Box Turtle Bulletin

Today In History, 1810: London’s Vere Street Club Raided

From The Times of London:

The existence of a Club, or Society, for the purpose so detestable and repugnant to the common feelings of our nature, that by no word can it be described without committing an outrage upon decency, has for some time been suspected by the Magistrates of Bow-street; who cautiously concealing the odious secret, abstained from taking any steps on the information they had received, until an opportunity should offer of surprising the whole gang. About 11 o’clock last Sunday evening, three separate parties of the patrole, attended by constables, were detached from Bow-street on this service; and such was the secrecy observed, that the object of their pursuit was unknown, even at that moment, to all but the confidential agents of Mr. Read, who headed the respective parties. The enterprise was completely successful. — We regret most deeply, that the information given at the office was found to be so accurate, that the Officers felt themselves justified in seizing no fewer than 23 individuals, at a public-house, called the White Swan, in Vere-street, Clare-market.

Three years later, the Vere Street scandal was the subject of Robert Holloway’s pamphlet, The Phoenix of Sodom, or The Vere Street Coterie:

The fatal house in question was furnished in a style most appropriate for the purposes it was intended. Four beds were provided in one room: — another was fitted up for the ladies’ dressing-room, with a toilette, and every appendage of rouge, &c. &c.: — a third room was called the Chaple, where marriages took place, sometimes between a female grenadier, six feet high, and a petit maître not more than half the altitude of his beloved wife! There marriages were solemnized with all the mockery of bride maids and bride men; the nuptials were frequently consummated by two, three or four couples, in the same room, and in the sight of each other!

Incredible as this circumstance may appear, the reader may depend it is all provable: — the uper part of the house was appropriated to wretches who were constantly in waiting for casual customers; who practised all the allurements that are found in a brothel, by the more natural description of prostitutes; and the only difference consisting in that want of decency that subsists between the most profligate men and depraved women. — Men of rank, and respectable situations in life, might be seen wallowing either in or on beds with wretches of the lowest description: but the perpetration of the abominable act, however offensive, was infinitely more tolerable than the shocking convcersation taht accompanied the perpetration; some of which, Cook has solemnly declared to me, was so odious, that he could not either write, or verbally related. It seems many of these wretches were married; and frequently, when they are together, make their wives, who they call Tommies, topics of ridicule; and boast of having compelled them to act parts too shocking to think of…

It seems the greater part of these reptiles assumed feigned names, though not very appropriate to their calling in life: for instance, Kitty Cambric is a Coal Merchant; Miss Selina a Runner at a Police office; Black-eyed Leonora, a Drummer; Pretty Harriet, a Butcher; Lady Godina, a Waiter; the Duchess of Gloucester, a gentleman’s servant; Duchess of Devonshire, a Blacksmith; and Miss Sweet Lips, a Country Grocer. It is a generally received opinion, and a very natural one, that the prevalency of this passion has for its object effeminate delicate beings only: but this seems to be, by Cook’s account, a mistaken notion; and the reverse is so palpable in many instances, that Fanny Murry, Lucy Cooper, and Kitty Fisher, are now personified by an athletic Bargeman, an Herculean Coal-heaver, and a deaf tyre Smith: the latter of these monsters has two sons, both very handsome young men, whom he boasts are full as depraved as himself. These are merely part of the common stock belonging to the house; but the visitors were more numerous and, if possible, more infamous, because more exalted in life: and these ladies, like the ladies of the petticoat order, have their favourite men; one of whom was White a drummer of the guards, who, some short time since, was executed for sodomy with one Hebden, an ensign. White, being an universal favourite, was very deep in the secrets of the fashionable part of the coterie; of which he had made a most ample confession in writing, immediately previous to his execution; the truth of which he averred, even to his last moments; but it is impossible to give it literally, for the person who took it, in the presence of a magistrate, said that the recital made him so sick he could not proceed…

That the reader may form some idea of the incontrollable rage of this dreadful passion, Cook states that a person in a respectable house in the city, frequently came to this sink of filth and iniquity, and stayed several days and nights together; during which time he generally amused himself with eight, ten, and sometimes a dozen different boys and men! …

Sunday was the general, and grand day of rendezvous; and to render their excuse the more entangled and doubtful, some of the parties came a great distance, even so much as thirty miles, to join the festivity and elegant amusements of grenadiers, footmen, waiters, drummers, and all the Catamite brood, kneaded into human shape, from the sweepings of Sodom, and the Spawn of Gomorrah…

Two men were found guilty of sodomy and were hanged (Mar 7). Seven more were found guilty of attempted sodomy and were made to stand at the pillory (Sep 27). The crowds who turned out for the pillory were particularly violent, throwing rotten fish, dead cats, “cannonballs” made of mud, and vegetables at the convicted men. The men were severely injured and barely survived their allotted time at the pillory.