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Gay Old Ireland - Whats the Story
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12-03-2011 10:02am#1
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Well if as you say a how progressive a society is its treatment and acceptence of minorities, are you raising some sort of issue that gay rights weren't included in the 1916 Proclaimation or the earlier writings or speeches of say, Tone, Emmet etcI have been wondering about this for some time, a modern standard or so we are told of assessing how progressive a society is its treatment and acceptence of minorities.
Occassionally, you get books on it Brian Lacey's "Terrible Queer Ireland" has everyone gay from St Patrick to Patrick Pearse.
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/61344.html
The evidence presented is often at best tenuous and according to one poster I asked is a " So & so (name) he's gay" and so on.
For reasons that are obvious I dont think there should be any reference to Patrick Pearses sexuality here . The standard argument is based around a poem " The Little Lad of Tricks" and some historians even say he had "Aspergers" http://www.independent.ie/national-news/rebel-pearse-was-no-gay-blade-but-had-autistic-temperment-128853.html. So no Pearse please and if you want a "Pearse is Gay Thread" start your own.
I am not gay and asked the mods had it been discussed here and was told not in detail. Part of the reason I have an interest is that a few months ago , I made a comment on a post on another forum on a social issue commenting that LGBT rights were absent .
Now I do lore & footnotes - so how I operate is to look up and read up and post what I find if interesting, storiies, trials , crime reports etc . So I am starting it with a clean sheet and anyone who has info just post it.
That way we will get a feel for how LGBT co-existed within society in Irish history.
?
Yes indeed, Irish nationalism and the 1916 Rising should once again be condemned for not mentioning these issues and others such as genetic engineering, artifcal intelligence and space travel etc as they should have forseen all these developments :rolleyes: Unlike documents which have included gay rights such as the America Declaration of Independence, the French Revoulotion, Magna Carta etc :rolleyes:0 -
Homosexuality- sodomy as a crime was introduced into Ireland by this guy - John Atherton and he was also executed for buggery with his steward John Child - I wonded did the medievals do jokes like " being with childe".
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][SIZE=+1]Atherton, John (1598-1640) [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT] [FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]In 1640, John Atherton, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, was hanged in Ireland for sodomy<a href="/glossary.php?word=sodomy&part=" target="_blank">sodomy</a> under a law that he had helped to institute. The sensational Atherton case was frequently cited in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as warning of the fate of men who engaged in same-sex sexual relations.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Born near Bridgewater in Somersetshire, England in 1598, Atherton came from a prosperous family and received an education at Oxford University. Sometime in his youth, possibly while at Oxford, he engaged in sexual relations with another man. It is not known how long this relationship continued or whether he habitually pursued sexual contact with other men. [/FONT]
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[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Atherton entered the service of the Church of England, presumably shortly after leaving Oxford. Around 1620, he took a wife and began a family.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]It is not clear why Atherton left England for Ireland in 1634, though he had possibly earned a reputation as a libertine that may have played a factor in the move. One anonymous contemporary, in a rhyming pamphlet published after Atherton's death, charged that the cleric had fled after committing numerous offenses, including incest with the sister of his wife. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Atherton later confessed to a series of sins, including reading "naughty" books, viewing immodest pictures, frequenting plays, drunkenness, and neglect of the Ten Commandments. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Under the patronage of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Atherton was appointed Lord Bishop of Waterford and Lismore in 1636.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]As the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Atherton successfully campaigned for the passage of an act that instituted the death penalty for the vice of buggery<a href="/glossary.php?word=buggery&part=" target="_blank">buggery</a>. In 1640, he became one of the first men accused under this statute. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]A lawyer named Butler, involved in a dispute with the bishop over the ownership of some land at Killoges, near Waterford, made a complaint to Parliament in which he accused Atherton of committing buggery with his steward and tithe proctor John Childe. The bishop strongly denied this specific charge, but Childe confessed. