molly house

plural molly houses · alternative molly-house · alternative Molly house · alternative Molly House · alternative mollie house · alternative mollie-house · alternative Mollie House · alternative Mollie house

1. historicalslangA tavern or other establishment in 18th and 19th century England where homosexuals could meet for various activities, such as cross-dressing and sexual encounters.First known use 18th c.

   Just — we must fuck who we will. Else what's the point of a molly house?

   2014, Mark Ravenhill, Mother Clap's Molly House, page 71

   3 more examples

   Just west of Charing Cross (where a molly named Tolson kept a brandy shop in the late 1720s, and where Whale and Horner were pilloried for keeping a molly house), we come to St James's Square and Pall Mall, ...

   1992, Rictor Norton, Mother Clap's molly house: the gay subculture in England, page 90

   In a vivid illustration of the dynamics created by sexual deviance, molly houses were a defense against the pressures of prejudice, but their visibility inspired new hostility.

   2007, Katherine Crawford, European Sexualities, 1400-1800, page 204

   One visitor to a molly house in the Old Bailey observed “men calling one another 'my dear' and hugging, kissing, and tickling each other as if they were a mixture of wanton males and females, and assuming effeminate voices and airs.

   2007, Thomas A. Foster, Long Before Stonewall, page 99

plural Molly Houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of molly house.

   Lady Cleland, the Doll's friendly rival, ran a Molly House in Gun Street.

   2013, Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd

   3 more examples

   The London party ends with the guests departed and the disillusioned Will casting a dispirited eye over the dregs of the hollow revelry, and the final scene returns to the Molly House, where Mrs. Tull, her fortune made, gives up her new name and her new business to retire to the country to apparent heterosexual happiness with her long-time admirer, the Princess.

   2001, Western European Stages - Volume 13, page 46

   'Molly Houses' — places where homosexual men gather— may have been around as early as 1700: this is where the historian Rictor Norton in fact locates the origins of a gay subculture in England (Norton 1992).

   2007, Ken Gelder, Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice

   [I]n a Bow Street Runners raid on a Molly House called the White Swan, twenty-seven men were arrested for sodomy and attempted sodomy.

   2009, Dan Cruikshank, The Secret History of Georgian London, Random House, page 77

plural Molly houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of molly house.

   The common people, however, seem to have been more tolerant of the Molly houses in their midst.

   1987, Gary William Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire: sexuality in Canada, page 41

   2 more examples

   A Molly house might adjoin a tavern or private house, often with guarded rooms, and provided an environment in which gay men could meet for drinking and entertainment, and engage in sexual acts, behind closed doors.

   2008, Catherine Ross, John Clark, London: The Illustrated History, page 154

   In addition, these new cities were also sites for the growth of new sexual subcultures, as evinced by London 'Molly' houses.

   2011, J. Arnold, S. Brady, What is Masculinity?