I have written previous posts on Thomas Baty (1869-1954), a gender radical who was born in Carlisle and who died in Japan. Baty was an international lawyer, a vegetarian, and an editor of the genderqueer journal, Urania. Writing books and articles under the female pseudonym, Irene Clyde, Baty campaigned against the binaries of biological sex, and of social gender conventions. Thomas Baty is an important non-binary pioneer in Cumbria’s LGBTQ heritage.
I was very pleased to find the informative article, Thomas Baty, gender critic, by Alice Millea, on the blog of the Bodleian Libraries. This article observes that Thomas Baty led a radically different life, with a queer identity, away from the official records of Baty’s Oxford and Cambridge university career and his qualifications in law. There are also images of documents relating to Thomas Baty, and a photo, from 1915-1920, which I have put at the top of this post, and of which I was previously unaware.
As advisor to the Japanese foreign office, Thomas Baty lived much of his adult life in Japan, along with his sister, even during the Manchurian crisis and World War Two, while continuing to pursue his gender activism.
The decoration above is a Japanese honour, awarded by the emperor for special merit in in civil or military fields. Thomas Baty was awarded the third class of the order in 1920, and the second class, in 1936, for his distinguished legal services to the Japanese government. Born in Stanwix, Cumberland, in 1869, Thomas Baty spent much of his adult life in Japan. He lived in Japan from 1916 until his death in 1954, serving the Japanese government in the capacity of legal advisor to the Japanese foreign office. He is of principal interest to this blog for his LGBTQ+ activities, but it is worthwhile taking a sideways look at this intriguing figure who grew up in Carlisle.
For some of the information below, I have drawn upon two comprehensive articles by Peter Oblas, cited in the acknowledgements.
When Thomas took the voyage to Japan in 1916, to take up his post, his mother, Mary, and his sister, Anne, travelled along with him. Sadly, his mother died, not long after their arrival, and her death was noted in the Penrith Observer, “An Old Penrithian Buried in Japan”. Mary was a daughter of the Matthews family in Penrith, and her father had been a watchmaker there. Anne, however, Thomas’s sister, shared house, or rather, houses – they had a ministerial house in Tokyo, and a lakeside retreat near Nikko – until her death in 1944. The Batys had brought the effects from their home in Carlisle with them.
Thomas must have developed an early interest in Japanese culture, for already in December 1902, before he moved to Japan, he is recorded in the Carlisle Journal as giving a lecture in Tullie House, Carlisle, for the Scientific and Literary Society on “Japanese Heraldry and Poetry”. Once installed with his sister, in their house in Tokyo, and with their summer home near Nikko, by Lake Chuzenji, he carried out his duties and took part in the social life there. Thomas and Anne seem to have enjoyed a comfortable life, with pleasant homes and servants. They socialised with Japanese officials and with the expatriate community, while Thomas even took part in sailing races, in his boat on the lake by their summer retreat.
During these years, Thomas continued to publish and to advise the Japanese foreign office. He also pressed on with his genderqueer and radical feminist activities, continuing to edit and write for the journal, “Urania“, under the pseudonym, Irene Clyde, along with his fellow editors. He also wrote a book of essays as Irene Clyde: Eve’s Sour Apples, published in 1934. This book is now very hard to get hold of, but Sonja Tiernan has listed the chapter titles, which sound tantalising: “1. The essence of sex: domination. 2. How it comes. 3. How it must go. 4. Vanishing sex. 5. The dynamics of sex. 6. The humiliation of the body: Clothes and no clothes. 7. The humiliation of the thong: flagellation. 8. What is progress?” Here, sex refers to gender, and relations between the sexes.
