18th Century Molly Houses: Secret Rituals, Tittle-tattle and Spies

Men Cross-Dressing. Image by John Collet, Public Domain

In the early part of the eighteenth century, spies were used to search out and close molly houses, which were ale houses used as meeting places for homosexuals, although it would be some time before the word "homosexual" came into common usage. "Molly" was a derogatory word to describe a homosexual man and is derived from the Latin word "mollis" meaning "soft".  Formerly, this word had been used for female prostitutes. The spies were organised by Societies for the Reformation of Manners.

The molly house provided a large room, where mainly working-class men could go for sex. There was cross-dressing and some of the men adopted female names, many of them highly exotic. This effeminacy was in stark contrast to the masculine rakes of the previous century. It's claimed that, during the 1700s, about twenty molly houses were closed down.

Mock Lying-In Ceremonies

In "The Mollies Club, 1709-10", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England - A Sourcebook, Editor Rictor Norton, - original source "Of the Mollies Club", Chapter XXV of Edward Ward's Satyrical Reflections on Clubs, first published in 1709 - Norton quotes Ward describing the ceremonies of the molly clubs. Norton emphasises that the mock lying-in ceremony, when a man pretended to be a woman giving birth, was merely a gay folk ritual and, much later in 1810, several men were arrested in the act of performing such a ritual. 

"The cross-dressing and lying-in rituals that Ward describes took place at specific times, called "Festival Nights".  They were almost always associated with masquerade festivals, representing some kind of survival of folk rituals." 

Although the lyings-in were only held at festivals, probably around the end of December each year, the men mimicked women at all their gatherings, dressing like women, gossiping, exchanging feminine confidences and lewd talk.

Role Play in the Brandy Shop

Edward Ward tells how nine gay men were arrested at a gay man's brandy shop, used as a regular meeting place. He describes these men "who fancied themselves to be women" and "fall into all the impertinent Tittle Tattle that a merry Society of good Wives can be subject to, when they have laid aside their modesty for the Delights of the Bottle."

The men called themselves "Sisters" and for the lying-in, one would wear a night-gown to give birth, attended by a "very officious Nurse" and when the wooden "joynted Babie" was born, the midwife would dress the baby and the men would carry out the Holy Sacrament of Baptism. 

Then, the men would relax into their roles, tattling about their children, their genius and their wit. One would be extolling the "Vertues of her Husband", and declare he was "a Man of that Affable, Kind and easie Temper, and so avers'd to Jealousie, that she believ'd were he to see another Man in Bed with her, he would be so far from thinking her an ill Woman..."  Another would be telling what a "forward Baggage Her Daughter Nancy was."  Yet another would be wishing "no Woman to Marry a Drunken Husband, for her sake, for all the Satisfaction she found in Bed with him, was to creep as close to the Wall as she could to avoid his Tobacco Breath and unsavoury Belches." And so on...

Ward concluded with his belief that this effeminate gossip was meant to extinguish the natural affection due to women. After all this, the usual activities of the molly house would resume - that is, until the Reforming Society gathered strength and managed to put an end to their "scandalous Revels".

Mother Clap's

In 1726, after a tip-off, there was a raid on Mother Clap's, a famous molly house in Holborn, London. The woman who ran it, Margaret Clap, was sentenced to the stocks.

Local people savagely assaulted the unfortunate woman while she was in the stocks and it's believed she died shortly after from her injuries, although there is no written record. What is known is that sentencing to the stocks was a most cruel punishment. People had their bare feet whipped, a practice known as bastinado, and this was excruciatingly painful due to the cluster of nerve endings in the soles of the feet. Those subjected to the stocks were often left for days in all weathers and many died from heat and exhaustion. Sometimes those who were dragged back to jail were so covered in filth as to be unrecognisable.

Men who were caught on Mother Clap's premises were hanged at Tyburn on 9 May 1726.

Sources:

• Norton, Rictor, "The Mollies Club, 1709-10", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England - A Sourcebook.

• Cameron, Janet, LGBT Brighton & Hove, Amberley Publishing, 2009.

Copyright Janet Cameron

The Grand Shaft of Dover and the British Class System Military-Style

The Grand Shaft of Dover bears testimony to the late great British class system, military-style.

The Grand Shaft comprises part of the seaport of Dover's Napoleonic defence system. The important seaport of Dover lies fifteen miles south-east of the City of Canterbury on the east coast of Kent. The discovery of a Bronze-Age cargo boat in 1992 dating from 1550 BC indicates that Dover has been a port for at least 3,500 years, and to our knowledge, this is the most ancient sea-going vessel ever discovered. It's on show in Dover Museum.

