Video transcript: Cyril and the Caravan Club
In The National Archives, we can find an interesting piece of document in the Metropolitan Police records: a love letter from a man called Cyril. How does such a private letter end up here? Well, because it was written to another man.
Cyril moved to London in 1932 when he was 20. Having had a wife and a kid, in London, he for the first time realised and so embraced his queer identity. Dressed up in a feminine look, he started to frequent certain queer spaces under the name The Countess and the pronoun she.
One of the places he used to drop by is the Caravan Club in Soho, which by the time was advertised as London’s ‘greatest bohemian rendezvous’, a rhetorical strategy to imply queerness as homosexual behaviour was at the time still illegal.
In the Caravan Club, he met his good friends, and more: Morris, the one he loved. He wrote, ‘I love you, Morris, darling. Honestly, I do.’
There were, however, some people from the neighbourhood who obviously didn’t want queerness to emerge in this area. Reports were received by the police. ‘It’s absolutely a sink of iniquity’, ‘frequented by sexual perverts, lesbians and sodomites’.
Surveillance began. Undercover cops flooded into the club. After about a month
the club was finally raided, only six weeks after it opened. People in the club were arrested, including Cyril.
When this happened, he tore up the letter and hide it under the sofa. But the police searched it out and retyped it to serve as his criminal evidence, which now forms a part of the documents in The National Archives. That’s why we get to know his story today.
The mutuality of pain and happiness, violence and resistance defined the life of being queer in London in the 1930s. And London as a city was, and still is, a hub where queer communities develop. In his book ‘Queer London’ when talking about queer lives in London in the early 20th century, Matt Houlbrook says: ‘For just as London opened up
certain opportunities for certain men, it closed down other possibilities and left other men marginalised or silenced.’
This is true throughout history and still applicable to London now, when homosexuality is no longer criminalised. But what’s delighted for you and me to see is that London is evolving towards a brighter future. Over a million people marched for the 2022 London Pride Parade to support and celebrate diverse groups of queer people in terms of sexualities, ethnicities, ages, etc. London is progressing to a more inclusive city thanks to Cyril, the Caravan Club, and many others alike.