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.
In this post I discuss the possible same sex relationship of May Morris, 1862–1938, the designer, craftswoman, and activist.
May Morris was born into the British arts and crafts movement, as a daughter of Jane and William Morris. Although the Morris family had homes in Kent, London, and famously, at Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire, May Morris has a slight link with Cumbria.
George James Howard (1843-1911), later 9th Earl of Carlisle, and his wife, Rosalind Frances Howard, had their home at Naworth Castle, near Brampton, Cumberland. Jane Morris, May’s mother, was friends with Rosalind Howard, and in 1870, May and her sister Jenny (Jane) Morris, spent part of the summer at Naworth with the Howard family. George Howard was an important artist and patron in the area, and while the girls were visiting, he painted a portrait of them. He donated artwork to what is now Tullie House and some of his pictures may be seen there.
George Howard, Jenny & May Morris, 1870 (plate II) (Collected Letters of Jane Morris) Housed Society of Antiquaries London Collection
May Morris grew up to be a skilled embroidress and designer. She was a socialist and writer on the arts. In 1907, she founded the Women’s Guild of Arts, with Mary Elizabeth Turner, since the Art-Worker’s Guild did not admit women.
There are LGBTQ connections too. In the following paragraphs, I am drawing on the research by Simon Evans, Curatorial Assistant, at the National Library of Wales. After the deaths of her parents, and while her sister, Jenny, was living in care homes. May Morris lived alone during the war at Kelmscott Manor, near Lechlade, Oxfordshire. During this time, many women joined the Land Army which was formed in 1917. A woman called Mary Lobb, who came from a family in Cornwall with a farming background, already had experience driving a steam roller in Launceston. In 191, she joined the Land Army and came to work in Lechlade, on a farm belonging to Robert Hobbs. Mary Lobb and the others on the farm seem not to have got on. So Mary either left or was sacked.
Mary Lobb then came to work for May Morris, as a gardener at first. But then May Morris and Mary Lobb became companions. They spent the rest of their lives together, even taking a holiday to Iceland together. May and Mary did not always live together, but they often did, and Simon Evans notes postcard evidence referring to “our bedroom”. He also states that May and Mary could be seen together out and about in Kelmscott or Lechlade, or in horse and trap, and that this occasioned local gossip. May Morris died first, in1938, and Mary Lobb in 1939.
From a modern perspective, the two women’s relation looks to be a lesbian one, although they did not use that word themselves. They certainly lived as close companions. I believe that the information available to visitors to Kelmscott Manor is being updated to reflect the queer aspect, and to balance what was previouslyless sympathetic and sparser references to Mary Lobb’s part in May Morris’s life. For more detail, I recommend downloading Simon Evans’s excellent article which contains photographs and pictures.
Acknowledgements:
Simon Evans’s article is available as a PDF file below:
John or Eleanor Rykener was a gender non conforming person from the south of England at the end of the fourteenth century.
I recently came across a very interesting true historical story, courtesy of researcher, Kim Racon, of Lehigh University. You can read her blog here. I won’t repeat her blog verbatim, but essentially, two people were arrested by London authorities for having sex out of doors in 1394. One of these people was dressed as a woman, alias Eleanor Rykener, but was discovered to be a man, John Rykener.
The confession of John/Eleanor Rykener has been preserved for us in London’s medieval records. It tells us that Rykener had been living and working as a woman, including as a tapster, that is a medieval bar tender, as an embroideress, as a female prostitute having sex with amongst others, male and female clerics. It seems that male clients at least may have believed Rykener to have been a woman. Tapster, embroideress, and prostitute, were all occupations associated with women. Rykener also had sex as a man with women.
As well as being in London, Rykener spent time in Beaconsfield, including having a sexual relationship with a woman, in Oxford, where she pursued embroidery and prostitution, and in the nearby town of Burford, where she worked as a tapster in the Swan Inn. I have put a picture of the medieval buildings of Burford, though not, I think, the Swan, at the top of this post.
Kim Racon notes that in the record of the confession and interrogation, the late fourteenth century Latin uses male and female pronouns for Rykener, depending on context. We don’t exactly what happened to Eleanor or John Rykener, and how they fared in later life.
Do have a look at Racon’s blog, and follow up the references below, if you are at all interested in this fascinating piece of early LGBTQ history.
A still from a 1971 documentary on ATV, called The Important Thing Is Love
A selection of 1970s and 1980s documentary TV films of LGBTQ relevance.
