Wikipedia:Peer review/Molly house/archive1

Molly house

I've listed this article for peer review because I recently expanded it and improved its structure and I will appreciate some feedback and any eventual suggestions for improvement. Thanks, Pbord (talk) 10:09, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Caeciliusinhorto:

The article uses the spelling "Molly-House" throughout, yet the title is "Molly house" (and the spelling "Molly House" is used in the titles of some works cited). I suggest standardising the spelling, either by moving the article, or changing the spelling in the body of the text, or both. (For what it's worth, Google's ngram viewer says that until 1995, "molly house" was the most popular spelling, and since then "Molly House" has been most popular, but over the last few years both have been declining to the still-minority "molly-house"...)[1]

Where the lead has "...to define a meeting point...", I would have "...to describe a meeting place..." or even "...for a meeting place..."

The second paragraph of the lead reads very clunkily to me:

1. "...these clubs tended to display a heavy sexual connotation...": I don't know how I would re-write this sentence, but I would definitely re-write it. What is a "sexual connotation" in this context?
2. "...cautious to classify them...": maybe "reluctant" would be better than "cautious"? Also, as it stands, this sentence implies that molly houses were brothels, or at least that many/most historians think they were. Yet there's no mention in the entire article that I can see of men working as prostitutes in molly houses, or any payment for sex whatsoever, apart from in this one sentence in the lead. If the discussion of male prostitution in molly houses is worth noting, it should be in the article body.
3. Not sure about "mere brothels". Simply "brothels" would be better: both more concise, and more NPOV.
4. I would also split this sentence in two, replacing the colon with a period, thus: "...classify them as brothels. Rictor Norton, for instance..."
5. For the next sentence, starting "At that time...": "were included in the offence categories of buggery and sodomy (terms which were often used interchangeably)" could simply be "were illegal"; the distinction or lack thereof between buggery and sodomy in English jurisprudence doesn't seem to be relevant to the article...
6. In the same sentence, "were heavily prosecuted (in the United Kingdom they remained capital offences until 1861)" could be replaced with "and remained punishable by death until 1861."
7. Next sentence: "the scenario for" -> "the scene of".

Third paragraph of lead is very weasel-wordy. "Today, historians consider molly houses a precursor to..." would be better. (incidentally getting rid of "nowadays", which reads as very colloquial to me...)

In the section on Etymology:

1. I might write "diminutive" rather than the more colloquial "pet-form". If you keep it, though, I'm not sure that it is usually hyphenated. I would end this sentence after "Mary", and then make the next sentence something like: "In the eighteenth century, the word 'molly' was used both for lower-class women and prostitutes, and as a slang term for effeminate or homosexual men."
2. The sentence beginning "Along with" in the section on Etymology has the word "possibly" twice; I would try to remove one of the uses.
3. When discussing the Latin mollis, I would say "which was used to describe the passive and thus supposedly effeminate partner in male same-sex [or "homosexual": either is fine] relationships", rather than what currently exists from "indicating" onwards.
4. Does the existence of the word in two specific dictionaries by apparently non-notable people need to be discussed?

Section on Gender issues:

1. "According to several critics": who?
2. "the English society of the time": simply "English society at the time" reads better to me.
3. The first sentence of this paragraph should end where the ":" is.
4. "defined in terms of their maternal functions": does this need to be in italic type?
5. "contrarily to": either "contrary to" or "in contrast with"
6. "attributing them features etc.": "which saw women as lustful and sexually aggressive [or assertive]"?
7. Scrap "it is possible to see that": simply "The development of the molly house was..."
8. Again, who are "some critics"?
9. "As stated by Robert Shoemaker,... any activity (such as homosexual intercourse), in which [men] could be seen as acting passively was further marginalised.": The link between this sentence and the ones preceding it are not clear to me. Could you make the reason for quoting this in particular more explicit?
10. In fact, everything in this subsection from this point onwards doesn't seem to follow very well from the earlier discussion. I'm not even sure exactly what it is meant to be doing. Is it meant to be talking about how homosexual men adopted what were seen as female gender roles as a way of building an identity?

