Buckingham Palace May Have Been Site Of A Gay Brothel In The 1600s

It turns out that the royals may not have been the first queens to have frequented Buckingham Palace. A British historian has revealed that the current site of the royal palace, may once have been home to a gay brothel.

This salacious piece of British history was first revealed by LGBTQI historian Norton Rictor in his 2013 essay The Gay Subculture in Early Eighteenth-Century London.

Rictor explained that the first known gay brothels and cruising spots may have appeared in London circa 1600.

However, Rictor made the dubious discovery relating to the Buckingham palace site when he stumbled upon the writings of English politician Clement Walker, who in 1649 mentioned the existence of “new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. James’s.”

In the vernacular of the time “Sodoms” referred to brothels, with “spintries” referring to gay sex workers.

The Queen’s Official residence In London

The Mulberry Gardens were created by King James, and is at present the northwest corner of Buckingham Palace. The palace has served as the official London residence and administrative headquarters of UK’s monarchs since 1837.

The Queen and members of the Royal Family on the balcony of #BuckinghamPalace after today's #TroopingTheColour pic.twitter.com/cSgmI1SkDg

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 13, 2015

Rictor went on to note in his essay that people didn’t quite have the language back then to label same-sex relations.

“The commentators upon morality probably could not deal with the concept of homosexuality except by labelling its practitioners with terms borrowed from the underworld of heterosexual prostitution.”

According to the historian, they often altered the language used for heterosexual sex workers to describe the city’s burgeoning gay population. Rictor explained that they used “terms such as ‘He-Strumpets’ and ‘He-Whores’ even for quite ordinary gay men who would never think of soliciting payment for their pleasures.”

Gay Sex In London In The 1600s

However, Rictor went on to note that gay sex in London was usually about “pleasure rather than profit,”

In such a different era, though perhaps not too different from ours, some Londoners were far from discreet when discussing their sexuality. Poet and Earl of Rochester John Wilmot had often written about his sexual liaisons with other men.

“There’s a sweet, soft page of mine. Does the trick worth forty wenches,” he wrote in one poem. In another poem he wrote, “Nor shall our love-fits. Chloris, be forgot. When each the well-looked linkboy strove t’enjoy. And the best kiss was the deciding lot. Whether the boy fucked you, or I the boy.”