The Misappropriation of the Grand Shaft

The Grand Shaft links the town of Dover to its barracks on Western Heights and consists of a 140 foot triple staircase, built between 1806 and 1809. The three staircases were spiral and made of red brick. They provided a shortcut for troops to the harbour in case of invasion, and also ensured a speedy retreat for troops from Dover Harbour, in case of attack. The moats, ditches and forts were mainly used during Napoleonic times when the threat of invasion was most feared.

The designated uses of the staircases appears to demonstrate the old class prejudices:

·      Officers and their Ladies

·      Sergeants and their Wives

·      Soldiers and their Women

Work on the Western Heights began in the 1770s and then, with the threat of Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon 1) it became urgent. Later, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III) gave Britain good reason for further improvements.

Although invasion never came, the shaft was put to regular use by the soldiers to reach the rowdy pubs and seedy brothels down below in Snargate Street and the pier district.

Sources:

·      The Port of Dover

·      www.dover-kent.co.uk accessed 12 June, 2006

·      Dover, Margate and Birchington Libraries

William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury: a Blot on the Biblical Landscape

A disgraceful exhibition of bad behaviour happened at Guildhall Street in the City of Canterbury in 1832 - and the cause of the uproar?  It was none other than William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. gentleman had been invited to a grand dinner with the Corporation members, but, unfortunately for them, William Howley had other ideas.

In any case, the local people were furious with the Archbishop because he had refused to be enthroned at Canterbury a few years earlier. He preferred to hang out at his two other homes, Lambeth Palace, and his country residence, Addington Park, near Croydon in Surrey. So he was not too keen on dragging himself away to dine with a bunch of boring Corporation people either, least of all to be a captive audience to all their tiresome complaints.

The cunning Archbishop got out of the commitment by sending a proxy, but this only caused further aggravation since it deprived his subjects of a fine, rowdy party. Some of them wrote angry letters to the local rag, the Gazette. But that wasn't enough revenge for the disappointed inhabitants of Canterbury. Soon, a mob began to gather outside the Guildhall and, as soon as the Archbishop arrived, they pelted him with stones and lumps of mud, yelling abuse and blasphemy. The frightened Archibishop leapt from his carriage and rushed inside the Guildhall.

This unhappy event was recorded as the Archbishop's first visit to the Guildhall - maybe also his last.

More Trouble at the Guildhall

The fate of the medieval Guildhall attracted a lot of controversy, but it was demolished around 1950 on the grounds that it was unsafe. The authorities decided, at the time, that it would be too expensive to renovate the building. Unfortunately, the demolition was carried out  some time after it had infected its neighbour, Curry's, a large retailer of electrical equipement, with death-watch beetle. The 7mm long woodboring beetle is known for making tapping noises in the rafters of old buildings in order to attract a mate. So it hadn't taken long before there were enough death-watch beetles to give Curry's a severe headache.

The street where the medieval Guildhall was located is now named Guildhall Street. The original Guildhall was built in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and was known as the Church of the Holy Cross.

Sources:

·      Adapted from: Cameron, Janet, Canterbury Streets, Tempus Publishing, 2004.

·      Canterbury Heritage Museum.

·      The Beaney Institute

The Female Mandela of Burma - Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi, Wikimedia Commons

An outstanding example of the power of the powerless, said her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi was also known as The Steel Orchid or The Star of Burma

    

Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old when her father, General Aung San, was assassinated in July, 1947, just six months before Burma gained independence from UK rule. In 1960, she went to India with her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, who was the British ambassador to Delhi, and four years later she travelled to the United Kingdom to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. Here she met her husband, an academic, Michael Aris.

Pro-Democracy Protests by Students

The couple settled down to raise their two young sons in England, but then, in 1988, Suu Kyi received news that her mother was dying, and so she returned to Rangoon to be with her. This was a time of severe political unrest and there was a revolt among students and office-workers against the harsh military regime's dictator General Ne Win. Ms Suu Kyi was traumatised as she sat with her mother in the hospital by the constant movement of stretchers transporting badly-bleeding and wounded people. TV news footage at that time shows fierce, relentless fighting in the streets, so brutal that it is difficult to watch.

