by Neil McKenna
It was standing room only inside Bow Street and the courtroom was stiflingly hot. Some spectators had queued for five hours to see Fanny and Stella and to hear ‘the filthy details’ of the case. There was an unexpected air of jocularity and expectation, quite at odds with the severely moralising tone of the newspapers. One ‘noble lord’ spent the greater part of his day in Bow Street surveying Fanny and Stella through an opera glass. Many of those present were, as the newspapers reported, gentlemen belonging to the theatrical profession, and one of them, the manager of a popular theatre in the Strand, was heard to remark that if this sort of attraction was likely to last, it would be desirable to add another row of stalls to the court and ‘allow seats to be booked a fortnight in advance’.
It was clear, too, that some friends of Fanny and Stella had queued for hours to get into court. ‘Theatrical’ covered a multitude of sins, and in addition to such leading comic actors as Edward Askew Sothern and J. L. Toole, who had come to witness and wonder at the sport in Bow Street, there was an odd group of spectators who came to the court day in and day out. They were allsorts: young and old, tall and short, fat and thin – and all conditions in between. Some were well dressed, some sloppily dressed, and some were quite clearly mutton dressed up as lamb, wearing clothes that were too young, too fashionable or too tight. Some were decidedly effeminate with perfectly arched eyebrows that made them look permanently surprised, and some were sporting subtly dyed or not-so-subtly dyed curling locks. Many seemed to know one another and despite their very obvious differences there seemed to be a common weal between them. They were the very disparate parts of a curious whole, and there was a distinctly tribal quality about them.
As the case went on, this clique or claque of men formed a strange chorus, greeting much of the evidence – especially the evidence that favoured Fanny and Stella – with ‘a most indecent manifestation of applause expressed by stamping and cheering’ – much to the dismay of the magistrate, Mr Flowers, who entreated, most ineffectually, that ‘such ebullitions of feeling should be restrained’. In the days that followed, as the witnesses for the prosecution took their turn in the box, many of them denounced these ardent supporters as sodomites, Mary-Anns and fellow he-she ladies.
Commencing proceedings, Mr Poland, the prosecuting attorney, stood up and brandished theatrically the detailed inventory of items seized at Wakefield Street by Detective Officer Chamberlain. Clearing his throat he proceeded to read it aloud to the accompaniment of much raucous laughter. Fanny and Stella could hardly repress their smiles. ‘The list of articles included the following,’ Mr Poland said, drawing a deep breath before plunging in:
Dresses:
Mauve satin, trimmed with black lace
White corded rep silk, trimmed with white lace
Pink satin, and tulle
White glacé, trimmed with blue satin and lace
White Japanese silk, pink stripe, trimmed with white lace and swansdown
Green cord silk
Violet glacé silk and white lace
Black satin, trimmed with mauve satin
Blue and white satin, piped with white satin
Mauve rep silk and green satin
Blue satin tunic
Pink tartalan
Muslin
Camlet costume
Cambric evening
Grey moiré antique
&c.
Here Mr Poland paused for breath. The list was exhaustive and exhausting. ‘Also,’ he continued:
a number of skirts and petticoats, in tulle, tartalan, white frilled cambric, white book muslin; frilled, check, plain and coloured petticoats, crinolines, &c; cloaks, jackets and bodices, opera cloaks, shawls, ermine jackets and muff; crimson velvet and tunic; about a dozen pairs of ladies’ kid boots, shoes, &c; seven chignons (of various kinds and colours), two long curls, ten plaits, and one grey beard.
‘The grey beard can hardly be called part of a woman’s costume,’ a bemused Mr Flowers interjected.
‘It may be part of a disguise,’ Mr Poland snapped, clearly irritated by the interruption. ‘Curling irons, sunshades, six pairs of stays,’ he went on, ‘one face press-over, two tulle falls, chemisettes, garters, drawers, four boxes of violet powder, one of bloom of roses, silk stockings, eight pairs of gloves, one bottle of chloroform, artificial flowers and a great quantity of wadding – used apparently for padding.’
