All the lesbian bars I’ve used as locations in my writing are made up, though I have made reference in dialogue to a few genuine establishments which were around at the time. I was, however, influenced heavily by real lesbian bars that have existed throughout British history.
Some of the better known establishments which lesbians frequented in London from the 1920s onward included the Cave of Harmony, the Orange Tree Club, the Hambone, The Gateways Club, and the Forum Club, but there were many others. It’s just that many of these weren’t known by name so much as by location. Locations were shared via word of mouth and they were more likely to be of the “there’s a place off the side street down from…” variety than “Here’s a name and map to the place”.
In letters found during her research, Rebecca Jennings came across references to lesbian bars or gay bars that were lesbian welcoming, some of which were described only via location. This included one on Hertford Street in Mayfair (of which there are mentions of it being raided) a number in Tottenham Court Road, the Coffee Ann, the 42nd on Gerrard Street, and the Jubilee. There was also The Champion pub in Notting Hill Gate, The Cricketers pub in Battersea, and the Robin Hood Club in Baywater. The West of London had more establishments than elsewhere in London or, at the very least, had more well-known establishments. There was a definite class split; many of the better known establishments in locations such as Knightsbridge, Chelsea, and Mayfair were visited by wealthier women. In other locations, there was a more mixed clientele.
Outside of London, Brighton became widely known as a city with a “gay vibe” (arguably much the same today) and there were more venues that were gay friendly there than elsewhere in the country such as: the Spotted Dog, Pigott’s, the Queen of Clubs, the Variety Club, the Lorelai coffee bar. Some pubs had a dual bar — a hidden bar in the back for LGBT+ customers and another in the front for straight clientele.
The Gateways Club (nicknamed ‘The Gates’), one of the most famous lesbian clubs, wasn’t originally a lesbian club, it was an exclusive “arty” type club or a middle-class bohemian club. Well known musicians of the time performed at the Gateways and initially there was a greater variety of customers. In the 1950s and 60s this changed and the club became almost exclusively a lesbian club. It had a capacity of 200 people, was members only (applications to be made in advance), and cost an annual fee of 10 shillings for membership. The private status of the club protected it from police attention. (I haven’t yet come across research suggesting whether/how much the Gateways paid the police in inducements to stay away (some LGBTQA+ bars of the time had to charge a members fee to cover this expense) but there are records of other lesbian bars paying inducements to keep the police away. My research into The Gateways Club was what underpinned the bar The Trespasser in “In Trying Times…”).
Police attention was regularly on new LGBTQA+ places opening. An older woman, Big Kay, in the early sixties tried to open a lesbian bar called the Jacaranda. It was raided on it’s very first opening, despite it being a private function, and Big Kay was denied her license as a result of the raid. (This is probably enough reason why the names and locations of lesbian and gay bars were not well known, if the police heard of it, they were likely to raid it before it had a chance to become established).
Lesbian and gay bars alike faced ongoing hostility from a threatening outside world, characterised by violent attacks by outsiders and police involvement. There are records of LGBTQA+ clubs being frequently raided from the 1930s through into the 1980s (and in some places the 90s), but there was a particularly flurry of raids and police involvement and brutality in the 1960s. (Perhaps not surprising, given how LGBTQA+ activism worldwide increased in response to this increased harassment, and the Stonewall Riots in the US were in 1969 after this decade of ever increasing raids and discrimination against those in the LGBTQA+ community.) During many raids, police would enter the club, separate people in men and women, then collect their names and addresses before marching them to the police station.
“The police attitude towards us was to show power… they were there to abuse us; they had the power to take us down to [the station]… they’d do the same procedure again and say, ‘It says it’s a boy,’ or ‘It says it’s a girl,’ and they’d keep you in the cell till the morning so you don’t go back to the club.”
Some proprietors made arrangements for protection in exchange for an inducement, others went to court to contest prosecutions for keeping a disorderly house. Attempts to defeat such charges were rarely successful and most owners just did what they could to avoid police attention. (The problem was, once you were raided and the police had a handy list of people and their addresses, there was no telling what abuse of power might occur. It wasn’t uncommon for wealthier members of the LGBTQA+ community, after being found in a gay bar by police and identified, to be subject to blackmail and having to make regular payments to keep the police quiet.) As a result, lesbian (and other LGBTQ+) venues often had to be in obscure places — basements, lofts, tiny side streets — and people were dependent on word of mouth to know where to go. Advertising that they were there in spaces were the police and bigots from the community might learn about the place, endangered all the clientele who went there.
Notes informed primarily by:
“A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since the 1500s” by Rebecca Jennings
“The Gateways Club and the Emergence of a Post-Second World War Lesbian Subculture” by Rebecca Jennings in Vol 31(2) of Social History.
Also used:
“From the Closet to the Screen: Women at the Gateways Club, 1945-1985” by Jill Gardiner
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