Gay & Lesbian

Who's a pretty policeman? Cartoon from Men Only magazine, 1936 © Paul Raymond Publications

In 1916 the World newspaper described ‘painted and perfumed travesties of men openly leer[ing] at the passer-by’ in Piccadilly. ‘Certain bars and restaurants are meeting places for these creatures’, the newspaper went on, adding that it was ‘lamentable to know that their victims or accomplices are largely drawn from the ranks of the British Army.’

What the World was observing was a lively and visible ‘scene’ in London during the war, long before Old Compton Street took off as the capital’s ‘gay village’. This scene endured throughout the inter-war period.

In 1924 the Sunday Express spotted ‘our new decadents… at Covent Garden [opera house], at the Alhambra [theatre in Leicester Square], wherever [the ballet dancer] Diaghilev had his seasons… Rouge and powder are known to this co-fraternity of nastiness.’ Feature continues

A number of queer men recall picking up in the circle at the Empire and Prince of Wales theatres. Gregory used to go to the London galleries to cruise, preferring these and the numerous ‘tremendous’ cottages to the bars, clubs and theatres which he associated with a particular ‘style’of man.

‘Paul Pry’ observed in 1937’s ‘For Your Convenience’, a thinly veiled cottaging guide, that these public toilets often developed a distinctive reputation. School teacher Bernard Williams explained further: ‘If you wanted a piece of rough you’d look round the cottages in Covent Garden… On the other hand, if you wanted the theatrical trade you’d do some of the cottages round the back of Jermyn Street or if you did the cottage at Waterloo Station you’d have a good class of trade there, dear.’

There was a lively pub culture throughout the period and, like the cottages, different places catered for differing queer punters. The Running Horse in Shepherds Market was popular with a cross-section of men and women. Stephen was a senior civil servant and remembers visiting the pub after dining at his nearby Mayfair club: ‘I met several of the waiters from the club there who were off duty [and] they used to tease one a bit’.

When the pub was placed under police surveillance in 1936 the more respectable drinkers like Stephen were not identified. The police report instead referred to the ‘two youths in the bar [who] had their hair waved and their faces and lips made up’. One of these men had ‘screamed in an effeminate way when touched’, while in another part of the bar ‘two young men were kissing the ear of another man’. There were also ‘three women of masculine appearance… Their hair was cut short in manly fashion, and they wore costumes of collars and ties and no hats’. The pub clearly welcomed queer men and women, and there was indeed some cross-over of male and female queer scenes in the city.

In Fitrovia, just north of Oxford Street, there was a cluster of pubs (the Bricklayers Arms, the Wheatsheaf, the Marquis of Granby and the Fitzroy Tavern) which, if not quite as queer as the Running Horse or the Cavour in Leicester Square, were bohemian enough to accommodate ‘the fringe of the gay worlds’. Michael remembers the Fitzroy as a bohemian hang out, with queer men, lesbians, actors, artists, uniformed soldiers and sailors, and sometimes a kilted pianist.

At other bars the clientele would change at particular times: the Criterion at Piccadilly Circus was empty of ‘respectable characters’ by mid-evening and by 10pm ‘the great ornate hall had been filled… with well-behaved male trash’. Across the Circus, Lyons Corner House had a particular section which waiting staff reserved for queer clientele. Quentin Crisp, meanwhile, describes sitting with his friends at the Chat Noir (or Black Cat) coffee shop in Old Compton Street ‘night after loveless night… buying each other cups of tea, combing each other’s hair and trying on each other’s lipsticks’.

In the 1930s, the Caravan Club and Billies Club in Soho were popular with a similar crowd and there were queer dances and parties. Two were exposed within weeks of each other in 1933 – one in Holland Park Avenue organised by ‘Lady Austin’ for his ‘camp boys’ and the other in Baker Street.

The News of the World tied itself up in euphemism describing the clientele at the latter: ‘about ten per cent were women, and women of a particular class, not prostitutes, but another sort of woman. The remaining 90 per cent were men, men of a class well known to the public in London, men who speak to each other endearingly and dress effeminately’. One man ‘wore only his pyjama trousers’ for the event.

On a much larger scale, Lady Malcolm’s Servant Ball and the Chelsea Arts Ball, both held annually at the Royal Albert Hall in the ’20s and ’30s, became key dates in the queer calendar, though this was not the intention of the organisers. After years of turning a blind eye, organisers forbade cross-dressing men from Lady Malcolm’s Ball in 1935:

‘NO MAN IMPERSONATING A WOMAN… WILL BE ADMITTED’, the ticket read.

During World War II Quentin Crisp describes London being like an enormous double bed: ‘While the GIs were around’, he wrote, ‘I lived almost every moment that I spent out of doors in a state of exhilaration’. After the war, though, the historian Matt Houlbrook describes London’s scene becoming less ‘blatant’; the flamboyant queens began to disappear from view.

A growing emphasis on domesticity and family life, rising prosperity, changing work patterns, and a burgeoning youth culture affected the dynamics of the queer sub-culture. Arrests increased and many queer men felt more fearful and cautious than before. More representative of the new era were the discreet private members clubs like the A&B (the Arts and Battledress) and the Rockingham – the so-called ‘the poof’s Athenaeum’. It wasn’t until the Gay Liberation Front zaps of the early 1970s that queer flamboyance returned to London’s streets.

Matt Cook is a history lecturer at Birkbeck College and editor of the new ‘Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages’; Greenwood World Publishing, £18.95.