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Atherton's fellow clerics rallied around him, partly to avoid the disgrace to the Church that a conviction would bring, but to no avail. He was convicted. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Court spectators hailed the verdict of guilty, and Atherton was nearly murdered on his way from the courtroom to the prison in Cork. He did not strenuously protest his conviction, seeing God's hand in it. He also confessed to having committed unspecified heinous sins that, if publicly known, would increase the scandal surrounding him.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]On the morning of his execution, Atherton declared himself unworthy of the Communion of the Dead, though he had written his wife that he expected to see her in Heaven. As he prepared for transport, the bishop sought to have his arms pinioned to his sides with a black ribbon, but the sheriff insisted on using the cheap cord typically reserved for common criminals. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Atherton was hanged on Gallows Green on December 5, 1640. At ten o'clock that night, he was buried in a far corner of the yard at Christ Church in a place where some rubbish used to be cast and where no one else lay. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]His partner in sodomy, Childe, was hanged at Bandon Bridge in March 1641. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]In Stuart England, the case of John Atherton became a topic of sermons and moral writings that denounced same-sex relations. Later, English gay men, notably William Beckford, subsequently collected these accounts as evidence of the existence of other men attracted to their own sex and as reminders of the viciousness of English attitudes toward same-sex sexual relations.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/atherton_j,zoom.html
[/FONT]
His real problem had been getting involved in a land dispute with a lawyer named Butler.
Butler was friendly with Richard Boyle - Ist Earl of Cork - a money grabbing guy who took over Walter Raleighs Irish Estates .
The Bishop was enforcing the churches ownership of property so the dispute and allegations had political motives as well. Plantation of Munster and all that.
So did prosecutions begin with the English and how did the Brehon Irish view it ?0 -
PatsytheNazi wrote: »Well if as you say a how progressive a society is its treatment and acceptence of minorities, are you raising some sort of issue that gay rights weren't included in the 1916 Proclaimation or the earlier writings or speeches of say, Tone, Emmet etc ?
Yes indeed, Irish nationalism and the 1916 Rising should once again be condemned for not mentioning these issues and others such as genetic engineering, artifcal intelligence and space travel etc as they should have forseen all these developments :rolleyes: Unlike documents which have included gay rights such as the America Declaration of Independence, the French Revoulotion, Magna Carta etc :rolleyes:
No need for that schtick there was no condemnation of Irish nationalism.
The point is society now judges its progressiveness on minorities, but that wasn't always the case and so we need to read between the lines of history to find information about people who were trying to stay hidden to some extent.
In addition through different periods sexuality have been judged differently, at certain times it would not have been much of a problem for one person to have a wife and a girlfriend and homosexual relations.
Abraham Lincoln is 'supposed' to have been gay based on the letters he sent to a friend, although I'm not sure there is anything conclusive. But even if he were he would not have thought of himself or identified himself as gay in the way we do in society today.
I think it would be odd if Casement restricted his homosexuality to foreign men, so what did he do to hide it when back in Britain? Presumably he had to because homosexuality was illegal (one of the reasons people think the black diaries were forged). Did his colleagues in the Rising know he was gay?0 -
The name Butler crops up again. In 1780 - Lady Eleanor Butler & friend fecked off to Wales as Eleanors mother had tried to force her into a convent.They claimed they were seeking a better way of life, devotion to an ideal but with hindsight we can see Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were probably just devoted to each other. This 18th century couple found each other in Ireland where they lived in the comfort and privilege provided by their wealthy families.
Miss Butler was particularly well read for the day, she could speak numerous languages. Nearly forty years old and still unwed she had the prospect of a life in the convent hanging over her, as her mother wished. At this time of course the correct ambition for a 'proper' lady was a good marriage and children. Sarah was in her mid twenties but could already see Eleanor's woes as a portent of things to come for her too. To add to her distress, Sarah lived with an uncle, his 'busy hands' being the final straw. The two women planned an escape and in Spring 1778 they eloped.
