Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957

by Matt Houlbrook

In August 1934, young Cyril L. wrote to his friend Billy about all the exciting men he had met, the swinging nightclubs he had visited, and the vibrant new life he had forged for himself in the big city. He wrote, "I have only been queer since I came to London about two years ago, before then I knew nothing about it." London, for Cyril, meant boundless opportunities to explore his newfound sexuality. But his freedom was limited: he was soon arrested, simply for being in a club frequented by queer men.

Cyril's story is Matt Houlbrook's point of entry into the queer worlds of early twentieth-century London. Drawing on previously unknown sources, from police reports and newspaper exposés to personal letters, diaries, and the first queer guidebook ever written, Houlbrook here explores the relationship between queer sexualities and modern urban culture that we take for granted today. He revisits the diverse queer lives that took hold in London's parks and streets; its restaurants, pubs, and dancehalls; and its Turkish bathhouses and hotels—as well as attempts by municipal authorities to control and crack down on those worlds. He also describes how London shaped the culture and politics of queer life—and how London was in turn shaped by the lives of queer men. Ultimately, Houlbrook unveils the complex ways in which men made sense of their desires and who they were. In so doing, he mounts a sustained challenge to conventional understandings of the city as a place of sexual liberation and a unified queer culture.

A history remarkable in its complexity yet intimate in its portraiture, Queer London is a landmark work that redefines queer urban life in England and beyond.

“A ground-breaking work. While middle-class lives and writing have tended to compel the attention of most historians of homosexuality, Matt Houlbrook has looked more widely and found a rich seam of new evidence. It has allowed him to construct a complex, compelling account of interwar sexualities and to map a new, intimate geography of London.”—Matt Cook, The Times Higher Education Supplement
 
Winner of History Today’s Book of the Year Award, 2006

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, London, Historical, Research

398 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2005

Reviews

[K.J. Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent accessible and fascinating history. Hugely informative and readable. I can't recommend enough.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly awesome book. A triumph of analysis of urban culture. Houlbrook is clearly obsessed with queer culture in this period in Britain; he really knows his stuff.

Houlbrook proposes so many interesting hypotheses. As sexuality became, conceptually, an entity increasingly defined outside of gender in the years after the Second World War, life for those men who transgressed gender and respectability boundaries became more marginalised. Houlbrook shows a queer world running up to the Second World War that was by no means permissive, but one that was more wonderfully confused than it became after. He explains with great emphasis how varied the people that made up London's queer urban culture: gender nonconforming, 'homosexual', 'bisexual', 'heterosexual'. We should interpret these people and their identities on their own terms, and not succumb to anachronism.

This book asks so many questions, and I'll be stuck with many of them for a long time. Beautiful.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great melding of social and cultural history. Even thought it's not my area, I just love reading this kind of history. I think it's because it feels so familiar and yet so foreign. My only critique is that he really didn't elaborate on race. In the end, I only wish I had time to read more of these histories!!! If you're interested, scour the notes, he references a lot of other potential gems. Also, check out George Chauncey's book Gay New York ... fantastic!

[Iryna K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Дуже пізнавальна монографія про соціальну географію Лондона 1920-1950х для ЧСЧ.
Одразу зауважу, що це досить академічна книжка, що відчувається і зі стилю написання, і - головне - з її зануреності у академічний контекст. Вона очевидно не розрахована на широку публіку, радше на людей, які вивчають цей предмет, знають загальну історичну, соціальну, культурну ситуацію відповідного місця і періоду, і зацікавлені у новій інтерпретації чи додаткових даних.
Втім, навіть попри те, що я не належу до цієї ЦА (хоча якийсь академічний бекграунд таки маю, і він точно допоміг, точніше, припускаю, що без нього продиратия крізь текст було би суттєво складніше), я винесла з неї багато цікавого.
Автор показує, у який спосіб чоловіки, що мають секс із чоловіками, існували у міському просторі, як місто впливало на них, а вони на місто. Але ще цікавіше мені було читати про те, яку форму мали сексуальність і гендер в той час, і як їх специфічна організація (а саме уявлення, що сексуальність визначає гендер, а отже, бажання мати секс із чоловіком дорівнює фемінності, результатом чого є queer, camp, painted boys тощо, натомість маскулінність дозволяє мати секс із чоловіком, але бути "нормальним") формувала публічне життя Лондона, а також як зміна уявлення про сексуальність, постання ригідної опозиції між гомо- та гетеросексуальність, медикалізації першої поруч зі зміною соціально-економічної ситуації у післявоєнній Британії (насамперед постання суспільства загального добробуту) змінили міський досвід ЧСЧ, знищили публічну квірність на довгий час, і якоюсь мірою поглибили стигму та дискримінацію щодо публічного життя ЧСЧ у період, коли приватна сексуальність була декриміналізована.