Negotiating with the Junta

As the daughter of a national hero, Suu Kyi was invited to lead the National League for Democracy. A film about her life depicted her reading a biography of Gandhi, an early indication that her entire philosophy was one of non-aggression and of devotion to Buddhist principles and concepts. This is a stance she has upheld consistently whatever the provocation. She became, according to the BBC, an "international symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression." Suu Kyi handled her campaign with poise, intelligence and dignity; nevertheless, while she was speaking to the people, the military were removing them as fast as they could, and taking them away in trucks to be interrogated or tortured.

Victory - then a Cruel Blow

Her election victory in 1991 was swiftly quashed by the Junta but she had already been placed under house arrest. This was a difficult time, a painful time that she filled with study and exercise. At the ceremony on 10 December 1991, where his mother was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while still under house arrest, her son Alexander Aris spoke of her struggle against oppression in the face of terrible odds: “We must also remember that the lonely struggle taking place in a heavily guarded compound in Rangoon is part of the much larger struggle, worldwide, for the emancipation of the human spirit from political tyranny and psychological subjection.”

From 1989 to November, 2010, a period of twenty-one years, Suu Kyi spent fifteen years under house arrest. At one point, all of her colleagues were arrested and Suu Kyi went on hunger strike to try to persuade the authorities to treat them well. Michael acted as negotiator to try to achieve an uneasy agreement with the Burmese military, and he subsequently managed to convince his wife to take some nourishment, since she only had a day or two left to live.

Death of Michael Aris

Michael's visit to Suu Kyi at Christmas, 1995 was the last time the couple ever met. Sometime later, in 1998, Michael discovered he was suffering from prostate cancer and had little time to live. He was unable to obtain a visa to visit to be with his wife one last time, and gradually his health deteriorated, while Suu Kyi agonised because she could not risk leaving Burma to be with him. She knew the military would never allow her to return, and there was still too much work to be done. To her great anguish and sorrow, Michael died without her, in a hospice, on his 53rd birthday on 27 March 1999.

A Beautiful and Terrible Film about Suu Kyi's Struggle - The Lady

The personal struggles of Ms. Suu Kyi and her devoted husband and sons were beautifully documented in the film The Lady. The film was produced and directed by Luc Besson, and the screenplay was by Rebecca Frayn. Michelle Yeoh played Ms. Suu Kyi opposite David Thewlis as husband, Michael Aris. Jonathan Woodhouse and Jonathan Raggett played sons Alexander and Kim. The film showed how, for the sake of the people, Suu Kyi sacrificed her own and her family's personal happiness, but always with their brave and generous co-operation and encouragement.

Honouring a Great Lady

In 2007, the Government of Canada made Ms. Suu Kyi an Honorary Citizen, and she has the distinction of being one person out of only five to receive that honour.

Ms. Suu Kyi's life and work has also been used in the U.K. to inspire the Brighton Festival, 2011, while the winner herself has been granted the Freedom of the City of Brighton and Hove, an accolade which, according to the article in the Argus, has delighted her. Council Leader Mary Mears said: "This is something that is given very rarely as it is one of the highest honours any city can give to somebody. For the Festival to have her as director is amazing."

Power that Corrupts

Although Suu Kyi is now General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, Burma's government remains one of the most oppressive and cruel regimes in the world where torture, rape and corruption continue to rage throughout the country. "It is not power that corrupts but fear," said Suu Kyi in one of her speeches. "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

Sources:

·      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11685977 Accessed 28 February 2012.

·      The Lady (film) Duke of York Picturehouse, Brighton, UK. Film viewed 28 February 2012.

·      http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/toronto-film-review-lady-234193Accessed 28 Febuary 2012.

·      "Aung San Suu Kyi granted freedom of Brighton and Hove" The Argus, 9 May 2011. Accessed 28 February 2012.

A Poor Reward for Goodness

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron

A Rochester legend about a good Christian suggests that he did not get what he deserved for his kindness. Instead he was murdered for no reason - and then something magical happened.

William of Perth, sometimes designated William of Rochester, is the patron saint of adopted children. He was born in Perth in the twelfth century and died at Rochester in Kent after having his throat cut in 1201, an act which had strange consequences. William was, allegedly, a bad lot during his early years, but in young adulthood he reformed and converted to Christianity. He committed himself to God, attended mass daily and cared for unfortunate and neglected children. Working as a baker, he gave every tenth loaf to the poor.

One day, while walking to church, William found a small, abandoned child on the threshold and decided to adopt him and instruct him in the art of baking. William named the child David.

