{"id":19064,"date":"2013-02-17T12:15:15","date_gmt":"2013-02-17T17:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19064"},"modified":"2013-02-17T12:15:15","modified_gmt":"2013-02-17T17:15:15","slug":"a-shocking-lurid-tale-of-depravity-that-transfixed-victorian-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/17\/a-shocking-lurid-tale-of-depravity-that-transfixed-victorian-london\/","title":{"rendered":"A shocking, lurid tale of depravity that transfixed Victorian London"},"content":{"rendered":"

In History Today<\/em>, Richard Canning<\/a> reviews a new book on the trial of Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, aka Mrs Fanny Graham and Miss Stella Boulton in 1871:<\/p>\n

McKenna provides what is certainly the definitive account of the Boulton\/Park story, drawn not only from contemporary journalism but also from the full legal transcript, a miraculous survivor housed in Kew\u2019s National Archives. It is a miserable tale, if leavened both by McKenna\u2019s dramatic verve and, during the show trial held in Westminster Hall, by Fanny and Stella\u2019s black humour. The establishment account \u2013 that the pair\u2019s persistent cross-dressing importuning was a scandal to public morals that must be stopped \u2013 soon breaks down. McKenna shows clearly how the men were effectively set up and, to some degree, even entrapped.<\/p>\n

Police confidence in pressing the serious charge of \u2018conspiracy to solicit, induce, procure and endeavour to persuade persons unknown to commit buggery\u2019 (as opposed to the minor offence of outraging public decency) was nonetheless misplaced. Buggery had until lately incurred the death penalty and still carried a lifelong penal sentence. No such charge had been brought for 240 years. The problem which attended the endless, farcical medical examinations of Boulton and Park reflected sodomy\u2019s millennial history as the nameless or invisible crime. Few Victorian doctors could claim to have seen evidence of the extreme anal dilation which purportedly occurred after the \u2018insertion of a foreign body\u2019. Of the half dozen who inspected the pair \u2013 both inveterate sodomites, as McKenna concedes \u2013 only one remained certain that the corporeal evidence supported conviction. They were acquitted and the notion that \u2018the impurities of Continental cities\u2019 had reached London was rooted in legal terms for a quarter-century \u2013 if paradoxically seeming somehow to be affirmed.<\/p>\n

McKenna lays bare a fascinating tapestry of interrelated personal histories, only partially capable of reconstruction. Frederick\u2019s elder brother Harry, already twice disgraced, was hiding in Scotland under an assumed name. Their father, a judge, was urgently shipped off to South Africa during the trial of his younger son. Impressively, Frederick\u2019s mother \u2013 amusingly a literal \u2018Mary Ann\u2019 \u2013 took to the stand to defend his moral character. So successful was she that the identification of Frederick\/\u2019Fanny\u2019 as a theatrical mother\u2019s boy exonerated him entirely from the imputation of vice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In History Today, Richard Canning reviews a new book on the trial of Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, aka Mrs Fanny Graham and Miss Stella Boulton in 1871: McKenna provides what is certainly the definitive account of the Boulton\/Park story, drawn not only from contemporary journalism but also from the full legal transcript, a miraculous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,9,10],"tags":[196,350,255,381,417],"class_list":["post-19064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-law","category-liberty","tag-lgbt","tag-london","tag-sexuality","tag-theatre","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Xu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19065,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064\/revisions\/19065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}