Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world and throughout time.

My name is Eli.

Hi, I'm Irene. I'm Alice.

And today we're talking about the trial of Stella Bolton and Fanny Park.

We have some content warnings for this episode.

The episode will contain potential misgendoring, depending on your understanding of Fannie

and Stella's identities. It will also contain mentions of sex work, including legal prosecution

of sex workers, periodical and modern day misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, including legal prosecution and imprisonment of queer people.

Discussions of pornography and explicit discussions of sex. Discussions... I just went to read that line again.

There will also be sexual assault specifically done and condoned by medical and legal authorities, use of outdated language

for queer people and sex workers, and mention of a possible suicide and a possible death

from an STI.

If any of that sounds like something that you would rather not listen to, feel free to skip

this episode as always, and listen to one of our other episodes for other horrifying things that have happened.

Before we begin, I also want to talk about our sources first at more length than normal,

but to do that, I need to tell you basically who Fanny and Stella are.

So Fannie and Stella are two young people, assigned male at birth, who habitually dressed in

women's clothes, went by women's names,

generally presented as female in their personal lives, as well as professionally as actresses

on the stage.

One night while they were at the theatre as the audience, not on stage, they were arrested

for being in women's clothes and they went to trial. It's primarily because of this trial that we know anything about them.

...