ABSTRACT
Samuel Stevens On Sunday night, the 14th of November last, I went to the prisoner’s house in Field Lane, in Holborn, where I found between forty and fifty men making love to one another, as they called it. Sometimes they would sit in one another’s laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hands indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women, O, Fie, Sir!—Pray, Sir-Dear, SirLord, how can you serve me so?—I swear I’ll cry out.—You’re a wicked Devil-and you’re a bold face-Eh! ye little dear Toad! Come, buss!—Then they’d hug, and play, and toy, and go out by couples into another room on the same floor, to be married, as they called it. The door of that room was kept by-—Eccleston, who used to stand pimp for them, to prevent anybody from disturbing them in their diversions. When they came out, they used to brag, in plain terms, of what they had been doing. As for the prisoner, she was present all the time, except when she went to fetch liquors. There was among them Will Griffin, who has been since hanged for sodomy; and-—Derwin, who had been carried before Sir George Mertins, for sodomitical practices with a link-boy.9 Derwin bragged how he had baffled the link-boy’s evidence; and the prisoner at the same time boasted, that what she had sworn before Sir George in Derwin’s behalf, was a great means of bringing him off. I went to the same house on two or three Sunday nights following, and found much the same practices as before. The company talked all manner of gross and vile obscenity in the prisoner’s hearing, and she appeared to be wonderfully pleased with it
Joseph Sellers deposed to the same effect, that he believed there were above forty sodomites taken from that house and committed to prison in one night.
