Saturday Night at Miss Bianca's Molly House

Part of Leeds Lit Fest 2026. See the full programme at https://www.leedslitfest.co.uk/

Step into the shadowy, exuberant world of 18th-century London as poetry collection A Cloud of Witnesses is brought to life in a bold, in-character performance by Miss Bianca.

Three hundred years ago, on a freezing cold night in February 1726, following an undercover entrapment operation, the authorities begin raiding gay venues in London. At the largest, Mother Clap's Molly House in Holborn, forty people are arrested and hauled off to prison, and in the trials that follow, a vibrant and flourishing community is revealed to a scandalised and enthralled public. It's a world of drag princesses, marriage ceremonies, 'baptisms', bawdy songs, masquerades and slang-a precursor of polari. There is tragedy and terror, too, in the persecution that follows. Mollies are fined, imprisoned, pilloried, and executed.

In this special festival event, Miss Bianca guides us through that lost world, performing poems from A Cloud of Witnesses. Drawing on trial transcripts, newspapers, and pamphlets of the time, this is a performance that reclaims silenced voices and reimagines the "hysterical record".

By candlelight (or something close to it), expect an evening of mischief and mourning, glamour and grit - where joy and danger sit side by side, and the mollies' world, with its danger, joy, and gin, comes roaring off the page.

Ian Harker is a poet and editor. His latest book 'Gain Access' is published by the Poetry Business, after co-winning their International Book & Pamphlet Competition in 2025, judged by Kim Moore. He's an Honorary Fellow of Leeds Trinity University, was shortlisted for the inaugural Tempest Prize from New Writing North, judged by Andrew McMillan and Patience Agbabi, and was an Ilkley Lit Fest New Northern Poet in 2024.

Image: M0010287: Field lane; 1840. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/dh7zj2gc

Part of Leeds Lit Fest 2026. See the full programme at https://www.leedslitfest.co.uk/