It was easier to pick them up than risk attending a brothel or propositioning a man of the same age. According to Norton, this stems from the fact that many older men would naturally encounter errand boys on the street. In the press, there has been a long-held slur linking homosexuality to sex with underage boys. Ned Ward’s The Secret History of London Clubs (1709, and freely available in a later edition from the Internet Archive) offers an open description of these houses suggesting that they were places of intrigue where the working class, the young and the old could meet and explore their sexuality. Moorfields, Lincoln’s Inn and the Royal Exchange were other places around the capital where you could find molly houses. According to historian Rictor Norton, London’s ‘molly districts’ included the arcade of Covent Garden, the south side of St James’s Park and the bog houses (toilets) of the Savoy. Arguably, there was a significant tolerance for this gay subculture.
Raids often took place based on a tip-off from neighbours who had an axe to grind or in relation to another crime it is clear that there wasn’t a concerted effort during this time to close down molly houses. While there was a chance that the houses could be raided and the penalties were severe, their locations were well known. ‘Molly’ was a derogatory term that meant either gay or feminine men. One potentially safe haven for gay men to meet in the 18th and early 19th century was ‘molly houses’. The bawdy 18th century and early 19th century are often regarded as a high point for the acceptance of same-sex relations and what we would now call transgenderism that would be clamped down upon following 1885. Early morning workers jeer at a gentleman as he is being carried home after a night of dissipation, 1747 Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Safe havens