I am reading a book written in 2003 by Graham Robb called Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century. His thesis, if I understand it correctly, seems to be that attitudes were more liberal in the 19th century than they were in the 20th. The chapter I am on now is called Gentle Jesus, and is examining Christian attitudes to homosexual love. It begins," Even in religious matters, the 19th century is much more recent than we think. (I think he should have used the word 'modern' rather than 'recent' but that is quibbling.)Christianity still loomed large in most minds and especially in homosexual minds, but it was not impossible, at least in private, to reconcile Christian belief with illicit love. A minister ...saw no contradiction in his human and spiritual passions: if God had made him that way, he must have had a purpose." Ulrichs told his sister that it would be 'extremely unChristian to ask God to perform a miracle and turn him into a lover of women.

He also talks about the ways homosexual lovers were spoken of and how they showed their sexuality by the clothes they wore and the ornamentations and even the music and books they read. Though I find it a bit dubious to say that lovers of that persuasion could be recognised by their love of Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's nocturnes and Wagner, Tchaisovsky, Debussy etc. Surely lots of non-gay people love these composers too. And as for finding gayness in Wind in the Willows! 

But this is the 19th century - he does stray into other times - Greek love, etc - but not so much. How was homosexual love viewed in other times and places? 
I think he feels there was a clamping down in the 20th century, much of which he blames on doctors and the medicalisation of this form of love. He mentions Krafft-Ebing (generally favourably) quite often and I read him when I was at university (not as part of any course I did. I was interested to hear my husband say he knew of Krafft-Ebing too, and even more interested to find we had a copy of his book still. It must have been hidden away somewhere among our books.)

Sorry about the mistakes in this - I seem to be able to correct them as I go, but otherwise a bit blue line comes up and I don't know what to do about this. I couldn't change the s in Tchaikovsky, for example.

Caro,

I haven't read that much about homosexuality, but as we had a suicide in the inner inner circle of the partner of a youngster being at odds with his homosexuality and perhaps even by the attitudes of the time towards it (some 30 years ago) I am interested in the subject and the psychological impact on the homosexual person.

As for the history I can only speak about Belgium starting from the 19th century. My grandmother from mothers side (born 1889) were my sister and I are grown up to our twelve and where the rememberance of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 with Napoleon III was still alive, didn't speak that much about homosexuality as it was in the Roman Catholic Belgium not a subject about which one could "speak", but from what I remember she was not against homosexuals. In that time there was never spoken about lesbian women, when one spoke in a denigrating manner about homosexuality it was always about men (as it is even today).

No in my opinion overhere in the 19th century, but I have no statistics in the Roman-Catholic Belgium it was contrary to what you read a bit as in the Muslim communities of today and perhaps in India too (Priscilla?).

As for the 20th century in Belgium, hearing my father's friends, men for men, was still an abberation and homosexual men were blamed with all kind of nicknames and set apart from the community.

And that remained that way also by the Catholic Church up to some 30 years ago, although their priests in the Catholic Colleges were abusing the students. Even a priest in a College started making "avances" to me too, when I was 14.

From my fifteen (the Fifties) I was in Ostend and there we were watching the British homosexual men coming over, and parading in the streets. I remember that we were a bit shocked by their hand in hand and overtly exposing to the crowds their otherness in a provocative way.

I have still difficulties with it. Be as you want to be but don't make such a fuss of it. I have now myself a cousin with a son married to a man and having adopted a son, but they don't behave in a defiant way to the community and are in practice not that different from another couple.

And yes since some thirty years attitudes are changed overhere and seemingly in Germany too.
As I see in the partner's "feuilleton" on TV : Sturm der Liebe, where in the Catholic Bavaria there comes a gay couple, who openly kiss each other and do as a bisexual couple behave (especially when it is in love).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_of_Love

Kind regards, Paul.

The Church has much to answer for, has it not? Yet I think we should consider what Christ himself said - or rather did not say - about "homosexuality". It is worth looking at the stories of the Centurion's Servant in Luke 7: 1-10 and Matthew 8: 5-13. The various translations of words here are very interesting - that tricky little noun "pais" and the use of "entimos" or "atimos"...? Greater faith in all Israel? And Christ himself had his "beloved disciple" - something I have always been silenced about when I have raised the topic and its implications. Paul too - his conversion came after his witnessing the horrific and horribly traumatic stoning of Stephen, a young man who is described in Luke's Acts as being as "beautiful as an angel". These are biblical "facts" too awkward to be thought/talked about with any degree of honesty in "Christian" circles.

I left the Church after being told by a fellow teacher, an ordained minister, that he taught the teenagers in his "spiritual care" that homosexuality was a sin, not a "life choice". I asked him for a definition of "sin", and suggested to him that such a view, however sincere, might actually be detrimental to the welfare of the young people battling with their various demons, sexual or otherwise - uncharitable even? He did - literally - simply shrug his shoulders.  Is wanting to punch someone in the face a sin?

I'm interested in the view expressed by Professor Retha M. Warnicke: "Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII" that Thomas Cromwell, committed Protestant that he was - or at least a man whose interest was in being seen as such - was a homophobe who was determined to bring down the homosexuals who were part of the Boleyn faction, the unlucky five who died with la Boleyn herself in May 1536. Sexual/religious politics at the court of the Lion King - Phillipa Gregory missed out on this. Buggery Act 1533 anyone?

Temperance, not only the Church but the Nazis too.

Coincidentally, I saw jesterday a documentary about Hitler consolidating his power against the threat of the SA of Röhm in 1934. The night of the long knives.

Ernst Röhm was a well known gay leader and the best friend of Hitler, nevertheless he has been murdered and his homosexuality used as an adding accusation.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Night-of-the-Long-Knives

For MM and LiR the documentary in French and for Nielsen and Dirk Marinus they can change in German...
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/086122-000-A/la-nuit-des-longs-couteaux/

And persecution of the homosexuals there was in the Nazi time:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/persecution-of-homosexuals-in-the-third-reich

And about gay fascism if you can believe Wiki, there seems to be a mixed historian approach, especially or perhaps only in the US...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_fascism

Kind regards, from Paul.

Temperance, my book has gone on to write about the gospels. He talked about Jesus' tolerance towards sexual matters. "It would take a determined anachronistic...to claim that Jesus himself was either homosexual or heterosexual. But it does show that the Gospels contain the elements of a rational, Christian defence of same-sex love. Church doctrine was not the final word." He then quotes Earl Lind saying that Jesus made no such blunders in his sex teaching. He was the only biblical teacher apparently to recognize the existence of androgynes without thundering against them.
Then he quotes James I saying Jesus did the same [as James I] and "therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ has his John , and I have my George."

