Pelted with Offal, Mud and Dead Cats: A Travesty In Clerkenwell

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Content warning: This article looks at an incident from the early 1800s which deals with homophobia, violence and hate speech, and which some might find distressing or triggering.

“Before the wretches were well in the cart, the public indignation burst out, and in an instant, as if on a given signal, the attack commenced.

The filth of the street, which was very deep, was thrown in their faces. The attack from all sides was so general, that they were almost instantaneously covered with mud.”

These angry scenes took place outside the Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell on 15 January 1819. The public’s wrath was directed at 16 men, whose “indescribable behaviour” had been widely circulated in the press, and confirmed by a magistrate. Now, they were on their way to Newgate prison through a carnival of fury. Thousands lined the streets to pelt the men with “The most offensive offal, mud, dead cats, dogs, rats &c.”

Their only crime was consensual sex.

England in the early 19th century was not a good time or place to be gay. Homosexual acts were not just illegal, but punishable by death. Some 50 men would be sent to the gallows for sodomy. The 16 men of the Clerkenwell sentencing were convicted of “conspiring together to commit an abominable crime”, rather than sodomy itself. It carried a lesser penalty but, as we’ll see, the men still suffered greatly.

Number 66 Marylebone High Street was the most notorious address in London for a brief spell in 1818. It was here, in early December, that the group was uncovered by authorities. The “fashionable young men,” as they referred to themselves, were dubbed “a gang of sodomites,” by a hostile press.

The Marylebone Gang, as they were also called in the press, were in the habit of assembling at the Marylebone address every Sunday for evenings of sexual adventure. This was the home of a former Methodist preacher, one William Wasley (not to be confused with his near-namesake, Methodist founder John Wesley).

The group soon attracted attention; the authorities were tipped off by a man who had been invited back to the house, where he’d witnessed “twenty men sitting in couples, in a manner not fit to be described”.

A warrant was drawn up to search the premises, with extreme prejudice. A group of heavies stormed the building with cutlasses drawn. They caught 16 men (“if they deserve the name,” opined one nasty press report) in compromising circumstances.

Most were well presented, including four who displayed “the most exquisite style of dandyism… much above the common order”. But these were no wealthy gads-about town. On questioning, they turned out to be gentlemen’s servants or working tradesmen.

A few further details are given. The landlord Wasley would greet the fashionable young men from a chair; a cat decorated with red ribbons in his lap. One of the men was designated the Russian Bear, and most of the others were “immoderately rouged”. It is a rare glimpse into a forbidden culture of the early 19th century.

The men, aged between their late teens and 45, were all tried together at the Middlesex Sessions House (pictured above; now private apartments). Details from the courtroom are scant, with most of the reportage focussing on the shocking aftermath. The men were given sentences of six or twelve months for “assembling together for a criminal purpose” — there being insufficient evidence to push for a more serious charge.

Their sentences would begin with the most vile parade of filth and invective that the streets of Clerkenwell have likely ever seen. It got started as soon as judgement was pronounced.

“As the wretches were conducted from the bar, they were hissed, hooted, struck at, and various sorts of filth thrown in their faces.”

And this was merely a precursor for worse. The prisoners were initially held in a strongroom — a mistake on the part of the authorities as it gave time for still larger crowds to assemble. The mob knew the prisoners were bound for Newgate, a short ride to the south. They lined Turnmill Street, Cowcross Street and Smithfield in “immense” number, waiting for the convicts’ wagon.

As soon as the cart set off, the men were pelted with every offensive object (or amorphous sludge) that the mob could get their hands on.

“The streets were ankle deep with mud, and there were both men and women employed with brooms to collect it in heaps. Every window, rooftop and lamp post was laden with angry Londoners, and “no person was seen without something to throw at the culprits”.

The attack commenced as soon as the Session House doors opened at two-thirty. The men, chained together in the back of a cart, were immediately covered in vile street slime. They were not the only ones. The constables guarding the wagon were also targeted. They ran back inside the courthouse, and in the words of the reports, “left the miserable wretches to their justly merited doom”.

Somehow, the bombarded vehicle made progress. Its 16 unfortunate passengers could scarcely breathe beneath the constant onslaught of mud, dung and worse. As the cart reached Smithfield, new horrors unfolded. This was, and remains, London’s main meat market. Here, the men were doused in bullocks’ blood, and every type of offal was poured on them from elevated positions. They were no longer recognisable as individuals, and had “an appearance which could not be contemplated without the utmost horror, when it was conceived that sixteen human beings, chained together, were struggling to breath under it.”

It was a short journey to jail but it must have felt like hours. By the time the men reached Newgate, they could no longer stand.

“They lay like dead bodies one over another on the pavement, and were dragged in apparently lifeless”.

What became of the sixteen men? It would be grimly fascinating to trace their fates through the archives. They all seem to have survived their ghastly cart ride, at least. A report on conditions in Newgate two months later notes that all sixteen are still incarcerated and sharing a single cell. What happened to them next remains to be discovered.

The case of the Clerkenwell 16 is, of course, just one of countless examples of the mistreatment and persecution of homosexuals that could be plucked from London’s history. But it's hard to find other examples on a similar scale.

It’s possible to follow the same streets as that sorry procession today. Turnmill Street, Cowcross Street and Giltspur Street have shifted not an inch in 200 years. The route through Smithfield is slightly altered by the Victorian market buildings, but not by much.

Yet the scene is otherwise unrecognisable. These streets are no longer caked in mud and dung; not ever. It would be remarkable to see a living cat in these parts, let alone a dead one. The streetscape, too, is almost entirely changed, with a mix of late-19th century commercial buildings and modern infill, and the dominance of the railway along one side of Turnmill Street. The one exception is the Rookery boutique hotel on the corner of Cowcross and Peter’s Lane, which dates from 1764. This and the sessions house are the only surviving witnesses to that horrible parade, a despicable chapter in London’s history that is all but forgotten, and should perhaps be remembered.

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