1750 - 1799
Thomas Gray
1750 Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Gray’s desire for a love in heaven that
could not be found on earth is now thought to be derived from the death of his friend
Richard West.
Edward Walpole is prosecuted for sodomy of an 18-year-old Irish boy.
Frederick II asks Voltaire to live with him to be his lover.
The future Stanisław II Augustus of Poland (18) meets Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (42), who
becomes his close friend & mentor. It cannot be proved that they were lovers.
Old England, a political journal stated: “The Abomination [sodomy] is now notorious: our
courts of justice have had it before them.”
2 workmen (c40 & c21) had sex in a street after dark, after the elder asked the younger to
bugger him. They were strangled & burned. The sodomy was not publicised.
On return to England, Hannah Snell reveals her gender, and receives a pension. Her memoir
The Female Soldier was published.
In Hamburg it was believed a sodomy case should not be publicized so the young didn’t
become aware of the crime.
Earthquake tremors were felt in London. The Bishop of London blamed “the unnatural
lewdness, of which we have heard so much of late.”
1751 Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollet. Same-sex lovers are blackmailed. Mark Arkenside is
lampooned as a doctor in love with the Greeks who invites the protagonist and his
friends to ‘An Entertainment in the manner of the Ancients.’ This scene was dropped
after the first edition.
The True History & Adventures of Catherine Vizzani by John Cleland. [1743]
The last death sentence in Denmark for sodomy takes place.
Maia van Antwerpen is unmasked by a former employer as a man. She was put on trial for
making a mockery of marriage.
Michael Levi raped Benjamin Taylor (12). A witness claimed to have seen Levi piss on Taylor,
but this may have been semen.
1752 The effeminate Prince Henry of Prussia marries a Princess Wilhelmina, but they have no
children. His reputed lovers include the actor Blainville, the French émigré Count La
Roche-Aymon and the brutish Major von Kaphengst.
James, the ‘Old Pretender’, is dismayed by his son, Henry Stuart’s, interest in Monsignor
Lercari, and requests that he be dismissed as major-domo. They still meet, so Lercari
is sent away from Rome. Stuart follows, and the Pope has to intervene to force him
back to Rome.
Winckelmann hints at the lust which could be experienced with Frederick the Great.
1753 Voltaire publishes anonymously The Private Life of the King of Prussia – wittily exposing
Frederick the Great’s homosexuality. They soon began to correspond again.
1753-76 Hugh Walpole has Strawberry Hill rebuilt in a asymmetrical pseudo-Gothic mode,
which has been seen as the work of a sexual outsider attacking the norms and values
of his father’s generation.
1754Charlotte Charke in the guise of a man worked as a prompter in Bath, but under her real name.
1755A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke, which describes her cross-dressing career.
The artist Thomas Patch (30) was banished from Rome for same-sex indiscretions.
November. Winckelmann arrived in Rome. He subsequently had affairs with Franz
Stander (artist), Niccolo Castellani and an unnamed castrati.
Winckelmann’s Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting & Sculpture: “Good taste
…had its origins under the skies of Greece…the only way for us to become great…is to
imitate the ancients.”
1756 The History of Henry Dumont, Esq by Charlotte Cibber Charke. Billy Loveman, the effeminate
sodomite character is criticised by Charke, but in chapter 6 some pity is shown towards
his plight.
Rev. Stephen Gorton was dismissed from his ministry when it was alleged he indulged in
unchaste behaviour with his fellow male bedfellows. [see 1726]. He was forbidden from
attending the Lord’s Supper for several months.
On a British naval vessel, a carpenter solicited 2 midshipmen for mutual masturbation, telling
them it wasn’t a sin.
c1756 Henry Bicks was charged with repeatedly buggering a boy who complained of “soreness in his
fundament”. He was turned out of the navy, but there wasn’t strong enough evidence,
despite plenty of eyewitnesses, for him to lose his life.
1756-63. 11 court martials for sodomy took place in the navy during the Seven Years War.
1757 Henry Tuthill, friend of Thomas Gray, was thrown out of school for a same-sex scandal. Gray’s
involvement with Tuthill was covered-up, but affected him deeply.
An effeminate male sex-worker sent letters to wealthy men, offering his services, and made a
good living. He was denounced by the Earl of Tankerville, and caught by the police.