[Christopher Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent tour de force ,GOLDEN , l am going to miss carrying this brilliant book around with me, I savoured every fabulous page❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early on Houlbrook corrects the common misconception that in Britain "being gay" was once illegal and subsequently legalized, noting instead that specific sexual acts between men were criminalized. (19.) Not everyone who engaged in these sorts of acts shared the same identity or understood the acts the same way. This is part of what Houlbrook means by queer, a variety of distinct yet fluid sexual practices and identities.
Working class men were not able to afford lodging that offered as much privacy as higher income men, and so were more likely to rely on public parks and urinals for sexual encounters. These spaces were also much more heavily policed than the private clubs and baths that middle class men could frequent. The differences among these spaces and among those who frequented them forms a refrain for Houlbrook There was not one common and egalitarian queer community but rather intersecting differences and hierarchies.
Houbrook sorts the men into a general typology of sexual practice and identity. There were queans - men who behaved in what was considered an effeminate manner and were open about their sexuality, renters or trade - men who had sex with other men, sometimes bragging of their sexual exploits, but who did not think of themselves and were not thought of by others as abnormal, and homosexuals - men who defined themselves by their sexual acts with other men and who were often more quiet and private about their behavior. Houlbrook notes that the third of these categories were men of more privileged status who both maintained discretion in order to preserve their position and who used their resources to access private spaces such as private lodging and exclusive clubs in order to avoid public scrutiny. The first two categories, on the other hand, consisted primarily of working class men who had less access to money and private space which in turn linked with their more public sexualities.
Interestingly, both queans and renters understood their behavior in gendered terms. Queans called each other girls and thought of themselves as woman-like but not as women. Renters had sex with (and sometimes robed) other men who they used called "pansies" and "brown hatters" (166) but still saw themselves as normal (non-queer) men because they saw their sexual partners as like women. Middle class homosexuals, by contrast, defined themselves not in gendered terms but by their sexual attraction to other men. Lack of challenge to gender norms as well as lack of engaging in public sex was part of middle class respectability and discretion.
While Houlbrook takes pains to complicate and nuance his claims throughout - the city is a space of both liberation and despair, the growth of private clubs for queer men both allowed new self-expression and created exclusion - the overall narrative arc of Queer London is one of decline or "cultural privatization." (270.) The range of and spaces for sexual expression narrow over the duration of the book. As homosexuality became more legitimate, queerness became less so, particularly the sexual practices of working class queers.
There are two notable omissions from Queer London, women and trans- people. Houlbrook distinguishes queans from transgendered people, since the queans dressed as women on occasion but did not live as women. Houlbrook mentions one case, Maurice/Mary who sought a "deliberate and complete illusion of femininity" by dressing as a woman all the time and who "saw himself as a woman." (165. I wonder why Houlbrook refers to Maurice/Mary's femininity as an illusion and uses a male pronoun?) Presumably trans- practices are also a type of queer, and more attention to trans- practices might complicate or perhaps support Houlbrook's narrative of declining space for queerness.
Finally, the book is exclusively about men. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this - Houlbrook notes that a book about queer women in London should be written - but it does make some of his story less clear. Women prostitutes appear regularly throughout the book as extras in the background in bars that queans frequented. Houlbrook claims that most renters quit having sex with men as they aged and developed more long term relationships with women. He also suggests that changing access to women in mixed gender bars and elsewhere may have contributed to the over all decline of renters. It is thus clear that queer men had significant relationships with women, as friends, lovers, wives, and mothers. Queer men's attitudes toward the women in their lives and women's responses to male queerness get no attention in the book, leaving an interesting piece of this story unexamined.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Houlbrook's book is a sophisticated look at queer identity after World War I to the passage of the Wolfenden Report.

