The First National LGBT History Festival is producing a weekend of theatre to celebrate the tenth anniversary of LGBT History Month.

A Very Victorian Scandal is a series of theatrical events across Manchester. It retells one of Manchester’s most outrageous pieces of gay history: the Hulme fancy dress ball police raid.

In 1880, Jerome Caminada, Manchester’s most famous detective, led a police raid on an all-male fancy dress ball in Hulme. The fall-out from the arrest, which scandalised Manchester at the time, is believed to have had political motivations, and resulted in the lives of forty-seven ordinary men being ruined.

The theatre events will take place over St Valentine’s Weekend 2015 and can be enjoyed as separate pieces:

THE RAID FRIDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 8P VIA, CANAL STREET
In the first of our series of performances, you will be invited to a reimagining of the fancy dress ball at Via on Canal Street. Mingle with the fancy dress ball attendees, learn a little about their lives, and watch them sing and dance to Music Hall songs. Manchester’s finest Victorian police officers will rudely interrupt the evening’s proceedings.

THE PRESS SATURDAY 14TH FEBRUARY 12.15PM MANCHESTER CENTRAL LIBRARY

An intimate performance at Manchester Central Library takes a fresh look at the motives behind the police raid. Secrets and politics combine to make some men, and ruin others. Detective Caminada courts the press, but can he keep control of the story?

THE TRIAL SUNDAY 15TH FEBRUARY 1PM PEOPLE’S HISTORY MUSEUM

In the concluding part of the series, you will discover what happened to the fancy dress ball attendees. Original newspaper accounts have been used to dramatise the infamous court trial. Will all the prisoners maintain their vow of silence, or will the threat of prison force someone to speak out?

Ric Brady and Stephen M Hornby have written the three pieces. LGBT Historian, Jeff Evans, introduced them to the true story, which he had researched for his PhD. Despite the story receiving global press attention at the time, it quickly disappeared from public knowledge.

The police raid was the biggest arrest Detective Caminada made in his career, and it is conspicuously absent from his published memoirs.

Stephen, co-writer, says: “These men faced an appalling injustice. What happened to them was a massive attack on their freedoms. But no one really knows about it, mostly because they weren’t rich and famous.”

Ric Brady, co-writer, says: “The men at the fancy dress raid were just ordinary people having a dance in private. It’s an honour to be able to tell their stories to a modern audience, and keep their memories alive”.

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