David Garrick performed in The Male-Coquette, which also featured the character Marchese di
Macaroni.
1757-9 Andreas Klink, Dutch preacher, was tried for pawing servants & guests who shared his bed,
blamed his nature on his pregnant mother missing the presence of his father.
1758 Saunders Welch on sodomy: “a horrid vice, too rife already, though the bare thought of it strikes
the mind with horror.”
John Chute is painted with a plain jacket, but under which is an elaborate embroidered
waistcoat. He has recently been described as a “defiantly affected old queen.”
John Chute
1760 La Religieuse by Denis Diderot is written. It includes an innocent novice nun being preyed
upon by a lusting Mother Superior.
Lord George Sackville was court-martialled for refusing to obey orders at the battle of Minden.
He was referred to as “the pederastical Secretary of State for the American Colonies.”
Richard Branson, labourer, was accused of importuning James Fasset (16) of Dulwich College. The Crown counsel said that if he had been successful in committing “this horrid and
most detestable crime, he would have infected all the others”.
In Hamburg a trial of a procurer implicates 20-24 men in a same-sex scandal.
Samuel Bundy was discovered to be female and was jailed briefly for “defrauding a young
woman of money and apparel by marrying her.” However, Mrs Bundy came forward and
refused to press charges.
L’Onanisme by Samuel Tissot, a Swiss physician. It contains many misleading facts about the
dangers of masturbation. He claimed that sapphists were prone to “cancers of the
womb”, “caused by movements and frictions which are far from natural.”
1761 Harris’s List of Convent Garden Ladies includes Miss Wilson of Green Street, Cavendish
Square. She had a burly physique & believed “that a female bed-fellow can give more
real joys than she ever experienced with the male part of the sex…many of the pranks she
has played with her own sex in bed (where she is lascivious as a goat) have come to our
knowledge.”
The Fribbleriad by David Garrick. Garrick’s opponents were being ridiculed as sodomites who
addressed the crowd: “with strech’d out fingers, and a thumb / Stuck to his hips, and
jutting bum.”
The Fribbleriad
28 July. The Cross-Keys near Leadenhall contained a very dark passage where a butcher, Giles
Cooper, “saw two men in a very indecent posture.” The butcher and his servant laid hold
of the men until the watch was called. Mr Bailey was being sodomised by a footman,
Robert Stimpson. Many women spoke to for Bailey, but he was found guilty, sentenced to
6 months in Newgate, paid a fine of 40 shillings and placed in the pillory on 4 November.
A child was killed in the press of people attending.
Another pilloried man was hauled “round in the pillory so violently that, had not the board over
his head been loose, his next must have been broken. He fell down and lay for some time
as dead; but they reared him up and set him on again where, covered with filth of all
kinds, he remained some time.”
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (44) feels able to confide in a tall, blond, good-looking Roman
youth (16). Around this time Casanova surprises Winckelmann by walking in on him one
morning. His trousers were undone and his was lying on top of a handsome boy. He said
he had always admired the ancients, who were all buggers, and he tried to emulate them,
but found women preferable.
1762 Johann Winckelmann (45) finds his ideal of beauty in Friedrich Rheinhold von Berg (26).
Two sailors were charged with buggery, Martin Billin & James Bryan. Even though a witness
physically removed Bryan’s penis from Billin’s arse, because no semen appeared to have
been discharged, the 2 sailors were given 1,000 lashes, rather than put to death.
Maia van Antwerpen had been working as a seamstress, but was raped. She married Cornelia
Swartsenberg, gave birth, with her named as the father on the baptism record.
18 October. Shann, master of as china shop, was found guilty of sodomy. He asked to be
transported, rather than be placed in the pillory. This was denied & although his friends
tried to protect him: the populace fell upon the wretch in the pillory, tore off his coat,
waistcoat, shirt, hat, wig and breech, and then pelted and whipped him in a most severe
manner.”. A ballad was written in which women screamed “flog him” & “take this
beggume pear.”
