Queer Places:
Macaroni Club, 49 Pall Mall, St. James's, London SW1Y 5JG, UK
Samuel
Drybutter (1729-1787) was a jeweller and bookseller, who kept a shop in Westminster Hall. The newspapers often refer to him as a ‘toyman’, which means a seller of luxury goods such as jewellery, watches, and various trinkets. He began as an assistant to his mother Jane Drybutter, acting as manager of her shop in Pall Mall where she sold luxury items such as tortoishell snuffboxes and diamond rings and books with gold mounts, while he worked mainly from the shop (or stall) in Westminster Hall, where he also sold books. Jane Drybutter let out rooms above her shop in Pall Mall, and she also had a shop in Tunbridge Wells selling similar and less expensive items such as pocketbooks and ribbons and linen goods. The Drybutters frequently dealt with the wholesalers James Cox and Edward Grace. In October 1757 Cox and Grace prosecuted Samuel Drybutter for stealing two tortoishell snuff boxes from them, which he had had mounted in gold and had pretended he got them from another source. When charged, Drybutter claimed they were in a consignment of things for him to consider on a ‘sale or return’ basis, and that in the meantime he had them mounted for one of his customers who had seen them in his shop. He fully intended to pay for the boxes. Although Drybutter had previously been investigated for dealing in stolen goods, on this occasion it looked as though Cox and Grace had made a mistake in their records, and Drybutter was acquitted. Many people in the trade – a case maker, a jeweller, a bookseller, a silk weaver, a watchmaker, a tailor, etc. – testified to Drybutter’s honesty and good character.
There is a tradition, possibly erroneous, that in 1757 Drybutter was pilloried for selling copies of
John Cleland's pornographic novel Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. There is one homoerotic passage in that novel, which did not appear in the first edition, and which is usually omitted from modern editions. It has been suggested (in works such as Ernest Baker's The History of the English Novel) that Samuel Drybutter was the person responsible for inserting salacious additions into the novel: perhaps he, rather than Cleland, was the author of the description of sodomy in the novel.
Drybutter again appeared at the Old Bailey in September 1767, but this time as the prosecutor, alledging that two boys, William Wools and Thomas Mills, had broken into his shop in Westminster Hall and stolen two silver watches, twenty-seven gold rings, a silver nutmeg-grater, thirty-five pairs of silver buckles, and other items. They were convicted and sentenced to transportation. In January 1771 Drybutter again appeared at the Old Bailey, to prosecute Michael Welch for stealing numerous items from his shop: a lacquer snuffbox, a silver nutmeg grater, silver thimbles, a bracelet set with garnets, numerous shoe buckles and knee buckles, watches, pencil cases, silver tankards, candlesticks and snuffers etc.; and further charged Michael Welch’s wife Lettia Johnson for receiving these goods, knowing them to have been stolen. Most of the goods showed up in a pawnbroker’s shop in Holborn. Welch was found guilty and transported, though his wife was acquitted. Drybutter again appeared at the Old Bailey in October 1776, in a complicated case in which William Davis was prosecuted for counterfeiting a warrant for the delivery of casks of wine and other goods by the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies, for which Drybutter had advanced the sum of £1,900. Drybutter was now living in the rooms above his house in Pall Mall, and let out the ground floor premises as a lottery office (his mother had died in 1761). An interesting bit of information from this trial relates to Drybutter’s physical size. William Davis, in his defence, said ‘I should not have suffered myself to be taken in my own house by Mr. Drybutter, a very little man, who I could have put down with one hand; he took me in my own house, where the greatest opportunity was offered me for escaping’ had he wished to do so. He claimed he did not intend to defraud Drybutter but intended to reimburse the funds in several months. Davis, who had a wife and three children, was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Samuel Drybutter was a notorious sodomite, and was considered to be the leader of the Macaroni Club in the 1770s. He was first arrested for attempted sodomy on 23 January 1770; he was committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell (Gen. Even. Post, 23-25 Jan. 1770). In September 1770 he was again apprehended soliciting a man in St. James's Park. He was already so notorious that "the populace, especially the women, were so enraged agaisnt him, that guards were sent for to attend the coach, and protect him from their fury" (Oxford Journal, 1 Sept. 1770). A newspaper reported that a year earlier he had solicited his own servant boy, but the matter was made up with the boy's friends. He apparently approached many of the boys playing in Westminster Hall near his toyshop (Reading Mercury, 3 Sept. 1770). Despite this, in July 1771 he again attempted ‘to repeat the infamous and detestable crime to which he seems to have so strong, though unnatural, a propensity’, and one evening tried to pick up a horse grenadier patroling at the Horse Guards. ‘He wanted him to dismount, and accompany him to a private place; the fellow refusing to comply, he offered him money and used several indecencies with him.’ The soldier seized him and a watchman put him in the round-house overnight. But the next day Drybutter counter-charged the grenadier with an attempt to extort money, and the grenadier was himself arrested. ‘In the morning they were carried, in separate coaches, before Justice Wright. The concourse of people to see the offender was so great, that it was thought prudent to drive him up towards Pimlico, lest he should have fallen a prey to the fury of the mob. When they got to the Justices, he found means by parting with some of the wages of his iniquity, to make the affair up: they were accordingly both discharged; and the catamite, to escape the populace, was carried off in the coach to some place at a considerable distance.’ He was said to have retired to his seat in the country for a few days. (London Even. Post, 25-27 July 1771). It appears that he was exhibited in the pillory, as a news report referred to ‘the late severe discipline he underwent’ (London Even. Post, 25-27 July 1771).
