Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland

by History Project, Barney Frank (Foreword by)

A Harvard student expelled for cross-dressing in the early 1600s, 17th-century citizens fined for same-sex cohabitation, touring female impersonators of the nineteenth century, early 20th-century women who passed as men and married other women . . .

Surprising, fun, and magnificently illustrated, Improper Bostonians is the first book to depict the last three centuries of gay and lesbian life in Boston - the American city with the longest recognized history of gay and lesbian life - and is the most comprehensive and meticulously researched gay city history ever written.

Genres: History, LGBT, Queer, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1998

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a cool project. The book examines native New England cultures’ attitudes and roles for gay men and women, executed gay Puritans, “Boston marriages” (aka lesbians living together), and other notable parts of Boston-area LGBTQ history.

We are offered images of erotic Native American petroglyphs in Maine and quotes from John Winthrop (first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony)’s love letters to his “friend” William Springe. We find out that on the seal of the city of Quincy (just south of Boston) is an image of Merrymount, a “colony” founded by Thomas Morton, essentially to have lots of sex (including interracial and homosexual) and do pagan things because he thought it was funny to give Puritans anxiety.

So many Boston-based celebrities I didn’t know were gay! Michael Wigglesworth, who wrote that bestselling long poem, Day of Doom, was gay. Aaron Burr’s mother might have been gay; she had an extremely romance-like friendship with a female “friend.” Emerson and Thoreau were probably gay. (Not for each other). And Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville (yes, for each other! Okay, the eroticism between Queequeg and Ishmael in Moby Dick makes soooooo much sense). Emily Dickinson was at least partially gay. Margaret Fuller was in love with her cousin Anna. And maybe Walt Whitman- the Watch and Ward Society certainly thought so.

Other cool things in Boston’s LGBT history:

A possibly lesbian and possibly mixed-race Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man and fought and was wounded in the Revolutionary War. Surprisingly, when this was discovered, she was honorably discharged, received a soldier’s pension, and was considered a hero. American’s own Mulan. (Oddly, Ann Bailey, who did the same thing at the same time, was arrested and thrown in jail for it).

At the turn of the 19th/20th century, there were “spinster clubs” full of single women with close relationship bonds who went hiking in the mountains and on other adventures together.

Girls’ boarding schools and colleges had a practice called “smashing” where one girl basically sends love letters and gifts to another until she gets her attention and reciprocates, and then they spend all their time together and spoon in bed.

Boston marriages, of course, get a lot of attention in this book. The most notable of them is that of Alice James (sister of Henry James) and Katharine Peabody- the inspiration for Henry James’s The Bostonians (up next on my reading list and the conclusion of my Boston-based book list yayyy).

There are some horrid stories of police raids of gay bars in post-WWII era where the gay men would be arrested and the lesbians would be taken into a back room to give the police a blow job to avoid being arrested.

So sad to think that queer bars that are described as “still open” at the time this book was published (1998) have all since closed- Playland, Napoleon. I’d have loved to go to those.

[Julia Bucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Letter from John Winthrop to William Springe, 8 February 1630:
'I loved you truly before I could think that you took any notice of me: but now I embrace you and rest in your love...I must needs tell you, my soul is knit to you, as the soul of Jonathan to David: were I now with you, I should bedew that sweet bosom with the tears of affection...'"

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1990’s an incredible group of people pulled together a history of Boston and its residents that focused on people who would likely have self-identified on the LGBTQ+ spectrum if they were alive today and looked at the legal documents of their contemporaries to understand how they were being judged and treated by society.

It feels in some places like the work of many authors and because it came out of an exhibition that was on display at BPL in 1996, there is sometimes a dearth or explanatory text.

For a book that came out pre-2000 though, the graphical layout is remarkably clean and there is an incredible self-awareness that while most recorded history was only recorded by a minority of literate record keepers, more stories must be told. The authors point to information about local Native American sexual identity and go out of the way to find stories about women and people of color (though interestingly, they’re better about it earlier in the book and the last section from 1945 to 1969!is heavily about gay white men and their bars).

While I understand the tremendous impact of this research when it came out, I would love to see a 1960 to 2020 version in a few years that includes everything from the Combahee River Collective to Maura Healy and the Names Project (AIDS Quilt) to the legalization of same sex marriage.

[Sarah Koppelkam · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a special book, lent to me by a fellow queer person in my neighborhood who experienced some of the later history therein. “Improper Bostonians” spans the history of colonized Boston, detailing experiences, people, and places that today we would categorize as LGBTQ+. I’m not the hugest fan of Boston, but uncovering so much about this forgotten (erased) history gave me a new respect for the city. A real delight was reading this at a coffee shop on Charles St and finding a passage that described the Boston Marriage of Sarah Orne Jewett (who shares my name) - and she and her partner shared an apartment on Charles Street! I appreciated how the authors and editors of this anthology (sponsored by the History Project) did not over editorialize - events and quotes where presented as they were and the reader is left to interpret their meaning, situated within their historical context.

Queer history is all around us, we have always been here, and I wish more people had access to this history.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old and somewhat outdated book with some incorrect information (i.e. one person was listed as killed by Nazis, when he really died of a heart attack) that is almost exclusively focused on the LG of LGBT (published late 90s). Would love to see an updated version with more inclusive information, but for what was there, this was super interesting to read. Most entries were short; sometimes the longer ones were too long to be maintain interest, and then again, some of the shortest ones left you wanting more information. If this is something that interests you, or even if you're just interested in Boston history, this is a good choice with some interesting photos.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know why I didn't already have this book marked as read, since I read it 24 years ago when it was first published! This book sprang from the exhibition at the Boston Public Library on 350 years of Gay & Lesbian History in Boston. As LGBTQI+ Rights are , yet again, under attack, re-reading this book is a sad reminder that no matter how much things may change, things stay the same! I do remember reading it the first time and thinking it would be fun to visit all the sites in Boston mentioned in the map in the book-now looking at the map I realize that I've spent the last 17 years working in and around all of the mentioned sites!

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would love an updated version.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

so important reading about the gay history of boston

[Vasha7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting scrapbook of pictures and short texts about sexual and gender "deviance" throughout Boston's history. Almost every page raises a wish to know more about that snippet of history; luckily, it's heavily footnoted, and research is continuing, which should lead to more publications in the future. Brevity takes the greatest toll on context-setting paragraphs; to sum up a broad historical development in a few sentences can only be done by great vagueness or great oversimplification, and this book largely opts for the second.

Some of the pages I found most appealing were those on Thomas Morton's Merrymount; Michael Wigglesworth's diary; portraits of Margaret Fuller, Louise Guiney, and other women; Harriet Hosmer's sculpture studio; Edward Perry Warren's art collection; F. O. Mathiessen's self-discovery; Eleanora Sears the athlete; Mary Driscoll, another powerful woman, although as anti-vice-crusading chair of the Boston Licensing Board...

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This compilation of photographs and documents from a variety of primary sources explores the history of LGBT Boston from its earliest days to the Stonewall era. Stemming from a display at the Boston Public Library, the book is thus largely visually based, giving only tidbits of information about each person or place or trend. Source notes are included for those interested in exploring the topic in depth.

[Billy Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great history of gay alesbian peoiple in Massachusetts from the beginning of the colony to publishing date. It would probably be a little boring to people not familiar with Boston as it is a very localized history, but a good history nonetheless, and a great read for those who want to understand why Mass. is the ONLY gay marriage state in the union.