When I was researching for this blog, I came across an excellent list of old documentary films of LGBTQ interest, courtesy of Will Noble on Londonist.com. These programmes were shown on British TV in the 1970s and the 1980s, and many are free to watch online on the British Film Institute player.
You can see the full Londonist list here. Here are a few that I have looked at and found very interesting:
An episode of “Speak for Yourself” from London Weekend Television in 1974, where the London group of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) made a film about their lives. Written by Jackie Forster and Roger Baker, it shows gay people chatting about themselves and attitudes in wider society, enjoying a boat trip on the Thames, and campaigning; there is also an interview with the programme presenter. The programme was originally screened at 11.20pm only in the London area. This is a sympathetic, well made and unpretentious film, which manages to convey a sense of solidarity and the flavour of the times. It is also fascinating to see people’s clothes and hairstyles!
Another film by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Lewisham, is David is Homosexual. This 1976 film was written by Wilfred Avery and filmed by David Belton. It follows the story of David, who initially unhappy and frustrated, joins the CHE, comes out to his family, and develops a rewarding life. The film shows other members of the group at meetings and later, the 1976 Gay Pride rally in Hyde Park. A compelling narration with a very human touch.
Heaven (Gay Life), London Weekend Television, 1980, explores gay life for men, with different scenes around a London nightclub called Heaven; the first part of the film looks at male to female drag and its early history, with interesting interviews by male drag artists. It also features remarks by a very young looking Alison Hennegan, at that time with Gay News.
The Important Thing is Love, a documentary from 1971, has a selection of people, lesbians and straight men, giving their opinions on lesbianism to camera. Some interesting contributions and an insight into attitudes of the late 1960s and 1970s.
These films, which are all free to watch, do concentrate on London. One documentary relevant to Cumbria, is the 1986 film made for Channel Four’s Six of Heart series, A Boy Called Mary. In this film, Kris Kirk, who was born in Carlisle in 1950 and who went on to be a music journalist, talks about his life and the gay scene. The film is not free to watch, though; it costs one pound to view.
There are other films of LGBTQ interest to be found by searching the Londonist list, and the British Film Institute itself. Of course, the language and approaches are of a piece with their time. Although I have put LGBTQ in the post title, this acronym does not appear in any of the films, and homosexuality and lesbianism are the common words used. I found some of these films fascinating, to see how people saw themselves and others in the 1970s and 1980s.
Gay Liberation Front street theatre. Hall-Carpenter Archives/LSE Library This picture does not to my knowledge show Kris Kirk, but does show gay street theatre of the sort in which he was involved in the early to mid 1970s.
This post discusses Kris Kirk, radical drag, and the Gay Liberation Front.
I have written in previous posts about Kris Kirk. Kris Kirk was born in 1950 in Carlisle, was christened as Christopher Pious Mary Kirk, and grew up and went to school in Carlisle. He attended the University of Nottingham, and after working in a variety of jobs, including theatrical dresser, he became a journalist. He wrote, amongst other subjects, about pop music, and wrote openly too as a gay man. His best music journalism has been collected in the book, A Boy Called Mary: Kris Kirk’s greatest hits. Kris Kirk was also profiled in the television series, “Six of Hearts”, in 1986.
With his partner, the photographer, Ed Heath, he brought out a book on drag and gender, called Men In Frocks, in 1984. Later he and his partner moved to Wales, but in 1991, Kris Kirk became ill with AIDS, and he died in 1993.
When Kris Kirk was a student at the University of Nottingham, he founded the Nottingham Gay Liberation Front, and took part in radical street theatre. I recently came across an informative LGBT history blog by Tony Scupham-Bilton, which discusses Kris Kirk and drag in Nottingham. You can read Tony’s posts which mention Kris Kirk here.
I won’t recount all the details from Tony’s blog, as his own posts speak for themselves. But suffice to say, that it involves the Nottingham Gay Liberation Front and a gay street performance of Robin Hood, with Kris Kirk in drag as Maid Marian! Delegates from the Soviet Union also make an appearance in the story. This was in 1975, and The Campaign for Homosexual Equality was also involved, with perhaps other groups. You can read here a reminiscence by Heather Cook, who also took part in the street play, dressing up as the Major Oak.