It seems also, that Thomas adopted unorthodox ways of living for himself to some extent. He was indeed a vegetarian; he was a member of the Humanitarian League, and became Vice President of the Vegetarian Society. This was at a time when vegetarianism was much more uncommon than it is today. Thomas also adopted feminine modes of dress on occasion. As Peter Oblas notes, the Canadian diplomat in Japan, Hugh Keenleyside, mentions in his memoirs that:
“Like most people, Dr. Baty had his emotional quirks. He was an active transvestite; even when having guests for he would sometimes appear in a flowing and low-necked gown.” (Keenleyside, p. 331)
One of Thomas’s precepts in international law was to be used by Japanese officials in an important controversy, with long term consequences. Thomas espoused the view that a territory without an effective government or controlling authority, was not entitled to be considered a state, and therefore not entitled to have its sovereignty protected in international law and recognised by other nations. This was to be of profound importance when Japanese troops entered and occupied Manchuria in 1931. This area was under Chinese rule at the time. Thomas considered that China did not have a unified controlling force, and so did not qualify as a state; the Japanese influenced province, Manchuria, could be recognised as the supposedly independent state of Manchuko; and that Japanese troops might be there without violating international treaties. Japan was called on to defend its actions before the League of Nations, and rejected demands to withdraw its troops. During this international incident, Japanese officials used Thomas’s legal contributions as part of their defence at the League of Nations, and in 1933, Japan, in fact, left the League. This incident was one of many complex and interlocking developments before World War Two.
When the Second World War did break out, Thomas and Anne stayed on in Japan, even after the declaration of war between Britain, the Us, and Japan in 1941. Thomas had also been exempt in 1941, from having his assets frozen, while those of other British and US nationals were. After the Manchurian incident, the British government had taken the view that Thomas Baty had done it a disservice, rather than otherwise. (Oblas, p.122) Following World War Two, given Thomas’s continuous residence in Japan, and his possible work for that government, Thomas was investigated for treason by British officials. Sir William Eric Beckett, the legal adviser to the British foreign office, believed that Thomas Baty had been treasonous, but also, that he had identified himself so completely with Japan, that he had in effect, become Japanese, and moreover, was an old man – in 1946, he would have been 77. Therefore, it was decided to revoke Thomas’s passport, and remove from him the protections of being a British subject.
Anne, Thomas’s sister died in 1944, and was buried alongside her mother in the Aoyama cemetery in Tokyo. But Thomas lived on until 1954, writing his memoirs, Alone in Japan. He too is buried in Tokyo, by his mother and sister. British newspapers mentioned Thomas’s death, especially after the publication of his will – “No collaborator…He Says in Will” was the headline in the Aberdeen Evening Express, 11 August 1955. Thomas Baty had recorded in his will a lengthy denial of any collaboration with the government of Japan.
In retrospect, it seems remarkable, if not an enigma, how Thomas, who was severe on unthinking masculine aggression which he associated with the fostering of gender stereotypes, and who supported pacifism, as in “Urania” and in Eve’s Sour Apples, should have been part of the unfolding of international crisis. A different light on his character is provided by the fact that in his will also, he left the toys with which he and his sister had used to play when young, to a Japanese friend, Taga Kiku Sama. In 1934, Thomas had given a lecture on the writer, Thomas Carlyle, entitled “Carlyle’s Human Side”, in which he notes with approval how Carlyle “took the side of love and mercy in his attitude towards war, the poor, and the animal creation”.
Thomas was a many-sided character, listing his recreations in Who’s Who as ” ‘music, heraldry, the sea; extreme feminist; would abolish all sex distinctions; conservative; vegetarianism’ ” (Hamer, p. 67). He was also interested in literature, and in localism, the creations of communities of manageable size.
It is impossible to reach a finished view on this complex and enigmatic figure. Perhaps living in Japan gave Thomas Baty/Irene Clyde personal lifestyle freedoms, which might have been harder to realise had he remained in Britain, for pursuing his projects of feminism and of gender transgression.
Acknowledgements:
Peter Oblas. “Britain’s First Traitor of the Pacific War: Employment and Obsession”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 7, 2 (December, 2005): 109-133. This gives much important information about Thomas Baty, including the removal of the house effects from Cumberland to Tokyo, the trajectory of his legal career, and investigation for treason, and references to memoirs of Hugh Keenleyside which mention Thomas Baty’s transvestitism. This can be downloaded here.
Peter Oblas. “In Defence of Japan in China: One Man’s Quest for the Logic of Sovereignty”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies3, 2 (December, 2001): 73-90. This gives much useful information on Thomas Baty and the Manchurian Incident. This can be downloaded here.
