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Feather Boas and Rave-Goers It was our great delight this autumn to lend a hand to Patrick Lilley who Less glamorous but just as chose to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his Brixton Club, Queer important to our continued Nation with an ambitious photographic exhibition of gay clubbing since success is the £2,500 grant the Second World War. Called Queer Nation O2, its curator, Alastair received from the Scarman Trust O’Neill scoured the country and tracked down numerous photographers, to help with running costs at the looking for images. He found some crackers. The beautifully produced archive and to enable us to learn exhibition ran in London for ten days at the end of November. Brighton from the experiences of other Ourstory Project supplied most of the pre-Liberation images from our community archives. Brighton collections in the archive, including photos of the Sussex Arts Balls, the and Hove Council has also Variety Club and the Curtain Club. There’s talk of bringing the exhibition stumped up some money to get us to Brighton for the week before Pride next year, if sponsorship can be started with major fundraising, so found – so, fingers crossed. thanks to them and to all the Friends of BOP who dug a bit deeper into their pockets last time round to help us out. Ronnie aka Cairo Connie Thanks are also due to Val, Nina and Martin for giving us office equipment and to all who have contributed photographs and magazines to add to our Spotted on the comments board next to collections. We are particularly the Lesbian and Gay Section at grateful to Eunice and to Peter for Brighton Museum, November 2002 sending our way some photograph albums of Ronnie (aka organisations so, for example, Cairo Connie) who used to be a someone looking up ‘Brighton in doorman at the Curtain Club, in the Second World War’ might the basement of the Queens Hotel have a whole new dimension in the 1960s. They include shots opened up to them! It could inside the Club and were a timely change lives. gift as we were able to put one of Lavender Lounge them in the Queer Nation O2 exhibition. In the nearer future, we’re looking forward to a repeat performance Access to Archives of the Lavender Lounge Bar, Cataloguing is well under way probably in the run-up to Pride now and lists of our holdings will next year. This immensely soon be entered onto a state-of-the- popular show sold out very art computer database. In time we quickly last time so lots of our might consider participating in fans missed it. Maybe we could the wondrous A2A (Access to find some money to make a CD of Archives) project, run by the it this time or perhaps BBC Public Records Office. One search Southern Counties Radio would on their website produces like to do a live outside Queer Nation O2 Exhibition, London, November 2002 results from all participating broadcast… Issue 12 • Winter 2002 Unveiling Illusion It’s a tricky business researching lesbian and gay history. We know that even today many people feel compelled to disguise the nature of their relationships for fear of rejection by family, friends, neighbours, for fear of careers stagnating or of being disinherited or beaten up. So must it have been in bygone decades and centuries. Anne Marshall has been offering early – and free – therapy researching pioneering women to poor women, who would doctors and has discovered a rich otherwise end up in the asylum. vein of them in Brighton and Hove The second had a medical and in the first half of the twentieth surgical focus and was later Royal Medico-Psychological Rockrose Cottage, Pyecombe century. Self-declared lesbian, renamed the New Sussex. All Association concluded with a Louisa Martindale is quite well these initiatives instantly had Keynesian quote, in which she worked for her as a very private known – she set up in private women flocking in, which was a exhorted her colleagues to aid in person, she ordered all her poke in the eye for local male “the assertion of truth, the personal papers to be burnt on her doctors, who’d greeted the women unveiling of illusion, the death, which occurred in1957, the doctors’ arrival with scorn. In dissipation of hate, the day after her 88th birthday. addition, Dr Boyle founded the enlargement and instruction of Anne’s conclusion, having National Council for Mental men’s hearts and minds” (suitably conducted thorough research, Hygiene, which we now know as amended in the gender including talking to friends of MIND. department, this could be Helen Boyle and her partners is Ourstory’s mission statement that she had a series of Choosing not to marry today!) Her leisure time was spent monogamous relationships. She Anne treads with caution around at her cottage in an isolated spot arrived in Brighton with Mabel the issue of whether or not Helen on top of the Downs at Pyecombe, Jones, with whom she set up the Boyle and her colleagues were where, according to Anne Dispensary and Lady Chichester Dr Louisa Martindale, 1925 lesbians – there were social and Marshall she had hordes of Hospital. Mabel, just before she demographic reasons why women visitors. Described by people who met Helen, had been working in practice in Brighton in 