The families quickly discovered their disappearance was more than met the eye and set about tracking them down, no doubt in utter secrecy. It's thought the two women tried to hide-out in a hunting lodge or retreat. Whatever, they didn't get far and were brought back to face the music. Remember, they were only going against their families' wishes, even by the standards of the 1700's they had not actually broken any laws, they hadn't done anything illegal at all.
Now with their intentions known to all, both families did their best to persuade the women to leave well alone, to get on with life in a 'proper' manner. In retrospect, Eleanor's family were more than capable of bundling her away to some distant shore but they didn't. Perhaps in the end they took some pity on her or feared the scandal would go public, don't underestimate the fear of shame! Whatever, eventually Eleanor and Sarah were allowed, begrudgingly, to go their own way.
The women left Ireland in search of the perfect place to settle in England but on a tour of Wales come to Llangollen and there found their dream. Built of local stone, rough hewn walls and roof a delightful cottage hidden in the beautiful Welsh countryside, “Plas Newydd” lay waiting for them. Here they stayed, renting the cottage along with four acres surrounding for the princely sum of £22 per year, or there about. Probably quite expensive for the day since to the locals 'The Ladies' must have seemed well to-do. In fact, we know they were not, Eleanor kept an excellent record of their accounts. Both women had a little money from their families but not enough to keep them in the style to which they were accustomed. Friends and well wishers provided for them too. They struggled to get by on many occasions but still kept a household of a gardener, footman and a maid each! For high born ladies this must have been the minimum, below which lay poverty!
Over the years they improved their home and created a way of life peculiarly their own. They became more and more reclusive, hiding from strangers when the fancy took them. Avid readers, their library improved to become one of the best in the area and their home was fitted in good taste throughout.
The two women planned each day in minuscule detail to make real the perfect life they'd dreamed of years earlier, in Ireland.
The locals dubbed them “The Ladies”. Eventually their notoriety spread far beyond Llangollen. We can only imagine how unusual this must have seemed to Georgian society.
When word of their idyllic lifestyle spread many could hardly believe it, wishing to see for themselves they were prepared to travel across the country to Llangollen. Amongst this number were some impressive personalities of the day including the Duke of Wellington and William Wordsworth! Newspapers carried reports of the women further widening their notoriety until eventually they came to the attention of Queen Charlotte. She was so impressed with their achievement they were granted a pension, remaining on the civil list the rest of their lives.
“The Ladies of Llangollen” are long gone now but the cottage is still there even though its past seems to have been largely forgotten. Eleanor's home in Ireland is a preserved site but for other historical reasons, you can see more of Kilkenny Castle by searching any of the main search engines. Eleanor and Sarah ended their lives in Wales, contented and happy. The families they ran from in Ireland eventually came to terms with the 'wayward' daughters and acknowledged their achievement.
http://www.famouswelsh.com/13_Articles/Ladies-of-Llangollen/Ladies-of-Llangollen.shtml
Ponsonby was related to the writer Caroline Lamb and they were viewed with some curiosity.
Their home in Wales is now a museum0 -
PatsytheNazi wrote: »Well if as you say a how progressive a society is its treatment and acceptence of minorities, are you raising some sort of issue that gay rights weren't included in the 1916 Proclaimation or the earlier writings or speeches of say, Tone, Emmet etc ?
I am not raising any issue. I raised the issue in other fora first in the context of gender debates on the basis that on social issues LGBT are often excluded or airbrushed out. I even got a few "you are gay" pm's for doing so .
So there is no agenda on the 1916 leaders - it is just I dont want it to be a Dudley-Edwards style debate. But the enforcement of homosexuality laws in the Irish Free state would interest me as would the later decriminalisation of homosexuality.
I also would like to see is lifestyles and contributions to art science etc by of the LGBT in Ireland . Factual & not lazy.0 -
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In 1880 an Irishman went to the gallows wearing a ring made of his dead friend James Nesbitt's hair.