1763 Johann Joachim Winckelmann published ‘Treatise on the Capacity for the Feeling of Beauty,’
later an inspiration to Walter Pater. “I have observed that those who are only aware of the
beauty of the female sex and are hardly or not at all affected by beauty in our sex, have
little innate feeling for beauty in art in a general and vital sense.” The work was dedicated
to his unrequited lover, a young Latvian nobleman.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
A young unidentified sodomite was pelted with so much refuse in the pillory that he died from
his injuries.
John Wilkes’s ‘An Essay on Women’, an obscene parody of Pope’s Essay on Man is read by
Parliament. It includes the lines: “there is a bastard plant called clitoris, much of the same
nature, although seldom large…The Lesbian ladies knew perfectly the virtues of it.”
1764 The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It has been argued that Walpole expresses his dread
of and desire for rampant manhood.
The History of Art in Antiquity by Johann Winckelmann – his masterwork foregrounds his
homoerotic aesthetic.
The Times, a poem by Charles Churchill. It contains many vituperative attacks on sodomites.
Diderot wrote ‘Essai sur la peinture’, which was published in 1796. “If Christ, at the wedding
at Cana …. Had run his eyes over the breasts of a harlot and the buttocks of Saint John,
wondering whether or not he would remain faithful to the apostle….then you would see
how differently we would regard the beauty to which we owe the grace of our
redemption.”
John Tynley, Earl of Castlemaine was caught in a same-sex scandal with 2 servants and flees to
Italy. He lives abroad for 25 years.
Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique lists some famous historical pederasts. He also rhetorically
asked how it was possible “that a vice destructive of mankind if it were general… is yet so
natural?”
78 individuals were indicted for sodomy in Holland. One was Jacobus Hebelaar, who confessed
to being both active & passive for the previous 7 years. He named his accomplices.
John Chivy died after being married to the same woman for almost 20 years. Chivy was found
to be female.
Horace Walpole noted the existence of a Maccaroni Club. These were men who had been on
the Grand Tour, who wore bright colours, and long curls, liked Italian pasta & made
playful use of vernacular & Latin poetry. They were later invariably classified as
effeminate.
Walpole defends his cousin, Henry Seymour Conway, from a series of political attacks, and
finds himself being the butt of comments such as: “by nature maleish, by disposition
female…it would very much puzzle a common observer to assign him to his true sex.”
The Gazetteer & New Daily Advertiser claimed that in Vanburgh’s The Relapse (1796) that the
sodomite Coupler’s “proposals to young Foppington would be, if that part were acted,
sufficient to congeal the blood in the veins of a modern audience.”
17 July. John Gill dressed as ‘Miss Beasly’ was brought before Henry Fielding for having sex
in a coach along the Strand.
The Public Advertiser reported: “a bugger aged sixty was put in the Cheapside pillory. The
mob tore off his clothes, pelted him with filth, whipped him almost to death. He was naked
and covered with dung. When the hour was up, he was carried almost unconscious back to
Newgate.”
In Amsterdam a woman who had been dressed as a man killed herself in custody.
1765-9 Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone. The crime [sodomy] was “not
fit to be named.”
1766 Horace Walpole writes to young John Crawford, who had wanted to become friends, “don’t
love me, pray don’t love me…I have taken the veil.
The Beggar’s Benison Society open a chapter in Edinburgh. (see 1732)
James Quinnin publishes A Memoir in which he reminisces about Peg Woffington being
successful playing the male character Harry Wildair in Farquhar’s The Constant Couple
(1700): “it was a nice point to decide between the gentlemen and the ladies whether she
was the finest woman or the prettiest fellow.”
The Fruit Shop: “Go where you will, at every Time and Place/Sodom confronts and stares us in
the face;/They ply in Publick at our very doors/And take the Bread from much more
honest Whores…/For pleasure we must have a Ganymede/A fine fresh Hylas, a delicious
Boy/To serve our Purposes of beastly Joy.”
1768 June. Johann Joachim Winckelmann is murdered in Trieste, in a possible same-sex revenge
killing by Francesco Arcangeli (31), a petty thief.
Eleanor Butler (29) meets Sarah Ponsonby (13). Later, they live together for 50 years and
become known as the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’.
1769 December. Thomas Gray is introduced to Charles de Bonstetton, with whom he has a very
passionate friendship.
Maia van Antwerpen was recognised from her time as a seamstress. She was put on trial again
and exiled. Cornelia Swartsenberg fled. [1751].