This focus on the city, moreover, reflects current trends and critical academic thought, particularly the “spatial turn” within the field of history, cultural studies, and human geography. As the work of David Harvey, on Henri Lefebvre, or Edward Soja suggests, space - the city - is not simply a passive backdrop against which social and cultural processes are enacted but a “constitutive of part of the cultural and social formation of metropolitan modernity.” Male sexual practises and identities do not just take place in the city; they are shaped and sustained by the physical and cultural forms of modern urban life just as they intern shape that life. 4

Bech concludes with an axiom: the city is "the social world proper of the homosexual… to be homosexual he must get into the city.” 5

Entering the public record was a disaster in Cyril's life, as it was in the lives of those countless other men who encountered the law in this period… this dissonance means we must understand the records of official agencies - on which this book draws - as being produced at the point where public and private, pain and pleasure, intersect. 5

My interest is, in Joan Scott's terms, "how difference is established, how it operates, how and in what ways it constitute subjects who see and act in the world.” 18: Joan Scott, “The Evidence of Experience”: 399-401 8

This book starts with the first world war trying to close in 1918 and concludes with the publication of the report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution - more commonly known after its chairman, John Wolfenden - in 1957. 10

Drawing upon an increasingly vibrant literature with history, human geography and cultural studies, it moves beyond simplistic invocations of the city as a queer space, and of a unified “homosexual” experience to explore the complex Inter relationship between modern urban life and the organization of sexual and gender practises. 11

In all of its erotic, affective, and social relations the queer body - and the spaces is it inhabited - was a public body, subject to the draconian force of law. 20

In acting against public sexual cultures and commercial venues alike, officers Drew upon their familiarity with urban queer life, utilizing “invisibility, or more specifically… dissimulation, making the police presence appear to be something other than it [was].” 34 Moran, Homosexual(ity) of Law, 143 26

Operating on the precarious border between invisibility (to passerby and police) and visibility (to each other), such practises temporarily reconfigured the boundaries between public and private, resolving the tension between peril and possibility to ensure that men could meet and interact in safety. This was the basis upon which they forged an equivocally vital world that interwove opportunities for sex and sociability. 45

The urinals constructed in streets and stations by municipal authorities in the late 19th Century were liminal social space in which a unique interplay between public and private sustained complex opportunities for privacy and sexual encounter. 49

Many cinemas, particularly in the west end, thus became known for the possibilities they held. In 1942, for example, Robert N., a clerk and George A., a Canadian soldier, were arrested at the Monseigneur Leicester Square. 92, 59

Repeated practice thus generated a map of a public queer world with its own landmarks, histories, and possibilities. If Burke’s For Your Convenience was the most remarkable version of this, all men possessed similar cognitive maps, within which certain places were iconic. 65

Municipal authorities thus never sought to prevent men frequenting London's bars, cafés, or restaurants. Indeed, this would have been impossible, since the individuals and venues that conformed to notions of “normal” masculine behaviour were effectively invisible. Rather, regulation sought to demarcate acceptable forms of public behaviour, imposing a form of sociability through which queer men were rendered invisible. In so doing the law was applied selectively and symbolically, and prosecutions orchestrated for maximum impact. 79

If the state sought to constraint men's sociability within peculiarly narrow limits, the amorality of the marketplace allowed queer commercial networks to develop. Some proprietors simply accepted men's custom. Others deliberately cultivated a queer clientele. 81

In London's commercial venues the consumer, the market, and the state does engaged in an ongoing conflict over the nature of queer commercial sociability. 84

Cosmopolitanism, as Judith Walkowtiz argues, was associated with “trans national forms of commercialized culture” - the “foreign practises, bodies and spaces” thought to characterize central London. Cosmopolitanism evoked assumptions about the opportunities to temporarily transgress boundaries of class or gender. 85