Emily Hamer. Britannia’s Glory: A History of Twentieth Century Lesbians. London: Bloomsbury, 2016 Chapter Four, “Lesbians after the great war”, discusses Thomas Baty’s interests in Who’s Who, as well as much else about him.
Karen Knop. “Eunomia is a Woman: Philip Allott and Feminism”, European Journal of International Law · February 2008. This can be read or downloaded here.
Sonja Tiernan. ” ‘Engagements Dissolved’: Eva Gore-Booth, Urania, and the Radical Challenge to Marriage”, chapter seven, in Eds Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan, Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives: Histories of Sexualities Volume I. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, pp. 128-44. This discusses Eve’s Sour Apples, and gives the chapter headings; chapter seven can be downloaded here, by creating a free account with academia.edu.
Lincolnshire Echo, Saturday, 15 November, 1913. This notes a lecture by Thomas Baty about localism.
The Scotsman, Saturday, November 3, 1934. This describes Thomas Baty’s lecture on Thomas Carlyle.
Aberdeen Evening Express, Thursday, 11 August, 1955 This reports the will of Thomas Baty.
Hugh L. Keenleyside. Memoirs of Hugh L. Keenleyside, Vol. 1, Hammer the Golden Day. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1981-1982, pp. 330-331. As noted by Peter Oblas, these pages provide the Canadian diplomat’s reminiscences of Thomas Baty and his sister, Anne Baty. I have consulted these pages myself.
A surviving copy of “Urania”; courtesy of Glasgow Women’s Library.
The early twentieth century journal, “Urania”, pictured above, was the brainchild of an extraordinary group of people. One of those key figures was the Carlisle born Thomas Baty. Thomas attended Carlisle Grammar School, and served his articles in the town. Afterwards, he developed a remarkable double career: he became a respected jurist, working in Japan, where he was legal advisor to the Japanese Foreign Office; but he had also a maverick side as a transgender and feminist activist! Thomas co-founded and co-edited the genderqueer journal, “Urania”, and published radical books and articles under the female pseudonym, Irene Clyde. Along with his colleagues, he campaigned in this way against the binaries of biological sex, and of social gender conventions. Such activity and awareness was unusual for the time – Thomas may nowadays be described as a transgender pioneer. He is a person of note, in Cumbria’s LGBTQ+ heritage.
“Urania” was published and circulated privately, at first six, and later three, times a year, between 1916 and 1940, by Thomas Baty and his colleagues. In fact, over the years, they bore the costs of printing and distributing the journal to, perhaps, 250 subscribers around the world. That may sound like a smallish number of subscribers, in a mission to reform the whole of society, by eliminating gender differences, and by ignoring those of biological sex. Yet, “Urania” was important to those who took it, it survived for longer than did many radical periodicals, while it was consistent and daring in its polemic critique of sexual and gender norms.
The journal’s name is an interesting choice: by 1916, Urania and Uranian were terms which had acquired significant associations. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a German sexologist, had written about homosexuality in a series of late nineteenth century booklets, in which he used the idea of Uranian (ultimately from Greek myth), to develop a complex taxonomy of types of male and female homosexual. (Steele, Tiernan) But the word, “Uranian”, was made better known in English through the writings of Edward Carpenter, a man who sought many reforms, especially of attitudes to homosexuality. The word, “”Uranian”, to signify homosexual, has certainly fallen out of use today, but it would have been recognised in the early twentieth century. “Urania”, therefore, had undoubted LGBTQ+ associations. But the journal had its own unique style and content.
“Urania” took as its inspiration Eva Gore-Booth’s idea that sex, as in the biological sex of a person, was an accident. Its ethos was that the “duality” of a world of two biological sexes, male and female, and of masculine and feminine gender conventions, was utterly flawed, that it cramped personal development, and that it put up harmful barriers between individuals. Sometimes “Urania” quoted Eva Gore-Booth’s phrase, sex is an accident. (Steele) Today, we would probably use the terms binary, and non-binary, instead of duality, when discussing sex and gender.
