Mapping an Atlantic sexual culture: Homoeroticism in eighteenth-century Philadelphia

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 119-154

  Lyons, Clare A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63749133044     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491498     Document Type: Review

References (142)

1. Pennsylvania Journal, Mar. 10, 1747. I purposely use homoerotic" to refer to same-sex erotic desire and practice rather than "homosexual," the 19th-century coinage, to avoid evoking modern understandings of homosexuality and to invite an open-ended inquiry into the mental conceptualizations of same-sex intimacy entertained by 18th-century Euroamericans
2. See Thomas Foster, "Antimasonic Satire, Sodomy, and Eighteenth-Century Masculinity in the Boston Evening-Post" in this issue
3. Foster, "Locating Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," paper presented at the MCEAS/OIEAHC Conference on Sexuality in Early America, Philadelphia, June 2001
4. and Richard Godbeer, "'The Cry of Sodom': Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 52 (1995), 259-84
5. See also Roger Thompson, "Attitudes Towards Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies," Journal of American Studies, 23 (1989), 27-40
6. Robert F. Oaks "'Things Fearful to Name': Sodomy and Buggery in Seventeenth-Century New England," Journal of Social History, 12 (1978), 268-81
7. and "Defining Sodomy in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of Homosexuality, 6 (1980-1981), 79-83
8. and Colin L. Talley, "Gender and Male Same-Sex Erotic Behavior in British North America in the Seventeenth Century," Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6 (1996), 385-408
9. For Virginia, see Oaks, "Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia," Journal of Homosexuality, 5 (1979-1980), 35-41
10. On bestiality, see John M. Murrin, '"Things Fearful to Name': Bestiality in Early America," Pennsylvania History, Supplement: Explorations in Early American Culture, 65 (1998), 8-43-
11. Foster, "Locating Sodomy," documents 15 cases of sodomy throughout New England during the 17th century and 3 prosecutions in Massachusetts during the first half of the 18th century, and Godbeer, "'Cry of Sodom,'" explores two Connecticut prosecutions for sodomy, one in the 17th and one in 18th century
12. Philadelphia's population of 12,000 at midcentury had grown to 42,000 by 1790; Billy G. Smith, The "Lower Sort": Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750-1800 (Ithaca, 1990), 206
13. Until the mid-1760s virtually all of Philadelphia's demographic growth depended on immigration. The majority of the city's population had been born abroad. The city continued to depend on immigration for much of its growth for the remainder of the century; Susan E. Klepp, "Demography in Early Philadelphia, 1690-1860," in Klepp, ed., "The Demographic History of the Philadelphia Region, 1600-1860," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 133 (1989), 85-III
14. Smith, "Lower Sort, " 214
15. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, 1997), table 1, 236
16. Most of England's industrial output was exported from London in the years before the American Revolution; Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, 1986), 70-77
17. There is a growing body of literature on early modern homoeroticism in Europe. The following synthesis is drawn from Mary Mcintosh, "The Homosexual Role," Social Problems, 16, No. 2 (1968), 182-92
18. Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London, 1982)
19. Bray and Michel Rey, "The Body of the Friend: Continuity and Change in Masculine Friendship in the Seventeenth Century," in Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, eds., English Masculinities 1660-1800 (London, 1999), 65-84
20. the works of Randolph Trumbach, esp. "London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and Western Culture in the Eighteenth Centuty," Journal of Social History, 11 (1977), 1-33
21. "Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical Roles, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: The Recent Historiography," in Robert Purks Maccubbin, ed., 'Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality During the Enlightenment (New York, 1987), 109-21
22. "Sodomy Transformed: Aristocratic Libettinage, Public Reputation, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Homosexuality, 19 (1990), 105-24
