As literary historian Rictor Norton points out, it’s in this historical moment that we find the first documentation of a recognizably modern “glory hole,” in a 1707 court case known as the “Tryals of Thomas Vaughn and Thomas Davis.”

In 18th-century London, gay men were regularly arrested in the Lincoln’s Inn bog house, on the east side of New Square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The Savoy bog house was used so regularly by gay men that members of the Society for the Reformation of Manners often posted themselves outside and could be sure of making an arrest there. And in the Temple bog house in 1707 a hole had been deliberately cut in the partition wall between two stalls—making it the first recorded glory hole.

To read the actual text of the trial is confusing, but well worth it for anyone interested in the shocking similarities between early modern and contemporary “gay” culture, behavior, and practices. Take one look at the language in the 1707 trial and there’s no mistaking it—we’ve got a glory hole on our hands (emphasis mine):

[H]e having had occasion to go to the Burrough of Southwark, to a Customer of his about some business, in his return took Water, and Landed at the Temple Stairs, but having occasion to untruss a Point, went down to the Temple Bog-House, where he had not been long before a Boy in the adjoyning Vault put his Privy-member through a Hole, which he perceiving was so surprized that he immediately went away; but he was no sooner come out, but the Boy follow’d him, and cry’d out stop him; saying he would have bugger’d him, upon which Vaughan meeting him stopt him, and said unless he would give him an account where he liv’d he would have him secured.

Who knew deviancy was so … traditional? While this is probably not the first time in history someone put his penis through a stall partition, the incident at the Lincoln’s Inn bog house is the first we have on record. It’s hard to tell how widespread the practice was, but as bathrooms (and bathroom stalls) became more common, and homosexuals more persecuted, it’s hard to imagine it not proliferating in kind.

By the time England entered the industrial era, even a whiff of homosexuality could lead to prison or forced labor. In 1885, England passed a law making any homosexual act illegal, with or without a witnessed account. Even overly friendly letters became grounds for prosecution. This gave homosexual men even more reason to hide, lest they ended up like Oscar Wilde. Yet, as homosexuality became riskier in the 19^th century, industrialization was packing together massive groups of dirty, hot, sweat-drenched men like never before. And in many of these factories, glory hole was becoming a commonly used industrial term, indicating, in addition to glass furnaces, the “large cavernous openings” of mining and oil drilling and the packed sleeping quarters of nautical vessels.

If there is a “glory hole” (a small hole, approximately three inches in diameter, which has been carefully carved, at about average “penis height,” in the partition of the stall), it may be used as a means of signaling from the stall. This has been observed occurring in three manners: by the appearance of an eye on the stool-side of the partition (a very strong indication that the seated man is watching you), by wiggling fingers through the hole, or by the projection of a tongue through the glory hole.

Out of all the places where gay men could hook up, Humphreys argued that the men’s room (or “tearoom”) offered the most advantages to those seeking “homoerotic activity without commitment,” as it was easily identifiable to those looking for action but also private enough to veil activities. Tearooms could “attract a large volume of potential sexual partners, providing an opportunity for rapid actions with a variety of men” and could potentially pop up anywhere, from “department stores, bus stations, libraries, hotels, YMCA’s, or courthouses” to the “restrooms of public parks and beaches” and highway rest stops. Basically, any bathroom, especially if it had glory hole, could be a tearoom (not to say every bathroom should be).

Today, glory holes have mostly been reduced to an artifact of gay history that many look back on nostalgically. In 2018, the Western Australian Museum raised eyebrows by adding a “historic glory hole” to its collection, and some communities have rallied around the cause of glory hole preservation. And even as hookup apps like Scruff and Grindr would seem to render the tearoom unnecessary (and indeed, one sees some users advertising homespun glory holes in their apartments), many men continue to seek out public glory holes for anonymous cruising, with some taking to the internet to share, rate, and describe past and present glory hole and general cruising locations.

So ultimately, who owns the term? Sure, the glass blowers may have had glory holes first. But today, a well-crafted vase is hardly the first thing that comes to most people’s mind when they hear the phrase. As is so often the case, it took the gays to engineer the glory hole’s most enduring form and likewise to make it iconic. Fortunately, there’s no need to bicker over possession too much—a glory hole is by nature democratic, open and accommodating to all.