The mission statement of “Urania”, printed in every issue, declared:
“Urania denotes the company of those who are firmly determined to ignore the dual organisation of humanity in all its manifestations. They are convinced that this duality has resulted in the formation of the two warped and imperfect types….If the world is to see sweetness and independence combined in the same individual, all recognition of that duality must be given up. For it inevitably brings in its train the suggestion of the conventional distortions of character which are based on it.
There are no ‘men’ or ‘women’ in Urania.” (Tiernan, Hamer)
In fact, a Greek motto appears too, meaning, they are all angels (sexless). (Ingram, Patai) The format of the journal included an editorial, a letter section, book reviews, and a selection of reprinted articles from newspapers and periodicals around the world. This selection was a bold and pungent one. Topics covered were cross dressing, including long term transvestism; people who underwent sex changes; same sex romantic relationships; cases of intersex individuals; examples from the natural world of hermaphroditism, such as with oysters and plants, where there are both male and female reproductive organs. Life unions between women were held as preferable to conventional heterosexual marriage, and “Urania” made positive references to Sappho. (Tiernan, Oram)
To give an example, in 1936, “Urania” printed the case of a Czech athlete, Zdenka Koubkova, who underwent medical gender re-assignment to become male, and called, Zdeněk Koubek. (Tiernan)
In addition, there was a section at the end of each issue of the journal entitled “Star-Dust”, which celebrated women’s achievments in traditionally male areas, such as in science or government; in 1929, “Star-Dust” lauded the number of prizes won by women in open competition with in British goverment departments. (Tiernan, Hamer) There was also an acknowledgement of men succeeding in a traditionally female area of expertise, knitting. (Hamer)
So far as I can see, “Urania” did not debate anxiously whether something might be called homosexual, transgender, or transsexual, or another relevant LGBTQ+ word – the term, “gender” was not in fact used in the journal. (Tiernan) Rather, the whole emphasis of the journal fell on showing that personal behaviour and development were not determined by social expectations of gender, nor by one’s biological sex; even the body itself could undergo change of sex. As Niamh Carey of the Glasgow Women’s Library notes, long before Judith Butler, “Urania” was critiquing the performativity of gender. And, as “I.C.” notes in “Urania” in 1937, their motto was “Ignore Sex!”
Thomas Baty contributed to “Urania” under the pseudonym, Irene Clyde, or “I.C.” Alongside Irene Clyde, Clyde’s colleagues, Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade contributed enormously to the journal’s success. The lines of poetry which are quoted at the top of “Urania” in the photo above are by Eva Gore-Booth.
It is impossible to do justice to the diverse and radical spirit of “Urania”, and its multifold content. It was related to suffrage struggles for female emancipation, but went well beyond those in arguing that only with the dismantling of socially constructed ideas of sex, could there be equality and self-realisation. There is a spiritual element in the journal too, which downplayed the physical aspects of same sex love; while at least two of its editors were vegetarian. A possible analogy for the journal today would be that of a long-running and well put together zine – zines have an edgy quality, as does this most unorthodox periodical.
Acknowledgements:
Emily Hamer. Britannia’s Glory: A History of Twentieth Century Lesbians. London: Bloomsbury, 2016 Chapter Four, “Lesbians after the great war”, discusses Thomas Baty, Irene Clyde, and “Urania”; this includes the journal’s mission statement, its challenge to binary gender, and its diversity of contents. Women excelling in traditionally male areas is mentioned here, as is the example of men knitting.
Karen Steele, “Ireland and Sapphic Journalism Between the Wars: A Case Study of Urania (1916-1940)”, Chapter Twenty Five, in Ed. Catherine Clay. Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018 Steele gives a long and helpful discussion of “Urania”, including its financial arrangements, the other editors, the term, Uranian, “Star-Dust”, and the diverse queer contents of the journal. Non-binary gender, and sex change, including “Zdenk Koubka”,are mentioned; as are Gore-Booth’s poetry and declaration that sex was an accident.
Sonja Tiernan. Eva Gore-Booth: an image of such politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012 Chapter Eleven, “Radical sexual politics and post-war religion” discusses Urania, including its mission statement, “Star-Dust”, Zdeněk Koubek, and Sappho.
