![]() ![]() He gave a health warning before his talk: ![]() It was a stone’s throw – or as Neil McKenna put it – “a strong ejaculation away” from 19 Cleveland Street, the site of a famous Victorian male brothel.įanny & Stella is a merry tale of Victorian men who liked to dress as women – Fanny and Stella were actually Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton who, according to the book’s publicity, had their “extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores revealed to an incredulous public” at a show trial in Westminster Hall “with a cast of peers, politicians and prostitutes, drag queens, doctors and detectives” in a “Victorian peepshow, exposing the startling underbelly of nineteenth century London.”īut I was equally interested in Neil McKenna’s tale of the problems he had getting the book published. The Sohemian Society meeting took place in an upstairs room at the King & Queen pub in Foley Street in what I think estate agents now call North Soho. ![]() Last night’s Chaps in Dresses was a talk by writer Neil McKenna nimbly plugging his new book Fanny & Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England about Boulton and Park. The evening started with the recitation of a limerick from famed Victorian porno publication The Pearl, circa 1879-1880. Like many others, I lament the change in meaning of the word ‘gay’.īut, last night, the highly esteemed Sohemian Society hosted an evening billed as Chaps in Dresses. Last night, I had a gay old time with Chaps in Dresses. ![]()
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