He asked that the might be buried together which finally happened 120 or so years later..
He is a near contemporary of Oscar Wildes a fraudster who reputedly trained as an engineer in London.Variously he was a lay preacher, surveyor, fraudster, convict, escaped prisoner, Bushranger, hanged prisoner.
He was tough.Scott, Andrew George [Captain Moonlite] (1842 - 1880)
Alternative Names:Moonlite, CaptainBirth:1842, Rathfryland, Down, IrelandDeath:20 January 1880, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, AustraliaCultural Heritage: Religious Influence: Occupation:
Andrew George Scott [Captain Moonlite] (1842 - 1880), by unknown engraver, 1879, courtesy of La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria. IAN28/11/79/180. .
Image Details
SCOTT, ANDREW GEORGE (1842-1880), bushranger, self-styled 'CAPTAIN MOONLITE', was born at Rathfriland, County Down, Ireland, and baptized on 5 July 1842, son of Thomas Scott, Anglican clergyman, and his wife Bessie, née Jeffares. Young Scott was described as 'dark, handsome, active and full of high spirits', but was known for impulsive acts of mischievous violence. He may have studied engineering in London, and legend has it that he served with Garibaldi in Italy in 1860.
On 22 November 1861 Scott, his parents and brother Thomas arrived at Auckland, New Zealand, in the Black Eagle. A fellow-passenger remembered him as 'very gentlemanly and high-spirited'. His father took charge of Christ Church, Coromandel, and his brother was ordained priest; Andrew taught school for a while but in February 1864 was commissioned in the Waikato Militia; later he transferred to the Auckland Volunteer Engineers Corps. On 6 November 1867 he was refused a post of inspector or sub-inspector in the armed constabulary, although he had been endorsed by prominent members of the Auckland community as 'a gentleman well suited for an office of command'.
Within a few months Scott had arrived in Australia, possibly first in Sydney. About April 1868 he went to Melbourne, met Bishop Perry and in July was appointed stipendiary lay reader of the Church of Holy Trinity, Bacchus Marsh. In November he advertised that he intended to set up as a consultant surveyor and engineer in addition to his clerical duties. However in March 1869 he was sent as lay reader to Egerton near Ballarat, where he made friends with James Simpson, the local schoolmaster, and L. J. Bruun, agent for the town's branch of the London Chartered Bank. As Bruun was returning to the bank late on 8 May, Scott, disguised in mask and cloak, attacked him and forced him to hand over the contents of the safe. He made Bruun write a note certifying his resistance to the robbery; Scott signed it himself with the deliberately mis-spelt 'Captain Moonlite'. Both Bruun and Simpson were charged with robbery but were acquitted; Scott soon left for Sydney.
For some months he lived off the proceeds of the crime, but towards the end of 1870 he began passing valueless cheques. In November he fraudulently bought the yacht, Why-Not, arranged for a skipper and a 'young lady' to accompany him, but was arrested by water police as he tried to leave for Fiji. On 20 December he was given twelve months in Maitland gaol, some of which he spent in Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, feigning madness. While he was in prison Bruun and his friends had detectives set on his trail, and when he was released in April 1872 he was charged with the Egerton gold robbery. While on remand he escaped from Ballarat gaol but was soon recaptured, and on 24 July he appeared before Judge Barry. Scott conducted most of his own defence, cross-examined Bruun for seven hours with 'shrewd and pertinacious questions' and amused the crowd with his facetious remarks. He received ten years hard labour and one year for escaping.
Scott was a recalcitrant and violent prisoner in Pentridge gaol. Released in March 1879, for a while he was a speaker at open-air meetings on prison reform and kindred subjects, but on 18 November with a small band he held up Wantabadgery sheep station near Wagga Wagga for two days. He used the two children of the near-by hotelkeeper as hostages, separating them by force from their parents. Two of the gang (one a boy of 15) and one trooper were killed when the police attacked the homestead. Scott and three others were found guilty of murder and he and one of his accomplices were hanged on 20 January 1880.