Gay street theatre, which produced Nottingham’s Robina Hood and her Gay Folk, was part of a wider vigorous culture of “zaps”, often by the Gay Liberation Front. Zaps were public pro LGBTQ demonstrations. Nowadays, we would call it direct action, although zap is a memorable term. Kris Kirk describes zaps of the early 1970s in Men in Frocks. These involved wearing outrageous costumes and interrupting a Festival of Light Rally in 1971, and street theatre in London, as GLF theatre goers went through Kings Cross tube station to the Duchess theatre in astonishing costumes, and also handed out leaflets.
Clearly these actions, whether protests, demonstrations, or street theatre challenged the public and made people think. They also used dressing up and cross dressing as confrontation radical tools.
The Gay Liberation Front was founded in 1970 at the London School of Economics, and people held its first meeting there. The LSE has a good collection of material relating to this and to LGBTQ issues in its Hall-Carpenter archives, and has also put up relevant photos, such as the one at the head of this post, in its collection on Flickr. I recommend look at these interesting photos. Maybe somebody will recognise themselves or others!
Kris Kirk’s activism in Nottingham in his student days in the 1970s shows that GLF or CHE type activism percolated around the country, and gives a flavour of the LGBTQ culture of the time.
In this post, I introduce the writer, socialist, and campaigner, Edward Carpenter,1844-1929.
As we approach Cumbria Pride on 25 September, it is worth remembering historical pioneers like the socialist and reformer, Edward Carpenter, who was a great exponent of homosexual acceptance and equality. Carpenter published pioneering works, and endeavoured to live out his ideas in practice too.
Edward Carpenter was born in Hove, in Sussex, in 1844 to a comfortably off upper middle class family. He was educated at Brighton College, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was ordained as a curate in the Church of England, but became dissatisfied, and with other clerics, petitioned Gladstone to be able to resign his orders. He left clerical orders, and consequently had to resign his Cambridge fellowship, in 1874. Thereafter, Carpenter moved to the Leeds, Sheffield, and Derbyshire area, and he began to lecture as a member of the Cambridge staff for the university extension movement. This movement was designed to take lectures to people who had not been able to attend university.
In the 1880s, Carpenter had developed his interests in natural living, vegetarianism, and in 1886, helped found the Sheffield Socialist Society. He became friends with William Morris, and was influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin. Carpenter was attracted to other men too, and he lived first with Albert Ferneyhough, at Totley, near Sheffield, and then at Bradway, where he began to write poetry. Albert Ferneyhough was a scythe-maker, and Carpenter and Ferneyhough were unusual in crossing class as well as sexual boundaries.
Carpenter’s father, Charles, died in 1882. The £6000 of Edward’s inheritance, a significant sum at the time, allowed him financial security to live and work independently. In 1883, Carpenter bought land at Millthorpe, Derbyshire, and established himself there, in a new cottage and a small market garden. Albert and Albert’s family moved in too. Carpenter became involved with other men, George Hukin, a razor grinder, and Cecil Reddie, founder of Abbotsholme school, Derbyshire, a school in which outdoor tasks and animal work featured heavily.
Visitors to Carpenter and Millthorpe included the artist and art critic, Roger Fry, who painted the portrait at the top of this post; Raymond Unwin, an architect who became involved with the garden city movement, and its progressive ideas of better homes for working people and closeness to nature; and in 1912, the novelist, E.M. Forster, whose novel about homosexual love, Maurice, was to remain unpublished until 1971.
During the winter of 1889-90, Edward Carpenter met George Merrill in a railway carriage. Merrill was a working class man from Sheffield, and they began a relationship. Again, they were crossing class and sexual boundaries. From 1893, Merrill was Carpenter’s partner and companion, living with him from 1898 at Millthorpe. Their relationship endured until George Merril’s death, in 1928.
The breadth and depth of Carpenter’s reforming ideas are striking. An active socialist, he campaigned hard with others against the air pollution and bad conditions caused by industries in Sheffield. Carpenter, who as I mentioned had become vegetarian, was friends with Henry and Catherine Salt and supported the Humanitarian League which they and others founded in 1891. The Humanitarian League promoted animal rights and prison reform, and campaigned against cruel sports and vivisection, and against capital and corporal punishment.
Carpenter was also friends with the activist and suffragette, Charlotte Despard, founder of the Women’s Freedom League. He advocated dress reform, made and sold sandals, and promoted sandal wearing. Carpenter had early become interested in Hindu spirituality, and in 1890-1, he travelled to India and Ceylon, to explore the culture and philosophy, and converse with a guru. Philosophical, spiritual, political, economic, and practical ideas of equality and of freedom could all dovetail in his mind.