Since "Jesus" is largely a Greek invention it should come as no surprise at all that the words attributed to him are ambivalent regarding sexuality, just as they are also ambivalent regarding slavery. Both subjects are conspicuously absent from most philosophical musings emanating from that culture and when the same philosophy was tagged on to a Jewish monotheist theology with rather peculiar edicts relating to these and other topics then the authors of the Jesus character were seemingly more intent on not offending Hellenic sensibilities than on foisting what would have been seen as over-judgemental Jewish attitudes on potential converts. To me this shows a degree of foresight and wisdom on the part of the authors of Christianity - whatever appeal it retains to this day is as much down to their judicious employment of ambivalence as it is to their equally judicious and highly subjective "borrowing" from several Greek philosophical strands that matched their goals.

Regarding the main topic under discussion, I tend to become a tad dubious when I am presented with any thesis that purports to explain how "people" in general regarded any issue at any given time, especially a time that incorporates an entire century and especially an "issue" that quite simply leaves no impression on the historical record unless some elements in society had at some point identified it as one. Even if one severely restricts one's definition of "people" to one particular culture one still has a responsibility to the reader to demonstrate that - just as in the case of the early Christian authors writing for Greek audiences - a large amount of ambivalence also pertained which also deserves comment in one's historical assessment. An honest acknowledgement of such ambivalence would also help prevent some authors from misidentifying motives behind actions and words attributed in retrospect to historical characters - or worse, shoe-horning historical data anachronistically into a formula designed to satisfy modern sensibilities.

A truly honest thesis with a title "attitudes to homosexuality through the ages", I imagine, would start by admitting that all cultures at all times displayed the whole gamut of "attitude", and that most cultures historically accommodated that gamut principally because many of them failed to see this as an issue at all, let alone something that deserved a word to describe it. Once that is out of the way then the writer of the thesis can concentrate on demonstrating that what they are actually examining is the data as recorded by those for whom the issue existed at all (which is almost by definition an issue presented overwhelmingly in negative terms), while studiously avoiding the temptation to retrospectively ascribe an "attitude" to people who would more likely be totally astonished were they to read what is now being written about their anachronistically applied acknowledgement of any "issue" in the first place.

Caro wrote:

... he quotes James I saying Jesus did the same [as James I] and "therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ has his John , and I have my George."

Ah - I think MM mentioned that on his thread about James and Buckingham?


Does your book mention how the English treated Edward II and Richard II? Perhaps it was not so much the sexual orientation of these two kings, but their open flouting of convention that caused so much resentment? They were both got rid of, of course. But was that because they were attracted to their own sex, or simply that they were both pretty ineffectual rulers and hopeless at keeping the Scots in order, and fighting generally? They were both - if I have had not had my history coloured by too much reading of foolish novels and plays (WW and Kit Marlowe) - rather sensitive souls, artistically inclined and not your usual warlike, sword-waving Plantagenet types?

nordmann wrote:

 Regarding the main topic under discussion, I tend to become a tad dubious when I am presented with any thesis that purports to explain how "people" in general regarded any issue at any given time, especially a time that incorporates an entire century and especially an "issue" that quite simply leaves no impression on the historical record unless some elements in society had at some point identified it as one.

I've probably not understood your post fully, nordmann, but surely the existence of laws would indicate how an issue was regarded? The Buggery Act of 1533, which I mention above, stated that " the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery" was "an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and Man". The Act was repealed under Mary, who wanted such things dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts (!), but re-enacted under Elizabeth:


The Wiki entry on the 1533 Act quotes R. Norton's The Medieval Basis of Modern Law: A History of Homophobia:


Although "homosexual prosecutions throughout the sixteenth century [were] sparse" and "fewer than a dozen prosecutions are recorded up through 1660 ... this may reflect inadequate research into the subject, and a scarcity of extant legal records." In 1631 Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, was beheaded because of his rank. Numerous prosecutions that resulted in a sentence of hanging are recorded in the 18th and early 19th centuries.


The Tudor legislation was replaced in 1828 by the Offences Against the Person Act. Anal penetration remained a capital offence until 1861, and a criminal offence in England until - unbelievably - 1967.

I still maintain things started to change when the nation took Jules and Sandy to their hearts: good Lord, even my father, not the most tolerant of people, enjoyed Round the Horne and looked forward to the outrageous dialogues from Jules and his friend on the programme. I was allowed to listen, even though I was very young. I just thought the pair were funny - had no idea what it was all about. What was hopeful was that - I think - the nation was laughing with Jules and Sandy, not at them.

Homophobes are usually - under all their ridiculous bluster - fearful people. Paul mentions "gay fascism" - wasn't that the subject of a book called The Pink Swastika - what I understand was a nasty piece of homophobic writing that no historian takes seriously? I haven't read the book, so cannot comment.

Keep Britain Bona - Jules and Sandy form a political party...

You see the problem with overly focusing on one specific aspect to the issue in one specific society? Your example of a radio programme broadcast to British audiences in the 1950s is used by you to illustrate what you (no doubt correctly within the very limited terms of the example) have in retrospect deduced to be indicative of a change in attitude within your own society at that particular time, namely a softening of attitudes which led later to a general acceptance of homosexuality.

But of course at the same time as you and your father were laughing at the antics of Jules and Sandy the murderer of Kenneth Crowe was acquitted of that charge (reduced to manslaughter and a light sentence) because the schoolteacher had approached him in "drag" and therefore contributed to his own brutal murder, Sir John Nott-Bower was well into his "purge" of homosexuals from all branches of public service in the UK, a decade long witch-hunt that we now know led to several suicides, several incidents of blackmail, and a whole host of false accusations by individuals availing of the anti-gay paranoia to advance their careers. UK courts regularly sentenced individuals to chemical castration, most notably Alan Turing who then went on to take his own life, for a "crime" which, in 1956, was redefined so as to include prosecutions against women for the first time in British legal history. And even as this escalation in anti-gay sentiment was being reflected in UK law the official Wolfendon Report was recommending decriminalisation of the same "offences" (while officially still describing homosexuality as an "aberration", mind you). In other words you can certainly take Jules and Sandy as symbolic of a turning point, but even if one just concentrates on official policy as expressed in law one can see that Kenneth Horne's characters were being broadcast to a society which at that point accommodated wildly variant views on homosexuality, some of which were in fact hardening to a point of wilful cruelty, not softening at all.