Henry Stuart, son of the ‘Old Pretender’, becomes intimate with Monsignor Angelo Cesarini,
whom he promotes. They remain very close for 40 years.
1770 Thomas Gray writes several passionate letters to de Bonstetton.
23 January. London shopkeeper Samuel Drybutter arrested for attempted sodomy and sent to
Bridewell prison after being in the pillory.
Rumours began to circulate that a Frenchman spying in England, Charles-Geneviève-Louise-
Auguste-André-Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont, was actually a female. In return for a
pension D’Eon returned to France as a woman and lived at the Burgundian family
estate.
The Oxford Magazine described Macaronis as “neither male or female, a thing of the neuter
gender lately started among us…it talls without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry,
treats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.”
c.1770 Caroline Stanhope, Countess of Harrington founds The New Female Coterie after she was
blackballed from the Female Coterie for having affairs with men and women. He was
nicknamed Stable Yard Messalina by the press.
1770-5 Richard Cosway paints a miniature self-portrait of himself in an exaggerated ‘macaroni wig.’
Cosway was jocularly known as the macaroni painter.
1771 July. Death of Thomas Gray. Some compromising letters, diary entries and documents are
destroyed by literary executors and friends.
July. Samuel Drybutter arrested again for attempted sodomy, but acquitted.
Captain Thomas William Wade is painted by Thomas Gainsborough in a swagger portrait, but
in which his clothing and bag wig denote him as a macaroni.
The Man of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie was published, ushering in a period of sensitive men
being depicted.
1772 30 April. A Newspaper reports without naming him that the Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe
attempted to make love to a soldier, but was rebuffed. He was identified by his rings
and watch with which he tried to bribe the soldier’s silence. He flees to France and dies
in penury.
Love in the Suds: A Town Ecologue. Being the Lamentation of Roscius for His Nyky by William
Kenrick. The poem implied that Isaac Bickerstaffe had been the lover of David
Garrick. The poem used the mores of the Ancient Greeks to defend same-sex love.
The Macaroni Painter, or Billy Dimple Sitting for His Picture by Robert Dighton is painted. It
may depict Richard Cosway.
Gustav III of Sweden becomes King after a coup. He had an obvious sexual preference for
men, and had many male favourites.
27 June. The Marquis de Sade pays his manservant to sodomize him. They are both sentenced
to death and burned in effigy. They escape immediate punishment.
October. Alexander Hamilton (17) arrives in New York & lodges with Hercules Mulligan (32),
haberdasher, who converts him to republican views.
A serious public debate takes place in the newspapers that sexual relations between men should
be legalised as long as they take place between consenting partners above the age of 14.
Thomas Jones, of Royal Regiment or Artillery enjoyed dressing as a women in masquerades.
He was exposed in newspapers of the time.
Capt. Robert Jones was accused of committing against Francis Hay (13) “that detestable and
abominable vice…called buggery.” Jones was sentenced to death, but George III
pardoned him on condition he left the country. Once Jones had been exiled the mob’s
attention swung to Samuel Drybutter who had offered Jones a back room for his
activities & spoke up in defence of Jones. In one coffee house chocolate was poured
over him, and in an eating house he was basted with dripping, rolled in sawdust &
covered in sauce. He moved to Paris to escape these attacks.
5 August. The Public Ledger printed a letter attacking the behaviour of Captain Jones.
6 August. An Islington crowd wanted to hang a sodomite in effigy, but the Riot Act was
read.
7 August. A squib appeared in The Morning Chronicle alleging that Samuel
Drybutter’s “club are desired to meet at the Gomorrah…to consider a proper address of
thanks for the respite of brother Jones.”
8 August. The Morning Chronicle reported that “an effeminate prig of a Macaroni” had said
he was glad Captain Jones was not to be hanged, only to be attacked by a mob.
5 September. The Craftsman reported that “dresses in the highest macaroni taste were to be
given to chairmen, porters, carmen, watermen & other low people.” This began to
spell the end of the macaroni style.
A racist print A Mungo Macaroni was published.
November. How D’Ye Like Me? a print by Carrington Bowles was published. This depicted
a simpering man aping the stance of a woman. A vestigial sword & a prominent
vagina-like crease in his breeches were a reference to a classical hermaphrodite.