In the area of homosexual recognition and rights, Carpenter is an important pioneer. In 1894-5, his pamphlets on sex, love, marriage, woman’s place in a free society were published, and then printed as a book, Love’s Coming-of-Age, in 1896. In fact, Carpenter had also written a fourth pamphlet, not included in the book, called, “Homogenic Love and its Place in a Free Society”. This pamphlet dealt with sexual relations between men, and was printed only for private circulation. By 1906, though, this section was able to be included in a new edition of Love’s Coming-of-Age. In 1908, Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women was published. This book did have an impact, and those influenced by reading it included the poet and autobiographer, Siegfried Sassoon, who corresponded with Carpenter about it in 1911. Sassoon was attracted to other men, and Carpenter’s book helped his understanding and recognition of this.
Carpenter helped to convey the theorising and reforming ideas of the German writer, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs into English. Ulrichs published radical works in the 1860s, and himself, homosexual, defended homosexuality and advocated reform. Indeed, Ulrichs theorised about bisexuality and intersex too. He coined words such as Urning, in English, Uranian, and may be thought of as a pioneering sexologist.
In his book, The Intermediate Sex, Carpenter discusses Ulrichs’s ideas, and gives his own thoughts,
“If the modern woman is a little more masculine in some ways than her predecessor, the modern man (it is to be hoped), while by no means effeminate, is a little more sensitive in temperament and artistic in feeling than the17 original John Bull. It is beginning to be recognised that the sexes do not or should not normally form two groups hopelessly isolated in habit and feeling from each other, but that they rather represent the two poles of one group—which is the human race; so that while certainly the extreme specimens at either pole are vastly divergent, there are great numbers in the middle region who (though differing corporeally as men and women) are by emotion and temperament very near to each other.”
Carpenter says also,
“‘Urnings,’ or Uranians, are by no means so very rare; but that they form, beneath the surface of society, a large class…Of course, if in addition are included those double-natured people (of whom there is a great number) who experience the normal attachment, with the homogenic tendency in less or greater degree superadded, the estimates must be greatly higher.”
He goes on to add that Uranian men may be artistic, sensitive, given to music and to poetry, as well perhaps as being, “often muscular and well-built, and not distinguishable in exterior structure and the carriage of body from others of their own sex;”
This would have been comforting to Siegfried Sassoon, a sporty poet!
Edward Carpenter was also friendly with Havelock Ellis, and met John Addington Symonds, who were working on a book length study of homosexuality, or inversion, to use the language of the time. Havelock Ellis’s book, Sexual Inversion, 1897, was the first medical textbook on homosexuality; it contained anonymous contributions by Edward Carpenter and by others, and endeavoured to treat homosexuality as a natural phenomenon, rather than as a sin or disease.
It is notable, that despite being an active proponent of what he sometimes termed homogenic love, Carpenter did not encounter trouble with the law, as Oscar Wilde did, in 1895. Carpenter’s attachments were no secret; indeed, he lived with male partners, and had a wide circle of homosexual friends and acquaintances.
Edward Carpenter died in Guildford, Surrey, in 1929. If you would like to read more about this complex and pioneering man, there are suggestions to follow up in the acknowledgements.
Acknowledgements:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on Edward Carpenter https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32300 Viewable with the number on a Cumbria public library card.
Measure 1922 Kurt Schwitters 1887-1948 Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T12392
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.
§ 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.
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.
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.
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.
13th December 1977: Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun with the Gay Defence Committee protesting at Transport House over moves to unseat her from the constituency of Northampton North. (Photo by Wesley/Keystone/Getty Images) Photo embedded from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2019/02/13/maureen-colquhoun/ I’ve tried to embed the Getty Images link directly, without success.
Maureen Colquhoun, 1928-2021, was a Labour politician, and the first openly lesbian MP, who pressed tirelessly for women’s rights, moving to Ambleside, Cumbria, in 1992.
Maureen Colquhoun, on the left of the photo, died this year, in February 2021, at the age of ninety two. In 1992, she, and her partner, Barbara Todd, moved to Ambleside, Cumbria, where they spent the latter part of their lives. Maureen Colquhoun became a councillor on Lakes parish council, and she was also a member of the Lake District National Park Authority. Involved in local issues, she sought, for example, speed limits on Lake Windermere and fewer low flying military exercises over the Lake District.
