Despite the fullness of her surviving discussions with Mary Berry and Edward Jerningham, there remains what Andrew Elfenbein calls as a ‘gap’ between the accusations and Damer’s answers, since she defended herself by emphasizing her respectability and virtue, 'not by proving her heterosexuality’ or ever denying her devotion to women. My own educated guess is that, given that the smoking gun kept smoking over almost two decades, she did have some sexual relationships with women - but this is not a point on which 'hard evidence’ is likely to be found, even if further letters turn up, given the circumspection and ambiguity of eighteenth-century correspondence. Hers is an isolated case, perhaps even the exception that proves the rule of lesbian invisibility in the eighteenth century; what is striking is not so much the fact that she got called a 'Tommy', as that so many ladies round her, who were behaving with equally obvious fervency towards each other, did not.
Emma Donoghue, ‘Random Shafts of Malice’: The Outings of Anne Damer, from Lesbian Dames p146
Tommy was a term for women who had sex with other women.