Tiernan mentions Alison Oram’s comments on “Urania” rejecting marriage and heterosexuality, but I have been unable to consult Alison Oram’s article, “Feminism, Androgyny and Love between Women in Urania, 1916-1940”, Media History, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2001
Eds Sonja Tiernan and Mary McAuliffe. Sapphists and Sexologists; Histories of Sexualities, Vol. 2. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, 2009 Chapter Five, “A History of Female to Male Transsexuality in the Journal Urania“, by Sonja Tiernan, discusses the history of the term, Uranian, and also in detail, the content of the journal. This includes I.C.’s injunction to ignore sex, oysters and plants, the wide range of newspaper reprintings which challenge binary gender and sexuality, and an interesting discussion of transsexuality, including the case of Zdeněk Koubek.
Chapter Nine, ” ‘No Measures of Emancipation or Equality Will Suffice’: Eva Gore-Booth’s Revolutionary Feminism in the Journal Urania“, by Sonja Tierman, in Eds Sarah O’Connor and Christopher C. Shepard. Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Newcastle : Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2008 This discusses the history of the term, Uranian, the other editors of the journal, the financial and distribution arrangements, and, in detail, the contents of the journal. “Star-Dust” is mentioned here, as is the example of women winning government prizes.
Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai. Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers, 1889-1939. Chapel Hill ; London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993 These authors have done important work in identifying Irene Clyde as Thomas Baty. They discuss Urania, including its circulation, in the chapter on Thomas Baty, “The Double Life of a Victorian Sexual Radical”.
Judith Ann Smith. Genealogies of desire : “Uranianism”, mysticism and science in Britain, 1889-1940 An MA thesis, which you can download here.
Copies of “Urania” are also held at London School of Economics, and The Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University. Issues of “Urania” are split between these three repositories. I believe that the first twelve issues of the journal have not survived – if anybody should come across one of these, get in touch!
As I mentioned in my previous post, Thomas Baty, (1869-1954), was a transgender pioneer, who came originally from Carlisle, Cumberland.
During the 1900s, Thomas began to publish books on international law; but he also began a very different career, as an active critic of established ideas of gender and sex identity. In 1912, he established the “Aëthnic Union”, a society which was intended to ignore differences of biological sex, and the gender expectations which sprang from that.
This unusual sounding name was one which he derived from the Greek, “ethnos”, a race (of people); and he seems indeed to have envisaged opening up human potential, by removing what he perceived as the tyranny of sex based social conventions. There is a statement of his ideas, in a letter which he wrote, advertising his new society, to the radical, feminist journal, “The Freewoman”, in February of 1912. That he was reading and corresponding with such a radical publication is itself very noteworthy. It also tells us something about the sort of people to whom he thought his union would appeal. “The Freewoman”, a weekly feminist review, was known for discussing sexual matters as they affected women with an unusual openness for the time, although it discussed broader issues of gender, exploitation, and class too.
In this letter, the Aëthnic Union takes an uncompromising position on sex and gender issues: on the basis of biological sex, “there has been built up a gigantic superstructure of artificial convention which urgently needs to be swept away. And it does not see how it is to be swept away unless sex is resolutely ignored”. Indeed, sex distinctions “rivet on the soul the fetters of a warped ideal…that autocratic sternness which one has been taught is the ideal of the masculine…that narrow triviality which one is taught (less successfully) to consider the mark of the feminine”. (“The Freewoman”, Vol. 1 (14), 22 Feb, 1912, p.278)
Conventional distinctions “create an iron barrier between individuals”; because of them, people are “never permitted to be themselves. They are forced to strangle their own development. From that soul-murder the Union would liberate them.” (“The Freewoman”, Vol. 1 (14), 22 Feb, 1912, pp.278-9)
Of those who joined Thomas Baty in the Aëthnic Union, I shall mention in this post two significant women: Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth. As Emily Hamer and Sonja Tiernan note, a flier or newsletter for a meeting of the Union has been preserved, which names Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper as supporters.
Esther Roper, seated in the photo below, was a suffragist, active on behalf of working women, and a sexual radical. She lived with her collaborator and partner, Eva Gore-Booth, in Manchester, and from 1913 in London. Although these women would not have been described in the language of the time as “partners”, in the way in which they are today, they shared their lives, and were finally buried beside each other in Hampstead, London.
