In the Telegraph, photographer
Johnnie Shand Kydd tells the story behind a picture of a rather queer ritual he once witnessed in Naples.
"One of the most fascinating pictures in the book, I think, is the one of the transsexual giving birth to a doll. I met the old boy a year ago and discovered that he was one of the last practitioners of this strange ritual.
He goes through the whole process of giving birth, so his waters break, and then he rushes to the window and shouts down to the street “help me, help me!”
"The next door neighbours rush up to find him and help him give birth. He’s given birth about 13 times. It’s a profundity ritual. I got access to it to photograph it, and then I read a book called ‘The Skin’ by Curzio Malaparte and there’s a chapter in that called ‘The Son of Adam’ which describes exactly the same ritual, in 1947. I then found out that this bizarre ritual goes back thousands of years."
Wow.
This reminded Fagburn of an account of another mock birth unearthed by the gay historian,
Rictor Norton.
300 years ago,
Ned Ward witnessed just such a ritual at a Molly House in London.
"Not long since, upon one of their Festival Nights, they had cusheon'd up the Belly of one of their Sodomitical Brethren, or rather Sisters, as they commonly call'd themselves, disguising him in a Womans Night-Gown, Sarsnet-Hod, and Nightrale, who, when the Company were met, was to mimick the wry Faces of a groaning Woman, to be deliver'd of a joynted Babie they had provided for that Purpose, and to undergo all the Formalities of a Lying in. The Wooden Off-spring to be afterwards Christen'd, and the holy Sacrament of Baptism to be impudently Prophan'd, for the Diversion of the Profligates, who, when their infamous Society were assembl'd in a Body, put their wicked Contrivance accordingly into practice..."
Isn't it strange the way some things survive?
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