Williams's Kindness Brings Murder and a Miracle

Many years later, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, William and David quarrelled just as they reached Rochester. We don't know what the quarrel was about, only that David, always a hot-headed youth, got mad. Unexpectedly, David turned on his kindly rescuer and patron, clubbed him, slit his throat and then robbed him before fleeing for his life.

A passing woman, who happened to suffer from madness, discovered the body. She was moved to pity and made a necklace of honeysuckle flowers which she placed on the dead Christian's body. Then she put the garland on herself and something very strange and magical happened - her insanity was instantly lifted from her. Some people said it was a miracle.

It was enough to impress some monks, who decided William's final resting place should be within the Cathedral. A shrine in the form of a tomb and chapel became a focus for pilgrims and its remains can still be seen near St. William's Hospital, although, unfortunately, William's relics were destroyed with the Cathedral in 1538 during Henry VIII's reign of terror.

William was canonised in 1256 by Pope Innocent IV, at the suggestion of the Bishop of Rochester, Lawrence de San Martino.

Sources:

·      Hawkings, David T. Criminal Ancestor (1992) Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd.

·      Lane, Brian, The Murder Club (1988) Harrap Ltd.

·      MacDougall, Philip, Murder in Kent (1989) Robert Hale

A Brief Introduction to the Evolution of Washing

Early 13th Century Bathing. Public Domain

Prehistoric man had only water for keeping himself clean, obtained from rivers and streams.  

In Roman times, both bathing and clothes-washing were beginning to evolve and develop. 

There is a legend about how soap was first produced.  It’s claimed that Sapo Hill in Rome was a site for animal sacrifice, and rain washed the animal fat (tallow) and ash down the hill and into the river, soaking into the clay.  The women began washing their clothes using this clay and found it worked.

It is claimed the Chinese were the first to use hot metal to iron their clothes.  One thousand years ago, it is said, they filled pans with hot coals to make rudimentary irons.  In the past, irons were also known as a ‘goose’ or ‘tailor’s goose’ and in Scotland they were known as ‘gusing irons.’  

An Italian town, Savona, manufactured large quantities of soap in the ninth century, and as a result, the French word for soap is ‘savon.’  

During the Middle Ages, clothes were washed and beaten in a wooden tub, or sometimes trampled on, then the dirty water was released through a hole in the bottom.

The scrub board, or wash board was invented in 1797. In 1851, James King patented the first machine with a drum in 1851 but it was powered by hand. In 1858, Hamilton Smith patented the rotary washing machine.

So although doing the laundry in the early nineteen hundreds may seem rudimentary to us today, hygiene technology had made considerable progress.

Read more...
Bagwash and Reckitt's Blue - When Washing Day was a Monday

Bagwash and Reckitt's Blue - When Washing Day was a Monday

Photo Copyright: Janet Cameron

Many older people still remember the weekly bagwash during the 1940s and 50s, when a housewife would leave out a bag of dirty washing for the laundry to collect.  It would be delivered back to her door, duly washed and rinsed, but sopping wet, for her to mangle, dry and iron.

‘It was before most houses had a washing machine,’ explains Stan Dyson, who now lives in Newhaven in East Sussex, but grew up in London’s Docklands.  Stan remembers his mother stuffing all those clothes, mixed whites and coloured, into those large, white canvas-type bags. 

‘In our area it was collected by either the Sussex Laundry or, I believe, the Co-op, and it was returned the following week.  On the odd occasion I had to run after the lorry as it went down our streets because they had delivered someone else’s laundry and Mum used to go absolutely potty when she was short of an item, or had someone else’s piece of laundry mixed up in hers – I wonder if someone just did that on purpose?’

If a housewife couldn’t afford the bagwash she’d put the dirty washing into the old copper boiler in the scullery, using either soap flakes or a huge bar of Fairy Household soap.  She also used soda crystals and maybe Dolly Blues or Reckitt’s Blue. The latter were a kind of blue dye which brightened and made off-colour whites appear whiter, working on the same principle as ‘blue rinses’ for ladies, also popular in the middle of the century. 

‘We used to curse Mum when she ironed the clothes especially if we were trying to read our comics,’ said Bob M.  ‘We had a 3–way adaptor on our light, one was used for the bulb, another for the wireless and the third one to plug in the iron.  It was when she did the ironing the light would swing all over the place and cast shadows.  She used the Morrison indoor shelter as her ironing board.’ 

