On the evening of 28 April 1870, Miss Fanny Park and her best friend Miss Stella Boulton, accompanied by friends Hugh Mundell and Cecil Thomas, left the Strand Theatre. As the four friends stepped inside a waiting cab, events took an unexpected turn. A policeman appeared from the shadows and placed Fanny and Stella under arrest. Cecil Thomas ran away, but Mundell, being a gentleman of honour, elected to escort the two young ladies to Bow Street Station to clear up the confusion.

It was a decision Mundell would live to regret because he found himself embroiled in one of the most sensational trials of the 19th century. The two flamboyantly dressed ladies he had accompanied that night, Fanny and Stella, turned out to be cross-dressers Frederick Park, a 23-year-old law student, and Ernest Boulton, a 22-year-old gentleman of ‘unspecified means’. Following a night in the cells, the two men were taken to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court wearing the gowns they had worn to the theatre, alongside a shamefaced Mundell. A jostling crowd gathered to see the spectacle, The Daily Telegraph reporting that, ‘the police had considerable difficulty in keeping a space clear for traffic’. The two ‘ladies’ faced a hostile crowd, who greeted the prisoners, ‘with shouts of laughter and hisses.’ Boulton and Park were subsequently charged that they, ‘did with each and one another feloniously commit the abominable crime of buggery’, as well as unlawfully conspiring ‘with diverse others, to disguise themselves as women and to frequent places of public resort, so disguised and to thereby openly and scandalously outrage public decency and corrupt public morals’. The wheels were set in motion for the first drag trial in Britain.

The Queen v Boulton and Park kept Victorian society gripped, with its cast of high-born characters and the exposure of their not-so-private lives. A century and a half after Boulton and Park’s case was heard in 1871, the event still marks an important chapter in LGBTQ+ history, not least because it signified the start of a public conversation about homosexuality, and what it meant to identify as a homosexual. It also uncovered London’s gay subculture, which was proved to be not only flourishing, despite Victorian sensibilities, but populated by men from all levels of society.

The Metropolitan Police and legal circles took a narrow view of homosexuality, using ignorance among medical professionals as proof that such ‘unnatural acts’ did not exist. Even The Lancet advised that experts from some of the more morally louche countries should be roped in to assist: ‘It is from no want of respect to our English confrères that we maintain that none of them is likely to have a really decisive opinion on the points involved. On the other hand, there are physicians in Paris, in Spain, and in Constantinople, who must, unfortunately, have seen very much of the results of a certain hideous vice.’

Boulton and Park were well known in the mid to late 19th century for their cross-dressing escapades, both on the streets and on the stage. Cross-dressing itself was not illegal in Victorian Britain, and the authorities tended to turn a blind eye so long as it was confined to the theatre. The stage gave Boulton and Park the ideal environment to pursue their passion for wearing female clothing, and the two became close friends – eventually sharing a flat and going out in public in both male and female attire. In the late 1860s the two men were part of a theatre troupe that toured the drawing rooms of provincial country houses and assembly rooms, always taking the female parts and listed under their male identities in the programme. In 1868 Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party MP for Newark, joined the tour, and he began a relationship with Ernest Boulton. The couple often played husband and wife on stage, and offstage Boulton began to call himself Clinton’s wife. He had calling cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton, and the couple exchanged love letters. As Boulton and Park became more daring and outlandish in their behaviour – openly parading the London streets dressed as women – the lines between business and pleasure became blurred and they inevitably drew attention to themselves. They were put under surveillance by the police and by the time of their initial arrest in 1870, the authorities had already been watching them for over a year.

At the initial hearing in April 1870 the court heard evidence from the policemen who had watched Boulton and Park, and their interactions with other gentlemen. Both men were also subjected to an intimate physical examination by Dr James Paul, who despite not being an expert in sexual activity deemed their ‘symptoms’ sufficient to accuse both men of ‘unnatural crimes’.

