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Molly houses were spaces for female mimicry mock marriages and births of singing, of community and of sex. Probably deriving their name from the slang for a homosexual male, these were havens for those looking for same-sex interactions in a society where sodomy was still punishable by death.
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It was only in 18th century London that the first well-documented queer spaces started appearing, with "molly houses" the place to head if you were looking for a gay old time. The first gay cruising grounds and gay brothels are likely to have appeared towards the middle of the 17th century, but evidence is limited. There's not a huge amount known about queer spaces in London before the 1700s a combination of poor documentation and the need for the upmost levels of secrecy means historians know very little about where exactly those looking for same-sex contact would have flocked. See Baz’s comic about 1963 – and the rest of our Tales from the Tavern – here.Īnd read more about the RVT’s unique history here.The best way of doing that? A history lesson. The bars shared a toilet, after all, and if you were to make someone’s acquaintance in there and agree to meet 10 minutes later at the bus stop down the road, no one would be any the wiser… For others, the proximity to the queer space was the whole point. “The biggest part was the gay part because it was packed and that was the part that made the money.”įor some users of the straight bar, the Tavern was simply a place for a pint. The performer Bette Bourne, who visited the Tavern as a 17-year-old in the 1950s, remembers its various different areas. During the postwar decades, the RVT had a very different layout from today, with a large central bar serving three areas separated by internal walls, with separate entrances. That doesn’t mean such venues were necessarily exclusively gay, however. They almost fill the role of the family home.” “They create a sense of solidarity or community in a world that is often quite hostile, offering something that approximates privacy and security. “In the 1940s and 50s, pubs like the RVT are social hubs,” says historian Matt Houlbrook. Whether it happened like that or another way, the RVT became known as a place where gays could meet and the secret queer language of Polari could be heard.
1940S GAY BAR LONDON DRIVERS
Gay punters then supposedly began flocking to the Tavern, attracted by the drag shows – or indeed the lorry drivers and market traders.
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Some say drag at the Tavern was established after the war, when acts developed by the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) to entertain the troops were revived to amuse the lorry drivers and market traders who used the pub. But it’s hard to know exactly how this came about – as with so many aspects of LGBTQ history before decriminalisation, solid evidence is thin on the ground. The RVT has a strong claim to being London’s oldest surviving gay pub, with a history of queer use dating back to the 1950s if not earlier. You can read the comic here, but if you’re curious about the real-life history behind it, then read on…
1940S GAY BAR LONDON SERIES
RVT Future’s brilliant comic series by Baz continues with a glimpse of the double life of the pub in the 1960s