mollie house

plural mollie houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of molly house.

   I am, however, the only real woman to run a 'mollie' house.

   2012, William Holden, Secret Societies

   2 more examples

   Closing down all erotic possibilities other than heterosexual requires the virtual divorce of Robinson Crusoe from the contemporary climate of sodomy trials, the activities of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners, criticism of homosexuality in courtly circles, raids on mollie houses, and documented concerns about sodomy in the Navy.

   1995, Minaz Jooma, The Alimentary Structures of Incest, page 114

   In eighteenth-century London there were pubs known as 'mollie houses' where men dressed as women.

   2007, William M. Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli, page 9

plural Mollie Houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of molly house.

   In the half-light cast from the doorway of a Mollie House I saw she was no older than six; all in rags, dirty, barefoot and hollow-cheeked.

   2012, Philip Nutman, Cities of Night

   2 more examples

   After the year the little girl is gone and the Mollie House serves no tea, and in another tea-shop a good practical woman looking for tips tells us, "They had good enough things in the hotel without that, and they closed it up," ...

   1939, Leo Richard Ward, God in an Irish kitchen, page 13

   "Your Ladyship," Manfred said, taking the Baroness by the hand, bowed and kissed her fingers with a flourish I can only describe as both theatrical and of the feminine manner, a touch I found both surprising and distasteful, for the Baroness had not inform me Lord Manfred was a habitué of the Mollie House.

   2013, Philip Nutman, Love Sells The Proud Heart's Citadel To Fate: Short Story

plural Mollie houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of molly house.

   Maybe he was murdered the first night he ran away or maybe he was kidnapped and sold to a Mollie house where men dressed as women.

   2006, Tom Shardlow, David Thompson, page 18

   2 more examples

   There were public houses in the vicinity where 'posture dancers' performed an eighteenth-century version of striptease; there were houses of pleasure which specialised in flagellation, and there were Mollie houses which were frequented by homosexuals.

   2012, Peter Ackroyd, London: The Concise Biography, page 329

   There were also 'Mollie houses' and clubs for homosexuals, among them the Bull and Butcher, the Spiller's Head, the Fountain, the Sun and the Bull's Head.

   2016, Fergus Linnane, London's Underworld: Three Centuries of Vice and Crime