On 11 Oct. 1771, the new city officers for Westminster were sworn in before Sir John Fielding.
Among those selected was Samuel Drybutter, who found himself presented for the office of
Petty Constable of St. Margaret’s. As the writer of Bingley’s Journal observed, Drybutter was in
the humiliating position of explaining why he was unsuitable. He told them,
Sir, I think I am not eligible; but supposing I was, I am a very improper man; you
know I am the detestation of all mankind; every man who hears me, hates, detests, and
abhors me; I am presented to the office partly out of joke, and partly from malice; they
who have presented me know what I am, and you, all of you know, that I am not a fit
person to be put into this office… The world calls me a S------e, I am one.
The Court of Burgesses, though shocked and horrified, felt that this should not excuse him from
“serving an office of trouble and expence,” and selected him anyway. He was duly sworn in,
though Sir John publicly lamented that the Court of Burgesses had disgraced the office by
“putting such an unnatural monster among them.”
During 1772, according to newspaper reports, Drybutter narrowly missed being apprehended for sodomy, always managing to escape. Immediately after Captain Jones was tried for sodomy, newspapers began urging the Magistrates to do something about Drybutter: ‘A celebrated toyman [i.e. Drybutter], not far from Westminster-hall, has taken a house in Pall-mall for the reception of a detestable set of wretches of his own stamp.’ (This identical notice appeared in the Westminster Journal for 18-25 July 1772 and in the London Evening Post for 21-23 July). Soon after hearing the news that Captain Jones would be given a pardon, a sarcastic notice appeared in the papers: ‘Mr. Dr-b-tt-r’s club are desired to meet at the Gomorrah, to-morrow evening, to consider of a proper address of thanks to the throne for the respite of brother Jones. The Macaroni, Delettanti, and other Italian clubs will bring up the rear of the cavalcade, all dressed in white linen breeches’ (Morn. Chron., 7 Aug.). Many of the satiric references to Drybutter and the members of the Macaroni Club are full of such puns on sodomy.
After the Jones' affair, Drybutter was so well known that he was
recognised, and became the object of public revenge. A
week before the acquittal of Lt. Jones, a coffee-house in Covent Garden was the scene of what the General Evening Post
called “a whimsical confusion”. As several gentlemen expressed their outrage that ‘such a
vice’ could find favour at Court, another man objected to the idea that a man’s life should be
forfeit for ‘his particular taste’. As the debate continued, a porter arrived with a letter for
Drybutter. When the man who had defended Jones responded, the company took action to
demonstrate their disgust. One man poured his chocolate over Drybutter’s wig. When Drybutter
demanded the meaning of this treatment, he was answered, “it is my particular taste.” The rest of the company, and several of the staff of the coffee-house then joined in. Another gentleman
poured a glass of capillaire down his neck, and a third threw the milk-pot into Drybutter’s face,
both insisting that this was their ‘particular taste.’ The barmaid poured a dish of hot coffee down
his breeches, and the waiter, an “honest Irishman”, kicked his “Old-Bailey” face out of the
coffee-house. The noise gathered a mob outside the door, who “immediately knew him, and
taking compassion upon his dirty condition, carried him again to the horse-pond in the Meuse,
and there sufficiently washed off the milk, capillaire, and chocolate, in that well-known water.”
