The Caravan opened on July 14, 1934, but closed after only six weeks. “It’s a reference to the tent-like interiors and the temporary nature of the club.” The name of the club was derived from “Caravanserai,” an antiquated term describing “a kind of nomadic community who moved around, pitched their tents and built their village in different places,” explains Joe Watson, London creative director of the National Trust. Thanks to suffocating societal and legal curtailments, The Caravan Club had to convey its queer-friendliness using coded language: it was marketed as “London’s Greatest Bohemian Rendezvous, said to be the most unconventional spot in town.”
Then, anything outside of the heteronormative was often communicated through a highly creative series of verbal signifiers and physical gestures: Polari was a comprehensive form of slang adopted by gay people to subtly demonstrate their sexuality (today, we still use “naff”, “zhoosh” – as in zhooshing up your hair, and “slap” for make-up) while certain exaggerated physical gestures hinted at queerness to those in the know. That was one of the many accolades bestowed on The Caravan Club in London’s Soho when it first opened in the 1930s as a gay-friendly members club, at a time long before homosexuality was legal. When the authorities describe a place as “a sink of iniquity,” surely only the most puritanical amongst us could resist a hankering to visit.
