![]() Author Neil McKenna ( The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde) pulls back the curtain on a city rife with poverty, disease, prostitution - and worry. The country was riveted.īut Victorian nightlife was more than just larks. The charges against the men included conspiracy “to induce and incite” this act. Lawyers would eventually prove that the police had not only arranged in advance for the doctor’s appearance, but had also paid witnesses. Asked to examine their bottoms, he found “evidence” of sodomy. Interestingly, a doctor happened to be in the crowd gathered in front of Bow Street Court, where Fanny and Stella were taken after their first night’s incarceration. “Buggery,” however, had become a crime, punishable by death only nine years earlier. Cross-dressing and female impersonation however, were not illegal in England. Two male transvestites - who’d adopted the names Fanny and Stella - were arrested outside the Strand Theatre, where police had previously observed them “lasciviously ogling” male theatregoers.įanny had further outraged the officers by entering the “Ladies Retiring Room,” where she asked the attendant to pin up the lace on her crinoline hem. ![]() ![]() In 1870, a sensational criminal case rocked Victorian London to its knickers, as it were. ![]()
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