Victorian transvestites Fanny and Stella regarded themselves as sisters … until they fell out over another man
moment when Stella Boulton swept into Edinburgh like the devouring north wind and turned his world upon its head.
There were women, there were men and then there was Miss Stella Boulton. Mr John Safford Fiske had never before met anyone like her and he knew he would never do so again. She was fascinating, compelling. She seemed to him to be half-man and half-woman, but more, infinitely more, than the sum of her two parts.
STELLA was “Laïs and Antonious in one”. An amalgam, a coalescence, of Laïs the Corinthian, the most famous, beautiful and expensive courtesan of the Ancient World, the muse of Demosthenes, and Antonious, the most beautiful and beloved boy of the Emperor Hadrian. It was, he wrote, “a ravishing thought”. Who could fail to fall in love with two such beings, united in one perfect
body?
Mr John Safford Fiske was powerless to resist. It was more than love, than lust. It was a kind of madness, a rapture. He could not sleep or eat. Thoughts of Stella, in or out of drag, as a man, a woman or an hermaphrodite, filled his waking and sleeping hours. He wanted Stella more than anything else. More than a wife and fortune. More than power and glory. More, perhaps, than life itself. He knew only too well that the more he wanted her, the more he risked all. But he was prepared to give up everything for her.
Perhaps Mr John Safford Fiske should have been careful of what he wished for: within weeks, Stella, along with Fanny, had been arrested in drag while out on a jaunt in London. On June 9, 1870, there was a loud rap at Mr John Safford Fiske’s chambers at 136 George Street, Edinburgh. On the doorstep stood Detective Officer Roderick Gollan of the City Police with a warrant for his arrest.
Ernest ‘Stella’ Boulton, Frederick ‘Fanny’ Park, John Safford Fiske, Louis Hurt and others would face a state trial for their high crimes before the Lord Chief Justice in Westminster Hall. If convicted, they faced imprisonment for life. Neil McKenna’s Fanny And Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England is published by Faber (£16.99). McKenna will be talking at Waterstones West End, Edinburgh, on February 21 at 6pm. Free tickets are available in advance. Call 0131 226 2666