            In some cases, though, the laundry wasn’t collected and returned and one of the children would be have to take and fetch it back.  Some housewives used a bolster case and it was not a pleasant job for a child of eight or nine, lugging home a heavy bag of wet washing.  Children were also expected to help their mothers turn the heavy handle on the mangle while she fed the sheets through the rollers. 

            Sylvia Kent of Billericay in Essex explains how, with seven children to wash for, her mother had to rise at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning to fire up the old copper in the kitchen. ‘The food had to be easy, so easy that day, so many people had something that would go into the oven, say a stew or rice pudding that didn’t need too much attention.’

My own mother’s washing machine, during the forties and fifties, was a basic affair although I can’t remember its make.  She had to fill it up with water by using saucepans and then turn on the heat, finally pounding the submerged dirty linen with a sturdy wooden paddle to agitate it.  Then the water had to be drained away and the machine would be refilled for the rinses.  Mum was thorough, she always did at least three rinses.  But first, my bricklayer grandfather’s detachable working-shirt collars had to be attacked with soap and a scrubbing brush using a corrugated washboard over the sink before being tossed into the machine.

One of my most vivid memories was of the old Acme mangle that reared up behind my mother’s washing machine, a source of great anxiety for me.  I could imagine that my fingers might become trapped and then my whole body would slowly be squeezed between the rollers, flattening out like a sheet.

To dry her washing, my mother had a rope line slung between the back of the house and a tall pole, which she could let down and wind up via a pulley. Wooden pegs, simply constructed of two curved pieces of wood joined by wire, secured the clothes.  Sometimes the line would break due to a worn rope or strong winds, and a whole line of clean washing would descend into the mud of the backyard and Mum would, understandably, be in a ‘mood’ as the whole complicated process had to begin again. 

It’s strange to think that in the United States housewives were actually using the first electric washing machine, with its motorised agitator as early as 1908.  By 1920 American housewives who could afford it could purchase a machine with a horizontal cylinder.  Technologically-speaking, we in Britain were lagging behind.

As a young wife and mother in the sixties, I also had a rope line, preferring it to the new rotaries. I’d get it up as high as possible by using a forked wooden pole to hoist up the heavy load.  I had better pegs than Mum, still wooden but with the spring action we’re familiar with today.  However, I was luckier than my mother as I did have an automatic washing machine.  The first top-loading automatic washing machines in Europe, swiftly followed by the first computer-controlled machines, were produced in the late forties and early fifties by Upton Machine Co whose name was later changed to Whirlpool. 

If it was raining, clothes were dried indoors, sometimes on a ‘clothes horse’ or ‘clothes maiden’, a simple wooden rack which opened out from two central vertical poles joined by hinges.  The term ‘clothes horse’ came into use in the 1800s and, of course, the evolution of language has now designated the term to describe a supermodel.  Sylvia Kent remembers the trouble her mother had, drying clothes for seven children.  ‘It all had to be hung on an overhead dryer, what a business!  The whole event seems terrible in retrospect, but I think all working-class people like us did this.’

For some people, it wasn’t so hard though.  Sylvia also tells the story of a lady who was asked about how she managed with her washing as a young housewife.  ‘Oh, I know nothing of this,’ she said airily.  ‘Dorothy the maid did it all – I think it was on Monday.

Read more:
A Brief Introduction to the Evolution of Washing

A Scandalous British Marriage that Shocked the Nation to the Core

The Grand Hotel Brighton, Public Domain

                                                   

A marriage proposal addressed to a young woman - by another woman posing as a man dressed as a woman. A marriage that profaned the House of God and outraged the decency of nature.

At the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the 1920s, Lilias Irma Valerie Arkell-Smith lived as "Colonel Victor Barker" along with her lover Alfrida Haward. Mrs. Arkell-Smith dressed and behaved like a man and was active in the Fascist party. She and Alfrida were married as man and woman, but the deception was exposed in 1929.

At the time, Mrs. Arkell Smith was thirty-three years old and, by then, notorious as the woman who, for several years, lived as a man, Colonel Victor Barker. When charged with perjury, she appeared before the recorder on the same morning as the report appeared in the newspaper. The case scandalised and titillated the general public and a crowd, most fashionably-dressed women, gathered, seeking entry to the public gallery. When the crowd was admitted to the court, there was a scramble for places and the gallery was full by 9.45am.

The Defendant Makes an Entrance

All eyes were riveted towards the door to the dock as Mrs. Arkell-Smith arrived. The newspaper report described her as: "A tall, upstanding figure, with her complexion deeply bronzed, she wore a red coat over a light grey costume and a felt hat was pulled down over her close-cropped hair. In the buttonhole of her coat was a bright red rose." 