23. Michael S. Kimmel, "From Lord and Master to Cuckold and Fop: Masculinity in Seventeenth-Century England," University of Dayton Review, 18 (1986-1987), 93-109
24. Kimmel, "'Greedy Kisses' and 'Melting Extasy': Notes on the Homosexual World of Early Eighteenth-Century England in Love Letters Between a certain late Nobleman and the famous Mr. Wilson," Journal of Homosexuality, 19 (1990), 1-10
25. G. S. Rousseau, "The Pursuit of Homosexuality in the Eighteenth Century: 'Utterly Confused Category' and/or Rich Repository?" Eighteenth Century Life, 9 (1985), 132-68
26. George E. Haggarty, Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1999)
27. Michel Rey, "Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700-1750: The Police Archives," trans. Robert A. Day and Robert Welch, in Maccubbin, ed., 'Tis Nature's Fault, 179-91
28. Rey, "Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris: From Sin to Disorder," in Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma, eds., The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe (New York, 1989), 129-46
29. Some literary scholars see a more gradual shift and a persistence of 17th-century meanings in representations of the sodomite into the mid-18th century; Cameron McFarlane, The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire 1660-1750 (New York, 1997)
30. Trumbach, "London's Sodomites"
31. Rey, "Police and Sodomy"
32. Rey, "Parisian Homosexuals"
33. Bray, Homosexuality
34. Craig Patterson, "The Rage of Caliban: Eighteenth-Century Molly Houses and the Twentieth-Century Search for Sexual Identity," in Thomas DiPiero and Pat Gill, eds., Illicit Sex: Identity Politics in Early Modern Culture (Athens, Ga., 1997), 256-69
35. Haggarty, Men in Love
36. David M. Halperin, "How to Do the History of Male Homosexuality," GLQ. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 6 (2000), 87-124
37. Emma Donoghue, Passions between Women: British Lesbian Culture, 1668-1801 (London, 1993)
38. Trumbach, "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture," in Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub, eds., Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (New York, 1991), 112-41
39. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, 1990)
40. and "Privilege of Unknowing," Genders, 1 (1988), 102-24
41. Judith C. Brown, "Lesbian Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Europe," in Martin Bauml Duberman et al., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York, 1989), 67-75
42. Pa. Gaz., July 18, 1754
43. Pamela, by comparison, appeared in 14 advertisements placed by 8 booksellers, and Fielding's Tom Jones was listed for sale 26 times during this same era. See Pa. Gaz., 1730-1800
44. Father Abraham's Almanac for 1760, "Books for sale by the Publisher" (Philadelphia, 1759)
45. Catalogue of Books Belonging to the Association Library Company of Philadelphia, (Philadelphia, 1765)
46. Just Published and now Selling, at Bell's Book-store . . . A Catalogue of. . . Books (Philadelphia: 1783)
47. Catalogue of Books . . . and other Goods at Moreau de St. Mery, & Co's. Store (Philadelphia: 1795)
48. Bradford's Catalogue of Books . . .for 1796 (Philadelphia, 1796)
49. A Catalogue of all the Books, printed in the United States. . . (Boston, 1804)
50. The charter, Laws, and catalogue of books, of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1765)
51. A Catalogue of books, belonging to the Association Library Company of Philadelphia . . . (Philadelphia, 1765)
52. Thomas Bradford, Day Book of Bradford's Circulating Library, 1771-1772, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP). Robert B. Winans, "Bibliography and the Cultural Historian: Notes on the Eighteenth-Century Novel," in William L. Joyce et al., eds., Printing and Society in Early America (Worcester, 1983), 177-80, found that Roderick Random was the sixth most popular novel in British North America, 1750-1800, based on its prominence in American book catalogues
53. Rousseau, "Pursuit of Homosexuality" 132-68
54. Steven Bruhm, "Roderick Random's Closet," English Studies in Canada, 19 (1993), 401-15
55. McFarlane, Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, 23-24, 108-44
56. Robert Adams Day, "Sex, Scatology, Smollett," in Paul-Gabriel Boucé, ed., Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Manchester, Eng., 1982), 225-43
