Abstract
The idea for this book began over a decade ago after a conversation with my grandparents. I wanted to know how they had met and fallen in love. It was in the late 1940s and my grandfather, who was on leave from the Marines, where he was doing his national service, went to a local dance hall. My grandmother was there on the arm of his best friend Alf, but by the end of the night they were well on their way to becoming an item. I was a little shocked by this, ‘didn’t Alf mind?’ I asked. ‘No’, my grandfather replied, ‘Alf was a puff and your grandmother was his pretend girlfriend. He was happy that we liked each other.’ After asking them to elaborate further, I found out that my grandparents’ circle of friends (all working-class and from the South Yorkshire mining and steel town Rotherham) knew about Alf and even had other gay friends. As a teenager, I had never seen my grandparents as being particularly liberal, but they certainly did not care about the unusual bedroom habits of their friends when they were younger. This casual acceptance was replicated when they met my own gay friends over the following years. The story stuck with me, but I did not consider the wider implications of it for many years.
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For examples of this, see Bob Cant and Susan Hemmings (eds.), Radical Records: Thirty Years of Lesbian and Gay History (London, 1988)
Hall Carpenter Archives Gay Men’s Oral History Group, Walking After Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories (London, 1989)
Alkarim Jivani, It’s Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century (London, 1997)
National Lesbian and Gay Survey, Proust, Cole Porter, Michelangelo, Marc Almond and Me: Writings by Gay Men on Their Lives and Lifestyles (London, 1993)
Jeffrey Weeks and Kevin Porter (eds.), Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men 1885–1967 (London, 1998).
Examples of some of the most prominent studies are as follows: H. Montgomery Hyde, The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Study of Homosexuality in Britain (London, 1970)
Timothy d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English ‘Uranian’ Poets From 1889 to 1930 (London, 1970)
Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain From the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, 1977)
Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800 (London, 1979)
Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey Jr. (eds.), Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York, 1989)
Colin Spencer, Homosexuality A History (London, 1995)
Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Postwar Britain (London, 1996)
Hugh David, On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality 1895–1995 (London, 1997)
Shaun Cole, ‘Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’ Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York, 2000)
Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England Since 1830 (London, 2000)
Paul Baker, Polari — The Lost Language of Gay Men (London, 2002)
Paul Baker and Jo Stanley, Hello Sailor! The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea (London, 2003)
H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century (London and New York, 2003)
Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality 1885–1914 (Cambridge, 2003)
Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2003)
Mark W. Turner, Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London (London, 2003)
Sean Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861–1913 (London, 2005)
Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (London and Chicago, 2005)
Matt Houlbrook and Harry Cocks (eds.), The Modern History of Sexuality (London, 2005)
Morris B. Kaplan, Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times (New York, 2005)
Florence Tamagne, History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris 1919–1939, Vol. I & II (New York, 2006)
Matt Cook, Robert Mills, Randolph Trumbach and H. G. Cocks, A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages (Oxford and Connecticut, 2007).
Here are examples of such, the majority of which were published after decriminalisation. In some cases (particularly Lehmann’s), these works combine fiction with autobiography: J. R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself (New York, 1999, first published 1968)
Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams, Being Autobiographical Notes (London, 1916)
Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (London, 1996, first published 1968)
Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions (London, 1991, first published 1977)
Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind (Minneapolis, 2001, first published 1976)
Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties (Minneapolis, 2000, first published 1938)
John Lehmann, In the Purely Pagan Sense (London, 1985, first published 1976)
Paul Levy (ed.), The Letters of Lytton Strachey (London and New York, 2006)
Stephen Spender, World Within World (London and Boston, 1991, first published 1951)
Stephen Spender, Lara Feigel and John Sutherland (eds.), New Selected Journals, 1939–1995 (London and Boston, 2012)
Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law (London, 1955)
A notable exception to this middle-class dominance was Harry Daley, a London policeman who knew E. M. Forster, J. R. Ackerley, Duncan Grant and Raymond Mortimer, and moved in decidedly literary circles: Harry Daley, This Small Cloud (London, 1986).
Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (Chicago, 2013).
Jeffrey Weeks, ‘Queer(y)ing the “Modern Homosexual”’, Journal of British Studies, 51:3 (2012), pp. 523–539, 526.