Postscipt
Captain Moonlite
Broadcast 6.30pm on 14/06/2004
One hour before bushranger Andrew Scott, (Captain Moonlite) was hung on January 20th, 1880, he asked that he be laid to rest beside the grave of gang member and best mate, James Nesbitt. This wish was not to be granted until more than one hundred years later when a couple of local women became interested in Scott’s letters, and the possibility of a gay relationship between the outlaws.
GEORGE NEGUS: G'day. Another interesting week ahead, starting with our Monday historical look at things, which tonight takes a quite personal turn with a very leading question - what happens when our individual history, as it were, runs out? And later we'll hear about some pretty elaborate funeral customs. But first, remember Captain Moonlite, the bushranger? Well, apparently the not-always-good Captain's heart's desire was to lie beside his best mate for eternity. Strange but true.
SAM ASIMUS: His last words were, "I ask that my body be given to my friends. I want to be buried in Gundagai." And I thought, "Why hasn't he?"
PATRICK SULLIVAN, EDITOR 'GUNDAGAI INDEPENDENT': It was a very romantic thing to do. I think that Sam and Christine actually were having some kind of an imaginary love affair with him by the time he was dug up and brought back.
SAM ASIMUS: It was just basically granting someone's wish and the wish of someone whom I believed was executed unfairly and unjustly. It was righting a wrong for me. Captain Moonlite was Andrew George Scott. He came to Australia in 1868. He actually started as a lay preacher at Bacchus Marsh, a Victorian town. I think it was very much to his liking. He could ride horses and engage in pistol shooting. And by all accounts, he was very charismatic. He was good-looking - intense blue eyes, that wonderful Irish brogue.
PATRICK SULLIVAN: He was allegedly very articulate, very intelligent, well-educated. It's hard to imagine how a bloke with his background could have become a criminal.
SAM ASIMUS: The bank at Mount Egerton was robbed one night. Hardly anyone saw anything. The bank manager was later charged, but he was acquitted. Years later, Scott was charged. He was found with the gold in his possession. He pleaded that he was not guilty. He paid a terrible price for it. He was sent to Pentridge. James Nesbitt was in Pentridge at the same time for theft, and they formed a very close friendship. He was his dearest, truest friend. He wrote to Nesbitt's mother and said, "We have a pure, real, true friendship." I believe he was his soul mate.
PATRICK SULLIVAN: Moonlite did refer to Nesbitt in terms that would suggest perhaps he was gay. But then, on the other hand, if Moonlite was gay, why did he use as his alibi for the Mount Egerton bank robbery the fact that, he claimed, he was with a woman.
SAM ASIMUS: He got out of prison early, after serving 7-odd years of a 10-year sentence, for good behaviour. He linked up with James Nesbitt, starting what he hoped would be a new career in lecturing on prison reform, something he felt very passionately about. But the authorities shut him down. He had too much to tell. He realised he had to get out of Victoria, get away from the persecution. So he linked up with a group of other young men. They actually walked into NSW, where they were hoping for better times. Unfortunately, NSW was gripped in a terrible drought and unemployment was very high. Luck was against them, really. They'd heard of Wantabadgery station, renowned for its hospitality. They were hoping to get food, shelter, perhaps work. Unbeknown to them, it had changed hands. They were turned away. It was absolutely the last straw. I think that they had pinned all their hopes on finding food and shelter there, and something snapped. They came back the next morning, held up the station. Rumours reached
the police in Wagga Wagga that the Kelly Gang had invaded. Over a period of three days, they took 35 people hostage. He treated the women with respect, though some of the men he roughed up. None of the men were shot. He could have. I think in the circumstances, he was probably quite restrained. The police turned up the next morning. Four constables only were sent. Short gunfight. Police fled.
