Meet Fanny and Stella, two cross-dressers who created somewhat of a fuss in 1871 after being arrested for running amok through the social scene of Victorian London, picking up men for sex and generally being far too outrageous for then sternly homophobic conservative Britain. Their story is told in the latest musical showcase at Vauxhall’s Above The Stag theatre…
Writer Glenn Chandler, whose credits include TV series Taggart as well as previous Above The Stag show Cleveland Street: The Musical, researched the story of the trouble-making cross-dressing couple in the newspaper archives. While the scandal seems to have disappeared from wider British notoriety, at the time it was reported in great detail.
Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park, aka Fanny and Stella, were two young Victorian gentlemen from good families, one of whose father was a high court judge. “They shared a love for dressing up as women, and as amateur actors appeared around the provinces in minor productions, but would carry on their female impersonating around the streets of London,” Chandler tells me. “When the show was over the frocks stayed on, and they’d go off to clubs picking up men for sex where all sorts of disreputable characters hung out. They weren’t glamorous like the drag queens you see in bars today, they looked frumpy, but then that was what lady-like was in those days.”
Boulton as Stella had so many men in love with her. She lived with an MP, Lord Arthur Clinton, who had cards printed for her – ‘Lady Stella Clinton’ – and yet he was a serving member of Parliament. Everywhere Stella went she got love letters from various men.
They were eventually arrested at the Strand Theatre by a copper who saw them being flirtatious with men, shouting down from their box. “They appeared the next morning at the magistrates court in their frocks, put in prison, and received bail then went on trial in 1871,” Chandler says. “I’ve taken quite a lot of lines directly from transcripts. The magistrates court proceedings were so hysterically funny with all these eccentric people turning up to give evidence. The sergeant came along with a bag of instruments and stuck objects up their rectums and measured their size of their dicks. He was convinced if a man had a large penis he was a homosexual. And if the sphincter didn’t act it was a sign that there had been foreign bodies up there.”
It was a very different time for gay people. “There were no nice words to describe us in those days. The word gay or even homosexual didn’t exist. We were sodomites. This is what makes it fascinating is that the case happened two decades before Oscar Wilde.”
Chandler’s words ring true, a little over 140 years later and we have only just got round to introducing same sex marriage and we are still fighting inequality around the world. “A lot of what Fanny and Stella is about is taking things back to another era and showing how long it has taken for things to change. The play is a comedy, but also a tragedy about two people whose colourful lives were effectively ruined.”
• Fanny & Stella: The Shocking True Story is at Above The Stag Theatre (17 Miles Street, Vauxhall, SW8 1RZ) until 14th June. Tickets: www.abovethestag.com