The charges were read out to her, the first charged her with committing perjury in an affidavit sworn on 29 June 1928 in an action in the King's Bench Division, and the second was for making a false statement in the marriage register on 14 November 1923.

"I plead not guilty to the first charge and guilty to the second," she replied. 

Prosecutor, Mr. Percival Clarke said that in some respects the charge on which she pleaded guilty was the more serious. Mr. Clarke then set out the details to the court, saying that in 1922, Mrs. Arkell-Smith was passing as Mrs. Pearce Crouch. She was originally the wife of an Australian soldier and had married him in April 1918 in the county of Surrey, but they only lived together for six months. By the end of the war, Mrs. Arkell-Smith was running a teashop with a woman friend in Warminster, Wiltshire, where she met Australian soldier, Pearce Crouch. The couple lived together as man and wife; she took his name and had a son and daughter by him. At the time of the trial her children were nine and seven years old.

The Deception of Alfrida Haward

In 1923, Mrs. Arkell-Smith patronised a chemist's shop belonging to a Mr. Haward at Littlehampton, and although still using her husband's name, she dressed as a landgirl in riding breeches, open-necked shirt and coat. She lied to Alfrida, Mr. Haward's daughter, saying she was really Sir Victor Barker, Bart, and explained her father had died some years previously. 

Her unlikely story was that her mother wished she should dress as a woman, but apparently Alfrida believed it. Then Mrs. Arkell-Smith proposed marriage to Alfrida, and the illegal ceremony took place in the parish church of Brighton on 14 November, where she entered the false details in the marriage register.

The Masculine Masquerade

Mr. Clarke set out before the court the deceptions used by the defendant. She claimed to have been a captain in the army and a member of the Distinguished Service Order. The name, rank and title enabled her to secure credit for clothing and, in May 1926, one of the firms to which she was indebted by about £40 brought an action against her, but the action was never pursued.

The recorder asked if the women were living together as man and wife from 1923 for around four years, and Mr. Clarke confirmed this. He mentioned that, at the beginning of 1927, Captain Victor Barker, DSO, joined the National Fascist Movement and was appointed secretary to one of the principals. A summons in 1927 for an offence against the Firearms Act led to Colonel Barker's prosecution, but eventually, the "Colonel" was acquitted. This was aided by the appearance in court of Colonel Victor Barker with his eyes bandaged while being led into the dock by a friend. The court was told that the Colonel had previously suffered temporary blindness from war wounds and the strain of the court case had brought on the trouble again.

At the recorder's amazed response to this account, Mr. Clarke said, "Not a soul in court - and I think I prosecuted her on that occasion - was aware it was other than a man in the dock."

Serious Debt Leads to Bankruptscy - and Worse

Mr. Clarke explained how, in 1938, a widow, Maud Roper Johnson, brought an action against Colonel Victor Barker in the sum of around £300. The prisoner swore an affidavit as Leslie Ivor Gauntlett Bligh Barker, colonel in His Majesty's Army, retired. The paper quoted the following affidavit.

"I have had experience in the time I was in cavalry I acted as a messing officer to various messes to which I was attached, for about eighteen months."

A Surprise for the Prison Doctor!

A bankruptcy order was made against Victor Barker on 13 October 1928. The "Colonel" did not put in an appearance, so tipstaffs were issued with a warrant for his arrest, which was carried out on 28 February 1929 at the Regent Palace Hotel. The tipstaffs found the defendant in masculine dress at a reception desk and conveyed him to Brixton Prison.

During a routine medical examination, the surprised doctor discovered that Colonel Victor Barker was a woman, and she was transferred to a different prison. She swore another affidavit now describing herself as Lillias Irma Valerie Arkell-Smithg, known as Leslie Ivor Gauntlett Bligh Barker, married woman. The exposure of her lies, said Mr. Clark, showed that the defendant had "a total disregard for truth or the sanctity of an oath." He was shocked she had chosen to perpetrate her deception by abusing the sanctity of the church, rather than using a register office for the marriage, and that the marriage was by license. 

"You will realise how important it is that marriage registered should not be falsified." 

The recorder commented that the maximum penalty for Mrs. Arkell-Smith's crime was seven years imprisonment.

D.I. Walter Burnby Explains the Transition from Woman to Man

The Detective Inspector summarised Mrs. Arkell-Smith's life. She was born on 27 August 1905 in Jersey of parents who were respected. She arrived with them, in England, in 1912 and went to a convent in Brussels for two year. At the outbreak of war, she was employed in various ways, and all of these occupations were undertaken as a woman. 