Maureen Colquhoun was born on 12 August, 1928, in Sussex. As the photograph above suggests, she went on to live an active political life. She joined the Labour party as a teenager, and then studied at the London School of Economics. She became a West Sussex councillor for the party, in Shoreham. During her time as a councillor here, she was blocked briefly by Conservatives from sitting on committees, and described as a “chatterbox”. Colquhoun was, in fact, the only woman member of the council authority at this time.
In 1974, Colquhoun was elected as the MP for Northampton North. She served as MP until losing her seat in the 1979 general election, following a deselection battle. During Colquhoun’s time as MP, she made her mark, raising issues, with which today, we have become more familiar. In 1975, she argued for the provision of a creche for female delegates at Labour party conferences. Colquhoun also asked the speaker in the House of Commons, George Thomas, to address her as Maureen Colquhoun or as Ms Colquhoun. Thomas agreed to pronounce the prefix in a way which would elide the distinction between Mrs and Miss. We are all familiar with the use of Ms as a title today, but it was rare in 1976, and the first time that such a request had been made in the House of Commons.
Colquhoun introduced a private member’s bill to the house in 1975, the Balance of Sexes Bill. It proposed equal numbers of men and women for public appointments. In the order for the second reading of the bill, Colquhoun said, “My Bill is designed positively to discriminate for women…
shall merely draw the attention of the House today to some of the everyday bread-and-butter bodies that affect everybody’s lives. For example, the Sugar Board has five men and no women. The Agriculture Training Board has 27 men, no women. Is it to be said that the only rôle of the woman in agriculture is that of the farmer’s wife?
The Committee of Investigation for Great Britain has seven men, no women. I cannot think how Great Britain can be investigated without the help of women.”
You can read more here. The discussion of the time does not go into non binary gender or gender non-conforming issues, except insofar as it concerns the role of women in public life.
Colquhoun’s bill did not become law, but it pushed on the debate about equal opportunities in a pioneering way. Subsequent legislation and measures reflect the way that attitudes have shifted, and we do sometimes see positive discrimination today.
At this time, in 1975, Maureen Colquhoun met Barbara or Babs Todd, and the two women fell in love. Barbara Todd was co-editing the lesbian and bisexual women’s magazine, Sappho, which she and Jackie Forster, and other women had founded. This magazine was started in 1972, after the first British lesbian magazine, Arena Three had folded, and it continued until 1981.
Cover of Sappho from November 1976 showing ‘the three Botticelli beauties. Courtesy of Glasgow Women’s Library
Colquhoun left her husband, Keith, and moved in with Todd. Their housewarming party led to public exposure, in that Nigel Dempster revealed the women’s relationship in the Daily Mail newspaper, in 1976.
This, and other issues, led to Colquhoun being deselected as a candidate in 1977 by the Labour party, some of whom did not approve of her “obsession with trivialities such as women’s rights”. Colquhoun was later reinstated as a candidate, but lost her seat of Northampton North in the 1979 general election. Before Colquhoun left parliament, in 1979, she introduced a bill to decriminalise prostitution, the Protection of Prostitutes Bill. She brought fifty prostitutes into the committee room in the House of Commons for the first reading of the bill (LSE). This bill did not become law, although it was allowed a second reading. The issues which it raised are still very much debated today.
After leaving parliament, Maureen Colquhoun remained active, in the charity Gingerbread, as a research assistant, in the Secretaries and Assistants’ Council and becoming a councillor in Hackney, where she served from 1982-1990. In 1992, as I have mentioned, she and her partner, Barbara Todd, moved to Ambleside, Cumbria. Colquhoun and Todd married in 2015, and lived together until Barbara Todd died in February of 2020. Maureen Colquhoun, who died a year later has left a political legacy behind her.
Keswick Lake, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1831-2 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/D27698 Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
I mention in this post some potentially interesting websites and books for those readers of this blog who feel inspired to look into LGBTQ heritage and research themselves.
The Institute of Historical Research has a good reading list, on its History of Sexuality & LGBTQ Collections webpage. I particularly recommend the sections on LGBTQ General Works, Homosexuality and Same-Gender and relationships, Queer/Questioning, and LGBTQ+ Biographies. English Heritage, some of whose properties have LGBTQ connections, has an excellent LGBTQ History webpage, with links to articles to follow up. For example, Alison Oram has written a great, thought-provoking article on Experiments in Gender. Katie Burke has written an insightful article on Researching LGBTQ History, discussing terms and concepts. The English Heritage webpages are very well-illustrated, with pictures of people and places. TheNational Trust also has lots of LGBTQ content on its webpages. It too owns properties with LGBTQ associations. You can find more information here, and even a series of podcasts by Clare Balding.