57. Smollett, Roderick Random (London, 1748), 194-95, 307-10
58. Roderick Random sold for 9s., 10s., and 12s. in the early 1770s; $2.00 in 1783
59. Robert Bell's Sale Catalogue . . . (Philadelphia, 1773)
60. Robert Bell, Just Published and Now selling (Philadelphia, 1783)
61. Carey, Catalogue of Books, Pamphlets, Maps, and Prints, published by Mathew Carey (Philadelphia, 1795)
62. Pa. Journal, Oct. 26, 1769, and Jan. 13, 1772
63. Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York, 1986), 55-61
64. James N. Green, "The Middle Colonies, 1720-1790," in Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (New York, 2000), 247-313
65. Stephen Botein, "The Anglo-American Book Trade before 1776: Personnel and Strategies," in Joyce et al., Printing and Society, 80-81
66. Select Trials at the Sessions-House in the Old Bailey . . . , 4 vols. (London, 1742)
67. and by Carey in Pa. Gaz., May 14, 1788
68. Father Abraham's Almanac for 1760
69. Catalogues . . . Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia 1765)
70. as overdue to the Library Company in Pa. Gaz., Oct. 23, 1766
71. Pa. Packet, Apr. 29, 1784
72. Select Trials, 1:158-60
73. Select Trials, 3:39-40
74. Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity (New York, 1999)
75. Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, 1987)
76. Bolster, Black Jacks
77. Margaret S. Creighton and Lisa Norling, eds., Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920 (Baltimore, 1996)
78. London Chronicle, July 17-19, 1764
79. London Evening Post July 17-19, 1764
80. for the arrests of transvestite male prostitutes. Trumbach discusses these events in "Sodomy Transformed," 116-17
81. The Tryal of Charles Bradbury (London, 1755)
82. The Trial of Richard Branson (London, 1760)
83. Some Particulars relating to the life of William Dillon Sheppard (Bristol, 1761)
84. Because Philadelphia booksellers rarely advertised pamphlets by title we cannot know if these pamphlets were among those imported and sold in midcentury Philadelphia. Booksellers' ads made general claims such as "the latest and most enterraining . . . plays . . . pamphlets." See Pa. Journal, Oct. 22, 1761
85. Charles E. Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740 (Oxford, 1994)
86. Naomi Tadmor, "'In the even my wife read to me': Women, Reading and Household Life in the Eighteenth Century," in James Raven et al., eds., The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge, 1996), 162-74
87. The Pa. Journal, Feb. 13, 1753, reported news from Lisbon of an "Auto de Fe" that included the conviction of a Portugese man from Brazil for sodomy. He was sentenced to "be whipt and banish'd ten years."
88. American Weekly Mercury, Apr. 12-19, 1739
89. Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Stanford, 1986)
90. and of Delays, Pardons, and Reprieves of Persons Sentenced to Death in Pennsylvania, 1682-1834," Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 64 (1960), 148-63, incorrectly reports that Thomas White was hanged for sodomy in 1748
91. for buggery with a mare. See Pa. Journal, Nov. 3, 1748. Bestiality was policed more stringently in Pennsylvania than sodomy in the 18th century. Bestiality was probably the crime John Ross was hanged for in western Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County, in 1786. His offense appears as only "buggery" in the record. My research into Philadelphia church disciplinary records uncovered no sodomy accusations. All extant records from Philadelphia's Presbyterian churches were examined for the 18th century for evidence of disciplinary action for instances of homoerotic sexual behavior. Newspapers were examined for reports of criminal prosecution or punishment for sodomy. Philadelphia newspapers did generally report local court news and judicial executions, but report no sodomy trials or convictions
92. Foster, "Locating Sodomy," examines the use of the language of Massachusetts sodomy statutes
93. William Graydon, The Justices and Constables Assistant (Harrisburg, Pa., 1805), 357
94. Lyons, "Sex Among the 'Rabble,'" 172, 198
95. Pa. Gaz., Apr. 5, 1753
96. William Meredith, Appearance Dockets, Quarter Sessions, Philadelphia County, June 1802, Meredith Family Papers, HSP. This was attorney Meredith's personal court docket book. See also Prisoners for Trial Docket, June 2, 1802, where the case is noted as "discharged."