1772-7 Johan Zoffany paints The Tribuna of the Uffizi featuring Horace Mann & Thomas Patch close to
a sculpture of two male wrestlers. Queen Charlotte refused to hang it in her
apartments, because according to George III, Mann & Patch “were considered as men
addicted to unnatural practices.”
1773 The Adulteress is published anonymously, and it includes the lines: “unnatural crimes like
these my satire vex / I know a thousand Tommies amongst the sex.”
May. Johannes von Müller, historian and philosopher, meets Charles de Bonstetton in Hapsburg
and a 12-year intimate friendship begins.
A play The Macaroni by Robert Hitchcock is staged in York & London. The Critical Review
said that “extreme self-love, pusillanimity, and effeminacy, are the qualities which
distinguish his character.” The play was also published in Philadelphia.
The Macaroni Jester, and Pantheon of Wit; Containing All That Has Lately Transpired in the
Regions of Politeness, Whim, & Novelty has a frontispiece of a macaroni hatching
fully formed from an egg.
15 June. A newspaper reports that “the famous Capt. Jones now lives in grandeur with a lovely
Ganymede at Lyons.”
3 July. The Macaroni: A Real Character at the Late Masquerade by Philip Dawe depicts an
extraordinary figure, which may be a parody of the macaroni fashion.
30 July. The Rev Henry Bate drives of a group of Macaronis, led by Fitzgerald, a gambler &
duellist, who were impudently staring at a lady. Bate wrote up the event in a
pamphlet The Vauxhall Affray; or, the Macaronis Defeated. He ridiculed Fitzgerald
as this “little effeminate being…The dress, hat & feather…& a variety of other
appendages to this man of fashion.”
1 December. Macaronies Drawn After the Life, a print. It shows a macaroni in full dress, and
then as a skeleton, implying that lifestyle is short-lived.
The Beggar’s Benison Society, hold a meeting in Manchester. (1732).
An anonymous story featuring Billy Dimple and his valet contains unsubtle references to
buggery.
Refin’d Taste a print by Richard St George Mansergh depicts a macaroni being attracted to a
masculine soldier, rather than an androgynous youth.
1774 Samuel Drybutter arrested again for attempted sodomy, but acquitted.
1774-1824 Jeremy Bentham writes several hundred pages on “the improlific appetite”, which remained
unpublished.
1775 Goethe’s Ganymed was written by this date.
1775-6 Father Font wrote a diary in the expedition of Juan Bautista Anza through California. He
noticed men dressed as women. He wondered if they were hermaphrodites, but
learned that they were sodomites: “dedicated to these nefarious practices.”
1776 The Rev. William Jackson’s poem Sodom and Onan satirises Samuel Drybutter as Ganymede.
July. The Gentleman Magazine reported that a former neighbour recognised James How, and
attempts to blackmail him. They knew he was a woman in disguise and had been
36 years married to Mary East. [1730].
Samuel Foote, theatrical manager & comic performer, was accused of assaulting John Sangster,
his footman. Foote was proved to be away on the date Sangster alleged, so he was
acquitted.
The Westminster Gazette advertised that £10k had been bet on the Chevalier d’Eon’s gender,
who was one of Louis XV’s spies in London. Another of the French King’s spies
informs him (incorrectly) that d’Eon was a biological woman posing as a man.
Autumn. Thomas Jefferson & others reviewed Virginian Law. In place of the death penalty
they considered sodomy and other offences to be punished by castration.
1777 A Sappick Epistle is published anonymously. It says of Sappho: “she was the first Tommy the
world has upon record; but to do her justice, though there have been many
Tommies since, yet we have never had but one Sappho.” This is the first known
instance of the term “tommy” in this context,
Alexander Hamilton becomes one of the coterie of young men serving as aides to George
Washington.
Travels in the Interior of North America by Jean Bernard Bossu in which he stated that the
Choctaws were: “addicted to sodomy.”
30 January. Samuel Drybutter tries to pick up a man in St James’s Park, he is attacked by a mob
in his house and he died 6 months later.
Friedrich von Steuben arrives in America with Peter Du Ponceau (17), his secretary.
