Arrested for cross-dressing! Meet Fanny and Stella, the Victorian gentlemen who shocked Britain and were prosecuted for the 'unnatural offence' of being transvestites

Feb 01, 2013 By Staff 0

Frederick Park, 22, and Ernest Boulton, 21, arrested in 1870
Were leaving Strand Theatre in London on 28 April
Charged with homosexuality and 'conspiracy'
They were acquitted after the prosecution built a very weak case

By Martha De Lacey

PUBLISHED: 08:18 EST, 1 February 2013 | UPDATED: 08:33 EST, 1 February 2013

It's a story that would scandalise Britain today: two young gentlemen prosecuted simply for being gay and enjoying dressing as women.

And the tale of Fanny and Stella, the middle-class transvestites arrested as they left London's Strand Theatre on the night of 28 April 1870 dressed as elegant women, shocked Victorian England too.

The men - real names Frederick Park (Fanny), 22, and Ernest Boulton (Stella), 21 - were charged with both having sex with each other (homosexuality was a criminal offence until 1967) and also with several counts of conspiracy after it emerged police had had their 'dressing-up flat' under surveillance for a year - and that the home secretary himself was encouraging the attorney general to prosecute.

Stella, left, and Fanny, right, the two Victorian men who were arrested and charged with having sex with each other and also of several acts of conspiracy

Ernest Boulton, left, as Stella, and as himself, right

Frederick was the elder of the two, the youngest in a family of 12 children and the son of Judge Alexander Park. His brother Harry had already left England and escaped to Scotland after being arrested for homosexual offences.

Ernest, just 20, was the more naturally beautiful of the pair, and very attractive in his feminine guise. The son of a shipping broker, Ernest had a wonderful soprano voice and was determined to be a singer until his father pushed him into a career as a banker.

His most famous lover was Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, son of the Duke of Newcastle and godson of Prime Minister William Gladstone.

Fanny resting on the shoulder of Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, son of the Duke of Newcastle, at one time the lover of Stella, sitting on floor

Victorian drawings of Stella, left, and Fanny, right

'They were so lewd in their theatre box it seemed they must be shameless whores'

Frederick dressed as Fanny

Fanny and Stella were hard to fathom. They had behaved with such lewdness in their box in the stalls as to leave not the faintest shred of doubt in even the most disinterested observer that they were a pair of hardened and shameless whores.

And yet, close up, Stella was revealed as a beautiful, almost aristocratic, young woman who showed flashes of an innate, and most decidedly un-whorelike, dignity and grace. One newspaper said later that she was ‘charming as a star’, another christened her ‘Stella, Star of the Strand’. And despite all the opprobrium that would later be heaped upon her, despite all the mud that would be slung at her and all the mud that would stick to her, she never lost the mysterious aura of a great and stellar beauty.

Mrs Fanny Graham, too, was clearly a woman of some education and breeding, and was certainly very far removed from your common-or-garden whore. Here in the saloon bar, it seemed harder to reconcile their obvious quality with the ogling, tongue-waggling, chirruping lasciviousness of the stalls. They spent half an hour or so in the refreshment bar.

Before they left, Mrs Fanny Graham, unaware that she was being watched, betook herself to the Ladies’ Retiring Room and asked the attendant there to pin the lace back to the hem of her crinoline where she had trodden on it. At a quarter past ten, Mr Hugh Mundell had been despatched in ringing tones by Mrs Graham to go and call for her carriage and soon afterwards the remainder of the party made a leisurely progress to the foyer and pushed their way through the noise and confusion of an emptying theatre to the waiting conveyance.

Just as the carriage was about to depart, one of the men who had been shadowing them all that evening jumped up and swung himself in through the door.

'I’m a police officer from Bow Street,’ he said, producing his warrant card, ‘and I have every reason to believe that you are men in female attire and you will have to come to Bow Street with me now.'

Extracted from Fanny & Stella by Neil McKenna (Faber & Faber, £16.99)

The day after their arrest, Fanny and Stella arrived sensationally at Bow Street magistrates court where nearly 1,000 people gathered to watch them be taken inside.

The two men spent four months in jail awaiting trial, and if convicted, their sentence would be between 10 years and life in prison

The two men spent four months in jail awaiting trial, and if convicted, their sentence would be between 10 years and life in prison.

Regardless, the pair did not flee when they were released from prison before trial, and the case arrived at Westminster Hall court in May 1871 for a huge state trial with the lord chief justice as judge and the prosecution led the attorney-general with the assistance of the solicitor-general.

Stella and Fanny, top right with croquet sticks, loved dressing up in resplendent women's clothes and going out in London society in the 19th century

Ernest Boulton, left, toured as a female impersonator with his brother Gerard before dying in England in 1903, while Frederick Park, right, went to America with his banished brother Harry and died in New Jersey in 1881

The trial of Fanny, right, and Stella, left, was considered Britain's first great legal squabble with homosexuality, but was forgotten as quickly as it became a sensation

But because of a very weak prosecution case - and the fact that the two men were charged with conspiracy with six others who had, between them, fled, died or didn't even know each other - the trial failed and the men were acquired.

Boulton's mother Mary Ann had, crucially, testified to say that it was no secret his son's nickname was Stella and that he enjoyed dressing as a woman - which made the case look more silly than sordid and sinister.

Neil McKenna, who has written a book about the notorious Victorian transvestites entitled Fanny & Stella, told the Daily Express: 'The irony is that if they had just been charged with sodomy the medical evidence would have meant they would probably have been convicted, sent to prison and died there.'

Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park, also known as Stella and Fanny, arrested at the Strand Theatre for incitement to commit an unnatural offence, by going around London at night in women's clothes

A drawing of the two female impersonators' dressing room

McKenna explains that the furore surrounding the trial of Fanny and Stella can be put down to Victorian society 'having one of its periodic anxiety attacks' about homosexuality - which had recently become a term to describe an identity rather than just a fleeting behaviour - sexually transmitted disease, death and the effeminisation of a previously masculine Britain.

After the trial - which was considered Britain's first great legal squabble with homosexuality, but forgotten as quickly as it became a sensation - Frederick Park went to America with his banished brother Harry and died in New Jersey in 1881. Ernest Boulton changed his name to Ernest Byne and toured as a female impersonator with his brother Gerard. He died in England in 1903.

Fanny & Stella by Neil McKenna (Faber & Faber, £16.99) is out on 7 February

McKenna explains that the furore surrounding the trial of Fanny and Stella can be put down to Victorian society 'having one of its periodic anxiety attacks' about homosexuality

Frederick Park - pictured as Fanny - went to America with his banished brother Harry and died in New Jersey in 1881

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