No Women Allowed: Gentlemen's Clubs

A gentleman's club is a club which does not usually allow women members. It is often old, well-established, and in a pleasant part of the city. Gentlemen's clubs usually have a library, a bar and a restaurant. Gentlemen's clubs are associated especially with upper-class men.
The three most famous in Regency times being Whites (established in 1693), Brooks's (1764), and Boodles (1762). There was also Watiers, which was started by the Prince Regent and named for his chef, who ran it, and the Cocoa Tree Club, (whose chocolate house origin is obvious) and many others. Whites' was so exclusive that it was claimed that when an heir to a great family was born, the child's name was put down for membership at Whites before his birth was even was registered. Its members have included Beau Brummel and Baron Alvanley, Horace Walpole Edward VII, David Niven and the current Prince of Wales.
In the United States the term "gentlemen's club" is frequently used as a euphemism for strip clubs — a trend also increasingly common in the United Kingdom, with chains such as Stringfellows and Spearmint Rhino using the term in this way.
The Sherlock Holmes series featured the following fictional gentlemen's clubs which were the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle:
* The Bagatelle Card Club - One of Colonel Sebastian Moran's clubs in a Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Empty House
* Diogenes Club – Mycroft Holmes's club in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
* The Tankerville Club - Featured in two Sherlock Holmes stories.
There are amny other examples of fictional gentlemen's clubs in literature: P.G. Wodehouse invented the Drones Club, where Bertie Wooster popped in to avoid Aunts and other undesirables, and the Junior Ganymede Club which was for gentlemen's gentlemen (valets). Dorothy Sayers invented the Egotists Club and Evelyn Waugh created Brats Club, featured in A Handful of Dust.
An increasing number of clubs were characterised by their members' interest in politics, literature, sport, art, automobiles, travel, particular countries, or some other pursuit. In practice many gentlemen would be members of a number of clubs, and it was not simply for gambling that men gathered there. A man's club was a home away from home, a place where he could escape his wife, his mistress, and his creditors, where he could while away the evening in convivial company, and get a good plain dinner and a comfortable bed for the night. Many of the early clubs began life as coffee and chocolate-drinking houses in the 17th century, over time becoming meeting places for people of similar political ideas, and at various times were regarded as hotbed of political sedition; indeed the Cocoa Tree was once considered the headquarters of the Jacobite Party.
In the early years of the 20th century women's clubs were established and many still exist today. Membership is restricted to women graduates and other women who have distinguished themselves in art, music, literature, philanthropy or public service.