page_title: Boulton and Park
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Boulton and Park / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly - Shepherd, Metropolitan Improvements (1828)
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: In the latter part of the nineteenth century, male homosexual acts were illegal under English law and were punishable by imprisonment under section 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The Act abolished the death penalty for sodomy which had been part of Henry VIII's Buggery Act 1533. Under the 1861 act, sodomy in the UK carried a life sentence in prison. Cases involving homosexual activity were rarely brought to trial, however, and those that were had a lower conviction rate than other crimes—there was a 28 per cent conversion rate for sodomy against a 77 per cent rate for all other offences. The sociologist Ari Adut observes that most suspects were either caught having sex in public, or were targets of a politically motivated prosecution. Many suspects were allowed to leave the country before trial.
  The concept of homosexuality, while known about, was not understood by the authorities in the 1870s. The historian and sociologist Jeffrey Weeks considers that the idea of homosexuality was "extremely undeveloped both in the Metropolitan Police and in high medical and legal circles, suggesting the absence of any clear notion of a homosexual category or of any social awareness of what a homosexual identity might consist". Such ignorance by the medical profession was seen as proof that such activity was not undertaken in Britain, in contrast to the expertise of French and German doctors. For British medico-jurisprudent works, such as Alfred Swaine Taylor's 1846 work A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, the act of sodomy was linked to bestiality, and described as "the unnatural connection of a man with a man or with an animal. The evidence required to establish it is the same as in rape, and therefore penetration alone is sufficient to constitute it".
  While the authorities were ignorant of the extent of homosexuality in Britain, some parts of the West End of London—including the Burlington Arcade, just off Piccadilly—were associated with homosexuality and male prostitution. According to the historian Matt Cook, this confirm[ed] the association of homosexual behaviour with fashion, effeminacy and monetary transaction". This burgeoning homosexual culture was aligned with effeminacy and cross-dressing, according to Joseph Bristow, in his work "Remapping the Sites of Modern Gay History". Public opinion—and the opinion of the authorities—was never against those men caught up in homosexual scandals, according to Adut. As examples he cites those associated with the 1889 Cleveland Street scandal, who remained in positions in society, except one, who left the country; similarly, when Boulton and Park were cleared of the main charges against them, they continued acting in Britain and abroad.
  Cross-dressing was not illegal in the 1870s; it was associated with the theatre, particularly pantomime; there was no association in the minds of the general public between cross dressing and homosexuality. When arrests were made for cross-dressing, it was under the charge of occasioning a breach of the peace. There had been cases of cross-dressing heard in the courts in the second half of the 19th century: in 1858 a 60-year-old man and a 35-year-old lawyer were arrested at an unlicensed dancing room. The 60-year old was dressed as a Dresden shepherdess, the 35-year-old in modern female dress; they arrested "for the purpose of exciting others to commit an unnatural offence". The same year a landlady reported her lodger for behaving indecently in parlour window while dressed in women's clothing.
caption: Burlington Arcade, London, which was known for male and female prostitution by the 1870s.[7]
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