Queer sociability was increasingly discreet and separate from “normal” urban life, the ongoing negotiations between official regulation, individual proprietors, and men's own demands for a secure “home” structuring what might be term a commercial closet, outside of which it was dangerous to step. 91

Indeed, in some ways the Turkish bath was an informal gentleman's club, providing refreshments and sleeping cubicles a long slide and array of steam rooms, massage parlours, and plunge pools. 95

Homosociality blended into homoeroticism, admiration into desire. 97

Most sexual encounters took place in the cubicles themselves, creating a distinctive micro geography predicated upon the movement between public and private space. 99

Rather, the staff patrolled an informal boundary between public and private encounters, attempting to limit men's visibility and reinforcing a sexual Micro geography that, for the most part, situated cruising within corridors and public rooms while confining sexual interactions to individual cubicles. Such a place specific form of regulation relied not on excluding queer men - though that threat was ever present - but on informal warnings when they became two indiscreet. 103

In 1917, for example, John H. - a private in the Canadian army - and John J. - a British sailor - rented a room in the Shaftsbury hotel in Saint Andrew Street. 76, 123

Thus Rodney Garland’s The Heart in Exile (1953) observed:
The majority of the underground do not go to queer pubs, clubs or even parties, do not linger round public lavatories, Railway stations or other recognized or obvious places. There are thousands of young inverts among the millions of normal young men who live with their friends in boarding houses, small flats, hostels, clubs, associations, sometimes under the roof of… parents…. Secrecy is complete and scandals are rare. The underground is everywhere. 134

In the 1920s, Crisp recalled:
The same exaggerated and over-simplified distinction that separated men from women… ran like a wall straight and impossible between… roughs and… bitches. [7. Naked Civil Servant, 61] 141

Public space was also an important economic resource, where fallen fruit could be picked up from passing vans, errands run for local tradesmen, or shopkeepers subjected to petty thefts. Street life offered excitement, offered boys to contribute to the family economy, and opened up the possibility of accessing further commercial pleasures. The cultural geography of boy life was reinforced by the unskilled labour market, which absorbed fourteen-year-old School leavers into an array of delivery jobs. Working class boys encountered adult men constantly, their interactions constituting age as a category of gendered and social inequality. Youth could mean relative poverty, physical subordination, and vulnerability. Youth could also mean desirability, and therefore the power to exploit an elder. In such encounters, danger and possibility existed in an ambiguous, perhaps you reconcilable, tension…
This confidence streetwise behaviour, however, coexisted with unambiguous sexual assaults in which men force themselves on unwilling partners. 183

Cruising - like public sex - was erotic and exciting precisely because it generated the electric thrill of social and spatial transgression. The deliberate rejection of propriety and respectability was, in itself, alluring. 210

These bodies were not eroticized in themselves but for the broader masculine qualities they seemed to represent. That toughness invested in the working class body to denoted a “real man,” rented closer to nature by his class. [64]

The relationships between boys and men, as Steven Maynard suggests, were regulated “not to protect innocent victims from abuse and exploitation by homosexual psychopaths but to prevent frivolous boys being let astray by fallen men.” [47. Maynard, “Horrible Temptations” 235] 233

For many observers, the rapid social changes unleashed by the war seem to have rendered Britain's stability problematic, destabilizing the critical interpretive categories - of masculinity, Youth, and nationhood -within which narratives of sexual difference in danger were framed. When established notions of Britishness seemed threatened from every direction, queer urban culture was viewed as ever more dangerous, assuming a central symbolic position in the post war politics of sexuality. 237

[Hubert Han · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queer London explores the fascinating intersection between sexuality, functionality of spaces, criminality, morality, and physical geography, constantly discussing the ever-shifting demarcation between the public and private spheres. The most interesting chapters for me were those exploring the subculture of working class bachelors and the need for articulated dominance as a show of 'masculinity' as opposed to queerness.

Houlbrook explores many aspects of homosexuality in London, but he could be more succinct about the impact of urbanity on the psychology and mental classification of queerness. Similarly, by taking a thematic approach, the book often loses any sense of chronology. Like most social and cultural historians Houlbrook is guilty of overusing opaque language to an extent where at times the words become vacuous, see: microgeography, hegemonic, interwove, discursive space, problematic, negotiating space. This is epitomised by Steven Maynard's quote on p222: 'subcultural and discursive formations as existing in a reciprocal relationship, both shaped by a process we might call the dialectics of discovery'. Orwell would be furious!

