Molly-house

On the other hand, at least one man believed the story and said that his fellow neighbors had stopped going to Whide's when they heard that he kept a molly-house.

While an established molly-house such as Mother Clap's served as many as forty men on any given night and provided a back room for more illicit activities, a molly-house could be as informal as someone's private room in an otherwise 'straight' public house.

On one occasion, Partridge was nearly mobbed in a molly-house when some men called him a 'treacherous, blowing-up, mollying bitch, and swore they'd massacre anybody that should betray them.'