The most known molly-house in 18th century London was that owned by Mother Clap, which had been open from 1724 to 1726, when a raid sustained by the Societies for the Reformation of Manners had it dismantled. It was located in Field Lane, near to another tavern "The Bunch of Grapes" in Holborn, a suburban parish of Middlesex a short distance from the City of London. This area came to be renowned as a rookery in the next decades, and described as "a sort of distinct town, or district calculated for the reception of the darkest and most dangerous enemies to society; in which when pursued for the commission of crimes they easily conceal themselves and readily escape". A literary example can be interpreted as a sort of confirmation of the reputation of this lane, since Charles Dickens placed here Fagin's den, an old Jewish man earning a living as a fence, in his 1837 novel "Oliver Twist". This peculiar homosexual meeting place, however, became well known to the public during the 1720s through the trial of its keeper, Margaret Clap, indicted for keeping a disorderly house and for encouraging her customers to commit sodomy; and, particularly, through the account given by an agent provocateur, Samuel Stevens.