D rag was not for the faint-hearted. It required discipline, stamina and a great deal of ingenuity. Money helped, as did plenty of space to store it all – which is where Martha Stacey’s ground-floor dragging-up rooms came in so useful. The sheer volume and complexity of the wardrobe of even the moderately well dressed young lady-about-town required a great deal of time and attention.
Fanny and Stella’s extensive drag wardrobe mirrored the garish artificiality that was the fashionable order of the day. Women of fashion laboured long and hard to present to the world a brilliantly enamelled exterior of wasp-waists, heaving bosoms and large bustling behinds. Nature was not enough. It could be improved upon, altered, faked and falsified. Wasp-waists required the tightest of tight-lacing, causing ladies young and old to faint frequently and doctors repeatedly to warn that prolonged tight-lacing could lead to permanent internal damage; bosoms were pushed and prodded and padded until they heaved; and the largest or smallest of behinds could be made to bustle by the use of a steel frame and half a dozen layers of flounced horsehair. An arsenal of false hair, false teeth, false bottoms, false breasts – and on at least one occasion, a false leg – was strategically deployed, along with a formidable battery of dyes and paints and an artillery of chemical processes to create the perfect woman. Beauty was made, not born. It was a commodity, manufactured, measured, sold and, above all, bought.
Acquiring the frocks, the petticoats, the stays, the undergarments, the shoes and all the other female accoutrements was no mean feat. It was hard, but not impossible, for men to buy dresses without arousing suspicion and hostility. Fanny and Stella had made daring trips in drag to the new emporia of Regent Street and Oxford Street where they had bought gloves and other accessories. Such was their airy disregard of convention, and so convincing their disguise, that Fanny and Stella could easily sweep into almost any gown shop in London and try on as many frocks and petticoats and cloaks and coats as they liked. Shopkeepers would naturally assume that they were a pair of soiled doves – extremely soiled doves – but then, many of their best customers were ladies of that sort, and morals rarely, if ever, got in the way of business.
Even if the doors of some of the most refined shops were firmly closed to Fanny and Stella, there were always alternatives. Like the irrepressibly cheerful young hero of the burlesque farce A Sneaking Regard, who breezily declares that he’s off to ‘a Theatrical Wardrobe Shop in Cross Street, to borrow the toggery, and equip myself well out in tip-top feminine style’, Fanny and Stella would visit theatrical costumiers for wigs, for make-up, and, importantly, for boots and shoes which were hard to find in their sizes.
And if the need arose, there were any number of skilled needle-women in London – milliners, dressmakers, stay-makers, bonnet-makers and assorted lowly stitchers – who could barely support themselves and who had, more often than not, to turn to prostitution when times were hard. Many would happily turn a blind eye to measuring up and making up frocks and garments of a more intimate nature for young men for their ‘private theatricals’.
Then there were the countless fripperers’ shops, selling second-, third- and even fourth-hand finery, where a young man might purchase a dress for his wife or for his sweetheart – or for himself. And like thousands of women, Fanny and Stella may have taken advantage of the offer of sending ‘42 stamps’ to Isabella and Samuel Beeton’s The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, receiving in return a paper dress pattern of the latest French fashions. With a sewing machine and a little common sense, they could run up their own exquisite creations.
Since the 1850s there had been an explosion in the number of n
ewspapers and magazines – and a corresponding explosion in advertising and mail order. By 1870, ladies and gentlemen could buy almost anything by mail order, particularly products the mere mention of which might bring an unbecoming blush to their cheeks. Publications groaned with advertisements for quack cures – pills, balms, cordials, panaceas, elixirs, specifics and tonics – for every ailment, real or imagined. Pages were crammed with advertisements for every kind of corset, stay, busk or truss; for undergarments of all conceivable varieties; for hair removers and hair improvers; for breast enlargers and breast reducers; and for a bewildering variety of cosmetics, creams and lotions to allow gentlemen and ladies – and would-be ladies – to transform themselves from ugly ducklings into fully fledged swans. Mail order was a godsend for Fanny and Stella, and no doubt a steady stream of packages addressed to Mrs Fanny Graham or Miss Stella Boulton would arrive at Wakefield Street or wherever else they happened to pitch their camp.