Drybutter would suffer again only a few weeks later. Dining on pig in Honey-lane-market, he
unfortunately sat at a table where some of the company knew him. They threw a pint of liquor in
his face, saying that ‘as he loved pig, he should not want for sauce.’ The company then forced
him to the fire, where “some of them basted him, with the contents of a bountiful dripping-pan,
whilst others applied the reeking spit to his nose: greasy dish-clouts in abundance were
occasionally made use of, and after rolling him in saw-dust, they suffered him to decamp.”
Drybutter was again arrested for attempted sodomy on 6 July 1774, and again aquitted. His pimp on this occasion was a man who had organised meetings at a public house at which nineteen men had been arrested in April 1774. Later narrow escapes also seem to have occurred. In 1776, Drybutter was satirized in Sodom and Onan, where he was nicknamed Ganymede. A contemporary satirical illustration titled "Ganymede & Jack-Ketch" shows him in fetters standing beside the hangman. "Jack Ketch" holds up a noose to put around Drybutter's neck and says "Dammee Sammy you'r a sweet pretty Creature & I long to have you at the end of my String." He is tweaking the chin of "Ganymede", who replies "You don't love me Jacky."
Some time later, on Monday, 30 June 1777, Drybutter tried to pick up a man in St James’s Park, who rejected his advances and reported him to two soldiers on duty there. The soldiers escorted Drybutter to Pall Mall, where they declared his offence and released him to the fury of the mob which had gathered. He was pelted with mud and severely beaten, but managed to reach his own house. Several hundred people then attacked his house, breaking all the windows and smashing up his shop, but were prevented from tearing it down by the arrival of a military party. One of Drybutter’s arms was broken in a dangerous manner, and his innards were so seriously bruised that ‘he now lies without Hope of Life’. It was reported that he died on Saturday, 5 July. Although gay men were occasionally killed by the mob while standing in the pillory, it was highly unusual (and not otherwise documented) for the mob to kill a gay man before he was even formally charged with a crime. It seems that in this case, the populace, who had been denied the chance to hang Captain Jones in 1772, after a long-simmering resentment decided to take the law into their own hands and exact their revenge by beating Drybutter to death.
But they do not seem to have succeeded. In The Complete Modern London Spy published in 1781, Drybutter was referred to as if he were still alive. In that pamphlet, one man out walking with another says, ‘do you observe that man who is now sauntering towards Covent garden? – he is one of those wretches, once almost unknown in England. He subsists by gratifying the unnatural vices of his own sex; in short, he is the companion of an infamous fellow, whose name is Dr–b—r, and who, though well known to be guilty of this horrible crime, has hitherto evaded all attempts to bring him to condign punishment.’ [The Complete Modern London Spy, For the present Year, 1781; or, A Real, New, and Universal Disclosure, of The Secret, Nocturnal, and Diurnal Transactions, In and about the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark (London, [1781]), p. 84.] It is hard to appreciate how Samuel Drybutter managed to live as a publicly known homosexual and to set society at defiance for such a long time, but clearly he was one of life’s survivors despite being queer-bashed and despite a long campaign of press vilification.
It is now known that Drybutter had fled to France, where he lived in an apartment on the Rue du Petit Lion, Paris, until his death probably in 1787. [John Culme, ‘Trade of fancy: new findings from eighteenth century London’, Silver Society Journal, Autumn 2000, pp. 98–110, esp. pp. 104–107.] His Will takes the form of a letter dated 16 September 1787, addressed to his long-time friend William Hodges, who kept a lottery office in the lower part of his house in Pall Mall: ‘Two days ago, I thought my writing was all finished to all the world for I was seized just after Dinner with a fit in which I continued insensible for four hours . . . I can truly say that I have been in the jaws of death – for I have felt every thing that must be felt by a dying person a total deprivation of all Corporal and mental powers.’ It is not certain how long he survived this apparent heart attack (he was christened on 17 February 1729, and would now be nearly 60 years old), but by the time his Will was proved in London on 8 May 1793, France was on the eve of The Terror. As The Times reported on 3 April 1793: ‘The inhabitants of Paris have now reached the zenith of infamy, and their City is in a state similar to that in which the City of Sodom was, immediately prior to Lot’s departure.’
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