Eva Gore-Booth was an Irish writer and activist, a suffragist, who campaigned on behalf of working women, and for pacifism. She is seated on the far left of the photo below, at Garsington, Oxfordshire. Eva Gore-Booth formulated the idea to be developed in the journal, “Urania”, that [biological] ” ‘sex was an accident and formed no essential part of an individual’s nature’ “. (Tiernan, chp. 11)
Eva Gore-Booth, in Garsington, with others including Clifford Allen, the pacifist, Lady Ottoline Morrell, the artist, Brett, and Lytton Strachey. The National Portrait Gallery. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Although both these ladies may appear demure in these photographs, they were in fact firebrands. Eva, interestingly, was the sister of Constance Gore-Booth, later known as the Countess Markievicz, who was to don uniform in the Easter Rising of 1916, and who took part in the fighting on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin; Constance later became the first women elected to Westminster, and the first female member of the Irish cabinet.
Let us go back to 1912, and to Thomas Baty, however. It is clear that as well as developing a distinguished legal career – he became the Joint Secretary of the International Law Association in 1905 – Thomas was mixing in some very interesting circles, of great LGBTQ+ and wider interest. Other members of the Aëthnic Union include the writer, Dorothy Helen Cornish, who supported alternative education, and Jessey Wade, who campaigned for animal welfare and vegetarianism.
To try and place the Aëthnic Union, and its agenda for erasing sex and stereotypical gender distinctions in context is a challenge. It does not appear to have survived for long as an organisation, and it certainly never gained popular support. However, it places Thomas Baty in a nexus of radically minded people, who were rethinking fundamentally important social issues. These very much include, but were not limited to, queer concerns. It is interesting to note too that the queer brew of thought in Baty’s circle would in time include transgender, transsexual, intersex, feminist, and gay elements. And the nucleus of associates and friends in the the Aëthnic Union were to go on to establish, edit, and run the genderqueer journal, “Urania”, until 1940.
Acknowledgements:
Emily Hamer. Britannia’s Glory: A History of Twentieth Century Lesbians. London: Bloomsbury, 2016 Hamer mentions the records and supporters of the Aëthnic Union on p.69.
Karen Steele, “A Case Study of Urania (1916-1940)” in Ed. Catherine Clay. Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018 Steele discusses Eva Gore-Booth’s phrase, “sex is an accident”.
Sonja Tiernan. Eva Gore-Booth: an image of such politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012 Tiernan discusses the Aëthnic Union, its newsletter, the Phoenix, and its supporters; she also discusses in detail Eva Gore-Booth’s phrase, “sex is an accident” in chapter 11.
Carla King, “The Other Sister, a review of Eva Gore-Booth: an image of such politics,” Irish Literary Supplement, March, 2014. At https://www.academia.edu/ and free to download.
Anne Fernihough. Freewomen and Supermen: Edwardian radicals and literary modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 Fernihough mentiones the Aëthnic Union on p.193
Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai. Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers, 1889-1939. Chapel Hill ; London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Constance Georgine, Countess Markievicz https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37472 Accessed 14 June, 2020.
These biographical entries can be viewed via the number on a Cumbria public library card.
https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr518277 Accessed 14 June, 2020. This page contains the edition of “The Freewoman” with Thomas Baty’s letter advertising the Aëthnic Union, which you may view or download..
In my next few articles, I would like to consider the fascinating figure of Thomas Baty/Irene Clyde. As a transgender pioneer, Thomas Baty, (1869-1954), who was born in Carlisle, is an important person in Cumbria’s LGBTQ+ heritage. He is also of wider interest for anyone thinking about transgender issues, and about the cultural life of the earlier twentieth century.
Thomas Baty began his life in Carlisle, but ended it in Japan; he had an outwardly conventional career, but went on to co-found and edit the radical, genderqueer journal, “Urania”. Thomas served for many years as government legal advisor to the Japanese foreign office; identified as a feminist; became vegetarian; and wrote pioneering articles and books under the female pseudonym, Irene Clyde.
