Victorian drag queens

James Gardiner is a researcher and author who specializes in collecting historical photographs depicting what he calls ‘gay life’. In his own words:

How can you have a photographic history of something that was, until very recently, something to hide, not photograph? And for a great many men, still is.[...] Many of us devote enormous energy to making sure that our appearance does not betray us in the wrong place - but does announce us in the right place. The camera, which denies us this flexibility, which fixes everything for ever in a frozen image, in black-and-white, can be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.

Gardiner collected photographs, postcards, cartoons, and many more objects depicting LGBTQ+ life in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Some of the most striking photographs in his collection can be found in a photo album of the late Victorian era, showing photographs of men in drag between 1880 and 1889.

Who would think this innocent photograph depicts the same person who stood trial in a case that attracted considerable attention from the Victorian-era London public. Stella, known to the court as Ernest Boulton, became famous in Victorian London for standing trial for wearing women’s clothing and alleged homosexual offences (Fanny and Stella, the young men who shocked Victorian England, Neil Mckenna, Faber & Faber, 2013, pp. 25-26)

Before the trial, Ernest had toured frequently with his friend, Fredrick Park, in a theatrical double act where they dressed up in women’s clothing as Fanny and Stella. They were often seen at, and sometimes ejected from, social events and theatres around West London in drag.

On a spring evening in 1870, they were both arrested and brought to the magistrate’s court under the accusation of performing ‘homosexual acts’. Ernest and Fredrick were still wearing their dresses when they stood before the magistrate, which elicited a buzz from crowds that had gathered to watch and fueled newspaper reports all across London (Neil Mckenna, pp. 27-28). Both ended up being acquitted because of lack of evidence and the absence of an actual law that forbade men from wearing women’s clothing (Neil Mckenna, pp. 572-574).

That Ernest liked to dress up in drag was unmistakably true, as one of the pictures in a Victorian photograph album proves.

Although Ernest was sometimes very public about his sexuality and presentation, this was probably very different for most of the other people featured in this photo album. Ernest is the only one photographed we know by name.

In a completely different era and context, the raids and subsequent riots at The Stonewall in 1969 are eerily similar to the Ernest and Park’s story in their use of publicly visible and invisible subversion of norms, their prosecution by authority, and their subsequent liberation from oppression. Stonewall remembrance day, and Pride Month, are about looking back at how others have stood up for their emancipation, and the need to continue subverting and questioning norms.

Read more about Fanny and Stella in Neil Mckenna’s 2013 book ‘ the Young men who Shocked Victorian England.’