Some Men In London by Some Men In London vol 1 Queer Life 1945-1959 (retail) (epub)

Author:Some Men In London, vol 1, Queer Life, 1945-1959 (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141989495
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2024-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

~

One unintended consequence of jailing writers such as Peter Wildeblood or Rupert Croft-Cooke was that they subsequently published accounts of their trials and imprisonment critical of the police, the judiciary and the prison authorities. Croft-Cooke had been convicted of homosexual offences in October 1953, his case based on the evidence of two navy cooks he had picked up in the Fitzroy Tavern. Like Wildeblood, he had served his nine-month sentence in Wormwood Scrubs.

When I first came to the Scrubs the homosexuals there were all men convicted of crimes or offences which would have been crimes or offences at other times and in other countries. That is to say they had been found guilty of seducing young boys, or of improper behaviour in public. The only cases in which men had been prosecuted for ‘gross indecency’ were those in which this had been accompanied by what are called in the press ‘serious offences’ and in biblical language ‘the abominable sin’. None of them had been convicted otherwise of ‘gross indecency with another male person’ for the Act of 1885 which for the first time made this, in privacy and between consenting adults, an indictable offence, had, by common consent, long been left in desuetude. But as the witch-hunt of homosexuals ordered or at least countenanced by the Home Secretary raised its disgusting hue and cry, the prison began to house a new kind of victim, men of the highest probity and idealism who had been dragged from useful lives, some of them to face the venomous sallies of certain Judges and Recorders, and now found themselves stunned and baffled in prison.

Though everything has been done officially to confuse the issue, I think it is useful to distinguish between criminal homosexuals and those who are only considered criminals in the British Commonwealth and United States. With the former one may have sympathy, one must plead for special understanding and care for them, but one cannot defend their position in society or deny that some kind of segregation is essential. For the latter no such plea should be necessary. As one Member of Parliament has said, their behaviour may be a matter between them and God, it should certainly not be one between them and the Law. There is no more reason to persecute homosexuals generally because a small number of them corrupt young boys than there is to persecute heterosexuals because some of them interfere with little girls. To blame them as a class because a few are caught importuning is no more logical than to abuse women because there are prostitutes on the streets. Children must be protected and public decency preserved but by whose divine authority are the police ordered to ferret out men who have never threatened either?

Even after the obscene tally-ho’s of the Home Office were audible and homosexuals began to be brought in almost daily to Wormwood Scrubs, it was noticeable that prosecutions under the 1885 Act (as opposed to prosecutions for homosexual crime) came almost entirely

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.