Voltaire advises the apparently homosexual Charles Michel, Marquis de Villette to marry
Voltaire’s niece. The marriage is unhappy.
In his entry ‘On Sodomy’ Voltaire refers to sodomy as “the sin against nature”, “this filth”, &
this vice unworthy of man.”
A British court decides Chevalier d’Eon (49) is a woman posing as a man. From this time until
death in 1810 d’Eon passes as a woman. A portrait in the London Magazine
shows a human figure – one half dressed in extravagant female attire, the other
half as a man.
22 July. Ann Marrow (Morrow) was convicted for impersonating a man, and marrying 3
women. She was put in the pillory, where she was blinded.
Thomas Jefferson & others recommended that female same-sex acts should be punished by
having half-inch holes cut through the cartilage of their noses.
William Beckford (17) falls in love with the married Jean-Daniel Huber (23), while in Geneva.
Jean-Daniel educated Beckford in the hardships of the rural poor.
1778 10 March. Lt. Frederick Enslin is found guilty at a court-martial of attempted sodomy with
John Monhort, a soldier.
30 March. Lady Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsoby elope. In April they leave County Kilkenny
in male attire.
Goethe’s poem ‘A den Mond’ [To the moon] originally contained the line “blessed is he who
holds a man to his breast.”
Evelina by Fanny Burney contains a critique of male milliners, who are “so affected.”
Christine Davies disguised as Christopher Welsh was wounded at the siege of Pondicherry. She
was known as ‘the Chelsea Amazon.’
William Beckford (19) meets William Courtenay (10) for the first time, and falls in love with
him.
Frederick Gotthold Enslin, Lieutenant, attempted to commit sodomy with John Monhort,
soldier, and is court-martialled by George Washington. Enslin was drummed out
of camp by all the drummers and fifers in the army.
1779 Alexander Hamilton, American revolutionary, sent a series of love letters to the married John
Laurens, an aristocratic Southerner. “I wish my dear Laurens it might be in my
power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you.”
In Indonesia a Chinese man gave money for sex to a Dutch boy (17).
1780 Corrected edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published. The male pronouns were reinstated.
George Stevens found them “an equal admixture of disgust and indignation.”
Lady Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby set up home together in a small house called Plas
Newydd, in Llangollen Vale. They become known as “the Ladies of Llangollen.”
Ladies of Llangollen
Edmund Burke speaks up in parliament against the cruel punishment meted out to many sodo-
mites in the pillory. He sued newspapers who claimed he must be a sodomite
himself for defending them.
Spring. William Beckford (20) was frustrated in his pursuit of a Westminster schoolboy.
The Death of Achilles is painted by Henry Fuseli – a male nude.
1781 Edward Onslow went into exile in France after Phelim Macarty accused him of same-sex
advances at the Royal Academy.
The Relief by Henry Banbury is printed. It depicts 3 young soldiers whose thighs & buttocks
are revealed by a gust of wind.
Joseph Wright paints Sir Brooke Boothby reclining in a woodland glade, as a man of feeling.
1782 Marquis de Sade writes The 120 Days of Sodom in the Bastille.
Marquis de Sade
Briefe über die Galanterien von Berlin appeared anonymously. “Warm Brüder” or “warm
freunde” are synonyms for same-sex lovers.
1 July. William Beckford writes an extravagantly loving letter to William Courtenay.
September. Deborah Sampson (22) was excommunicated from the First Baptist Church of
Middlesborough, Massachusetts for “dressing in men’s clothes and behaving very
loose and unchristian.” She had taken part in several battles as a man, and was
given an honourable discharge and a pension.
1783Last burning of a sodomite in France. A defrocked monk murdered a boy who refused to have sex
with him.
1784William Beckford (25) has an affair with the 17-year-old William “Kitty” Courtenay at Powder-
ham Castle, and is exiled from Britain for a decade. The whole story seems to
to have been wildly exaggerated by Courtenay’s vindictive uncle Lord Lough-
borough.
William “Kitty” Courtenay
Edmund Burke again sued newspapers who claimed he must be a sodomite himself for defending
them.
1785Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom published.
William Beckford leaves England for exile in Portugal. While there the Marquis of Marialva falls
in love with him, but Beckford is attracted to Marialva’s son, Dom Pedro. Beckford
was also attracted to Gregorio Fellipe Franchi, a young, handsome, lively musician.