Books on LGBTQ history can also be found. These include Alison Oram’s famous study, The Lesbian History Sourcebook : love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970, Routledge, 2001. I am not aware of a book specifically on Cumbria LGBTQ heritage. However, the diaries of the eighteenth century Anne Lister give a startling insight into some women’s lives in Yorkshire. There are several books relating to Anne Lister in Cumbrian public libraries, for example, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (1791-1840), Virago, 2020; Anne Choma, ed. Stella Merz, Gentleman Jack : the real Anne Lister; with a foreword by Sally Wainwright, BBC Books, 2019.
The publishing company, Pen & Sword, has produced some interesting relevant books. Charlotte Furness’s book,Unmarried Women of the Country Estate, Pen & Sword, 2020, includes a section on Anne Lister, as well as discussing other characterful women. Particularly relevant is Gill Rossini’s book,Same Sex Love 1700-1957: a history and research guide, Pen & Sword, 2017. This book contains an overview of LGBTQ history in England, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Chapters include “Changing Attitudes to Male Same-sex Relationships”, “Molly Houses”, “Romantic Friendships Between Victorian Women”, “The Medicalisation of Same-sex Desires”, “Case study: The Masked Ball of 1880 in Manchester”, and “The Beginnings of a Homosexual Social Network”. At the end of this very clearly written book, Rossini has a useful “A Research Guide to Same Sex Relationships”.
I hope that these resources give food for thought. I am sure that there are many more resources out there! Feel free to share some in the comments section.
Alison Oram. The Lesbian History Sourcebook : love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970. Routledge, 2001.
Anne Lister. The secret diaries of Miss Anne Lister (1791-1840). Virago, 2020. Carlisle public library 306.766 and Kendal public library 306.766 Ed. Stella Merz. Gentleman Jack : the real Anne Lister / Anne Choma ; with a foreword by Sally Wainwright. BBC Books, 2019 Carlisle public library 902 LIS and Workington public library 306.766 A list of books in Cumbria public libraries featuring Anne Lister, https://cumbria-libraries.org.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=&q=anne+lister&branch_group_limit=
Charlotte Furness. Unmarried Women of the Country Estate. Pen and Sword, 2020. Gill Rossini. Same Sex Love 1700-1957: a history and research guide. Pen & Sword, 2017.
I discuss in this post, the house of Brantwood, in Coniston, which is, most famously, the home of John Ruskin, but also a house which appears in the texture of some of Cumbria’s queer stories.
John Ruskin, 1819-1900, bought Brantwood in 1871. The house itself is situated overlooking Coniston Water, Cumbria, and may be reached by boat, as well as by road. Ruskin retained a home in London, but spent long periods in Brantwood in the Lake District. John Ruskin was a significant art critic, patron of the arts, and social thinker, influential during his lifetime, and after. He had early an interest in geology, and advocated greater naturalism in art and in his own pictures. Ruskin was a patron of Turner, and became a notable figure in Pre-Raphaelite circles. His personal life was troubled, both with relationships, and later, with illness.
Ruskin’s ideas about craft, mechanisation, and education for work people, sometimes intersecting with those of Thomas Carlyle, influenced Canon Rawnsley, who went on to co-found the National Trust, and also the proponent of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris. John Ruskin lived an active life, publishing and giving lectures, as well as foreign travels to sites of artistic importance. He left behind him many published works on artistic and social subjects, as well as interesting personal correspondence and diaries. Today, Brantwood is owned by the Brantwood Trust, and the house and its gardens are open to the public.