And of course against all that was that sizeable chunk of society - including you and your father - whose ambivalence to this "issue" was at least enough to allow yourselves to share in the humourous possibilities it also presented, this humour itself being part of a long and peculiarly British mining of sexuality deviating from "social norms" for comic effect. In fact a study of that particular traditional source of humour in Britain would probably contribute far more to an accurate assessment of common British attitudes towards homosexuality than any amount of legal edicts throughout the same period might convey.

And that's even before one then attempts to look further than your own society and try to assess any "common" attitudes held by people at the same time within all of the cultures and diverse societies that the world has to offer, an exercise even more certain - in my view - to inescapably arrive at ambivalence as the more usual default in this regard, and in fact those societies or those parts of society fixated on the issue (for or against) being in fact the true "aberrations".

You are unfair - and factually inaccurate: the programmes were broadcast in the late 1960s, not, as you say, the 1950s. A decade can make a hell of a difference: my generation, the one that came of age in the 60s and 70s, had vastly different ideas from those of our parents. People loved Jules and Sandy - and I have thought about the anguish of lives such as Turing and others, not least of Kenneth Williams himself. Please give me credit for some finer feelings, nordmann - I do have the odd one now and again.

I was a little girl and not laughing "at" anyone in a cruel and heartless fashion. My father was not heartless either, simply, for all his "education", unwise - a victim or a product of his own times and upbringing. 

I wonder if you realise how unkind you sometimes sound?

I was certainly not portraying you or your father as "heartless" simply for laughing at well constructed humorous parodies on the radio. And if I missed the broadcast dates by a few years I am also sorry - though it must be said that the same decade was the one it took between when the Wolfendon Report was submitted to parliament and when legislation was eventually drafted based on its recommendations (in Wales and England - the rest of the UK was to persist in systemic persecution of gays for quite a few years yet).

I have no doubt you possess finer feelings, Temp. So fine indeed that they are so easily bruised even when not assaulted, only perceived by you to have been. In fact the point I was making was that you and your father, products of a society and a time as you both unavoidably were, in appreciating the skills of Horne, Williams and Paddick and enjoying them exactly as the artists had intended, in fact were probably typical of what was by far the more common "attitude" held by British people to the "issue" of homosexuality at that time - which was one of general ambivalence unless confronted with the issue directly in your own lives, something the courts and officialdom in general played no small part in when this occurred. Up to that point, beyond as a source of humour, I would reckon it hardly impinged on most people's sensibilities at all, or at least heterosexual people.

I know you hate being contradicted, nordmann - and please don't say I am easily bruised; I'm not a windfall apple - but I am not so sure the entire British nation were beastly, homophobic brutes. There were such ignorant and unpleasant bigots, of course. There has always been and, no doubt, always will be, the stupid, cruel minority - but perhaps most people were more tolerant (and not just "ambivalent") than you suggest. Did Mrs. Patrick Campbell sum up the average attitude with her famous observation: "Does it matter what these affectionate people do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses?" Discretion was the key. That said, perhaps it was only in some artistic and upper-class circles that there was any degree of acceptance. "Not the marrying kind", "confirmed bachelor", "Is he so?" were euphemisms well understood. Perhaps attitudes were less tolerant amongst members of the working class - or rather amongst members of that most deadly stratum of English society, the lower middle-class.

Data and evidence offered here in an article in History Extra. I suppose you'll pick holes in it, but whatever - I'll still post it. Interestingly - and surprisingly -  the author, Jeff Evans, a historian from Manchester Metropolitan University, agrees with you that attitudes in the 1960s were possibly less tolerant than in the previous century.


The Surprisingly Liberal Attitude of the Victorians Towards Homosexuality.




PS Poor old Edward Carpenter. He really should have given up the naked dancing. I bet it terrified the horses.


Edward Carpenter, the socialist, also had significant problems finding a printer for Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society (1894). He finally found a small labour press in Manchester, but his work was met with hostility from Dr O’Brien, a member of the Liberty and Property Defence League who was seemingly adverse to both socialism and homosexuality. In 1910 O’Brien produced and circulated a pamphlet entitled Socialism and Infamy: The Homogenic or Comrade Love Exposed: An open letter in Plain words for a socialist Prophet Edward Carpenter. In it, Carpenter was accused of “morbid appetites, naked dancing, corruption of youth, paganism and socialism.”

If enough people within a society are ambivalent towards any issue then the effect is practically indistinguishable from tolerance, though I would add the caveat that the unwillingness to actually understand the issue (also a product of ambivalence) would suggest accidental toleration more than intentional tolerance.

The other statements you allude to me having made, none of which I actually did, are a cause of concern. Does your refutation of allegations concerning how "working class" or "lower middle class" people once thought suggest a failure of comprehension on your part, a failure to communicate on mine (I never mentioned class at all and definitely did not refer to anyone as a "beastly homophobic brute"), or worse, an eagerness to defend against imagined slights that were never uttered, even at the expense of acknowledging comprehension and communication that were actually both successful? Other than as rather ineffective tools to ward off crows, straw men have little practical function.

But I'll make my point yet again since it obviously still hasn't been satisfactorily communicated - and again bearing in mind that you have limited your own point to British society, one with which we are both reasonably familiar as a historical subject; Yes, it is true that the past century or more saw the issue of homosexuality addressed both positively and negatively by an increasing number of individuals in a manner that inevitably drew it as an issue ever more to the forefront of public consciousness. But the majority of people during the same period? I would say largely ambivalent, maybe for some very poor reasons and maybe only because they saw it as someone else's concern. The proof of the pudding; I would tentatively add, is probably therefore in how the same society over this time could - depending on the question they were asked - quite comfortably think of themselves as tolerant of gays, while simultaneously extremely tolerant of the draconian laws their society inflicted on the same people.

Will you stop (w)rapping my knuckles?  Keep your ruler for others around here.

I think you're wrong - would ordinary people during the last century (I mean the 19th) have had any say in the formation, let alone the repeal, of such laws? Keeping one's mouth shut was a necessary option for many - gay or otherwise. But the lack of convictions that Evans mentions is interesting...

More ferreting for info needed here.

Consider your knuckles unwrapped ...

