“The country round the tree was inhabited by people strongly addicted to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah; when the great Prophet, Mahomet, determined not to suffer them to lead such detestable lives any longer, he applied to God to punish them; whereupon God caused this tree to grow out of the earth, which, destroyed them all, and rendered the country for ever uninhabitable.”
From the best authority that can be gathered, this crime was first introduced into England about the year 1315, by a sect of heretics called Lollards; whose intent it was, among other most damnable doctrines to subvert the Christian faith; for from a note on the Parliamentary Rolls it is said, “A Lollard has committed the sin not to be named among Christians,” which seems to be the first authentic account of it in England. Many years previous to the reign of Geo. I. the sin was permitted without any exemplary punishment:—but about the 12th year of that reign a number of those wretches were apprehended, and convicted of the most abominable practices, some of whom were put to death; which gave a check to the evil for some time.
We will now come to the prevalency of the crime in the present age. About five and twenty years ago, there existed a society of the same order with the Vere-street gang, in the City of Exeter, most of whom were men of rank and local situation; they were apprehended, and about fifteen of them tried; and, though they were acquitted by the letter of the law, the enraged multitude was so convinced of their guilt; that without any respect to their rank, they burnt them in effigy.
About the same period, another disgraceful scene was exhibited in London, at Clement’s-lane, near the new Church in the Strand; (the exhibition of that crew is in the memory of many persons who may read these pages;) this scene was, if possible, more ridiculously wicked; for though it embraced all the turpitude of the Vere-street Coterie, yet the public indignation was in some measure for a moment allayed, by the grotesque appearance of the actors:—they were seized in the very act of giving caudle to their lying-in women, and the new-born infants personated by large dolls! and so well did they perform the characters they assumed, that, one miscreant escaped the vigilance of the officers and the examining magistrates, and was discharged as a woman!
I cannot pass this description of ladies, without making mention of another, usually entitled to an external tribute due to delicacy; for it seems that one, of no inconsiderable consequence to the dignity of the Coterie, is, by profession, a Chimney Sweeper and Nightman, an employment not ill appropriate to the delicate passions which constitute his amusement. This lump of diabolism resides west of Hyde-park corner; and some time ago married a little Catamite, called Miss Read, according to the rites of the Vere-street church; and, of course, did that which all good husbands will do, took his precious spouse to live in the house with him, the better to secure himself from the effects of cuckoldom: but it so happened, that this sweet-scented enamorata has a wife, unfortunately for the poor woman recognized by the Canons of the Church of England; and, therefore, to pave the way for this little dung-hill, Venus, he was introduced as a young man who wished to board and lodge in a decent family; and three guineas per week was the stipulated price, which the poor deluded woman thought an acquisition to her family, and worthy her attention; little dreaming that this knight of the gully-hole regularly gave Miss Read the money every week, in order that he might be considered as an honorable and punctual pay master! This miscreant is said to be worth several thousand pounds!—Now reader, put the money out of the question, and say what is he worth without it?
I have before observed, this short Treatise is not meant for anything like a detailed description of an hundredth part of the vast geography of this moral-blasting evil; but the time is near at hand that will afford a most ample display of this wide-spreading contagion;—which, dreadful and poisonous as the whole is to the ear of manhood, there is one feature more excruciating to my feelings than all the rest; and that is, the situation of women who are subject to all the indiscribable tortures inflicted upon them, by an unfortunate, ill-fated marriage with beings of this description, whose object in marrying is wholly the property they possess:—that a fine, elegant, perhaps beautiful woman, should be doomed to have her bed encumbered with a wretch, who loathes her person, squanders her fortune, and treats her with criminal contempt, to indulge damnable propensities, with (if I may be allowed the metaphor) the scavengers of Sodom! And yet the laws of the country afford her no redress, the abomination is no cause of divorce; yet if, on her part, she should listen to the voice of nature, and presume to convince the world that she feels the poignancy of her misery, and flies to the arms of a man who knows how to estimate her worth, the law, like a bull-dog, seizes on her indiscretion, and she is deemed unworthy the association of the virtuous part of sex! and doomed to pine out her life in the most aggravated species of celibacy. I must beg leave to illustrate this circumstance by an instance which occurred about six years ago.
One of these horrid wretches got hold of a fine handsome boy, whom he met with in the Park; and took him to various houses, several times, for the most abominable purposes. The lad had the curiosity to watch him home; and having called many times without seeing him, the wife was induced to ask his business with her husband? when this young student in the cursed science told her, not only what his business then was, but what had already panned between them.—The woman, struck with horror, grief, and amazement, retired to her room, and was a corpse in an hour!
It has been observed by a learned Judge, that the proof of this crime ought to be the more clear, as it is the more detestable; that it ought to be strictly and impartially proved, and then as strictly and impartially punished. It is an offence, like that of rape, easily charged, but very difficult to be disproved;—the accusation should, therefore, be clearly and incontestibly made out; for if false, it deserves a punishment inferior only to that of the crime itself: and Sir M. Hale relates two very extraordinary cases of malicious prosecutions for rape, that happened within his own observation, and concludes thus; “I mention these instances, that we may be more cautious upon trials of offences of this nature, wherein the court and jury may with so much ease be imposed upon, without great care and vigilance; the heinousness of the offence many times transporting the judge and jury with so much indignation, that they are over-hastily carried to the conviction of the person accused thereof, by the confident testimony of sometimes false and malicious witnesses.”
I am led to the adoption of these observations of the learned Judge, by a perusal of the evidence given at the Old Bailey on the trial of Hepburn and White, before mentioned.—With respect to the abominable practices which several others were convicted of, there can be no doubt but that Hepburn and White participated in the extent of their guilt; but I am by no means satisfied with the proof of the capital part for which they suffered, upon the evidence of James Mann, a Drummer, who himself was a particeps crimines: the notoriety of these wretches’ propensities in many other instances, perhaps, paved the way for the more ready admission of the witnesses testimony; but if that evidence had been stripped of the auxiliary accusations, it would most certainly have been received with a doubt sufficiently cogent to have acquitted them:—there are some inconsistencies in the evidence, and some cause for malignant motives in giving it; however, I have merely observed upon this case that no degree of abhorrence attached to the crime ought to interfere with the cool judgment of a jury;—who, I dare say, were satisfied with their verdict: but we have had so many instances of capital punishments resulting from uncontrolable indignation, created by the heinousness of offences, that in my mind the conviction of men charged with atrocious crimes, does not always arise from the inevitable proofs of their guilt. In this place it may be necessary to make a few observations upon the cases of several persons who have suffered death, transportation, and other punishments, upon accusations of extorting, or attempting to extort, money, under a threat of accusing the parties of Sodomitical practices; and as some have suffered death within these few years, upon convictions of this nature, I enquired of Cook, if he knew, or ever heard of any attack of that kind having been made upon innocent men? when he informed me, that the prosecutors he had heard of, so far from being innocent men, were all notorious Sodomites, of the worst description; and that he has known many instances of men being convicted for attempting to extort money under such threats, where the prosecutor has allowed the party an income sufficient to indulge them with every comfort during their confinement:—that one man is now in Newgate, who was sentenced to two years imprisonment, whose prosecutor regularly paid him a Guinea per week during the whole time! for it seems these wretches care not what it costs to convict, as, in their idea, it clears their character.
I have a letter now before me, from a miserable creature in Newgate, sentenced to transportation, whose story is briefly this:—