findings did Dr Paul betray the least emotion.
‘I had never seen anything like it before,’ he said in a shocked tone of voice. ‘I have been in practice sixteen years, seven years out of that at the St Pancras General Dispensary, and I have on very many occasions examined the anuses of persons. I do not in my practice ever remember to have seen such an appearance of the anus, as those of the prisoners presented.
‘I examined Boulton, and found him to be a man,’ Dr Paul testified. ‘The anus was dilated, and more dilatable, and the muscles surrounding the anus easily opened.’
Then it was Fanny’s turn.
‘Boulton was then removed, and the prisoner Park came behind the screen,’ Dr Paul deposed. ‘I said to him the same I had said to Boulton.’
Fanny stripped herself naked and bent herself over the same desk stool.
‘The anus was very much dilated,’ Dr Paul recounted almost by rote in court, ‘and dilatable to a very great extent. The rectum was large, and there was some discoloration around the edge of the anus, caused probably by sores.’
The small puckering folds of skin around Fanny’s anus – the rugae – he noticed were abnormal: ‘I found them loose, and not in their normal state. I should say they were rough.’
There could, he said, be one – and only one – explanation for the slackness of Fanny and Stella’s bottoms. ‘The insertion of a foreign body numerous times would account for those appearances,’ he said.
Dr Paul was pressed as to exactly what he meant by ‘the insertion of a foreign body numerous times’.
‘The insertion of a man’s person would cause the appearances I have described,’ he replied. A ‘man’s person’, a man’s penis, or rather, men’s penises – lots of men’s penises – were the cause of the extraordinary state of Fanny and Stella’s bottoms. They had, in Dr Paul’s opinion, been so repeatedly sodomised by men that the anus had lost much if not most of its natural elasticity.
There was more. Dr Paul also examined Fanny and Stella’s penises. Again he was shocked by what he found. Stella’s penis and scrotum were ‘of an inordinate length’ and Fanny’s ‘private parts were elongated’. What, he was asked, might cause such an elongation of the penis?
‘Traction,’ Dr Paul replied solemnly. ‘Traction might produce elongation of the penis and the testicles.’
It was an alarming comment, conjuring up an image of Fanny and Stella’s penises physically distorted and elongated by the rigours of anal penetration. One of Dr Paul’s treasured authorities on sodomy claimed that very often ‘the dimensions of the penis of active pederasts were excessive in one way or another’, that they were ‘pointed and moulded to the funnel shape of the passive anus’. And sometimes they were ‘twisted’ – a consequence of ‘the corkscrew motion required during anal sex’.
There was no doubt in Dr Paul’s mind that the bodies of the two young men he had just examined bore all the hallmarks of sodomy. They might protest their innocence until they were blue in the face, but their sins were engraved in scarlet upon their flesh. It was proof, indisputable and unarguable scientific proof, of the charges against them that they ‘did with each and one another and with divers other persons feloniously commit the abominable crime of buggery’.
6
Wives and Daughters
Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,
And, forming you, mistook your kind?
No; ’twas for you alone he stole
The fire that forms a manly soul;
Then, to complete it every way,
He moulded it with female clay:
To that you owe the nobler flame,
To this the beauty of your frame.
Jonathan Swift,
‘To Stella, Visiting Me in My Sickness’, 1720
M rs Mary Ann Boulton was a devoted wife and an indulgent mother and she did not mind who knew it. Whatever adversity and misfortune they had as a family experienced (and, really, they had endured more than their fair share of
‘I had never seen anything like it before,’ he said in a shocked tone of voice. ‘I have been in practice sixteen years, seven years out of that at the St Pancras General Dispensary, and I have on very many occasions examined the anuses of persons. I do not in my practice ever remember to have seen such an appearance of the anus, as those of the prisoners presented.
‘I examined Boulton, and found him to be a man,’ Dr Paul testified. ‘The anus was dilated, and more dilatable, and the muscles surrounding the anus easily opened.’
Then it was Fanny’s turn.
‘Boulton was then removed, and the prisoner Park came behind the screen,’ Dr Paul deposed. ‘I said to him the same I had said to Boulton.’
Fanny stripped herself naked and bent herself over the same desk stool.
‘The anus was very much dilated,’ Dr Paul recounted almost by rote in court, ‘and dilatable to a very great extent. The rectum was large, and there was some discoloration around the edge of the anus, caused probably by sores.’
The small puckering folds of skin around Fanny’s anus – the rugae – he noticed were abnormal: ‘I found them loose, and not in their normal state. I should say they were rough.’
There could, he said, be one – and only one – explanation for the slackness of Fanny and Stella’s bottoms. ‘The insertion of a foreign body numerous times would account for those appearances,’ he said.
Dr Paul was pressed as to exactly what he meant by ‘the insertion of a foreign body numerous times’.
‘The insertion of a man’s person would cause the appearances I have described,’ he replied. A ‘man’s person’, a man’s penis, or rather, men’s penises – lots of men’s penises – were the cause of the extraordinary state of Fanny and Stella’s bottoms. They had, in Dr Paul’s opinion, been so repeatedly sodomised by men that the anus had lost much if not most of its natural elasticity.
There was more. Dr Paul also examined Fanny and Stella’s penises. Again he was shocked by what he found. Stella’s penis and scrotum were ‘of an inordinate length’ and Fanny’s ‘private parts were elongated’. What, he was asked, might cause such an elongation of the penis?
‘Traction,’ Dr Paul replied solemnly. ‘Traction might produce elongation of the penis and the testicles.’
It was an alarming comment, conjuring up an image of Fanny and Stella’s penises physically distorted and elongated by the rigours of anal penetration. One of Dr Paul’s treasured authorities on sodomy claimed that very often ‘the dimensions of the penis of active pederasts were excessive in one way or another’, that they were ‘pointed and moulded to the funnel shape of the passive anus’. And sometimes they were ‘twisted’ – a consequence of ‘the corkscrew motion required during anal sex’.
There was no doubt in Dr Paul’s mind that the bodies of the two young men he had just examined bore all the hallmarks of sodomy. They might protest their innocence until they were blue in the face, but their sins were engraved in scarlet upon their flesh. It was proof, indisputable and unarguable scientific proof, of the charges against them that they ‘did with each and one another and with divers other persons feloniously commit the abominable crime of buggery’.
6
Wives and Daughters
Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,
And, forming you, mistook your kind?
No; ’twas for you alone he stole
The fire that forms a manly soul;
Then, to complete it every way,
He moulded it with female clay:
To that you owe the nobler flame,
To this the beauty of your frame.
Jonathan Swift,
‘To Stella, Visiting Me in My Sickness’, 1720
M rs Mary Ann Boulton was a devoted wife and an indulgent mother and she did not mind who knew it. Whatever adversity and misfortune they had as a family experienced (and, really, they had endured more than their fair share of
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