Section on Molly-Houses and homosexual subculture in London

1. "Sodomy was a capital offence". Would it be productive to discuss what sodomy actually entailed before this point?
2. "the organisation of homosexual men and their activities had to be a crucial point": simply "...activities was crucial"?
3. To what extent did a homosexual community/homosexual subculture exist in the UK at this point? Would be good if you briefly discussed this before assuming that such a community existed.
4. "Molly districts seemed to appear": what does "seemed to" mean, here? Is it just filler? if so, "Molly districts appeared". Is it that we think molly districts appeared at this point? If so, "Molly districts seem to have appeared".
5. "acknowledged and tolerated at the same time": just "tolerated"?
6. After the colon, what is currently there seems unnecessarily wordy: try "these were often districts with lots of other criminal activity such as theft and prostitution".
7. Article says "six or seven" molly districts existed in London, and then goes on to list five by my count, in four bullet points. Firstly, I'm not sure that having bullet points adds anything to the article; secondly, if they are going to be included I would have one district per bullet point. Nor am I sure that a list of where in London the molly districts were adds much to the discussion...
8. "Sodomitical offences": I strongly suggest re-writing this so the word "sodomitical" is not needed.
9. "the crime locations attributed to the accused": surely "the location of the crime" is better in every way?

Were molly houses exclusive to London? The article only seems to discuss London, but doesn't actually comment on whether or not they were a broader phenomenon. Either explicitly note that they were solely a London phenomenon, or discuss molly houses outside of London...

Section on Law enforcement:

1. "(also defined "detestable crime" in trial records[25])": is this really necessary? If you want to keep it, I'd suggest 'Before 1533 the "unnatural sin" and "detestable crime"...'
2. "the country's": I would specify "England's", as the UK did not exist yet, and there is potential confusion on which constituent part of the UK is being referred to here...
3. "An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie (Buggery Act 1533)": just use a wikilink! thus: "An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie", or simply "the Buggery Act". The full title of the law is not really needed.
4. "And also": just "And", or "so", or "and consequently". "And also" makes it sound that this was a separate development to the buggery act!
5. "crime" should not be in quotation marks: very NPOV.
6. No need to quote the Old Bailey Proceedings; just summarise and cite. I don't think the quote adds anything.
7. "actively pursued prostitutes, Sabbath breakers and also homosexual men": as this is the article on the molly house, homosexual men should not be an afterthought. Perhaps: "actively pursued homosexual men [– along with prostitutes, Sabbath breakers, and others who engaged in immoral behaviours –]" (section in square brackets is optional). This additionally makes the next clause, which refers to dismantling molly houses, make more sense: at first I wondered what prostitutes and Sabbath breakers were doing in molly houses!
8. I have no idea what this paragraph/sentence means, and it desperately needs re-writing to make it clearer: "Molly-Houses at that time were evidently and intrinsically related to since they gathered sodomites being a capital offence, so most of the information concerning Molly-Houses and the community around them is available through an indirect form, that is, mostly through newspaper reports and the accounts given during the Old Bailey trials relating to sexual offences, such as sodomy, assault with sodomitical intent and keeping a brothel, or sometimes the ones related to theft cases (for example, in cases with men caught stealing during a sexual encounter)."
9. Nor do I understand "but fraud and extortion cases seemed to continue in giving retail at length detailed accounts of alleged sexual encounters between men." (or why the second half of that clause is italicised)

Section on Activities:

1. "allowing cohesion in the group": which group? homosexual men? men who frequented molly houses?
2. Why is "Female Dialect" capitalised?

Section on Mother Clap's Molly House:

1. "It was located in Field Lane, near to another tavern The Bunch of Grapes in Holborn, a suburban parish of Middlesex a short distance from the City of London.": Is all this detail necessary? Could be simplified to "it was located in Field Lane, Holborn."
2. "A literary example can be interpreted as a sort of confirmation of the reputation of this lane, since Charles Dickens placed here Fagin's den, an old Jewish man earning a living as a fence, in his 1837 novel Oliver Twist.": or simply "Field Lane's reputation for housing criminals led Charles Dickens to base Fagin's den here in his novel Oliver Twist". Fagin is sufficiently well known that the fact that he was a fence is unnecessary, and his Judaism is certainly irrelevant...
3. "This peculiar homosexual meeting place, however, became well known": I would suggest "Mother Clap's molly house became well known..."
4. "On 9 May 1726, three men (Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright) were hanged at Tyburn for buggery following a raid of Margaret Clap's Molly-House. Their trials are fundamental since they provide important details for the descriptions of the gay community surroundings. On 12 April 1727 he was convicted of assault with sodomitical intent." Which he is referred to here?