Meaning of molly house | Babel Free

Definitions

A tavern or other establishment in 18th and 19th century England where homosexuals could meet for sexual encounters.

historical, slang

Examples

“Just west of Charing Cross (where a molly named Tolson kept a brandy shop in the late 1720s, and where Whale and Horner were pilloried for keeping a molly house), we come to St James's Square and Pall Mall, ...”

“In a vivid illustration of the dynamics created by sexual deviance, molly houses were a defense against the pressures of prejudice, but their visibility inspired new hostility.”

“One visitor to a molly house in the Old Bailey observed “men calling one another 'my dear' and hugging, kissing, and tickling each other as if they were a mixture of wanton males and females, and assuming effeminate voices and airs.”

“Just — we must fuck who we will. Else what's the point of a molly house?”

“The London party ends with the guests departed and the disillusioned Will casting a dispirited eye over the dregs of the hollow revelry, and the final scene returns to the Molly House, where Mrs. Tull, her fortune made, gives up her new name and her new business to retire to the country to apparent heterosexual happiness with her long-time admirer, the Princess.”

“'Molly Houses' — places where homosexual men gather— may have been around as early as 1700: this is where the historian Rictor Norton in fact locates the origins of a gay subculture in England (Norton 1992).”

“[I]n a Bow Street Runners raid on a Molly House called the White Swan, twenty-seven men were arrested for sodomy and attempted sodomy.”

“Lady Cleland, the Doll's friendly rival, ran a Molly House in Gun Street.”

“The common people, however, seem to have been more tolerant of the Molly houses in their midst.”

“A Molly house might adjoin a tavern or private house, often with guarded rooms, and provided an environment in which gay men could meet for drinking and entertainment, and engage in sexual acts, behind closed doors.”

“In addition, these new cities were also sites for the growth of new sexual subcultures, as evinced by London 'Molly' houses.”

CEFR level