But there you go again. I did not imply that ordinary people had much or any say in repealing or devising anti-gay legislation. Please include "ambivalence" in your ferreting - it is almost never a consciously adopted frame of mind, least of all when a whole society tends to share the trait. Such conscious approach to how one may feel about any subject would tend, I suggest, to have more chance of producing informed tolerance (or even informed intolerance) rather than mere ambivalence, which is why it can be very easy to confuse the two based on initial observation alone, something that can therefore lead one by the same token to some very wrong conclusions regarding how a large chunk of society thinks, what it thinks, and why.

nordmann wrote:

But there you go again.

Blimey - what a patronising and condescending comment.

But then, there you go again - not reading what I have actually said, and certainly not responding to it in the manner of discussion/conversation I am used to. My suggestion that the attitudes of the working-class and of the lower-middle class were possibly different from those of the aristocratic and artistic circles was just that - a suggestion offered, hopefully to stimulate further exploration of the topic. It's how I talk to people: I suggest (well, usually) and try to throw out ideas. If I have unfortunate tendencies to bruise and to perceive imaginary slights (classic bit of gaslighting that!), you have tendency to lecture, in the process ignoring points people make or, even worse, twisting their points to subvert the whole discussion. You did it all the time with Tim - no wonder the poor lad disappeared, never to be seen again.

Right, rant over. Here is some arty stuff - article about the 2017 Tate exhibition of "British Queer Art 1861- 1967. I read another good article about the same exhibition yesterday evening and I can't find it now. Will search again and post link if I find it. The exhibition was obviously really interesting - wish I hadn't missed it.


Queer Art - Tate Exhibition

PS I am mulling over what you said about ambivalence: I hate to admit it, but you may have a point.

Gaslighting? You think I am psychologically manipulating you hoping you eventually doubt your own sanity?

Blimey.

nordmann wrote:

Gaslighting? You think I am psychologically manipulating you hoping you eventually doubt your own sanity?

Blimey.

Blimey - no. Heaven forbid! I am usually perceived as being a reasonably sane person (on a good day), so I don't think you hope to manipulate me into "doubting my own sanity " - sorry, I can't stop laughing at what you have just said. No. Although, in extreme instances, gaslighting can indeed be used in the dastardly manner you suggest, I don't think you are trying to do that. But gaslighting is often employed in a less dramatic fashion - it is a something that can also be used simply to undermine a person's confidence -  definitely a sneaky and useful little tool when used in debate...

But there you go again. You latch on to the least important part of my post - no doubt to suggest I am being utterly daft - and ignore all the other points, reasonable ones, I hope, that I have made (about class attitudes). The evidence in art from 1861 onwards - offered in my link - obviously of no interest or importance  whatsoever to the thread.

Sorry, Caro, this is such a good topic. I did try.

The accusation of gaslighting was the least important part of your post?

Double blimey.

Not my    fight but adding my bit of muscle -    yeah and add bloody minded too but we all manage to survive and post on.

My half penneth on this subject  is of my own raising of anger towards people who were socially intolerant .  In war time, my gran invited a gay soldiers to her house she had met in a pub who, one Sunday, put on a spontaneous  hilarious show..... I recall saucepan lids and tea towels.
 All relationships  family and beyond  were entertained as the norm - likewise class distinction, political persuasion, race - and indeed former tacky life style in one case of a woman who later became a cherished family friend. All this blended in very well for some fantastic social events to      which outsiders joined in with verve. The only exclusions to this were law breakers - beyond driving and non criminal offences
And thus it had been for  my mothers side in particular since the 1920's - my father's family were much the same and anyone marrying into the wider family was drawn in. 

I need now to reflect on the meaning of attitude......... a discomforting word. And I will now go  away and you can get on with your what ever it is..... Regards to both... P.

Temperance wrote:

My suggestion that the attitudes of the working-class and of the lower-middle class were possibly different from those of the aristocratic and artistic circles was just that - a suggestion offered, hopefully to stimulate further exploration of the topic.

Priscilla wrote:

My half penneth on this subject  is of my own raising of anger towards people who were socially intolerant.

For the duration of the Second World War I believe that, for the most part, homosexuality was unofficially tolerated in the armed services and amongst the population generally, for practical reasons in the face of far greater threats to society. However after the war and well into the 1950s there does seem to have been a delliberate agenda by British authorities to actively harass and prosecute prominent homosexuals, to weed such people out from important government jobs, and in support of this to whip up a degree of homophobia amongst the population as a whole. This was perhaps prompted by similar policy in America where McCarthy’s red scare had been accompanied by a 'lavender' one, with mass firings of homosexual employees from the state department. How much the British population bought into this is debatable but there were several high profile scandals that certainly helped promote the agenda, such as the 1951 exposure of the spies Burgess and Maclean, whose betrayals made social privilege, homosexuality and treason seem a mutually reinforcing trinity.

Then in 1954 there was the prominent case of Peter Wildeblood, Lord Montague of Beaulieu and Michael Pitt-Rivers.

In the summer of 1952 Lord Montagu had offered Wildeblood the use of a beach hut near his Hampshire country estate. Wildeblood, who was the Daily Mail's diplomatic correspondent, brought with him two RAF servicemen: his lover Edward McNally and a colleague of McNally's, John Reynolds. The foursome were joined by Montagu's cousin, the wealthy land-owner Michael Pitt-Rivers. These five, so it now seems, simply spent a fairly innocuous few summer days together at the beach hut by the seaside. But a year later intimate letters from Wildeblood to McNally, but which also implicated the other three men, were found by RAF police during a routine search of McNally's quarters. McNally and his fellow RAF serviceman Reynolds were promptly arrested but they were subsequently offered immunity to prosecution if they agreed to turn Queen's evidence against the bigger prize of the three 'toffs': Montagu, Pitt-Rivers and Wildeblood.

Following their arrests in January 1954, Wildblood, Montague and Pitt-rivers were brought to court in March charged, somewhat euphemistically, with "conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons", aka in legal terms "buggery". The trial incidentally and perhaps ironically was held in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle, it being the Assizes for the county in which the 'crimes' had been committed, and so the drama was conducted in magnificent medieval surroundings and beneath Richard II's/Henry VIII's famously flamboyant round table celebrating brotherly fidelity. It was also (in March) an apparently exeedingly chilly venue, and Wildeblood subsequently recorded his profound gratitude to his lawyer, Arthur Prothero, for, amongst other things, supplying a pair of woolen long-johns to wear under his suit, so that he might not, just like Charles I at his execution, be seen to shiver and so that be taken as fear.