FOOTAGE OF SAM ASIMUS AT RUINS OF BUILDING
This is all that's left of McGlede's hut. This is where the final shoot-out took place between Moonlite, his mates and the police, heavily reinforced after they left Wantabadgery station. It was a scene of great excitement and confusion. It was here that James Nesbitt, the youngest bushranger, Augustus Wernicke, and Constable Bowen were all shot dead. Scott and the surviving gang members were tried in Gundagai and in Darlinghurst, charged with the murder of Constable Bowen. Scott represented himself, and how hard must have that been, two of his friends just freshly buried in Gundagai Cemetery, one his dearest friend. There were times when they said he was so emotional that he had to stop and collect himself. He denied that he fired the shot that killed Constable Bowen.
CAPTAIN MOONLITE: "Though not guilty of the blood of anybody, I am ready to suffer for their sakes and answer for breaking the laws of the country."
SAM ASIMUS: He was sentenced to hang. He used his time in the condemned cells. He wrote volumes - absolute volumes. Letters - letters to so many people. I think he was really, in his mind, trying to square up all his debts, make his final goodbyes. And his letters were all about justice and friendship. They were what moved me in the end, his letters.
CAPTAIN MOONLITE: "I am to die on the 20th instant, and hope that I may rest with my friend. The only thing I long for is the certainty that I may share his grave."
SAM ASIMUS: He was actually hanged on 20 January 1880 at Darlinghurst Court. After that, he was taken...to what is now Rookwood Cemetery and buried in the Anglican part of the cemetery, and there he lay for 107 years...before his last wish was granted. He's buried in Gundagai Cemetery. He is within a few metres of James Nesbitt and Augustus Wernicke. Constable Bowen is not too far away - far enough away to be separate - so that they are all laid to rest in the same place.
GEORGE NEGUS: Quite a tale, and beautifully reconstructed by Kerry Staight and our mates in the GNT Adelaide bureau. Captain Moonlite finally buried with his best mate, James. Sam, by the way, and others chipped in something like six grand to make the Captain's final wish a reality.0 -
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Ireland was/is deeply conservative - in some ways like your American Bible belt from a few years back, the most famous being William of Orange .William had several male favourites including a Rotterdam bailiff, Van Zuylen van Nijveld. He granted English titles to two of these alleged lovers, who served him loyally as courtiers: Hans Willem Bentinck, who became Earl of Portland; and Arnold Joost van Keppel, who he made Earl of Albemarle.
Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, and lord of Voorst in Gelderland (c. 1670 - May 30, 1718), son of Oswald van Keppel and his wife Anna Geertruid van Lintello, was born in Holland about 1670. He became page to William of Orange, accompanied him to England in 1688, and became groom of the bedchamber and master of the robes in 1695. On 10 February 1696/7 William made van Keppel earl of Albemarle, Viscount Bury and Baron Ashford.
In 1700 William gave him lands of enormous extent in Ireland, but parliament obliged the king to cancel this grant, and William then bestowed on him £50,000. The same year he was made a knight of the Garter. Meanwhile he had served both with the English and Dutch troops, was major-general in 1697, colonel of several regiments and governor of 's Hertogenbosch.
http://www.irelandinformationguide.com/William_III_of_England
King Billy ‘preferred pink’ to Orange
A gay activist claims there is evidence William of Orange had male lovers.
Monday July 28 2008
A leading gay rights activist has raised the temperature in the North’s row over homosexuality by claiming there was evidence King William of Orange had male lovers.
Peter Tatchell highlighted the controversial allegation as evidence of hypocrisy over homosexuality in the North, but was condemned by unionists for setting out to deliberately cause offence.
The campaigner. who lobbies internationally for full rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, will tonight deliver the Amnesty International
Pride Lecture in Belfast. Mr Tatchell’s appearance at Belfast’s week-long gay pride festival comes after senior DUP politician Iris Robinson sparked controversy by branding homosexuality an abomination.