The detective inspector then confirmed her family details, finally adding that she and Pearce Crouch were estranged in 1923, having lived together for about four years. After this, she met Miss Haward, and it was at this time she began passing herself as a man, and continued to do so until her arrest.

"I Must Hear Something of this Travesty of Marriage!"

There was some confusion between Mr. Clarke and D.I. Burnby about the marriage, although the question was not published in the Argus article. The recorder said, of Burnby's uncertain response: "The witness must not be as vague as that. If there is anything that ought to be said, let me see it in writing. I do not want anything prurient to stand in Court. Perhaps I can get it from Miss Haward." Mr. Clarke insisted he did not want to call Miss Haward.

Then the defence said, "I object to its being given in writing in this way." The recorder responded that he must learn something about "this travesty of marriage."  The witness was examined, establishing that Mrs. Arkell-Smith had only one charge made against her in her life, of which she was acquitted. She had been consistently employed, had supported her children, including paying for her son to go to a good school. She was a genuinely hardworking mother-of-two."

As far as the bankruptcy charge was concerned, Mrs. Arkell-Smith said she never got it.

Alfrida Haward's Evidence

Alfrida Haward was called and the paper's reporter described her as follow: "A rather slight woman dressed in brown with a brown fur and hat to match, she appeared nervous as she entered the witness box." Mrs. Arkell-Smith hung down her head and avoided eye contact with Alfrida Haward. The recorder advised Alfrida not to be nervous.

Alfrida confirmed she had lived with Mrs. Arkell-Smith for about three years. When shown a blue-pencilled passage from a typewritten document by Mr. Clarke for the prosecution, she was asked if it was true. 

"No," said Miss Haward, then adding that she didn't understand. "It was true and it was not true," she said. 

Sir Henry, for the defence, then asked her if she thought it was true when the incident happened and she agreed that she did. She also agreed that she knew Mrs. Arkell-Smith as Mrs. Pearce Crouch when she first met her. "Did you understand the two children were hers," asked Sir Henry. Alfrida replied that she thought the boy was, but not the girl.

To Sir Henry's questions about Mrs. Arkell-Smith's appearance, when she first knew her, Miss Haward replied that her hair was cropped, but she couldn't remember whether it was long at first and subsequently cropped. Miss Haward confirmed that she believed Mrs. Arkell-Smith to be a woman at that time, which was around the beginning of 1923. 

She also told Sir Henry that Mr. Pearce Crouch treated Mrs. Arkell-Smith very badly, including in her own presence. Arkell-Smith/Colonel Barker complained to Alfrida Haward that her husband consistently knocked her about and, in June 1922, she escaped from him and turned up at Miss Haward's flat.

Afrida Haward remembered the defendant checked in to a Brighton Hotel as Mr. Victor Barker in October 1923 and Miss Haward joined her there the next day, where she remained with the defendant up to the date of the marriage, sleeping in the same room, and bed. At this point, Miss Haward appeared faint and was offered a seat. She described how her parents, newly returned from their holiday, were told of her situation. Her father, believing Mrs. Arkell-Smith to be a man, insisted that, under the circumstances, they must be married.

Repeating again the question about her gender, and receiving the same answers, the recorder asked how the children were explained away. "He told me the boy was by another woman and the girl was Pearce Crouch's," explained Miss Haward. At the next question, she asserted that she did not discover Mrs. Arkell-Smith's gender until she saw it in the papers.

"Were you sleeping in the same room?" asked the recorder.

"Yes," said Miss Haward.

"You never knew from first to last?"

"Never, after she told me she was a man," replied Miss Haward and then added, "She left me some years ago for another woman." When asked how Colonel Barker kept up the deception, Miss Haward said, "I don't know."  She said everything appeared perfectly normal and he appeared to behave as a husband would to a wife.

"After the form of marriage," asked Sir Henry, "did you always occupy the same bed?"

"Not always."

That was the end of Miss Haward's questioning and she was allowed to walk slowly to the back of the court to her seat.

The Greatest Punishment - Please for the Defence

Sir Henry Curtis Bennett began his speech for the defence, pointing out that in a case of this kind, the court would be surrounded with prejudice, but it should be dealt with on its merits alone, and he asked the court to put "those matters" out of their minds.