During the trial McNally, as queen's evidence, claimed there had been dancing and "abandoned behaviour" at the gathering in the beach hut, but Wildeblood said it had in fact been "extremely dull", while Montagu claimed that it was all remarkably innocent, saying: "We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that's all." However despite his legal immunity the love letters from Wildeblood to McNully were read out in court and under cross-examination McNully was tearfully forced to describe, in anatomically explicit detail, all the intimate acts he'd conducted with Wildeblood during their happy two year relationship. McNully was not prosecuted but it was very clear that he had never been an innocent party, vilely seduced by Wildeblood, but was rather a fully consenting partner in their relationship (indeed he had kept the incriminating letters, much against Wildeblood's pleas to destroy them, simply for sentimental reasons). As a result of these charges, Montague, Wildeblood and Pitt-Rivers were found guilty: Montagu received a 12-month prison sentence, while his co-defendants were sentenced to 18 months.

The press had been full of salacious if untrue stories of wild orgies fuelled by champagne, the seduction of boy scouts, and, perhaps worse than all this, of men who had associated with their social inferiors. It had been put to Wildeblood during his trial that it was a "feature" of gay men to seek "love associates" in different walks of life from their own, and that McNally was infinitely his social inferior, his 'bit of rough' as it were. He had replied that it had never been flung in his face that he was consorting with his social inferiors during the war (he served in the RAF) and he claimed the right to choose his friends.

There was every reason to suppose that when the three men were led away to begin their sentences there would be angry attacks by the good burghers and women of Winchester, and indeed there were such scenes. But the attacks - the very British hammering of umbrellas on the vehicle's roof, the yelling, hissing and shaking of fists - were directed at the car taking away the two RAF men who had turned prosecution witnesses. And the mob's ire does not seem to have been because they had committed homosexual acts or that they had dared to consort with their social betters, but rather because they were seen as having cravenly betrayed their colleagues - and in the case of McNully his lover of nearly two years - in order to save their own skins. (That view was probably slightly unfair as I believe McNully - likely not the sharpest legal mind - was certainly manipulated and possibly even tricked by the prosecution into turning Queen's evidence against the others).

When eventually the three convicted men emerged, the mood was somewhat different. As Wildeblood himself later wrote in his memoir 'Against the Law' published in 1955: "It was some moments before I realised they were not shouting insults, but words of encouragement. They tried to pat us on the back and told us to 'keep smiling' and when the doors were shut they went on talking through the windows and gave the thumbs up sign and clapped their hands". Much later, when Wildeblood was finally released from prison, he found his neighbours and work colleagues just as supportive. The fate of the two RAF servicemen, although immune from prosecution, was not so benign. Without the protection of rank, previlege or education, they were unceremoniously thrown out of the RAF and left to quietly disappear (and unsurprisingly McNully's relationship with Wildeblood was never rekindled).


From left to right, Michael Pitt-Rivers, Lord Montagu and Peter Wildeblood leave court in 1954.

The official expectation was that Wildeblood, the only one who had openly confessed to his homosexuality during the trial, would, like Oscar Wilde, quietly disappear, perhaps abroad. He did no such thing and spent much of his later career as a journalist, and then as a playwright and television producer, lobbying for change in the law regarding homosexuality: and he was the only openly homosexual man consulted by the Wolfenden Committee. The victimless 'crimes' of Wildeblood, Montague and Pitt-Rivers - as well as a similar case in 1953, just the year before, concerning the popular novelist Rupert Croft-Cooke, his long-term companion, Joseph Alexander, plus two Royal Navy cooks - did much, I believe, to show up the stark difference between government official policy and popular opinion, not just in regards to the treatment of homosexuals but also to the government's rigid and controlling stance in many other areas of British life. Nevertheless it would be many years before homosexuality was widely accepted - something I can readily attest to from my own experiences in the 1980s and even 1990s.

I have just found this in Matthew Sturgis' biography of Oscar Wilde: it would seem to prove my comments about the differing attitudes of the various classes as wrong:

The prejudice was typical. Queensberry's victory and Wilde's arrest had called forth an extraordinary outpouring of self-righteous vituperation from press and public alike. Among the sheaf of telegrams that the victorious Queensberry had received was one stating: "Every man in the City is with you. Kill the bugger!" George Wyndham noted that such hostility was common to "all classes".

However, that said, Sturgis also notes that:

Frank Harris thought it fiercest among the "puritan middle-class", that stratum of society who had always distrusted Wilde as an artist, an intellectual and as "a mere parasite of the aristocracy".

But had it been Wilde's carelessness - his lack of the necessary discretion - that had damned him? The details of Wilde's unwise assignations with the various Tite Street rent boys were widely reported - and the lads, of course, had been "bought" by the prosecution and encouraged to report Wilde's encounters with them in horrendously graphic and salacious detail. Indeed Alfred Wood's account of what occurred between him and Wilde at Tite Street was so graphic as to be "unreportable", even by that Victorian rival of the News of the World, Reynold's Newspaper.It was, sadly, all distressingly sordid, and a far cry from how the Victorian artistic and aristocratic heirs to that "rich and beautiful tradition that ran from Plato and the Greeks to Michelangelo and the great figures of the Renaissance", liked to perceive themselves.

Wilde had let the side down, not so much in what he had done, but in being found out.

“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

It should be added that, in prison, Wilde, as reported in Sturgis' book, quickly made himself liked and respected by all who got to know him. All classes there - the Governor, the wardens, the lowest of the prisoners, took to him. His so-called "crimes" were forgotten - or, if not forgotten, were no longer deemed important.


PS On the subject of the Greeks, this is what Wilde had to say:

Plato, like all the Greeks, recognised two kinds of Love, sensual love, which delights in women - such love is intellectually sterile, for women are receptive only; they take everything, and give nothing, save in the way of nature. The Intellectual loves or romantic friendships of the Hellenes, which surprise us today, they considered spiritually fruitful, a stimulus to thought and virtue - I mean virtue as it was understood by the ancients and the Renaissance, not virtue in the English sense, which is only caution and hypocrisy.

Thank you very much, MM, for this story and the survey of the evolution of attitudes in the last decennia. I learned from it.
Kind regards, Paul.

Both MM's and Temp's posts need to stand alone without interruption - like this I suppose. Post readers please go  up a few.

I gather from my book that at times homosexuality was almost forced on people, especially young men. In places like ships or convict places. He said something like there were rumoured to be more homosexuals than straight people in early Australia in some areas. "...which must have had the largest gay districts anywhere in the world in the 19th century. In some colonies, heterosexuality was the exception. Sydney had bars, hotels and drag shows for homosexual men several years before there was firm evidence of such things in the United States. The theory that new Australians were corrupted on convict ships and delivered to the continent in a state of sudden homosexuality hardly does justice to what was evidently a buoyant gay society."