Brian Lewis, ‘Introduction: British Queer History’, Journal of British Studies, 51:3 (2012), pp. 519–522, 520.
Chris Waters, ‘Distance and Desire in the New British Queer History’, GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 14:1 (2007), pp. 139–155, 139.
Laura Doan, ‘Review of Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–57. By Matt Houlbrook’, Twentieth Century British History, 17:1 (2006), pp. 134–136, 135. Embedded quotes refer to Houlbrook, Queer London, p. 171.
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940 (New York, 1994).
John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago and London, 1999), p. xi.
Peter Boag, Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (California, 2003).
Chris Brickell, Mates and Lovers: A Gay History of New Zealand (Auckland and London, 2008).
Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard, ‘What Have Historians Done With Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500- 1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (2005), pp. 274–280.
Although many of the following make reference to working-class men, the main focus remains firmly on the middle class: Lesley Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality. 1900–1950 (Cambridge, 1991).
Martin Francis, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Airforce, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2008)
Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth Century London (London, 1996)
Michael Roper and John Tosh (eds.), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1991)
John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven, Connecticut, and London, 1999)
John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 2004).
John Tosh, ‘The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept?’ in John Arnold and Sean Brady (eds.), What Is Masculinity?: Historical Dynamics From Antiquity to the Contemporary World (London, 2011), p. 24.
Martin Francis, ‘The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity’, The Historical Journal, 45:3 (2002), p. 652.
Cocks, Nameless Offences, pp. 157–198; H. G. Cocks, ‘Safeguarding Civility: Sodomy, Class and Moral Reform in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 190 (February 2006), pp. 121–146.
Dave Russell, Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination (Manchester, 2004), p. xii.
Helen M. Jewell, The North-South Divide: The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England (Manchester, 1994).
Ian Taylor, Karen Evans and Penny Fraser, Global Change, Local Feeling and Everyday Life in the North of England: A Tale of Two Cities; A Study in Manchester and Sheffield (London, 1996)
Frank Musgrove, The North of England: A History From Roman Times to the Present (Oxford, 1990)
Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 1991)
Dennis Smith, Conflict and Compromise: Class Formation in English Society 1830–1914: A Comparative Study of Birmingham and Sheffield (London, 1982).
J. B. Priestley, English Journey (London, 1984, first published 1934), pp. 371–375.
Mary Ellen Chase, In England Now (London, 1937).
Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918–1939 (New York, 1963, first published 1941)
J. L. Hodson, Our Two Englands (London, 1936)
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1989, first published 1937).
Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History (London, 2010), pp. 52–66.
Peter Gurney, ‘“Intersex” and “Dirty Girls”: Mass-Observation and Working-Class Sexuality in England in the 1930s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 8:2 (1997), pp. 256–290, 257.
N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal Is Our Life: An Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community (London, 1969, first published 1956)
W. Hannington, The Problem of the Distressed Areas (London, 1937)
Pilgrim Trust, Men Without Work: A Report Made to the Pilgrim Trust (Cambridge, 1938)
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty, a Study of Town Life (London, 1901)
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty and Progress: A Second Social Survey of York (London, 1941)
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty and the Welfare State: A Third Social Survey of York Dealing Only With Economic Questions (London, 1951)
St. Philips Education and Research Society, The Equipment of the Workers: An Enquiry by the St. Philip’s Settlement Education and Research Society Into the Adequacy of the Adult Manual Workers for the Discharge of Their Responsibilities as Heads of Household, Producers and Citizens (London, 1919)
Ferdynand Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948)
Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society (London, 1961).
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, Connecticut and London, 2001).
Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes (eds.), Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire (Barnsley, 1976), pp. 5–6.
Louise A. Jackson, Child Abuse in Victorian England (London, 2000), p. 36.
Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum (London, 1971), p. 100.
Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life (London, 2009, first published 1957)
Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, England 1918–1951 (Oxford and New York, 2000, first published 1998), pp. 186–187.
Dave Russell, ‘The Heaton Review, 1927–1934: Culture, Class and a Sense of Place in Inter-War Yorkshire’, Twentieth Century British History, 17:3 (2006), pp. 323–349, 323.
