Queer Heritage · London, Greater London
Mother Clap's Molly House
London's most famous molly house, a coffee-house refuge for gay men run by Margaret Clap. Constable Samuel Stevens' report of his 14 Nov 1725 visit records 'between 40 and 50 Men making Love to one another, as they call'd it'; the raid of 17 Feb 1726 saw ~40 arrested and three men — Gabriel Lawrence, Thomas Wright and William Griffin — hanged at Tyburn on 9 May 1726.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- London Museum
- British Newspaper Archive (paywalled)
Nearby on the map
'London's greatest bohemian rendezvous' said the flyers; 'a sink of iniquity' said the prosecution. The basement queer club survived six weeks of 1934 before the raid — but the police files preserved its dancing, its slang and its defiant joy in extraordinary detail, and in 2017 the National Trust reopened the basement as a memorial to it.
Documented historyLiterary PassionThe Tabard Inn site (Chaucer's Wife of Bath)London, Greater London · EnglandThe pilgrims' departure point of the Canterbury Tales — and the stage entrance of the Wife of Bath, five husbands down and gloriously unrepentant, English literature's first great celebrant of appetite. The inn is gone; the voice has never stopped talking.
Fact & fictionRoyal LiaisonBanqueting House, Whitehall (Charles II's court)London, Greater London · EnglandThe last standing fragment of Whitehall Palace, the sprawling warren where the Merry Monarch kept his court and his mistresses — Barbara Villiers chief among them — sometimes within corridors of the Queen's own apartments. The palace burned in 1698; the gossip proved more durable.
Documented historyHot spotSpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.