Queer Places:
Fort de Vincennes, 75012 Paris, France

Louis-Marcel Voyer (born July 30, 1839) was an ex-army officer, pianist and benefactor, Catholic and conservative. He was arrested on the night of June 18, 1880 for indecent activity with a soldier, gunner Mégrin (who prostituted himself to make ends meet), near the Fort de Vincennes. Because Voyer had played the piano at the Elysée Palace, his case attracted much publicity. His explanation that he had been holding the hand of a young artillery man to comfort him because he thought they were being followed cut no ice with the court. The trial ended with the conviction for both.

In 1881, after complaints about the dubious trial of a well-known pianist, Louis-Marcel Voyer, only ten arrests were made in Paris for ‘male prostitution’, compared to 165 in 1879 and 120 in 1880. (In 1882, normal service was resumed: eighty-two arrests.)

My published books:

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• Robb, Graham. Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century . Pan Macmillan. Edizione del Kindle.
• Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS Copertina anteriore Julian Jackson University of Chicago Press, 15 dic 2009