Trial record
The aptly named ‘Mother Clap’ kept what was called a sodomitical house – not exactly a brothel without women, but more a meeting place for homosexual men – forover a decade, in Holborn which in the eighteenth century was a mish-mash of tiny streets and alleyways. Cross-dressing was a popular pursuit at Mother Clap’s, and there were rooms where couples could adjourn to have sex; it sounds very like the place Jonathan Wild described being taken to by Charles Hitchin (see above). When Mother Clap was put into the pillory at Smithfield, she was so badly assaulted by the crowds that, like Hitchin, she died later of her injuries.
Margaret ‘Mother’ Clap’s trial July 1726
Margaret Clap was indicted for keeping a disorderly house, in which she procured and encouraged persons to commit sodomy, December 10 1725, and before and after.
Samuel Stephens. On Sunday night, the 14th of November last, I went to the prisoner’s house in Field Lane, in Holborn, where I found between 40 and 50 men making love to one another, as they called it. Sometimes they would sit in one another’s laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hand indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women. ‘O, Fie, Sir! – Pray, Sir – Dear, Sir, – Lord, how can you serve me so? – I swear I’ll cry out. – You’re a wicked devil, – and you’ve a bold face. – Eh, ye little dear toad! Come, buss!’ – Then they’d hug, and play, and toy, and go out by couples into another room on the same floor, to be married, as they called it. The door of that room was kept by — Eccleston, who used to stand pimp for ’em, to prevent anybody from disturbing them in their diversions. When they came out, they used to brag, in plain terms, of what they had been doing. As for the prisoner, she was present all the time, except when she went out to fetch liquors. There was among them William Griffin, who has since been hanged for sodomy; and — Derwin, who had been carried before Sir George Mertins, for sodomitical practises with a link-boy.1 Derwin bragged how he had baffled the link-boy’s evidence; and the prisoner at the same time boasted, that what she had sworn before Sir George in Derwin’s behalf, was a great means of bringing him off. I went to the same house on two or three Sunday nights following, and found much the same practises as before. The company talked all manner of gross and vile obscenity in the prisoner’s hearing, and she appeared to be wonderfully pleased with it.
Joseph Sellers deposed to the same effect, adding, that he believed there were above 40 sodomites taken from that house and committed to prison in one night.
Prisoner. As for Derwin’s being carried before Sir George Mertin’s, it was only for a quarrel. I hope it will be considered that I am a woman, and therefore it cannot be thought that I would ever be concerned in such practises.
The evidence being full and positive, and no body appearing to her character, the jury found her guilty. Her sentence was, to stand in the pillory in Smithfield, to pay a fine of twenty marks and suffer two years imprisonment.