece of a priest. Bordoni had the reputation as a seducer of young
women.
17441 January. Richard Manning & John Davis were found kissing & fondling each other by their
spying landlady. They were sentenced to be whipped.
In Denmark a Lutheran minister denounced 2 men for sodomy. He was admonished by the judge
for not dealing with the matter privately himself.
Horace Walpole meets Horace Mann on his Grand Tour. Mann was later described as being “so
long out of England, that he has lost the manliness of an Englishman, and has borrowed
the effeminacy of Italy.”
Horace Walpole
1745Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray’s friendship is renewed. Was this a same-sex problem?
June. Andrew Baxter, Scottish philosopher (62), writes to John Wilkes (20), medical student at
Leiden: “never man was thought so much upon by another.”
23 November. Hannah Snell dons her brother-in-law’s clothes, assumes his name & enlists in the
British Army.
Jeremiah Dyson makes Mark Akenside independent of his profession by giving him an allowance
of £300 pa, and taking a house for him in Bloomsbury Square. Akenfield seems to have
preferred men to women.
1746 John Chute planned to make Francis Whithed his heir, but Whithed died (31). Chute was
inconsolable (45), and remained alone for the remainder of his life.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Peter Lamprecht fall out, and Winckelmann is left distraught.
August. Baron d’Holbach, German philosopher, wrote to John Wilkes, who had returned to
England to marry an heiress, and was torn with jealousy. He remembered the: “Joy, the
fear of a second parting, what charming tears, what sincere kisses.” [1745].
Autumn. Dr ‘Charles’ Hamilton of Somerset was convicted on charges of fraud and vagrancy for
impersonating a man. Mary Hamilton married a woman and had penetrative sex with
her over a period of 2 months. The prosecuting council alleged Hamilton had married
possibly as many as 14 times. She was publicly whipped until her back was “almost
flayed,” and sent to prison for 6 months.
Ann Ellingworth, prostitute attempted to steal from Terence King & his wife. At her trial Ann
claimed that Mrs King had attempted to seduce her: “Terence King’s wife went to put
her hands up my petticoats and I did not like it from a woman’s hands. I had never
known such doings from our own sex.” The jury sided with Ann.
Maia van Antwerpen enlisted in the Dutch States Army as Jan van Ant.
Henry Fielding was inspired to write the anonymous pamphlet: The Female Husband. Fielding
seems fascinated by the masculine ‘Amazonian’ woman.
Algarotti rejoins Frederick the Great’s court, but not as a lover.
Peter Lamprecht leaves Johann Winckelmann by returning to Magdeburg.
1747Horace Walpole sees his friend’s Conway’s marriage as a rebuff.
1 October. A marriage between John Ferren & Deborah Nolan was recorded, even though after the ceremony it was discovered John Ferren was a woman.
In Indonesia, Willelm Bax, bookkeeper, was accused of molesting 2 teenage slaves.
David Garrick creates a farce, Miss in Her Teens, playing a character called Mr Fribble. Fribble
talks in an affected manner: “Where’s my cambric handkerchief, and my salts? I shall
certainly have my hysterics!” Mary Delany recorded: “it is said he [Garrick] mimics
eleven men of fashion.”
In Alkmaar a woman masquerading as a sailor was due to be lashed, but was discovered to be a
woman on the scaffold.
The Pretty Gentleman by Nathaniel Lancaster was produced about another effeminate man:
“Examine that smooth, that velvety skin! View this pallor which spreads itself over
his countenance. Hark, with what a feminine softness his accents steal their way
through his half-opened lips!”
A soldier found guilty of sodomy was given 500 lashes.
1748Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett. The novel contains a humorous seduction scene in which
the title character is persuaded by the fop Earl Strutwell to read Petronius and is
informed that love between men is the best method of preventing corruption by
womankind. See chapter 51. Another character, the scented Captain Whiffle had
long hair “in ringlets, tied behind with a ribbon”. A character remarks: “in our own
country it gains ground apace, and in all probability will become in a short time a
more fashionable vice than simple fornication.”
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; or Fanny Hill by John Cleland. There is a same-sex scene
towards the end of the book.
August. Hannah Snell in male attire was sent to capture Pondicherry in India.
Maia van Antwerpen in male disguise marries Johanna Cramers.
In Indonesia, a man was found guilty of sodomizing 2 youths on board ship. One was a Dutch
boy (15). He hadn’t realised that the crime was so filthy & unnatural.
In Indonesia 5 young male Europeans accused 2 Asians of pestering them for sex.
In Paris there were at least 8 cabarets & taverns where groups of 15-30 men would meet to eat,
drink, sing, danced & have sex. There were similarities with the English Molly
Houses.
1749Hundreds of local Jews protest outside the ambassador of Tripoli’s residence in the Hague. A
Jewish youth had been importuned by the ambassador ‘That he should go with him to
the Ottoman Empire, with professions of the great love he had for him.”
10 April. Andrew Baxter, philosopher wrote: “Mt first desire…my dearest Mr Wilkes, is to serve
virtue and religion; my second and ardent wish to testify my respect to Mr Wilkes.”
John Cleland is prosecuted for writing Fanny Hill. He grovelled, and was given a pension in
exchange for agreeing to stop writing pornography.
Spring. The London Evening Post advertised The Sappho-an. An heroic poem in the Ovidian
style, describing the pleasures which the fair sex can enjoy with each other.”
June. Hannah Snell in male guise fought in the battle of Devicottail, where she was injured. To
avoid detection she either removed the bullet herself, or had help from a local
woman.
Satan’s Harvest Home attacked the “vile catamites” who “make their preposterous addresses, even
in the very streets”. “Instead of the pillory I would have the stake to be the
punishment.” “ ‘Till of late Years, Sodomy was a Sin, in a manner unheard of in
these Nations.” “We have but too much Reason to fear, that there are Numbers yet
undiscovr’d, and this abominable Practice gets Ground ev’ry Day.” The author
complains about “fulsome Fellows Slavering every Time they meet, Squeezing each
other’s Hand, and other like indecent Symptoms.”
It was decreed sodomy in the armed forces should result in a court martial, and could be punished
with death by hanging.
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