Boulton and Park

(Thomas) Ernest Boulton (1847–1904) was born on 18 December 1847 in Tottenham, Middlesex, England, the son of stockbroker Thomas Alfred Boulton and his wife, née Mary Ann Sarah Levick. From childhood the young Boulton liked wearing female clothing, and was encouraged in his impersonations of maids and other women by his mother; he used the nickname "Stella". Boulton started work as a clerk at his uncle's stockbroking firm and then briefly at a bank, before leaving in 1866 or 1867.[1] Park was initially an articled clerk (law student) with a London solicitor. Frederick William Park (1846–1881) was born on 21 November 1846 and christened on 5 January 1847 in Wimbledon, Surrey, the son of barrister Alexander Atherton Park, Master of the Court of Common Pleas (a superior court) and his wife, née Mary Frances Brown.

As they became friends, Boulton and Park formed a theatrical double act, touring as Stella Clinton (or Mrs Graham) and Fanny Winifred Park, and receiving favourable press reviews for their performances.[2] For around two years they also frequented the West End of London in both women's and men's dress, attending theatres and social events. They were ejected from both the Alhambra Theatre and the Burlington Arcade on several occasions. On one occasion they were bound over to keep the peace after being mistaken for women dressed as men.[1]

A third person involved in the affair was Lord Arthur Clinton, who had lived with "Stella" as husband and had exchanged love letters with Stella.[3][4][5]

A crowd watches Boulton and Park leave Bow Street Magistrates' Court on the morning after their arrest. Artist's illustration published in The Illustrated Police News

On the evening of 28 April 1870 Boulton, Park and another man were seen leaving a house in Wakefield Street, near Regent Square, by a police detective, who followed them as they took a cab to the Strand Theatre. There the detective saw them meet two others, described as "gentlemen", before the party entered a private box inside the theatre. A police superintendent and a police sergeant joined the detective during the performance, and Boulton, Park and one of the others, Hugh Alexander Mundell, were arrested as they attempted to leave the theatre. The others escaped.[6] The three arrested men were subjected to intimate examination by a police doctor in order to establish whether they had had anal sex.[7]

When brought before the magistrate, Frederick Flowers, at Bow Street Magistrates' Court the next day, Boulton and Park were still wearing women's clothing, which was described in some detail in newspaper reports. Mundell claimed that he had believed that Boulton and Park were women, even though he had previously met them while they were dressed in men's clothes. He was given bail, but Boulton and Park were not. The case attracted considerable attention and a large crowd had collected in Bow Street to see the two leave in a police van.[6] Subsequent magistrates' court hearings also attracted unusually large numbers of spectators to witness the proceedings.[8]

The indictment was against Lord Arthur Clinton, Ernest Boulton, Frederic Park, Louis Hurt, John Safford Fiske, Martin Cumming, William Sommerville and C. H. Thompson. The last three absconded before the trial.[9][10] John Fiske was an American citizen and the United States consul at Leith, Edinburgh.[1] Lord Arthur died on 18 June, the day after receiving his subpoena for the trial, ostensibly of scarlet fever but more probably a suicide.[5] However, there was speculation at the time that, helped by powerful friends, he faked his death and fled abroad, to live on in exile. The author Neil McKenna cites circumstantial evidence that supports this theory.[11]

The trial began on 9 May 1871 at the Court of Queen's Bench, before a special jury.[1] It was presided over by Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice.[12] At the hearing Boulton and Park's lifestyle attracted great public interest, especially when a trunkful of their dresses was brought in as evidence. However, the unreliability of the witnesses and their physical examination by the police without higher authority swayed opinion in their favour. The prosecution was unable to prove either that they had committed any homosexual offence or that the wearing of women's clothing by men was an offence in English law.[5] Cockburn's summing up was critical of the prosecution's case and the behaviour of the police.[13] After deliberating for fifty-three minutes the jury found them not guilty.[3][14]

In 1882 there was a subsequent bizarre development when a Mary Jane Furneaux was convicted of impersonating Lord Arthur Clinton in a cross-dressing fraud case. Furneaux convinced her victims that she was Lord Arthur Clinton disguised as a woman and that his reported death was a cover.[15] Ironically, while Clinton had no creditworthiness at the time of his death, Furneaux succeeded in obtaining 15,000 pounds. Such was the interest in the case that it prompted the selling of cheap biographies of Furneaux.[16]

A blue plaque, marking the site of the house Boulton and Park lodged in, Wakefield Street, Bloomsbury (2015)

Boulton and Park appear as characters in The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881), a pioneering work of homosexual pornographic literature. In this story, the cross-dressing narrator recounts how he meets Boulton and Park dressed up as women at Haxell's Hotel in the Strand, with Lord Arthur trailing along behind. Later on, the narrator spends the night at Boulton and Park's rooms in Eaton Square, and the next day has breakfast with them "all dressed as ladies".[17]

Boulton and Park appear in the play Lord Arthur's Bed (2008) by the English playwright Martin Lewton. The play was premiered at the Brighton Festival on 14 May 2008. It subsequently toured nationally in 2008 and was transferred to Dublin in 2009.

A stage play by Taggart writer Glenn Chandler, based on the story of Fanny and Stella and entitled Fanny and Stella: The Shocking True Story, was to be performed at the Above the Stag venue on London in May–June 2015.

Neil Bartlett's play Stella was co-commissioned by the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), Holland festival and Brighton Festival. Stella premiered at Brighton Festival[18] on 28 May 2016 and ran for three weeks from 1 June at Hoxton Hall as part of LIFT festival, ending in Amsterdam as part of Holland festival.[19]

Citations

Bibliography

• H. G. Cocks (2003) Nameless offences: homosexual desire in the nineteenth century. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 1-86064-890-8
• Ronald Pearsall (1971) The Worm In The Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality. London, Penguin

• Timeline of LGBT history in Britain