Hair was another vexed question. Hairstyles were heroic: towering, complex architectural follies involving one, two and sometimes as many as three chignons, hairpieces attached to a substructure called a frisette. Chignons and frisettes – these ‘monstrous erections of dyed and false hair’ – were heavy, often weighing two or three pounds. They were said to ‘impose such a weight on the heads of these martyrs that they deserve pity rather than reproof’, and the notorious procuress Madame Rachel wore such ‘a whopper’ of a chignon, ‘’twas said she was quite bandy-legged through the weight of her head’.
In the hysteria generated by Fanny and Stella’s arrest, the Graphic claimed that there were ‘hair-dressing establishments at the West End where a young gentleman, although previously bearded like the pard, may emerge within an hour’s time so disguised by chignon, rouge and pearl-powder that his own mother would fail to recognise him’.
When she could afford to, in the days of plenty in 1868, Stella used to insist on twice-daily visits from a hairdresser in Brydges Street, Covent Garden. ‘The hairdresser used to come in of a morning to clean Boulton’s hair,’ Maria Duffin, a maid, recounted, ‘and if he was going to an evening party or to the theatre, the hairdresser used to come and arrange the chignon and the hair.’
But most of the time Fanny and Stella had to rely on their own resources. On the night of their arrest, Fanny and Stella had dressed each other’s hair expertly. Stella wore hers à la grecque, with at least one – and probably two – chignons of elaborately curled and braided hair, while Fanny’s was a profusion of tiny flaxen curls dressed with a diamanté star. Fanny, with her ‘sterner features’, also wore a Eugénie bandelette, a popular style of chignon, a fringe of curls worn across the forehead in the manner of the Empress Eugénie. It was said to soften the face.
Judging from the ‘great quantity of wadding’ found at Wakefield Street it was clear that Fanny and Stella used to pad their busts. They might as easily have resorted to ‘The Registered Bust Improver’, patented in 1849, which claimed to do away with the ‘evident defects of pads made of Cotton and Wool’. Improvers were made from an ‘air-proof’ inflatable material, sold in boxes of half a dozen and available by post from Mr White of Gresham Street.
Fanny and Stella may have also followed the practice of French male prostitutes in drag, who wore false bosoms made from boiled sheep’s lights – or lungs – cut to shape and then inflated. ‘One of the prostitutes complained to me the other day,’ the Parisian doctor François-Auguste Veyne reported, ‘that a cat had eaten one of his breasts which he had left to cool down in his attic.’ Stella had visited Paris in 1868 to perform in drag and would have met some of the city’s formidable brigade of men who dressed as women and carried back to London the latest tips and fashions.
Facial hair was another headache. They could shave it, they could pluck it, or they could try to remove it permanently. Close shaving was effective but short-lived. However closely they shaved, a shadow of stubble would appear within hours, making kissing a little risky. This was a bigger problem for Fanny, who was more hirsute than Stella. Plucking was painful, time-consuming and likely to lead to irritation. Some men swore by a weak solution of arsenic for removing facial hair or by hydrogen peroxide to inhibit beard growth.
Make-up was a vexed question too. There were those who saw any kind of ‘paint’ as an affront to Society, and the first vicious step on the road to ruin. Women who wore paint were no better than actresses or whores. But the fashion for paint grew steadily in popularity and by 1871 a ladies’ magazine observed that ‘no one who goes much into Society can fail to notice how common the use of paints, powders and cosmetics has become of late years.’ Mrs H. R. Haweis was rather more forthright. ‘If a girl has the trial of a complexion so bad that the sight of it gives one a turn,’ she wrote in The Art of Beauty:
it is a simple duty for her either not to go into Society at all, or, if she does, to conceal it, as she would not scruple to conceal lameness or leanness. You have no right to inflict your misfortune on everybody – it is an unpardonable offence against good taste.
