page_title: Boulton and Park
section_title: Portrayals
hierarchical_section_title: Boulton and Park / Portrayals
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue plaque erected 10th July 2013 by Marchmont Association at 13 Wakefield Street, Kings Cross, London WC1N 1PF
context_page_description: Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were two Victorian cross-dressers. In 1870, while in drag, they were arrested after leaving a London theatre. They were charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy, a crime that carried a maximum prison sentence of life with hard labour. Their case came to court the following year when they were acquitted after the prosecution failed to establish that they had anal sex. The pair admitted to appearing in public dressed as women, which was "an offence against public morals and common decency". They were bound over for two years.
  Boulton and Park were both from upper middle class families; both were homosexual; both enjoyed wearing women's clothes and both enjoyed taking part in theatrical performances—playing the women's roles when they did so. It is possible that they asked for money for sex, although there is some dispute over this. In the late 1860s they were joined on tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark. Also homosexual, he and Boulton entered into a relationship; Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.
context_section_description: Boulton and Park appear as characters in The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, an 1881 work of homosexual pornographic literature by John Saul, a male prostitute. In the work, Boulton was named "Laura" and Park was named "Selina". In the story, the cross-dressing narrator recounts how he meets Boulton and Park, dressed as women, at Haxell's Hotel on the Strand, with Clinton. Later on, the narrator spends the night at Boulton and Park's rooms in Eaton Square, and the next day has breakfast with them "all dressed as ladies". According to Cohen, the work "provides a piquant complement to the other narratives of their lives, valuable both for radically shifting the perspective and for highlighting the tendentiousness of any report about 'sodomitical practices'."
  Boulton and Park appear in the plays Lord Arthur's Bed (2008) by the playwright Martin Lewton, Fanny and Stella: The Shocking True Story, written by Glenn Chandler and performed at the Above the Stag Theatre, London in 2015, and Stella, by Neil Bartlett, which was co-commissioned by the London International Festival of Theatre, Holland Festival and Brighton Festival in 2016. Boulton and Park are also the subjects of a Victorian limerick:
  There was an old person of Sark
  Who buggered a pig in the dark;
  The swine in surprise 
  Murmured: 'God blast your eyes, 
  Do you take me for Boulton and Park?'
caption: A blue plaque, marking the site of the house in which Boulton and Park lodged, Wakefield Street, Bloomsbury
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