1906, might have chosen not to marry. became school doctor to Brighton There were also good reasons High School and Roedean and why unmarried women might not developed the New Sussex have thought of themselves as Hospital for Women and Children lesbians. The new science of in Windlesham Road (now sadly sexology had produced the being turned into flats). Just before stereotypes of ‘real lesbian’ and the First World War she met the ‘pseudo-homosexual women’. The Hon. Ismay Fitzgerald, who real lesbian was supposed to be according to Louisa’s auto- masculine in both clothes and biography,A Woman Surgeon, demeanour and, according to came for a visit and stayed thirty- Havelock Ellis, have “an five years. incapacity for needlework and Less straightforward is Dr domestic work and a fondness for Helen Boyle, who never wrote her athletics”. The pseudo- autobiography and who, despite homosexual woman, on the other remarkable achievements, too hand had been seduced by the real numerous to detail here, has faded homosexual, was intellectually from sight. When she arrived in inferior to her and was seen to be Brighton in 1897, she and her inadequate in her relationships partner, Mabel Jones were the first with men. So a lot of women that women doctors to set up in general we would now consider to be practice in the district. Three years lesbian didn’t name themselves at later she started the first all because they didn’t see that Dispensary for poor women and they fell into either of these two children in Brighton (at 145, categories. Islingword Road), and soon after Helen Boyle was driven by a The medico-surgical branch of the Lady Chichester Hospital, 4–6, Ditchling Road, founded two small hospitals in conviction that mind, body and c1914. “[The illness of] the patient who lay for five weeks in the sunniest bay window ordinary houses, together known social conditions all contributed to …could be traced to her weary struggle to make shillings go further than was as the Lady Chichester. The first a person’s state of health. Her possible …these five weeks were the happiest and brightest period of her whole life”. of these was revolutionary in 1939 presidential address to the Miss A. H. Bennett, English Medical Women. Photo:The Wellcome Library London Homo from Homo From the pages of Gay News, thirty years ago, that was closing down and it was an old fashioned wediscover that the Queen of Clubs was the first tailor’s shop, which had this mahogany fixture – at Brighton Club to advertise in the hairy press. Peter one time it had been drawers where they used to put remembers when he used to live there at about the all the hats. And the mahogany counters. We took the same time. drawers out and that’s where you stacked all your beers and things and this mahogany counter became Really dreadful the bar. We used to go out on Saturday sometimes, “Ray Jacobs used to own the Queen of Clubs – he had round all the junk shops. I remember we found this the club for quite some time and then somebody else statue of a nude man, not very well-endowed. By the Dr Helen Boyle. “[A] slender, vivacious took it over and it really got down trodden, it was time we’d finished with him – and some plaster of Irishwoman, quick of brain and witty of really dreadful. It was a gay girls’ club really which Paris – he was adequate for the top of the bar! tongue”, according to the Brighton & you were terrified to go in cause you thought you’d As you went in the door, the bar was to your left Hove Gazettein 1939 get your throat cut – they were very butch some of and the dance-floor was the front bit, with a juke box the girls that were in there! in the corner – you had to pay to put the music on to Hull under Dr Mary Murdoch And then Tony, who owned the lease of that dance to. It was tiny because it was only the ground (who was definitely a lesbian, building, took it over and I took on the basement flat. floor of one of those houses in Bedford Square and it identified herself as such and was We changed it all to a gay men’s club. I’d met Tony was just two rooms. There was a big coal fire in there a lifelong friend of Louisa years before – when I first left school, I went to work and a white fireplace with a big mahogany top. It had Martindale.) When she left at Hubbards of Worthing, which was a departmental this black seating that went all the way round. Brighton in 1910 Mabel is known store. And this Tony came in to look at curtain Vibrating ceiling to have adopted a child with a material and over the curtain material made eyes woman friend. A later partner of atme. In those days, to stay open later than twelve o’ clock, Helen’s, Cecily Lamorna Hingston, Tony gutted the club really and had very little you could have an extension but you had to have a lived during her student days with money to do it with. There was a shop in Brighton good excuse – you had to be doing something for the first woman stockbroker, somebody, raising money for some charity, Beatrice Gordon Holmes who then you were allowed to have a two o’ clock went by the name of Gordon extension. That used to be packed with Holmes and had no problem people like sardines. How the floor stayed identifying herself as a ‘real up I’ll never know because I