Thomas was born in Stanwix, Carlisle, Cumberland, in 1869. His mother was Mary (née Matthews), and his father, Thomas Baty, the cabinet-maker, with premises on Fisher Street, Carlisle. Thomas attended Carlisle Grammar School, and we can see from local newspaper reports, that he did well at school. He tried for the Hastings Exhibition for Queen’s College, the University of Oxford, in 1887, and was successful at his second attempt in 1888 – his father had died by this date.
The illustration above, from the “Carlisle Journal”, 1889, and drawn from a photograph by a local photographer, gives, I hope, a flavour of the Carlisle which Thomas Baty knew, when he was growing up.
Thomas took degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, establishing himself as an expert in international law. In fact, he served his articles with a firm of solicitors in his home town, Messrs Donald, Ostell, and Lightfoot, Carlisle.
This tells us something about the outward person – but it would be interesting to know what, if any, personal experiences and impressions contributed to his later unorthodox career. There is a 1902 polemic by Thomas Baty in Macmillan’s Magazine, “The Root of the Matter”, which argues forcefully against compulsory education, and for the independence and influence of the family.
Thomas Baty began to teach law at British universities, and to publish books on international law. In 1915-16, his career began to take a different turn. Through personal contacts, he applied for the post of legal advisor to the Japanese Foreign Office, and in 1916, sailed from London to Japan. The passenger list shows that on the same ticket were Mrs M. Baty, widow, Thomas’s mother, and Miss A M Baty, Anne Mary, his sister.
Thomas Baty had begun to be more active in promulgating his views on gender and on sexuality around this time. As Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai have shown, Baty used the female psuedonym, Irene Clyde. In 1909, Irene Clyde published the novel, Beatrice the Sixteenth. According to a contemporary newspaper notice, the novel concerns the adventures of Mary Hatherley, “explorer and geographer”; the heroine is wounded on her travels, and taken from the African desert to a strange land by strange people. This is in the utopian fantasy tradition, going back to Gulliver’s Travels, and further.
In the mysterious country of Armeria, gender considerations have been abolished, and the language of the inhabitants makes no use of gendered terms. However, Hatherley’s narrative does use feminine pronouns, and it appears that the land is peopled almost entirely by women, who even do the fighting. Baty/Clyde draws unfavourable comparisons between the praiseworthy conduct of this land, and the unenlightened, meat-eating, sexist, and heterosexual culture of Britain of the day; “between the old world and the new”, as the newspaper notice has it. Mary Hatherley goes on to spend the rest of her life with one of the Armerians.
In 1915-1916, Thomas Baty and other important figures founded the radical journal, “Urania”. It was published from 1916-1940, and boldly declared, “There are no ‘men’ or ‘women’ in Urania.” I hope to write more on this fascinating journal in my next post.
Acknowledgements:
I was first alerted to Thomas Baty/Irene Clyde by the LGBT+ exhibition, “Within and Beyond”, at the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry, Kendal, curated by Dr Rachel Roberts; this included an exhibit of one of the surviving copies of “Urania”.
“The Queen”, p.37, Saturday 23 October, 1909. This newspaper includes Beatrice the Sixteenth in its column of book notices, “The Varied Shelf”.
Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai. Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers, 1889-1939. Chapel Hill ; London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993 These authors have done important work in identifying the persona of Irene Clyde with Thomas Baty.
Eds Sonja Tiernan and Mary McAuliffe. Sapphists and Sexologists; Histories of Sexualities, Vol. 2. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, 2009 This discusses “Urania” in chapter 5.
Emily Hamer. Britannia’s Glory: A History of Twentieth Century Lesbians. London: Bloomsbury, 2016 This discusses Thomas Baty, Irene Clyde, Beatrice the Sixteenth, and “Urania” on pp.67-73
Maria Aline Salgueiro Seabra Ferreira. I Am the Other: Literary Negotiations of Human Cloning. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005 This discusses gender and language in Beatrice the Sixteenth on p.75
Introduction by Julian Franklyn to Thomas Baty’s “Vital Heraldry”, in “The Armorial”, 1962. Edinburgh: 1963 This mentions Thomas Baty’s Irene Clyde personality.
LGBT+ Language and Archives 