97. Lyons, "Sex Among the 'Rabble,'" 288-90
98. The Philadelphiad (Philadelphia, 1784), 34-38
99. "A New Song About Miss Ketty" (broadside) (Philadelphia, 1765)
100. Anna Clark, "Anne Lister's Construction of Lesbian Identity," in Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay, eds., Sexualities in History: A Reader (New York, 2002), 247-70
101. Helena Whitbread, ed., I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840 (London, 1988)
102. Donoghue, Passions between Women. For an exploration of English interpretations of a late 18th-century female couple see Susan S. Lanser, "Befriending the Body: Female Intimacies as Class Acts," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (1998-1999), 179-98
103. Donoghue, Passions between Women
104. James, Medicinal Dictionary (London, 1745), vol. 3
105. James, Medicinal Dictionary, advertised by David Hall in Pa. Gaz., Sept. 22 1748, Aug. 3, Aug. 17, 1749
106. and by William Prichard in Pa. Journal, Dec. 18, 1782
107. See also John Quincy, Lexicon Physico-Aiedicum: or, a New Physical Dictionary (London, 1719)
108. in Bell, Catalogue (Philadelphia, 1773)
109. Secret Memoirs . . . from the New Atlantis, advertised by Dunlap in Pa. Gaz., May 18-25, 1738
110. Rivington, A Catalogue of Books (Philadelphia, 1762)
111. Trumbach, London's Sapphists, 126
112. Donoghue, Passions between Women, 184-90. Other novels with female homoerotic desire that were particularly popular in Philadelphia were baron de Montesquieu's Persian Letters and Swift's Gulliver's Travels
113. School of Women, advertised in Pa. Gaz., July 18 1754, by Tench Francis
114. Thompson, Unfit for Modest Ears: A Study of Pornographic, Obscene and Bawdy Works Written or Published in England in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century (Totowa, N. J., 1979), 29-34, 151-55
115. Peter Wagner, Eros Revived: Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America (London, 1988), 204, 227-31
116. Pa. Gaz., July 16, 1752
117. Newspaper reports about Mary Hamilton appeared in the Bath Journal, Sept. 22, 29, Nov. 3, 1746 (the Nov. report was reprinted in Daily Advertiser, Nov. 7, 1746
118. St. James Evening Post, Nov. 8, 1746
119. and Ipswich Journal, Nov. 15, 1746)
120. The Pa. Journal printed a brief account of Hamilton on Mar. 10, 1747. A slightly abridged version of the Nov. news of her conviction, it omitted all reference to a male name and did not identify her as a doctor or as Charles Hamilton, but focused on her relationship with other women. Fielding's pamphlet, The Female Husband: or, the Surprising History of Mrs. Mary, alias Mr. George Hamilton, published in London, Nov. 12, 1746, sold out quickly
121. We do not know how widely this pamphlet circulated in Pennsylvania. English court documents of the case are printed verbatim in Sheridan Baker, "Henry Fielding's The Female Husband: Fact and Fiction," PMLA, (1959), 213-24
122. and Castle, "Matters Not Fit to be Mentioned: Fielding's The Female Husband," ELH, 49 (1982), 602-22
123. Prisoners for Trial Docket, 1790-1799
124. Danforth, The Cry of Sodom . . . (Cambridge, Mass., 1674)
125. Smith, The Burning of Sodom . . . (Boston, 1741)
126. Crime pamphlets printed in Philadelphia focused exclusively on vice between men and women; Lyons, "Sex Among the 'Rabble,'" 81-83, 372, 451
127. Sharon Block, "Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion in Early America," in Martha Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York, 1999), 141-63
128. and Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, 2002)
129. Caleb Crain, "Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio: An Early American Romance," Early American Literature, 33 (1998), 6-38
130. Journal of Leander [Mifflin], James Gibson Collection, HSP
131. Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England
132. Maccubbin, ed., 'Tis Nature's Fault
133. Kimmel, "'Greedy Kisses'"
134. Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York, 1976)
135. Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)
136. Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and "Lower Sort" during the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (New Brunswick, N. J., 1987)
137. Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class 1720-1830 (New York, 1993)
138. Marybeth Hamilton Arnold, "'The Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman': Sexual Assault in New York City, 1790 to 1820," in Kathy Peiss et al., eds., Passion and Power: Sexuality in History (Philadelphia, 1989), 35-56, also finds evidence of enhanced male sexual privilege that cut across class lines in early national New York. See her treatment of rape and the republican citizen
139. For scholarship that supports this interpretation of the centrality of womanhood in the construction of the republican state also see Ruth H. Bloch, "The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America," Signs, 13 (1987), 37-58
140. James Jasinski, "The Feminization of Liberty, Domesticated Virtue, and the Reconstruction of Power and Authority in Early American Political Discourse," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79 (1993), 146-64
141. and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Discovering the Subject in the 'Great Constitutional Discussion,' 1786-1789,"
142. Journal of American History, 79 (1992), 841-73