That's an interesting quote from the book, Caro, as it seemingly demonstrates some serious flaws in the author's approach to historical analysis. It would be interesting to see the author refer to the actual data on which he based his statements (the use of "forced" for example is particularly worrying if not backed up by specific reference the reader can then use to gauge its suitability as a verb). Also, how did he determine a distinction between communities with an artificially high ratio between men and women (not uncommon in early white Australian society) and one in which that ratio reflects the inhabitants' sexual orientation more than it does their status as male labourers concentrating in large numbers where the frontier society offered best potential for an income? And, by the same token, where does he distinguish between men dressing as women for purposes of entertainment and as expression of their sexuality? Would he, for example, assume the same for the many instances in which large groups of incarcerated males, such as in POW camps during WWII, also dressed in "drag" when their captors allowed them to stage their own dramatic diversions? Would this also lead the author to assume that heterosexuality was an "exception" in these microcosmic societies too?

But what strikes me as terribly misleading is when he characterises whatever was happening in early Sydney as a "buoyant gay society". This is not to contradict his point that homosexuality was accepted as standard and enjoyed a relative freedom of expression in the early days of the Australian colonial state - I would again like to see more cited evidence of this as it runs against the well documented contemporary examples of existing social mores as expressed through court records and similar - but rather to question his use of such anachronistic terminology when describing what he wants us to believe pertained.

However homosexual males saw themselves in that era they would most definitely not have employed the term "gay" (unless they were indeed exceedingly happy and carefree as the word would only have implied at the time). In fact before 1892 they would not even have had the word "homosexual" at their disposal - and for a few decades afterwards would only have encountered it were they also all well versed in psychological terms used in text books within that field, especially those translated from the German (where it had first been coined in the 1880s).

I have read several historical treatments of the subject over the years and the better written examples, I have found, have all tried to impart to modern readers at the very least that a true appreciation of the subject, especially one concentrating on perceptions of homosexuality within society over the years, can only be accurately presented if the author also allows the subjects of his scrutiny - in so far as the historical record allows - to speak for themselves in the language of their time. This applies equally to homosexuals' self-perceptions as well as to corresponding heterosexual perceptions of homosexuality in the same society and at the same time. In fact looking at the use of language itself in this case is a valuable clue not only to how sexual orientation was interpreted before the convenient terms rooted in psycho-analysis that we employ today had even been coined, but also how its perception underwent fundamental changes over time and throughout a myriad cultures along the way. It is a complex analysis when examined in this way, a complexity not well served at all through the easy application of anachronistic sensibilities and terms to this field of study.

A field indeed which in fact should be all the more striking for the diversity of opinion that history yields to the researcher than for any sense of a single trajectory in social development which such lazy use of language might inadvertently imply.

My book had about thirty pages of references, and covered a wide range of thoughts and attitudes. I would like to quote something from almost every page, but don't find typing all that easy these days. He does quote a lot of actual people, but I haven't time to copy them. He does say when the word "homosexual" was first used. And like me the word 'gay' is probably just his use to vary the word used and have it more relevant to the audience he is now writing for.

Post duplicated after editing.

I thought the points raised in your post were very interesting, Caro. Does the author of your book make any reference to Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, a book that was published in 1976 and which has had enormous influence on the way we "see" and understand things? I do not pretend for one moment to grasp much of this, but I believe Foucault's thesis was that human "sexuality" is a "construct". Power in the western world is based on knowledge; but power reproduces knowledge - about sexuality or anything else -  by shaping it within its own anonymous intentions. We "learn" what we are "supposed" to think - whether about homosexuality, mental illness, sexual "perversions" - anything really.

Your post made me wonder about the so-called rampant "homosexuality" in English public schools. Perhaps "homosexuality" in these places was/is (not always, obviously) just another form of bullying - the establishment of the pecking-order -  and was/is really a lesson in power and control, rather than a real expression of normal adolescent desire or young love. Which again made me think about a little snippet from one of my favourite films, The Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne, a man wrongly convicted of murder, is serving a life sentence in one of the USA's most brutal prisons, and he, a young, good-looking man, has quickly attracted the attention of "the Sisters". Red, a prisoner who understands an awful lot about life and people, warns Andy:

Red: The Sisters have taken quite a liking to you, especially Bogs.

Andy: I don't suppose it would help any if I explained to them I'm not homosexual?

Red: Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify. Bull queers take by force. It's all they want or understand. If I were you, I'd grow eyes in the back of my head.

Andy later is subjected to an horrific attack - a rape. Any form of rape - whether "homosexual" or "heterosexual" - is not about sex: it is about the imposition of power: the judicious use of fear, agony and humiliation to effect control over perceived inferiors. A lot of things were "won" on the playing fields of Eton - and in the study-bedrooms of the older boys there.

It is indeed a complicated subject.

Just for interest, I checked out Graham Robb, the author of the book that Caro mentions. I know we can never be sure of anything, but this man's entry on Wiki - if we are to believe it, and I don't see why we shouldn't - is actually pretty impressive. I suspect he knows how to reference his data properly. I think they make you do that at Oxford. It appears he has published books on some interesting topics, hopefully not using "lazy" language too much.


Who Is This Bloke Graham Robb? Has He Passed His History O-Level?

I have just ordered the book that prompted Caro to start this fascinating thread: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb. It is available from Amazon and you can "Look Inside" before you buy. I did, and it all looks pretty good - hence my forking out £12.65 so I may actually read the man's work before commenting further.

Here are two reviews from the "Look Inside" pages:

Always intelligent and impatient of received ideas (and thus demolishing a good many), it contains certain quite brilliant sections.

Paul Binding: TLS Books of the Year

The central object of Graham Robb's wise and witty, learned and humane study is to show that...a rich and complex same-sex culture existed throughout the 19th century and long before. Robb, whose lives of Balzac, Hugo and Rimbaud have made him perhaps the best biographer now writing, has culled evidence from throughout Europe and the United States.

Mark Bostridge: Independent on Sunday

Caro wrote:

I gather from my book that at times homosexuality was almost forced on people, especially young men. In places like ships or convict places. He said something like there were rumoured to be more homosexuals than straight people in early Australia in some areas. "...which must have had the largest gay districts anywhere in the world in the 19th century. In some colonies, heterosexuality was the exception. Sydney had bars, hotels and drag shows for homosexual men several years before there was firm evidence of such things in the United States. The theory that new Australians were corrupted on convict ships and delivered to the continent in a state of sudden homosexuality hardly does justice to what was evidently a buoyant gay society."

