molly

In 18th- and 19th-century Britain, a molly house or molly-house was a meeting place for homosexual men. The meeting places were generally taverns, public houses, coffeehouses or even private rooms where patrons could either socialise or meet possible sexual partners.
Despite the reputation of molly-houses as places having primarily sexual connotations, rather than as social meeting places, some historians are reluctant to classify them specifically as brothels. Rictor Norton, for example, argues that the regular customers could have been in fact mutual friends, at least at the beginning, since consistent evidence concerning male prostitution seems to be insufficient in Britain until the 1780s.
From 1533 onwards, homosexual relations and sexual activities were illegal in England and were frequently prosecuted, with homosexual sexual activities being included in the offence categories of buggery and sodomy (the terms which were often used interchangeably), they remained capital offences until 1861. From the 16th century onwards until 1861, particularly during the 1720s, molly-houses came to be the scenes of raids and arrests, and their customers frequently became targets for blackmail.
Molly-houses can be considered a precursor to some types of contemporary meeting places for the gay community, such as cottaging.

View More On Wikipedia.org