I discuss the attempt in 1921 to make sexual relations between women in England and Wales illegal.
When I was reading Gill Rossini’s book, Same Sex Love 1700-1957: a history and research guide, Pen & Sword, 2017, which I mentioned here, I was interested to see that in 1921, an MP called Frederick Mcquisten, moved an amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment bill proposed in 1921, which would have made lesbian relations criminal.
Rossini notes that “The amendment was passed by 148 votes to 53 against in the House of Commons, but it was to fail in the House of Lords.” (p.90) You can see in Hansard the debate in the House of Lords about it, which is very interesting. This is the amendment below, from Hansard.
COMMONS AMENDMENT.
HL Deb 15 August 1921 vol 43 cc567-77 567
§ After Clause 3, insert the following as new clauses:
§ Acts of indecency by females.
§ Any act of gross indecency between female persons shall be a misdemeanour, and punishable in the same manner as any such act committed by male persons under section eleven of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885.
It is a counterfactual question which can never be answered, however, it is intriguing to speculate what the results would have been, if this had become law, and lesbian activities had been made illegal.
In her book, Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales, Palgrave, 2020, Caroline Derry notes that the amendment like the 1921 bill “had its roots in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885”. (p.128) This 1885 act contained an amendment by Henry Labouchère which made criminal gross indecency between men, and which was used to prosecute Oscar Wilde.
Derry also argues that the lesbian amendment was introduced by opponents of the 1921 bill, as a kind of wrecking measure, because it was controversial and would mean that the bill would take up more time than available for it and would fail:
“Unlikely to win on the merits of their arguments, they [the bill’s opponents] resorted to manipulating parliamentary procedure. The government had agreed to give enough time for this Private member’s Bill to pass provided that it remained uncontroversial; there would not be sufficient parliamentary time available for additional debates…The gross indecency amendment was introduced as material which would render the bill controversial, ensuring that it ran out of time and would not pass into law. (pp127-8).
Derry observes that “There was unanimity among parliamentarians that lesbianism was a bad thing, but their views on how to control it were considerably more diverse.” (p.129) She goes on to argue, that although the amendment was a “spoiling amendment rather than a serious proposal”, “MPs were, though, exaggerating rather than lying”. (p.135)
Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull include the House of Commons debate on the clause about indecency by females, on 4 August, 1921, in their book, The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex Between Women in Britain from 1780–1970.
For example, Mr Mcquisten, in moving that the clause be read a second time, says:
“It [the clause] is one which, I think, is long overdue in the criminal code of this country. I have had professional experience of very calamitous and sad cases due to gross practices indulged in of the kind specified in the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and which are referred to in my Amendment. These moral weaknesses date back to the very origin of history, and when they grow and become prevalent in any nation or in any country, it is the beginning of the nation’s downfall. The falling away of feminine morality was to a large extent the cause of the destruction of the early Grecian civilisation, and still more the cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire. One cannot in a public assembly go into the details; it is more a matter for medical science and for neurologists; but all lawyers who have criminal and divorce practice know that there is in modern social life an undercurrent of dreadful degradation, unchecked and uninterfered with.” (quoted in Oram & Turnbull, p.166)
Shortly after, in this debate, Lieutenant-Colonel Moore-Brabazon asserted, “There are only three ways of dealing with perverts. The first is the death sentence. That has been tried in old times, and, though drastic, it does do what is required – that is, stamp them out. The second is to look upon them frankly as lunatics, and lock them up for the rest of their lives. This is a very satisfactory way also. It gets rid of them. The third way is to leave them entirely alone, not notice them, or advertise them. That is the method that has been adopted in England for many hundred years, and I believe that it is the best method now, because these cases are self-exterminating. They are examples of ultra-civilisation, but they have the merit of exterminating themselves, and consequently they do not spread or do very much harm to society at large.” ((quoted in Oram & Turnbull, p.168)
There is a curious mixture here of medicalisation, probably of eugenics, and of the shade of Edward Gibbon with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. As Rossini and Derry point out, it was silence which was decided upon as the best method of suppression of lesbian.
In the House of Lords debate on the matter, on 15 August, 1921, the Earl of Desert asserted,
I am strongly of opinion that the mere discussion of subjects of this sort tends, in the minds of unbalanced people, of whom there are many, to create the idea of an offence of which the enormous majority of them have never even heard.” (Hansard)
He also pointed out the opportunities for blackmail of women which the legislation would create: “we all know of the sort of romantic, almost hysterical, friendships that are made between young women at certain periods of their lives and of its occasional manifestations. Suppose that some circumstance gave to some person who knew of it the idea:”How easy it now is for me to make a charge. Perhaps they do not know what the law is.” Do you suppose any woman with anything in the world to lose would ever face such a charge as that?” (Hansard)
The Lord Chancellor, Mr F.E. Smith, asserted in the same debate, “If you except a sophisticated society in a sophisticated city, I would be bold enough to say that of every thousand women, taken as a whole, 999 have never even heard a whisper of these practices. Amongst all these, in the homes of this country, where, in all innocence, and very often as a necessary consequence of the shortage of small houses, they have to have the same bedroom, and even sleep together in the same beds, the taint of this noxious and horrible suspicion is to be imparted, and to be imparted by the Legislature itself, without one scintilla of evidence that there is any widespread practice of this kind of vice.” (Hansard)
The amendment failed, as did the Criminal Law Amendment bill in 1921. A Criminal Law Amendment bill did become law a year later, however, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1922, with no criminalisation of lesbians.
Acknowledgements:
Gill Rossini. Same Sex Love 1700-1957: a history and research guide, Pen & Sword, 2017 See Chapter 3, pp.89-91.
Caroline Derry. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales, Palgrave, 2020
See Chapter three, ‘Gross Indecency Between Females’: The 1921 Parliamentary Debates’
Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull. The Lesbian History SourcebookLove and Sex Between Women in Britain from 1780–1970, Routledge, 2001, and as ebook, Taylor and Francis, 2013. My page references are to the ebook edition. See especially pp.166-169.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1921/aug/15/commons-amendment-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moore-Brabazon,_1st_Baron_Brabazon_of_Tara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._A._Macquisten
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/18281/frederick_macquisten/argyll
This page contains a picture of the politician and lawyer, Frederick Alexander Mcquisten.
The picture, Measure 1922, at the top of this post is by Kurt Schwitters. Kurt Schwitters was an innovative German artist and poet, who fled Nazi Germany, and, via Norway, and intermnent camps in Scotland and England, came to live in Ambleside, Cumbria (then in Westmorland), in June 1945. Schwitters died not long after, in Kendal, in January, 1948. Abbot Hall Gallery at Lakeland Arts in Kendal has some of his work.
https://lakelandarts.org.uk/items/kurt-schwitters-1887-1948/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Kurt Schwitters
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/60630
Viewable with the number on a Cumbria public library card.
LGBT+ Language and Archives 