In 1870, Frederick "Fanny" Park and Ernest "Stella" Boulton were arrested in London while wearing women's clothing. While cross-dressing was not the main reason for their arrest, it was a minor charge tacked onto the prosecution, and it was the reason that their trial was a sensation in newspapers across England.
It was not just Boulton and Park that were on trial, however. Also facing the same conspiracy and incitement charges were Louis Hurt and John Stafford Fiske, the United State’s consul in Leith, Edinburgh. Three more had absconded – Martin Cumming, William Somerville and C.H. Thompson – meanwhile, another had died, the aristocrat Lord Arthur Clinton, whose love-letters to Ernest Boulton had been discovered by law enforcement. Clinton reportedly died from natural causes, but suicide has always been largely suspected.
Although seeking a guilty verdict for ‘conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence,’ the prosecution focused mainly on Boulton and Park’s cross-dressing, and brought in a variety of witnesses who had seen them dressed in women’s clothing.
The conspiracy and incitement charges were hard to prove, and even harder for journalists of the time to write about. Newspapers, like the prosecution, focused on the cross-dressing. However, no one really complained about Park and Boulton and their fashion choices. People who saw them agreed that they were well-behaved and did not bother anyone, so why were they on trial? Read about the sensational landmark trial of Park and Boulton at the British Newspaper Archive. -via Strange Company