lived lesbian’. Helen spent the last downstairs and if I was going upstairs to do seventeen years of her life with my duty behind the bar and they were Marguerite du Pre Gore Lindsay dancing, the ceiling used to vibrate and all who continued to occupy Helen’s flop about!” cottage in Pyecombe until her own death in 1977. Count Me In Despite enough circumstantial evidence to send a murderer down for life, there are those who are Gay News, October still, nearly half a century after her 1972 death, reluctant to acknowledge the likelihood that she was a lesbian. Helen Boyle talked about The Queen of Clubs, “unveiling illusion” and I feel sure early 1970s that, had she lived in our age – “We thought there and had she known about the must be a lot of lads mental strains on LGBT people that, at Christmas revealed in the Count Me In time have got survey two years ago – she would nowhere to go. have been glad to help out as the So we used to do a courageous, compassionate and Christmas party. wise role model she surely is. It was nothing to do Linda with alcohol, it was Grateful thanks to Wendy Walker at just a tea party for East Sussex County Records Office the people that were and Dr Louise Westwood at Sussex on their own for University for supplying additional Christmas Day.” information for this article. A Stone in her Shoe Women of Brighton Visitors to cyberspace might like to take a trip round the new Ayear or so back we (as begins to gather momentum. website of Ourstory cataloguer, Ourstory Books) were She meets and falls in love Val Brown. Told in a charming, approached by a Sussex with the erudite and witty accessible style, brief life stories of author, Jo Burgess. She’d read our Stevie and her life seems to 31 women of substance, some of book, Just Take Your Frock Off, be complete. However, them from our own gay family, (Barbara Bell’s autobiography) Corinna has not taken into grace the screen along with and asked us to pictures of themselves and their read the abodes. Find them on: manuscript of a www.womenofbrighton.co.uk novel she’d written, loosely based on her own Treading the Boards life. We thought it a good book, If you enjoyed the recent TV That’s Wonderful (But She well-written and dramatisation of Sarah Waters’ Doesn’t Appeal to Me)andI’m a interesting – novel, Tipping the Velvet, you Mummy (An Old Egyptian acompelling might well appreciate a new CD of Queen). Recognising the heritage account of original music hall songs by male of today’s camp performers, the relationships and female cross-dressing artistes notes also remark that “Douglas between women of the 1920s and ’30s. With the Byng’s comedic turn back then in pre-liberation authentic sound of a slightly was as courageous as he was times. crackly old seventy-eight record, talented, for there was still We were you can enjoy such delights as homophobia in theatre delighted to hear Moanin’ for Yousung by Norah management as a residue of Oscar this year that Jo Blaney and deep-voiced cellist, Wilde’s earlier notoriety.” has found a Gwen Farrar, who were partners The CD is called Tipping the publisher and both on and off stage according to Velvet (although it isn’t actually that the book, the sleeve notes. the soundtrack to the TV d AStone in her Of local interest, there are four programme) and is definitely ate Shoe, is now numbers by Douglas Byng, who worth a listen. wise st available. She came to live in Arundel Terrace, (Thanks to Joyce and her has very kindly Brighton, when he retired from the Margaret at MonoMania for nless ot donated some stage. He regales us with such pointing us in the direction of this 3 u 0 copies to us to camp choruses as She May Be All CD.) d 20 stoe lyl oaun!d I fw yeo aur ew golualdd tloik oef afe cr otphyem, atecmcopuensttu tohues b Leiasuat,i wfuhl oand Below:Douglas Byng, urstory Lt O please send £9.99 (includes p&p) attracts her like a moth to astalwart of revue, © to Brighton Ourstory Project, PO aflame and opens up new variety, cabaret and ght Box 2861, Brighton, BN1 1UN. horizons which enable most famously a star Copyri Corinna to fulfil her true of pantomime usually Text • nature to a depth she had as the dame. 7 From the back cover not thought possible, forcing 994 4 Corinna had always known her to a decision she had 73 7 2 1 tiht awta ssh ae dwiaffis cau blto pyr, obpuot stihtiaotn never contemplated. ubert 0 h t1o9 w30esa. rD iens pthitee Ehnegr lsatnredn ogft thhe Some words from the author mont Sc u a and resilience of character, A Stone in her Shoeintends to Be even she falls in line with show the difficulties of being an d by nte social expectations and outsider as seen by society at Pri marries a young airman as large, to show this experience as Above:Tipping the Velvet, a • 2 6 the Second World War worth every minute of the fight by collection of historic music hall 97 9 begins. She joins up and the the individual to win, to make a recordings inspired by the novel by 73 6 2 process of her liberation success of life, to show it is worth Sarah Waters n: 01 from conventional morality, all the loneliness and fear. Desig so slow in development, Jo Burgess hic p a Gr Brighton Ourstory Project, PO Box 2861, Brighton BN1 1UN hester C Email: [email protected] Joyce