Despite the author's apparently impeccable scholarship, and for all his research, references and citations, this to me still sounds as though he is conflating homosexual behaviour with homosexual culture with homosexuality per se. It is well known that when men are confined together for long periods of time - whether in prisons, ships, barracks, same-sex schools or work camps - increased levels of homosexual activity and behaviour are likely to occur. But to say that Australia "... must have had the largest gay districts anywhere in the world in the 19th century. In some colonies, heterosexuality was the exception ... The theory that new Australians were corrupted on convict ships and delivered to the continent in a state of sudden homosexuality hardly does justice to what was evidently a buoyant gay society", is at the very least misleading, if not untrue. That bold statement is akin to claiming that Victorian prisons and Royal Naval warships were centres of a "bouyant gay society" where "hetrosexuality was the exception" - which is clearly false, or at least only partially true and only when the actual, rather grim, context of these situations is made clear. There again, having not read the book, I'm not certain the author isn't making just the same point by saying this, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, simply for ironic emphasis.

Men who have sex with men do so for a range of reasons: to satisfy deep sexual desires, or for just a quick and easy
no questions shag; in response to an immediate lack of female companionship; to impose power and inflict fear; or simply because it's forbidden ... but that doesn't mean the men themselves are necessarily homosexual or would identify as such. I have known men who have sought out casual gay sex, yet insisted that they are not themselves gay: "it's because my wife is too busy with our new baby"; "because I'm working away from home at the moment"; "because my girlfriend's just left me"; "because I can't get a girlfriend"; "because it reminds me of school" ; "because I'm curious"; "because I'm drunk and horny" etc. Then there are those that are probably simply in denial and who emphatically state that they can't possibly be gay because; "I'm married"; "I'm a policeman"; "I'm too well-known" (though I hadn't a clue who they were); "because my parents are strictly religious"; or even once, "because I'm the Principal Private Secretary to the Cultural Attaché at the S--- embassy in London".    

That said I haven't read the book in question so really shouldn't comment, especially about a short quotation which is not in its original context. Nevertheless I still find that particular point made by the author to be rather odd, but perhaps it is not representative of his actual premise.

Interesting post, MM.

MM, quoting Caro, quoting Robb, wrote:

...Sydney had bars, hotels and drag shows for homosexual men several years before there was firm evidence of such things in the United States....

I wonder if the Puritan heritage in the States either delayed things, or made it essential to be more "discreet" than in the Australia? I have no idea whether the Church had much influence in Sydney in the 1800s? I know absolutely nothing about Australian history, especially its religious attitudes. I have only read The Thorn Birds which I cannot really offer as a reliable source ( ). Also your comment, "or simply because it's forbidden," intrigued me. Were the early settlers/transported convicts likely to be more rebellious personalities - men who would do what they liked with whomsoever they liked without fear of God or man? A good way of sticking two fingers up to any kind of authority? Just a thought and probably a ridiculous one.

Another fascinating book - but one which examines only homosexual life in London - is Peter Ackroyd's Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day.

Don't think even nord will criticise anything the excellent Ackroyd offers!

Temperance wrote:

Another fascinating book - but one which examines only homosexual life in London - is Peter Ackroyd's Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day.

Wasn't that the book 'Comic Monster' was translating into Spanish, a couple of years ago? There were quite a few very interesting discussions that arose from CM's translation questions that were posted here. 'Queer City' is a book I really ought to read ... perhaps I'll order it for my Christmas box, along with 'The Mirror and the Light'.

Robb is apparently an author who specialises in homosexuality as an historic theme, and by all accounts a well respected author at that. However, in a book ostensibly revealing to the reader the author's analysis of social attitudes to this subject throughout history then Robb, whose academic credentials suggest he would concur with this, has a responsibility not to apply language anachronistically to any phenomenon which can be interpreted one way today but, historically, may well have been interpreted quite differently at the various times and in the various societies he addresses. I understand from reading those passages from his book available online that this book has been written for wide public consumption, and therefore he may feel he can deviate from the rather stricter standards which would apply in a thesis for academic review, but it is still important in my view that such use of anachronistic terminology, while it might work and be acceptable in some cases (such as in his well-regarded biographical works), it really should be avoided if at all possible if one's stated purpose is to explain contemporary attitudes and not just report their presence.

I agree with MM also regarding the author's rather unnecessary conflation and interpretation of various attitudes and behaviours that conform to the notion of homosexuality in only the broadest sense, an oversight that inevitably leads to incorrect or unsubstantiated historical conclusions. This is not to say that Robb has done this throughout his book (I have read only isolated chapters) but it is certainly true in the bits I've read since Caro introduced me to his book's existence. I would be interested in your opinion, Temp, in this regard when you have also read the complete manuscript.

On the question of religion's role in shaping attitudes towards homosexuality in the early USA it is certainly true that the New England area in particular adopted laws and punishments reflecting an extreme puritan distrust and even hatred of homosexuality based on their rather strict and narrow interpretation of Christian religious scripture. However (and I wonder did Robb also refer to this in his book?) such extreme aversion to homosexuality also prompted one enterprising colonist - Thomas Morton - to go a little further inland and found the marvellously named town of Merrymount (a 17th century euphemism for gay sex) in Massachusetts. In Merrymount not only was gay sex condoned but in fact the town also has the distinction of being the first in the Americas to ban slavery in its statutes (escaped slaves were welcome as citizens), approve of integration and intermarriage with local indigenous people, and - way ahead of the rest of the world - introduced legal same-sex marriages, even for lesbians who, for another three hundred years, wouldn't even exist legally in British law. Morton also abolished religion as a communal activity, though his statutes rather quaintly allowed its "discussion, especially between unlike minds".

Merrymount, in fact, is probably one glaring exception to any advice against applying anachronistic terminology to what its founder envisaged as a viable community which, given its location and the social mores shared by all its neighbours, amazingly thrived for at least two generations before an expanding population's encroachment on its territory eventually led to its inevitable subjugation to the commonwealth's rather more conformist laws. At least for a brief while what we would call modern sensibilities could certainly be applied to its function and character, and in fact some very modern sensibilities indeed would not have been offended. There is little not to like about Merrymount - my own favourite being the statute that the mayor could be a man or a woman, even if the same person.

