Sexual Subcultures: Caught In The Act

"I still look upon this group of people as a group with which I have a cultural affinity. As a gay man I think you can look upon this material and you find evidence that doesn't surprise you at all.
"You find nelly queens, you find rough trade, you find men who are defiant, you find men who are ashamed of themselves and commit suicide, you find men who join the club every evening and resign from the club every morning - very much the same as today
"I really do recognise them as gay men, in the modern sense of the word gay. I really do think you have to reclaim your past before you can fight for the good gay future."

Rictor Norton, Voices From the Old Bailey: Sexual Subcultures, BBC Radio 4.

The don of gay historians, Rictor Norton, was speaking on this brilliant programe that looked at three 18th century court cases recored at London's Old Bailey;
Gabriel Lawrence, a milkman arrested at a molly house (a gay pub/club/brothel) - and later hanged.
The Brown brothers who blackmailed sodomites they caught cruising St James's Park
And Princess Seraphina, who fought back and took to court a man who'd tried to rob her of her drag.
She won, too.

Old Bailey accounts like these are pretty much the only way we can know anything about the lives of ordinary gay men at the time.
You can read those featured on this programme on the BBC website.
I find things like this endlessly fascinating and I hope you do, too.
If so, and haven't had the pleasure already, visit Rictor Norton's astounding gay history website.
Rictor also does a quite devastating demolition job on those Foucauldian fools who argue that "the homosexual" is a modern invention - as did one of his co-contributors on the programme.
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful stuff.
Right, I think that's enough superlatives for one post, don't you?

• The version broadcast this evening is edited - and misses a third of the material, so you'll miss much. Not least of the which is the bawdy Georgian song 'Bumography'!