When I was investigating people who might have relevance to Cumbria’s LGBTQ heritage, I came across mentions of Brantwood several times. The first was in connection with the Victorian author, Eliza Lynn Linton, who had a rather queer life, and who wrote suggestively queer novels. Eliza Lynn, who grew up in Cumberland and then moved to London, married in 1858, William Linton, an engraver, and a social and political reformer. William James Linton bought the house of Brantwood in 1852, and moved into it, with his children and second partner, Emily. In Brantwood, Linton set up a private printing press and was joined there in 1854 by three young men who helped him print pamphlets, and his monthly magazine, espousing Republican principles, the English Republic. According to one of these men,
“I was also one of the three young men who went to Brantwood in the spring of 1854, to help with the mechanical portion of the publication of the English Republic. Here we printed not only that work, but also a Tyneside magazine called the Northern Tribune; but the scheme in which we were engaged was not financially successful, hence the English Republic ceased, the establishment was broken up, and the little community we had constituted had dispersed.” (W.E. Adams in Somes Layard, p90)
William James Linton, c.1858 in George Somes Layard. Mrs Lynn Linton. Methuen: London, 1901, p91
“Only an enthusiast would have thought of setting up a printing office in a remote quarter of the Lake District, miles away from the nearest railway station. Paper and other materials had to be carted over the Fells from Windermere to Brantwood, and the printed magazines had to be carted over the Fells from Brantwood to Windermere back again. Nor did the circulation of the English Republic warrant this inevitable addition to the cost of production. As a matter of fact, it never did pay at all. Mr. Linton had therefore to finance the establishment out of his own earnings as an engraver.” ((W.E. Adams in Somes Layard, pp91-2)
It was during this period that William Linton, while living with Emily at Brantwood, first met Eliza Lynn. She already had a reputation as a writer, and being a native of Cumberland, happened to be in Keswick. Eliza Lynn visited Brantwood and made friends with William and Emily. Eliza Lynn’s first impression of Brantwood is of the unkempt garden, where nature was allowed to flourish, and, given the reforming ideas of the household, where the children of the house were playing in gender neutral clothing:
“Playing in the neglected, untrimmed garden, where never tree nor bush was lopped nor pruned, and where the long grass of the lawn was starred with dandelions and daisies as better flowers than those which man could cultivate, was a troop of little children…all dressed exactly alike – in long blouses of that coarse blue flannel with which housemaids scrub the floors; and all had precisely the same kind of hats – the girls distinguished from the boys only by a somewhat broader band of faded ribbon.” (Eliza Lynn Linton, Somes Layard, p94)
Not long after, Emily died, and Eliza married William Linton, and took on responsibility for the seven children. Eliza Lynn Linton’s book, The Lake Country, 1864, was illustrated with engravings by her husband. William. In fact, their marriage did not last, due to incompatible habits, and they stopped living at Brantwood. In 1866, William Linton left with his children for America, and Eliza Lynn Linton stayed in England. The house of Brantwood was let, and, in 1871, it was bought by John Ruskin.
In his correspondence of 1871, Ruskin mentions his newly acquired house:
“The view from the house was finer than I expected, the house itself dilapidated and rather dismal.” (To Mrs Arthur Severn, 12 Sept, 1871, Letters, Vol 2, pp34-5)
“I’ve bought a small place here, with five acres of rock and moor, a streamlet, and I think on the whole the finest view I know in Cumberland or Lancashire, with the sunset visible over the same. The house – small, old, damp, and smoky-chimneyed – somebody must help me get to rights.” (To Charles Eliot Norton, 14 Sept, 1871, Letters, Vol 2, p35)
In addition to Eliza Lynn Linton’s links with Brantwood, I also came across the household of Miss Harriette Rigbye and Miss Frances Tolmie in connection with the house. I have discussed their arrangement in my talk on Partnerships and Relationships. I do not claim that this was a gay relationship; however, between 1874-1895, the women shared a household in an enduring arrangement, and Harriette Rigbye left Frances Tolmie a substantial bequest in her will. They were living at Thwaite Cottage, Coniston, where they met their neighbour, John Ruskin. As Ethel Bassin notes, the references to Harriette Rigbye are slight, but they make clear that Miss Rigbye, and probably by extension, Frances Tolmie was part of the Ruskin circle at Coniston.
Ruskin was friendly with the Miss Beevers of Thwaite, and the little distance from Brantwood allowed easy visiting. The Miss Beevers were friends of Miss Harriette Rigbye, and Ruskin includes his love to Harriette Rigbye in a letter to Miss Susan Beever and her sister, Mary. Ruskin’s diary mentions him taking a walk “through Miss Rigbye’s wood in quite lovely spring day”. (Diaries, p1103) Ruskin also writes to Miss Rigbye herself, and including a drawing of leaves. thanking her for a tree-peony. Interestingly, Ruskin does not appear to refer to Frances Tolmie anything like as much, if at all. Perhaps this is a question of status; Frances Tolmie was considered Harriette Rigbye’s companion, rather than the other way around. This circle of friends at Coniston, with the exception of John Ruskin himself, was quite feminine; it is likely that they saw each other very frequently, and they did correspond when they were out of the country.John Ruskin continued at Brantwood until the end of his life in 1900, as indeed, did Frances Tolmie and Harriette Rigbye at Thwaite Cottage, until 1894-5.