[Stevie Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads very much like a PhD thesis adapted into a book. As such its depth is incredible, but it also suffers a little from having a narrow remit and occasionally showing up authorial biases. I'd been warned about the lack of queer women when I was lent the book, but what irked me and nearly made me stop reading multiple times was the almost complete denial of bisexuality (not necessarily as an identity, but certainly as a concept that could be mapped onto some behaviours). A useful reference, but not one I'll necessarily be revisiting.

[Nickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it! Incredible source material. Really conjured up the exciting, scary, forbidden world of gay London between the wars, and made some surprising points about changing reactions and identities between then and now. In my recent spirit of always accompanying a text with a tune, I bought Flanagan & Allen's Underneath The Arches to go with this and found it quite poignant. Even had a bit of a weep, I did.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating work by Houlbrook - broad, deep research with a much richer analytical framework than previous work in the field. Houlbrook's cultural methodology pulls from anthropological, sociological, and economic queries that create a compelling argument for the power of space, language, and law to forge personal and public identities.

[Michael Schwarz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating and compelling urban history, but unfortunately written in a turgid academic style that sometimes made me want to run from the room screaming.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matt Houlbrook deciding not to write about gay women was literally the whole reason I changed my thesis and got an A so thanks

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesomely brilliant narrative history of gay life in London in allow its variety and complexity, mostly between WWI and WWII. London's gay/queer history, like that of many, probably most, cities are far more extensive and interesting than most people imagine - who knew there was a guide in the 1930's to the best 'cottages' (public toilets for cruising in) in London? (republished as a result of Houlbrook's book - original copies go for £2,500+ - it has become even more of a 'curiosity' in the years since Houlbrook's book was published in 2006 as almost all of London's public toilets have been closed and sold off, a rich Victorian and secret gay heritage lost forever).

It is too easy to see the history of gay life in London pre the Wolfenden reforms through the prism of such film images as 'Victim' where the men might be queer but there was only grimness and certainly no gaiety (pun intended). Gay history was individual and constantly changing and adapting, there was no one narrative that was true for all time or even over the space off years or between different areas and classes.

None of this may seem very new or exciting, which is good because it means that its message has percolated down but, if it seems in any way surprising then the book has a job still to do. Even if you think you know what it has to say you probably don';t realise how extensively and truly fascinating it is.

A real treasure of a book - and one that should be read instead twaddle like 'Bad Gays in History'. Do yourself a favour read this book.

[S.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dry and academic, but commendable for the staggering amount of research that went into it. I found it difficult to get through more than one chapter in one sitting though, and while it was interesting and (occasionally overly informative), it wasn't an enjoyable read.

[Ben Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really good for anyone who wants a better picture of what gay life was like in London between the Wilde trial and the Wolfenden report. Lesser explored, but just as vibrant, exciting and dangerous. The book is a tad academic at times but offers insight I have never read anywhere else.

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting but a bit densely written for the casual non-academic reader.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of the messiness of Queer London in the interwar period and the 1950s, though obviously pretty academic tone

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much that I almost didn't want to finish it. Highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in British queer history!

[Jocelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone interested in twentieth-century queer history, this is a great read.

[AdamPeter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seminal

[Maddie Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

was fine. can’t wait to be done with summer reading

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoops! Finished this book some time ago, but forgot to update my goodreads..
Either way, I liked this, but I probably wouldn't read it again. A lot of quotations by a lot of different people give you a lot of different angles on the whole matter, which is amazing, but it doesn't make for light reading.
It's nice that it gives a largely unvoiced group a voice, though.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating take on the multiple queer identities that existed in London during the interwar years and how the antagonisms between them helped structure the terms of legalizing homosexuality in the 1960s.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I have no doubt that we shall win, but the road is long, and red with monstrous martyrdoms." - Oscar Wilde.

This book is not an easy read, but puts into perspective a subsection of gay culture during the interwar period.