John Rykener

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John Rykener, known also as Johannes Richer and Eleanor Rykener, was a transvestite prostitute working mainly in fourteenth-century London (near Cheapside), but also active in Oxford. He was arrested in 1395 for cross-dressing and interrogated. The records have survived, the only surviving legal records from that age which mentions same-sex intercourse. It is interesting to note that the offence for which he was arrested was his flaunting of social rules of gender presentation rather than his sexual activities.

During his interrogation, Rykener claimed to have had many clients including priests, monks and nuns; he said that he preferred priests because they paid better than others. He revealed that two Franciscan friars had given him a gold ring, while a Carmelite friar and six "foreigners" rewarded him with five shillings.

[edit] External links

• Latin text with facsimile and translation into English
• Biography
• Paper on Rykener

[edit] See also

• The Interrogation of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth-Century London, David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, GLQ1 (1995): 459-65