PS- I also recommend Ackroyd's book. Temp knows, as an author he can do little wrong in my own

I'd never heard of Thomas Morton before - just read about him on Wiki - that, plus your post, actually the best laugh I've had since lockdown began! Thanks for the info on this man, nordmann. And he was from Devon! Gosh, I bet the Puritans absolutely loathed him! Love the bit in the Wiki entry about the huge maypole with the antlers on top. That said, he was a very courageous man - and his being left to starve by the godly ones was not so funny. Interesting he was a lifelong friend of Ben Jonson.

Must find out more!

From Wiki ( )

In "O Brave New World: American Literature from 1600 to 1840", a paperback original "Critical Anthology of American Literature" edited by Leslie A. Fiedler and Arthur Zeiger, the editors include selections on Morton from Morton's and Bradford's accounts in the section "The Heritage of Melancholy". In the section introduction, the editors write: "Side by side with [Puritanism], there was exported [to America] a Cavalier style of life, a blend of English countryside paganism and Gentleman's Christianity    that managed to survive for a while in the South . . . but was almost immediately driven out in the colder climate of the do-it-yourself North. . . . Sometimes one wonders what would have happened if it had survived, this beatnik colony in the seventeenth-century New England woods, presided over by university Bohemians—full of classical quotations, rum and deviltry. . . . But the archetypal conflict of Cavalier and Puritan is surely operative, too; and it is this archetypal aspect of the story that has persuaded some critics to treat it as a full-blown myth—one strong and attractive enough in any case to have cued innumerable retellings."

Harrison T. Meserole describes Morton as "America's first rascal".

Thomas Morton: I'd never heard of him either, but he sounds an interesting chap, if rather a bit of a rum bugger as it were ... one of those fascinating characters that somehow seem to have slipped out - or been deliberately editted out - of the mainstream history narrative, and to our general loss I fear.

Meles meles wrote:

Thomas Morton: I'd never heard of him either, but he sounds an interesting chap, if rather a bit of a rum bugger as it were ... one of those fascinating characters that somehow seem to have slipped out - or been deliberately editted out - of the mainstream history narrative, and to our general loss I fear.

Yes, a "rum bugger" indeed, but in the nicest possible way. A tolerant and sane man, I think. I suspect it was his neighbours, the  Puritans, who so spectacularly failed to love their neighbour as themselves, who were the true rum buggers - in the least likeable way. Mad "Princes of Limbo" indeed.

I have finished Caro's book - excellent read, but it has left me feeling totally confused and unqualified to pronounce on this or any other matter. How we deceive ourselves when we think we are being "tolerant" (what a giveaway that particular word is!) and liberal. I, like everyone, am a product of my time, and I feel totally bewildered by what is "precise" here and what is not. What do we we mean by "precise" expression anyway? Words are such slippery things. And the lenses through which words are read and things are seen are being continually adjusted. My specs (like those of Gore Vidal - see below) are sadly out of date. This quotation from Peter Ackroyd, whose book - perhaps because he is himself gay - is a more realistic account of the way things were (can we ever know?), sums up my confusion:

But the question is bedevilled by the fact that for a long time sexuality itself has been seen as a matter of identity. Gore Vidal maintained that there are no heterosexual or homosexual people, only heterosexual or homosexual acts. This was unexceptional at the time: now it would be considered almost reactionary. The rise of social media s of some significance. "Identity politics", once a somewhat arcane movement local t university campuses, now has social media as its forum, especially with regard to questions of sexuality or gender identity. Many people eminent in the conventional media have found themselves attacked on the "blogosphere" or on Twitter for failing to recognise new orthodoxies of expression. Sometimes the matter becomes more public and more serious...

What is significant is that sixty years ago homosexuality was a crime: now blatant homophobia can lead to prosecution. But has anything really changed? The very term "coming out", as Ackroyd notes, testifies to lingering societal prejudice.

PS Caro's book has a whole chapter devoted to "Gentle Jesus". I was intrigued by his discussion of this picture - Delville's  The School of Plato - or his Platonic Jesus (1898):



I wonder what Mary Whitehouse would have made of the "Plato" depicted here - and of his twelve naked disciples? I'm sorry I can't make a larger, clearer image "take".

Of course Neil MacGregor chose to feature the Warren cup (which has two depictions of homosexual sex acts) in his "100 Ojects" series.

On rereading, I find I've omitted the point that struck me as significant - the status of the lovers. It seems to be well covered (if with the usual caveats as to provenance) in the Wiki entry on the cup, and covers the difference in attitude between Greek and Roman societies on this topic..

My understanding of the Merrymount settlement was that it was established by Thomas Morton and his men around 1625. They were originally part of the Plymouth Colony, which was established in 1620 by the Puritan religious separatists who'd come over on the Mayflower. Morton and his men didn't care for the strict religious rules established by the Puritan settlers of Plymouth. Morton himself was familiar with the ancient English folk religious traditions. He and his men left Plymouth and headed north, and established their own settlement, which was Merrymount. It was primarily a trading settlement, rather than a colony. Over the next few years, they apparently enjoyed themselves, quite a bit of drinking took place, and they established very friendly relations with the local Indians. They invited the local Indians to their celebrations, consorted with the Indian women. and tried to obtain Indian women as wives. They also traded with the Indians, and did quite well, actually becoming somewhat prosperous. At some point in their traditional country celebrations, they erected a Maypole, which was an ancient English country celebration, but which the Puritans abhorred, considering it a pagan custom. The Plymouth Puritans also resented the settlement's prosperity, the fraternization with the Indians, and especially the selling of firearms to the Indians, which was forbidden in Plymouth Colony.

Infuriated, the Plymouth Colony sent their militia up to Merrymount, arrested Thomas Morgan, chopped down the Maypole, and deported him. A few years later they burnt down Merrymount.  Thomas Morgan returned to Plymouth, and was arrested again, but was released due to failing health. He died a few years later.

Altogether, I think the Merrymount settlement only lasted for about 5 years. But it was evidently fun while it lasted.

I started watching Jessica Kellgern-Fozard's channel when I was learning British Sign Language because she used to make some videos on the subject.  She covers a wide range of subjects.  She has made a video about 'Boston Marriages' where two women lived together in days gone by, though she does mention some of such partnerships may have been platonic friendships.  I'm sure I saw a video by her once about some sort of partnerships between sailors/pirates but I can't find it.

I've found the video in which Jessica talks about the partnership between pirates (though I'm sure I read about that somewhere on Res Hist once but I can't find it now).