As has already been discussed elsewhere, many brothels and Sporting Houses of the Victorian era maintained a selection of costumes and outfits, the better to satisfy their customers' often curious predilections. Many a birching was enlivened by the bircher assuming the dress and manner of a ruthless schoolmistress, and many a professional lady excited the concupiscent urges or her customers by dressing and acting the part of an innocent nun. Such pursuits seem almost conventional, however, when contrasted with the unusual and highly specialised activities favoured by the patrons of the exclusive establishment known as Quintain's to the outside world, and "The Menagerie" to its members, a secretive circle which counted amongst its members peers of the realm and military men of the highest rank.
Quintain's was located off St. James in London in a site now occupied by a branch of the HSBC Bank, and formerly an unremarkable gentleman's club known as "Grove's" before it was purchased and extensively refitted in 1898 by a Mr John James Quintain whose antecedents are regrettably lost to history, though one contemporary report asserts that he was a Scot from Kirkcaldy, the son of a Congregationalist minister who made his fortune in the Yukon Territory.1
The truth 2 was that while Quintain had certainly set off intending to make his fortune in the Yukon gold rush, he had got no farther than the town of Skagway in Alaska, where he realised that while fortunes could be made from prospecting for gold, more assured riches could be obtained by catering to the treasure seekers who passed through the rough frontier town, and to that end he opened a brothel which he ran under a very tight leash. In 1897 he sold out to a consortium formed by his competitors and quit Skagway for London accompanied by a Mrs Maldyce, who had been his business partner and bedmate.
Quintain had acquired some peculiar tastes in his career and had discovered that he could obtain the finest degree of sexual pleasure only while costumed as an animal, or in the company of a bedmate thus attired, and this is what his London establishment specialised in: the ladies of Quintain's had a vast wardrobe of finely-made animal costumes to draw upon, made only from the finest materials and real fur, while a selection nearly as large was available to gentleman customers. Word soon spread and a surprising number of London's gentleman rakes discovered they had a taste for Quintain's unusual wares, though most disregarded Quintain's earnest pamphlets and impromptu lectures 3.
The brothel operated under conditions of the utmost confidentiality and relied on word of mouth recommendation to bring in new members. It came to count peers of the realm and minor royalty among its customers, all of whom paid dearly yet gladly to experience the unique pleasures offered within its ordinary-looking walls. In addition, customers, besides requiring to be nominated by two existing customers, were vetted with a startling degree of scrutiny by Quintain and Mrs Maldyce before being permitted to join their select group.
An excerpt from the private journal of Walkender Fish 4 gives some idea of the lively fun one might enjoy at the Menagerie:
Adjourned to Q's with M, S, and deF. Ladies in fine form, Sal agreed to be costumed as roe deer and I as a grey wolf who chased and mauled the sweet moppet most vigorously. M opted to be ravaged by a tigress, which we considered v. peculiar of him and laid him open to some witty jibes.
But as the song has it, all good things must have their end, and Quintain's had its end on the night of 5th December 1902, when it was raided by a party of seven constables from the Metropolitan Police, led by Superintendent Charles Hope. An unknown number of members and the majority of the staff fled via an unnoticed basement exit, but Quintain and seven members were apprehended and placed under arrest. What Superintendent Hope found when he searched Quintain's private papers quite staggered him. The peculiar games and costumed trulls were already well known to him; what came as a complete surprise was the discovery that Mrs Maldyce (with or without the knowledge of Quaintain) had been secretly documenting the customers' indiscretions and predilections in minute detail with a view to blackmail, and a minor panic ensued within government circles when it was discovered that certain members of the War Office, the Foreign Office, and the Civil Service had been among them, in addition to various peers of the realm, some otherwise respectable churchmen, and other highly placed individuals.
Mrs Maldyce had managed to evade arrest in the raid, and nothing more was heard of her, though rumour had it that she had managed to embezzle the majority of the establishment's profits and had set up a more standard brothel in Brussels.
Quintain was charged with "keeping a disorderly house", the standard charge thrown at brothel-keepers, though there was some concern that the case would create a sensation in court due to the peculiar specialisation of their establishment. But in the event, the case never came to court, pressure being applied from on high to keep the entire matter quiet; indeed, some students of the period hold that a minor Royal was intimately involved.
Shattered by Mrs Maldyce's betrayal, Quintain retired to Troon in Scotland, where he lived out his remaining years with the last surviving member of his family, a spinster aunt. He passed away on 4th August 1914, the day that Britain declared war.
1. Sims, Ernest, "Crimes Against Nature", private edition, 1904. Though Dr Erich Wiesbaden, in his 1927 "Anima, Animas, and Archetypes" states that Quintain was a Cornishman from Truro, and that his fortune came from the illicit importation of French pornography.
2. Anson, C. W., "Untold Tales of the Yukon", Faber & Faber, 1972.
3. Quintain was convinced that his costumed antics had a spiritual dimension to them, thus anticipating later developments. Conversations with a local Chilkat shaman during his time in Alaska had apprised him of the long and mystical history of dressing as animals for shamanic purposes, and he managed to concoct a remarkable and ramshackle belief system which incorporated elements of Chilkat beliefs, Tantric practices, and Theosophy, which he fervently believed would allow one to come into closer contact with one's "animal spirit" and attain a greater closeness with Nature. He intended to write a book expounding his belief system in detail, but the project was interrupted by Superintendent Hope's raid, and the manuscript pages seized along with all his other papers.
4. From Fish's journal for the year 1899, currently held in the closed collection of Loughborough University Library.
Dr. Kilmarnock's Obscure World of Victorian Erotica
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