Tim Hitchcock

Subcultures and Sodomites: the Development of Homosexuality

The literature on eighteenth-century male homosexuality has grown tremendously in the last twenty-five years. Through the work of historians such as Randolph Trumbach, Alan Bray and Antony Simpson the creation of an identifiable homosexual subculture in the eighteenth century has become central to our understanding of the development of modern sexualities in general. The initial impetus for the expansion of this field was the increasing self-confidence and political activism of the modern gay community, but the influence of the ideas developed here have had a significant impact on the broader history of the eighteenth century.

‘The Surest Way of Wooing’: Marriage, Courtship and Sexuality

John Cannon, a financially improvident excise officer and charity school master, had this dream at the age of fifty-four. He had been married for twenty-five years, and was the father of five children. Yet even he could not dream of a sexual encounter without unconsciously linking it to courtship and marriage. In a series of erotic dreams he records in his voluminous memoirs, Cannon consistently links sex and marriage, and is frequently stricken down by uncertainty about his ability to contract a valid dream marriage.

Sexual Fear and the Regulation of Society

In late May 1748 Elizabeth Edwards was called before two Justices of the Peace for Middlesex to swear to the paternity of her bastard child. In response to the formulaic questions of her interlocutor Elizabeth did not retail the story of seduction and abandonment her audience wanted to hear. Instead she told them: … that on the eleventh day of April last past she this Examinant was delivered of a male bastard child in the workhouse of the parish of Chelsea … [who] was unlawfully begotten on her body by one Richard Jones of Chelsea Waterman, who had carnal knowledge of her body the first time, at the dwelling house of the said Richard Jones at Chelsea aforesd about three years agoe, at wch time this Examinant nursed his wife in her Lying-In — And this examinant says frequently afterwards in the said house and other places; and particularly at an apartment of her sister Mary’s in Chelsea park, untill she proved with child by him and several times after — And this Examinant also says that the said Richard Jones is the true Father of the said Child and further says not. The mark of Elizabeth Edwards …1

The Public Cultures of Sex

Running races in which young women necessarily exposed their legs to a mixed crowd of drunken onlookers form just one aspect of the public culture of sex which characterised eighteenth-century England. At the other end of the spectrum were the libertine clubs and explicit pornography of the elite. When the, admittedly Scottish, Beggar’s Benison held its semi-annual meetings, the all-male, elite participants dressed in monkish gowns, greeted each other by rubbing their erect penises together and collectively masturbated into a ceremonial cup.2 On most occasions a young woman from the local village would be paid to expose her genitals to the assembled crowd, before the reading of explicit stories or medical accounts of various sexual phenomena.3 Between these extremes of both taste and class was a panoply of public sexual activity and explicit writing. In joke books, trial reports, medical literature, and wildly extended and metaphorical treatments of sex, a public culture of sexual reference was played out which formed a fundamental part of the growing print culture which characterised the eighteenth century. To some extent its variety can be accounted for by the social class of the various audiences. French language pornography (the most common sort) obviously found its readership among the educated elite, while the relative paucity of English equivalents suggests that the market for this type of thing among the middling sort was less widespread.

Introduction: Sex before Discourse

On the morning of 16 November 1707, Elizabeth Gray entered the Sardinian Chapel in Duke Street, London, where she stripped off her clothes and ran naked to the altar. ‘She appeared in several Strange … Postures, and … did hold forth in a Powerful manner; and could by no means be prevailed upon to desist; but … told them she was come to Reform the people, and bring them to a right understanding.’ It was a full fifteen minutes before she could be prevailed upon to stop talking, dress and leave.1

Tribades, Gross-Dressers and Romantic Friendship

In 1722, at the age of thirty, Ann Carrack, a spinster, set up a milliner’s shop with Mary Erick in the parish of Christ Church, London. They rented a shop worth thirty pounds a year and went into partnership — ‘share & share alike’ — working together and living together in and above the shop. In 1725 they rented cheaper premises in Bull’s Head Court, just off Newgate Street, where they lived until 1729. At this point the partnership broke up and the two women went their separate ways — Ann Carrack making her living as an independent needle-woman, while Mary Erick went on to set up a small shop in the parish of Chelsea.

The Body, Medicine and Sexual Difference

In 1677 a young apprentice iron-smith from Staffordshire found that gangrene had attacked his extremities. His arms, legs and penis began to rot away, and to be eaten slowly by maggots. The author of the published account of these events saw the young man’s fate as a result of a rash curse he had made some time earlier. After having stolen a Bible, the apprentice swore his innocence, praying that his arms and legs should fall off if he was lying. But many of his fellow villagers saw his case in a rather different light. They believed that the young man’s fate was the result of his past sexual behaviour. Whoring, buggery and bestiality were all adduced as possible causes for his condition.1 In either case, an ill-considered word or action resulted in a horrific change in his body, a change which physically and naturally punished his sin in this world.