"One of the greatest punishments the defendant has already been made to suffer is that members of the public come to gaze at her wherever she moves. At the police court, she had to be got away in secret ways. Wherever she goes when she is out of doors, she is followed about. Today, even some people are taking an interest for sorry reasons in her having to stand in the dock. That is a very serious punishment for any man or woman."

Summing up for the Defence

Sir Henry said the defendant was a hard-working woman up to 1923, when she changed her sex to the outside world from woman to man. At nineteen she joined the Red Cross and was employed in Haslemere, Surrey. At the beginning of 1915, she went to France and drove ambulances right up to just behind the lines for twelve months. Early in 1916, she returned to  this country as her nerve had broken. From summer 1916 to March 1917, she was head lad - although known as a woman - to the Shropshire Hunt. In Autumn 1917, she went to the Military Remount Depot in Bristol and there she dressed as a male, in fact, as a land-girl. (sic) 

She was engaged in looking after and breaking in horses, and, in 1918, she met Mr. Arkell-Smith, whom she married in April, aged twenty-three. But the marriage was doomed from the beginning due to her husband's heavy drinking and his ill-treatment of her. It was so bad, she left him after only six weeks. During the marriage, she only ever received £25 from her husband, and had received no allowance from him since his return to Australia. Subsequently, serving as a driver for a mess officers, her duties included ordering for the mess herself. 

After the war, at Westminster, she met Pearce Clarke, and after six months they began to live together. Pearce Clark was demobilised in April 1919, and went to work in Paris. Their son was born in February 1920.

The last thing the defendant wanted was to get married at all. Miss Haward was then twenty-seven and Sir Henry suggested that it was idle to suggest that Miss Haward did not know perfectly well she was living with a woman. But her father naturally believed the defendant was a man, and it was as a result of his insistence on the marriage that the defendant was placed in that position for so many years. "Today, she was going through the greatest ordeal of her life," he added.

The recorder said it was a case of unprecedented and peculiar characters. He need time before passing sentence, so the verdict was postponed until the following day.

Sentence is Passed

On 25 April, the Argus reported that "Colonel Barker" had been sentenced to nine months imprisonment in the Second Division. Again, the public gallery was full, although the paper reported "fewer fashionably dressed ladies." Mrs. Arkell-Smith, however, had now emphasised her masculine appearance. She was allowed to sit while sentence was passed. "You have had the advantage of being defended by one of the most able and eminent advocates at the Bar, Sir Henry Curtis Bennett," began the recorder. "He has made what I may describe as a masterly defence on your behalf."

Then the recorder voiced his rejection of the argument which, he said, might be relevant in a case of bigamy, but was irrelevant in a charge of perjury. He said Mrs. Arkell-Smith's situation was described as though she was on the "horns of a dilemma" because, having lived together with Miss Haward, she was forced to agree to the marriage due to Mr. Haward's insistence. 

"In my judgement, you were on no such horns. You had merely to show that you were a woman. I cannot see how it could have put you in any difficulty. It  may have disturbed your pride, but it was no such dilemma as it would have been, had you been a man."

The recorder continued that he was impressed by Miss Haward and her assertion she had believed the defendant was a man, and also believed the explanation about the children. Even so, disregarding the truth or falsity of Miss Haward's evidence, he said that in considering the case, he felt Miss Haward must have known the defendant was a woman even before the illegal marriage. He would, however, mitigate the sentence because of the morbid interest the case had aroused, which was part of the punishment for the defendant's "perverted conduct".

Scathing Remarks

Describing the defendant as an unprincipled, mendacious and unscrupulous adventuress, he added, "You have, in the case before me, profaned the House of God, outraged the decency of nature and broken the laws of man. You have falsified the marriage register and set an evil example which, were you to go unpunished, others might follow."

The maximum sentence to be imposed was seven years penal servitude, but using all leniency he could, the recorder passed sentence of nine months in prison in the Second Division. The newspaper report said the accused was unmoved by the sentence, rose to her feet, bowed to the recorder and was escorted by a warder to the cells below.

"At one point only did Mrs. Arkell-Smith display any emotion. This was during the scathing remarks of the recorder. The defendant had shrunk into her chair and lowered her eyes to the ground. She was in tears, but she pulled herself together, gradually regaining her former calm."

The couple had  been married at St. Peter's, Brighton's Parish Church and they had honeymooned at the Grand Hotel.

Sources:

·      Newspapers as mentioned in the text.

·      Cameron, Janet, LGBT Brighton and Hove, Amberley Publishing, 2009.