Chevalière D’Eon (1770) bored with Burgundy travels back to Britain and lives the remainder of
her life as a woman.
Richard Read was sharing a bed when Roger Sweetman tried to penetrate him from behind. He
gave Sweetman 2 or 3 blows to the head before going back to sleep.
c.1785Jeremy Bentham wrote ‘Offences against Oneself: Pederasty,’ first published in 1978.
1785-90 Anton Reiser by Karl Philipp Moritz – a young man suffers from psychological deprivation, and
who is successful as cross-dressing for the stage.
1786William Beckford’s camp Gothic-novel Vathek.
Discourse on the Worship of Priapus and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients
by Richard Payne Knight. A learned treatise on the cult of the erect penis. The
book was vilified & Knight was banished from the clubs of London.
1786-8Goethe travels in Italy, which he subsequently commemorates in Roman Elegies. Many have
sexual themes. He writes to Duke Karl August about some of the beautiful
examples he has seen of Greek traditions. This may mean love between men.
Venus Urania by Ramdohr is a serious study of Greek love.
1787Johann von Archenholz publishes his travels in which he said about London: “there are females
who avoid all intimate intercourse with the opposite sex, confining themselves to
their own sex. These females are called lesbians. They have small societies,
known as Anandrianic Societies, of which Mrs Y[Mary Anne Yates], formerly a
famous London actress, was one of the presidents.”
29 December. Goethe writes to Duke Karl August: “I have seen with my own eyes the most
beautiful examples of something that we know only from Greek traditions…It is a
subject about which one can hardly speak, let along write, and so I shall save it for
future conversations.”
1788A Parisian woman complained that her son (15) had been sodomized by a member of Tipu Sultan’s
embassy.
Death of Pierre-André de Suffren, French Admiral, – he advocated same-sex relationships in his
crews to improve morale & fighting capabilities.
1790Edmund Malone in relation to Shakespeare’s Sonnets attempted to explain that men of letters at
that time addressed one another in extravagant intimate terms, and that love
really meant friendship.
Faust, a Fragment by Goethe. Mefistopheles was attracted to pretty young boys.
July. The General Evening Post includes an article ‘Extraordinary Female Affection’, which
annoys the Ladies of Llangollen so much that they consider suing. “Miss Butler is
tall and masculine…Miss Ponsonby, on the contrary, is polite and effeminate, fair
and beautiful.”
Goethe makes another shorter trip to Italy. His Venetian Epigrams were inspired by the trip.
Les Enfants de Sodome a satirical petition pamphlet containing Articles of Association for a
Society of Sodomites, contains a list of prominent sodomites. The pamphlet was
purported to have been written by the famous sodomite Charles-Michel de Villette.
Les Petits Bougres au manège (The Little Buggers’ Reply) is published in Revolutionary France.
Pursuits of Literature by T.J. Matthias includes an attack on Richard Payne knight’s Priapus for:
“containing all the ordure and filth…and all the representations of generative organs
in their most odious and degrading protrusion.”
Lord Courtenay is referred to in the Morning Post as a sheriff “come to present an address from
the city of Gomorrah.”
17 June. Hester Thrale’s diary: “Mrs Damer, a lady much suspected to liking her own sex in a
criminal way.” Anne Dahmer preferred women after her husband shot himself.
The Ladies of Llangollen consult Edmund Burke over a newspaper article, which implied sapphic
leanings. He advised them to ignore it.
1791The French National Constituent Assembly revises French criminal law, decriminalising sexual
relations between men by deliberately omitting references to them.
Anne-Louis Girodet’s painting of a homoerotic The Sleep of Endymion is acclaimed.
The ‘Ladies of Llangollen,’ Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby react angrily to a newspaper article,
which labels their menage as perverse.
Karl Philipp Moritz published accounts of 2 men “who manifested an enthusiastic love for persons
of their own sex.”
Chateaubriand is sleeping in a communal bed when he feels the leg of his Dutch guide slide up
against his own. He ran out with his bearskin “cursing the customs of our noble
ancestors.”
Isaac Cruikshank produces a print The Knowing Crops, in which two men shake hands, but the
delicate pointed feet and spy-glass of one indicate his similarity to a macaroni.