M-O A: TC Royalty, 69/5/M, Pre-Coronation Diaries, Sheffield, 21 April 1953, and M-O A:TC Royalty 69/5/L, Interviews Regarding Coronation Souvenirs, May 1953, quoted in Frank Mort, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven and London, 2010), p. 31.
For an overview, see Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History (Michigan, 2007).
Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and Working-Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s’, Journal of Social History, 34:4 (2001), pp. 773–795
Stephen Brooke, ‘“Slumming” in Swinging London? Class, Gender and the Post-War City in Nell Dunn’s Up The Junction (1963)’, Cultural and Social History, 9:3 (2012), pp. 429–449
Selina Todd, ‘Affluence, Class and Crown Street: Reinvestigating the Post-War Working Class’, Contemporary British History, 22 (2008), pp. 501–518
Mike Savage, ‘Affluence and Social Change in the Making of Technocratic Middle-Class Identities, 1939–55’, Contemporary British History, 22 (2008), pp. 457–476.
Claire Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40:2 (2005), pp. 341–362.
Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain 1918–1960 (Oxford, 2006)
Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher, Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918–1963 (Cambridge, 2010).
Examples of traditional studies of the working classes as opposed to more specialist work in the primary fields outlined above: Brad Beavan, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester and New York, 2005)
Joanna Bourke, Working Class Cultures in Britain, 1890–960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London and New York, 1994)
Andrew Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900–1939 (Buckingham and Philadelphia, 1992)
Trevor Griffiths, The Lancashire Working Classes c.1880–1930 (Oxford, 2001)
Stephen Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth 1889–1939 (Oxford, 1984, first published 1981)
Benjamin Jones, ‘Neighbourhood, Family and Home: The Working-Class Experience in Twentieth Century Brighton’, PhD thesis (University of Sussex, 2008)
Mike Savage and Andrew Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840–1940 (London and New York, 1994)
Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1998, first published 1983).
Little has been written about the structure and workings of the Assize Court Circuits, particularly in the twentieth century. On the establishment of the Assizes Circuits in England, see J. S. Cockburn, A History of the English Assizes, 1558–1714 (Cambridge, 1972)
For a brief explanation of the context and workings of the Victorian Assizes Circuits, see David Bentley, English Criminal Justice in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1998), pp. 51–56.
This was the case in infanticide cases when the location of the crime could not be pinpointed; see Daniel Grey, ‘Discourses of Infanticide in England, 1880–1922’, PhD thesis (Roehampton University, 2009), p. 8.
On the importance of the press and its relation to these areas, see Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1–10, 15–28
Adrian Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford, 2003).
Colin Seymour-Ure, The British Press and Broadcasting Since 1945 (2nd edn., London, 1996), pp. 16–18.
Tony Brown (ed.), Edward Carpenter and Late Victorian Radicalism (London, 1990)
Emile Delavenay, D. H. Lawrence and Edward Carpenter: A Study in Edwardian Transition (London, 1971)
Sheila Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter, A Life of Liberty and Love (London and New York, 2008)
Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks, Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (London, 1977)
Chushichi Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter 1844–1929: Prophet of Human Fellowship (Cambridge, 1980)
Paul Baker and Jo Stanley, Hello Sailor! The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea (London, 2003)
Bob Cant and Susan Hemmings (eds.), Radical Records: Thirty Years of Lesbian and Gay History (London, 1988)
Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon, A Man’s World: From Boyhood to Manhood 1900–1960 (London, 1996)
Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon, Forbidden Britain: Our Secret Past 1900–1960 (London, 1994)
Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon, A Secret World of Sex (London, 1998)
Jeffrey Weeks and Kevin Porter (eds.), Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men 1885–1967 (London, 1998). In the cases of the Steve Humphries collections, Between the Acts, Walking After Midnight and Hello Sailor!, the original transcripts and recordings of many interviews are available to access in the Carpenter Hall Archives, in the British Sound Archive and at Testimony Films. There are also a number of relevant interviews with old soldiers at the Imperial War Museum. Using the original interviews was outside the scope and time frame of this thesis, but would be a future line of research to pursue.
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Smith, H. (2015). Introduction. In: Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895–1957. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137470997_1
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