The behaviour of Boulton and Park’s associates was also questioned, and charges were brought against Louis Hurt, a close friend of Boulton; John Safford Fiske, the American consul in Leith; William Somerville, who had accompanied Boulton and Park to a ball while they were in drag; and Martin Cumming and C.F. Thomas, who also enjoyed wearing women’s clothing in public. Hugh Mundell, who had been apprehended alongside Boulton and Park, appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Cumming, Somerville and Thomas all absconded before the trial and Lord Clinton died in June 1870 of what was reported to be scarlet fever, but rumours quickly spread that he had committed suicide.

The trial began on 9 May 1871 and according to Reynolds’s Newspaper, ‘Great interest was attached to the proceedings… crowds of persons congregated round the entrance to the court for an hour previous to its opening.’ The press devoted much of their reporting to the appearance of the prisoners – now dressed in male attire, although ‘somewhat more tastily than is quite common with young men of the present day’ (Reynolds’s Newspaper, 14 May 1871).

The prosecution case, led by Sir Robert Collier and Sir John Coleridge, rapidly fell apart. With a lack of physical evidence of the ‘buggery’ they were accused of, and no witnesses to testify to any homosexual activity, the prosecution was built on proving that the lifestyle of the men – their public cross-dressing and flamboyant behaviour – were proof of homosexuality. The prosecution witnesses proved disastrous. Martha Stacey, the landlady in Wakefield Street where they were residing when arrested, was quite certain that ‘she never saw any impropriety of conduct’ (The Morning Advertiser, 11 May 1871), and other witnesses testified along the same lines. In fact, many of the witnesses hadn’t even noticed that Boulton and Park were men. Even Hugh Mundell, who had been caught in flagrante with the pair outside the Strand Theatre confirmed that he believed them to be women, and that rather than encouraging any physical advances, Boulton had in fact rebuffed them.

Romantic letters between the ‘accomplices’ were also produced, but aside from references to ‘my darling’ and ‘fondest love’ – and one rather risqué ‘with many kisses’ – the defence successfully argued that they were mere terms of endearment, embellished with the ‘theatrical propensities’ that Boulton and Park were familiar with. ‘There was not the slightest proof of any conspiracy with which they were charged,’ announced the Manchester Evening News on 15 May 1871.

Boulton’s mother testified that she approved of his friendship with the Lord Clinton and knew of her son’s penchant for dressing up – which it was argued was a result of play-acting off stage as well as on. Her testimony that ‘Ernest was always a most devoted son, his only fault being a love of admiration, which was fed by the flattery of foolish people’ was clearly that of a loving and understanding mother. The defence’s coup de grace was their dismissal of the physical evidence. Frederick Le Gros Clark, a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, testified alongside several other eminent physicians that ‘I found nothing upon Boulton and Park to show that they had committed an unnatural offence, nor could I find anything that would lead to a suspicion that they had been guilty of an unnatural offence’ (Reynolds’s Newspaper, 14 May 1871).

Following a lengthy summing-up by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, in which he levied criticism at both the prosecution and police, Boulton and Park were acquitted. It took the jury just 53 minutes to find all four men not guilty. ‘The announcement was received with a burst of applause,’ the Days’ Doings reported, and Boulton ‘on hearing this result, fainted, but after a short time recovered his wonted composure.’

Although the trial was over, the sense of drama surrounding the case and the scandalous nature of the charges ensured that it was perfect fodder for penny pamphlets. Several were produced, with increasingly outrageous titles such as ‘Men in Petticoats’ and ‘The Unnatural History and Petticoat Mystery of Boulton and Park’, alongside illustrations of the couple in drag.

While the landmark trial did much to uncover the relative freedom of Victorian gay sub-culture, it also paved the way for a tightening of laws and punishments related to homosexual behaviour. The failure to convict Boulton and Park was a factor in the introduction of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment, which made it easier for authorities to punish gay men – as evidenced in the famous trial of Oscar Wilde, and subsequently of Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing.

Most importantly though, it points to a different version of Victorian history – one that challenges the gender stereotypes that have become so familiar to us from this period. The lives of Fanny and Stella, and their trial as Boulton and Park, reveal that the notion of an ‘alternative life’ was very much a part of 19th century society. One hundred and fifty years later, it’s a story that still resonates.