he brief mention of 'several men dressed in women's clothes in one of the Cardiff Times “Samuel’ columns registers the changes brought about by the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. These included broadening the concept of 'gross indecency' to include any public expression of affection between men, whether 'dressed in women’s clothes' or not. This permitted the many outrages perpetrated in the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, including the fatal persecution of Alan Turing.
A misleading impression can be given if the texts referred to concentrate on one facet of sexual behaviour. Transvestite prostitutes do not have any necessary link to what were later called 'consenting adults'. We must not forget, either, that a large number of university-educated men celebrated love of men, which might or might not be expressed in physical sex. There was a variety of homosexual desire in the later nineteenth century known as 'the higher sodomy' -- that is homosexuality which might not be physically expressed, or if it was, was so expressed as to seem to the participants wholly beneficial to mankind at large. One of the reasons that certain Oxbridge —Oxford and Cambridge —colleges made agreements with the police that the latter were not to enter without permission was so that no sexual acts, approved by the Greeks, should be brought before the courts.
Bibliography
[Review of] Neil McKenna's Fanny and Stella: The Young Men who Shocked Victorian England. London: Faber & Faber, 2013.
Last modified 21 March 2022