When researching for this project, I also came across the singer and musician, Mary Wakefield, 1853-1910, through the work of Sophie Fuller and Catherine Maxwell. Mary Wakefield, born in Kendal, was a very active amateur musician, who greatly encouraged local choirs. Maxwell and Fuller have written on the possibility of Mary Wakefield having same sex relationships. There is a link with Brantwood here too. Mary Wakefield and John Ruskin were introduced at a luncheon party in London in 1876 (Newmarch, Chp. V, p.55) Gradually during the later 1870s and in the 1880s, they became much better acquainted with each other, and developed a friendship of significance to them both.
Mary Wakefield and John Ruskin exchanged ideas on art, music, and nature. Wakefield would drive the thirty miles to Brantwood from her Westmorland home of Sedgwick, and Ruskin had paid a visit to Sedgwick, where he heard Mary Wakefield and her sister, Agnes singing. Wakefield referred to Ruskin’s views on music in her publications, and she also wrote an affectionate account of the house and gardens of Brantwood,”Brantwood, Coniston: John Ruskin’s Home”, for Murray’s Magazine, November, 1890. Ruskin had built a turret room at Brantwood, with a magnificent view of the scenery; Wakefield might well have felt at home there, as she herself occupied rooms in the tower in her family home of Sedgwick. (Newmarch Chapter V, p.58 and passim).
In this 1890 article, Wakefield describes in particular, her long-remembered first visit to Brantwood, the approach to the house, the courtesy of the host, the aesthetics of the interior, and the detail of the garden and surrounding countryside:
“you come quite suddenly upon a singularly peaceful-looking little nook, from whence opens out the short carriage-drive, under tall larches on one side, and a lovely mossy wall, covered with a profusion of ferns, on the other, bringing us to the door, and hearty welcome, which at Brantwood is always bestowed at the threshold” (quoted from Wakefield’s article in Newmarch, Chp. 5, p.62)
Interestingly, both William James Linton and John Ruskin favoured self-publishing. William Linton had a physical printing press in the establishment of Brantwood, where he printed his political pamphlets. Ruskin found Linton’s press in an outhouse, when he gained ownership of the house, and Ruskin’s biographer, Timothy Hilton, states that this spurred Ruskin towards self-publishing his own works (pp. 499-501) Self-publishing works of interest and importance to oneself was a feature of certain nineteenth century circles, and in this context, we may note William Morris, and the Kelmscott Press.
Here are pictures of William Linton and of John Ruskin, in their old age.
Brantwood, house and grounds, has formed a thread through the records of some of the people of interest to Cumbria’s LGBTQ past. This may be a meaningless coincidence. It does, however, give another way to consider a narrative of the property. In my view, it also reflects the likelihood that people who either lived in, or were on visiting terms with, this well-situated and substantial house, were those middle or upper middle class people who would leave records behind them. These records come in the form of letters, diaries, publications, photographs. This means in turn, that it is easier to identify queer elements in their lives.
George Somes Layard. Mrs Lynn Linton. Methuen: London, 1901
Eliza Lynn Linton. The Lake Country. London, 1864 https://archive.org/details/lakecountry00lintiala This is in the public libraries of Barrow-in-Furness, Carlisle, Kendal, Keswick, and Whitehaven.
Ethel Bassin. The Old Songs of Skye: Frances Tolmie and her circle. London: Routledge, 1977, Chp. 8
Timothy Hilton. John Ruskin. Yale University Press, 2002
Eds Joan Evans, John Howard Whitehouse. The Diaries of John Ruskin: 1874-1889. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959 I have been unable to consult this book properly, but the reference to Ruskin’s walk is on p.1103
Rosa Newmarch. Mary Wakefield, a memoir. Kendal: Atkinson & Pollitt, 1912. This is a memoir of Mary Wakefield, by her friend, the musicologist, Rosa Newmarch, is the key source for Wakefield’s life. You can download a pdf of this publication on The Mary Wakefield Westmorland Festival website. There is a reference copy in the Fred Barnes Collection in Barrow-in-Furness public library; in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library; and in the reference collection in Kendal public library. See especially Chapter V Friendship with Ruskin.
There are many books on John Ruskin and Brantwood in Cumbria public libraries. For example, Ed Helen Viljoen. The Brantwood diary of John Ruskin: together with selected related letters and sketches of persons mentioned. Yale University Press, 1971 in the Jackson library, in Carlisle public library 1 F RUS Windermere public library L820 RUS
LGBT+ Language and Archives 