Description
Hailed as the first queer city guide, For Your Convenience was originally published by Routledge in 1937 and is now reproduced in a facsimile edition for the first time in 80 years.
Two members of a Gentleman’s Club meet over a copy of the Sanitary World and Drainage Observer. The discussion turns to where ‘relief’ may be obtained after drinking three cups of tea when out and about in the city. We are told that the ‘places that have no attendants afford excellent rendezvous to people who wish to meet out of doors and yet escape the eye of the Busy.’
A wry and playful slice of social history, For Your Convenience could be read at as an entertaining and eccentric handbook to London’s public loos but to our more sceptical eye it is patently a guide to where men could meet like-minded men in an era when homosexuality was illegal. It remains a classic whether taken at face value or not.