The liberal application of paint helped cover a multitude of sins. Nearly all the witnesses who queued up to testify against Fanny and Stella spoke of them being heavily painted, though much of their make-up must have been hastily thrown into Carlotta Gibbings’s carpet bag and spirited away from Wakefield Street. Detective Officer Chamberlain had only found a box of Bloom of Roses – liquid rouge made from the shell of the cochineal beetle – and four packs of violet powder. The writer and ‘Practical Artist in Hair’ Edwin Creer recommended violet powder as ‘one of the most innocent and best preparations for whitening the skin’ but warned against the plethora of ‘pernicious compounds done up in a packet and labelled “Violet Powder”’ which could be extremely injurious to health and sometimes cause death.
Among ladies, violet powder was widely used to dry out and deodorise the moister, more secret parts of the body – so much so that the Pearl, a Monthly Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading felt itself obliged to issue a ‘CAUTION TO LADIES’:
A contributor wishes to remonstrate against the practice of a very nice young lady friend of his, who treats her quim as if it were a baby’s arse. He says, ‘a nice cunt is a delicious thing to suck, but damn the violet powder, which dries up all the natural juiciness’.
Then there was the mysterious bottle of chloroform found in Wakefield Street. By 1870, chloroform was in common use as a general anaesthetic and as a way of relieving pain. It was famously administered to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold in 1853, and again at the birth of Princess Beatrice in 1857, creating outrage among many in the medical establishment who believed that the pangs of childbirth were divinely ordained and a painful but necessary rite of passage.
Chloroform also induced euphoria. Like laudanum, it was readily available without prescription from chemists’ shops, and there were hundreds if not thousands of addicts who sought and found oblivion through inhalation of its sweet-smelling vapours. But it was highly addictive and too much could prove fatal.
Rather more alarmingly, chloroform was said to induce uncontrolled libidinous feelings. Mild inhalation had a strong aphrodisiac effect. When asleep under its influence both women and men reported dreams so vivid and so powerfully erotic that they felt as if they were real. There were in consequence many accusations of seduction and rape made by women against doctors and dentists who had administered the drug. Chloroform became inextricably bound up with the great moral panic over the white slave trade, stories of which had respectable young women travelling alone being waylaid, rendered unconscious, raped and then sold into sexual slavery in the far-flung corners of Empire.
Stella had been suffering for years from fistula, a painful abscess in the rectum, which by February 1869 had become so severe that surgery was the only solution. Chloroform was administered as an anaesthetic during this operation and Stella may well have been tempted to continue to use it as an effective analgesic. Chloroform vapours injected directly in
to the rectum were said to be highly efficacious for a variety of anal disorders.
Additionally, chloroform may have been a useful means of relieving pain and discomfort during anal sex, especially for Stella for whom it must have been a sore trial. Like amyl nitrite, which was discovered in 1844, chloroform dilated the blood vessels causing the involuntary muscles – especially the anal sphincter – to relax, making anal penetration much easier and rather less painful.
Chloroform’s combined qualities as analgesic, aphrodisiac and anal dilator rendered it the drug of choice for Fanny and Stella. It might rouse the dormant passions of hesitant or reluctant lovers into vigorous life, at the same time as its vapours loosened and widened the sodomitic passages. And if it was used for nothing else, chloroform was the remedy of last resort for drunken, difficult or violent punters. They could be swiftly knocked out cold and dumped comatose in a back street or alleyway to wake up with a sore head and only a hazy recollection of the erotic misadventures of the night before.
10
A Dirty Business
Amenities of Leicester Square
Girl to Ponce: ‘Go along, you bloody Mary-Ann, and tighten your arsehole with alum.’
English Whore to French Woman: ‘Yah, you foreign bitches can only get a man by promising them a bottom-fuck!’
French Woman: ‘Yes, I do let the English gentlemen have my arsehole, but my cunt I do keep for my husband.’
The Pearl, 1880
T he dramatic arrest at the Strand Theatre was not the first time that Stella had been in trouble with the police. In 1867, when she was just eighteen, Stella had been arrested on at least two occasions in the Haymarket, the London thoroughfare synonymous with the very worst excesses of prostitution.
On the first occasion, Stella and her friend Martin Luther Cumming were both in drag, almost certainly drunk and plainly soliciting men – much to the indignation of half a dozen battle-scarred female streetwalkers who, as the Daily Telegraph delicately phrased it, ‘considered they were interfering with their calling’.