John Church (9) was apprenticed from his Foundling Hospital after he was caught playing sexual
games with fellow orphan boys. [see 1808 et al].
The Sleep of Endymion is painted by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson – a sensual & suggestive
painting of 2 young men.
Louis XVIII flees Paris with his official favourite, known as the King’s friend – Comte d’Avaray.
1792Gidoret’s painting Sleep of Endymion is recognised as an icon of same-sex love.
Mary Anne Talbot (14) under the guise of a footboy “John Taylor” accompanied Captain Essex
Bowen on a voyage to Santa Domingo. Her inheritance was spent by a Mr Sucker or
Shuker. She decides to continue working as a male sailor.
December. The Bon Ton Magazine exposed a female whipping club which met on Thursday
evenings in Jermyn Street.
1793 Anne-Louis Girodet’s painting of Citizen Jean-Baptiste Belley causes a stir.
In Mexico a priest singled out 32 rustic & obscure people to have sex with, as there was less
chance that they would inform on him.
In Portugal William Beckford has an affair with Gregorio Franchi (17), a choirboy.
Sodomy was no longer a capital offence in France.
Charles de Bonstetton proposes to marry Frederike Brun, which greatly upsets Müller, although
their friendship endures as a more distant correspondence.
Anne Seymour Dahmer sculpts the head of her dear friend Mary Berry.
1794Alexander von Humboldt (25), future explorer and scientist, falls in love with Reinhardt von
Haeften (21), a lieutenant stationed in Bayreuth.
Friedrich Von Steuben dies, leaving vast bequests to two adopted ‘sons’, Benjamin Walker &
William North. A third ‘son’, John Mulligan, inherits his books & maps.
Hester Thrale’s Diary mentions that Sir Horace Mann & George James, the painter “had such an
odd way of twirling their fingers in Discourse,” that she refers to sodomites and
presumed sodomites as “finger-twirlers” from that time on.
1795 Marquis de Sade’s The Philosophy in the Bedroom. It includes an incidence of attacks on same-
sex individuals. It defends sodomy & lesbianism as a form of contraception. Same-
sex activity is seen by one individual as an innate disposition.
9 December. Hester Thrale’s Diary: “this horrible vice has a Greek name now and is called
Sapphism.” She also noted: “whenever two ladies live too much together…’tis a joke
in London now to say such a one visits Mrs Dahmer.”
Anna Seward visits the Ladies of Llangollen. She commemorates them in verse & writes about
them in letters.
1796The Monk by Mathew Lewis.
Anne Fleming is buried with her great friend Catherine Jennis in St Mary’s Church, Norfolk.
July. Hester Thrale now Mrs Piozzi visits the Ladies of Llangollen.
Diderot’s La Religieuse [1760] is published, as is ‘Essai sur la peinture’ [see 1765].
1797Marquis de Sade’s Justine published.
Christabel by Coleridge is written, but is unfinished. There are lesbian undertones between the
title-character and Geraldine.
John Taylor, sailor is seized by a press-gang, so is forced to reveal his real identity as Mary Anne
Talbot.
c.1797Moreau de St-Méry in exile in Philadelphia was shocked at young women who “give themselves
up at an early age to the enjoyment of themselves…being willing to seek unnatural
pleasures with persons of their own sex.”
A biography of Deborah Sampson appears paying attention to 3 relationships she formed with
girls when she was masquerading as Robert Shurtleff. [1782].
1798Venus Urania by Friedrich von Ramodohr: “A subtle fire ran through their veins at every
accidental touch. Whenever they caught sight of one another unexpectedly, they
were filled with inexplicable rapture.”
c.1798 Joseph Fiévée, novelist & spy for Napoleon, meets the playwright, Théodore Leclercq. They
spend the remainder of their lives as an open couple, and are buried together.
Heinrich von Kleist is believed to have had various same-sex relationships when he was in the
army. Two especially close friends were Ernst von Pfuel & Ruhle von Lilienstern.
1799 In the preceding 400 years there were only 10 cases of sodomy in Basel apart from the Italians in
1474.
1799-1804Alexander von Humboldt travels in Latin America with Aimé Bonpland.
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