Chapter 1

Mistress Adelaide’s World

Adelaide Spencer lives in a Britain not so different from our own, but one in which the only form of locomotion is based on steam and in which electricity plays only a small part. There are no telephones and of course, no computers. Morals and values largely reflect those of Victorian England but in Adelaide’s Britain it is the members of the female sex that are the decision makers, the owners of property and the leaders.

Men have a lower status in society, are not free to make decisions such as their choice of career and are expected to be of use to women. Over the years it is women that have been the inventors, the entrepreneurs and the artists. Men have become used to living in their shadow and one group has turned the act of male servitude into a high art. Gimps are a caste that are recognised for their devotion to the role of the submissive male, who seek to exemplify that role in everything that they do and who train (or are trained) for years in some cases to achieve the highest abilities in the service of women. Gimps can be found in the houses of the wealthy, in Gimp Houses where their services are available by the hour or the day and, in one exceptional circumstance, in a travelling Gimp Circus that displays their skills to those that would otherwise never be able to afford to encounter them.

Considered by some as little better than prostitutes, Mistress Adelaide’s circus Gimps offend those who see Gimp culture as elite and those that view travelling entertainments as a trivial diversion of the working classes. Adelaide Spencer disagrees.

This is the story of one visit, to one village on their recent tour.