Mrs Robinson, who is the wife of the Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, has condemned all attacks on the gay |community, but Mr Tatchell said: "It is particularly hypocritical for unionist politicians to play the homophobic card when their hero William of Orange had male lovers."
King William was married, but some academics have raised hackles by pointing to his promotion of young men to high office as evidence of bisexuality.
A DUP spokesman dismissed the allegation and accused Mr Tatchell of setting out to antagonise.
"This is the kind of deliberately offensive and provocative comment and shock tactics that he has used in the past," the party spokesman said.
http://www.herald.ie/national-news/king-billy-lsquopreferred-pinkrsquo-to-orange-1442148.html0 -
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jonniebgood1 wrote: »How about some 'English immorality versus Irish Morality'.
Here is another version of the story
← Stamp Active Network
Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2010 →
Homosexuality in Post Office History
Posted on 08/02/2010 by postalheritage| Leave a comment
To commemorate Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans History Month, BPMA Archivist Helen Dafter examines the Post Office’s past attitudes to homosexuality and homosexual employees.
When thinking of The Royal Mail Archive most people immediately think of stamps, or how letters got from one place to another. It is less common for people to consider how the materials in the archive might reflect wider social history. One aspect of this social history is how the issue of homosexuality was dealt with by the Post Office.
Conduct of staff and how this may reflect on the image of the Post Office was a matter of concern. This was particularly the case with senior members of staff-whose position would have a more direct impact on the overall reputation of the Post Office. One such was the Prosecution of Gustavus Cornwall, Secretary to the General Post Office in Dublin in the late nineteenth century. In July 1884 Cornwall lodged a libel claim against the publication United Ireland for articles printed in May 1884 implying that he was associated with James Ellis French (head of the Criminal Investigation Department in Dublin Castle), and guilty of the same crimes alleged against Ellis. The pattern of this case was similar to that of the case of Oscar Wilde a decade later.
A cartoon about the United Ireland trial captioned "Flogging them to the fight: Earl Spencer having in vain attempted to crush United Ireland himself, by fair means, goads on the foulest scoundrels in the Castle Service, under pain of losing their salaries, to assail the obnoxious newspaper with a legal battering-ram of £40,000 damages".
Gustavus Cornwall lost his case for libel on 7 July 1884 and was suspended from duty in the Post Office – a suspension which lasted until his compulsory resignation in August 1885. Shortly after the libel action Cornwall was prosecuted for Felony (Sodomy) and conspiracy with Martin Kirwan (of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers) to “procure others to commit diverse lewd and filthy practices”. He was swiftly acquitted on the Felony charge, but the jury was unable to reach a decision on the conspiracy and he was retried and acquitted in October 1884.
In light of his acquittals Cornwall requested a new trial for the libel case. This was refused in November 1884 and Cornwall appealed. Finally a new trial was granted in May 1885. This trial was only to consider whether the original claims of felony were libellous, it did not address the claims of conspiracy. At this point Cornwall decided that he did not have sufficient funds to pursue a new libel trial and thus failed to take it further.
The copy deposition of the Queen a. Cornwall & Others - Unnatural offenses
It was decided that given the circumstances it would not be appropriate to allow Cornwall a pension – despite 45 years of employment by the Post Office. He was advised to resign and offered full pay for the period of his suspension up to 31st July 1885. This decision reflects the impact accusations of this nature could have. Although Cornwall was acquitted of all charges, the fact that the initial libel trial had found against him, combined with the fact that the acquittal on the conspiracy charge was due to insufficient evidence, damaged his reputation seriously enough for the Post Office to cease all association with him, lest it also be tarnished.
Seventy years later the Post Office was still struggling with issues associated with “sexual perversion and indecency”. These issues were wide ranging as outlined in the Ritson Report on Discipline in the Civil Service circa 1955 (POST 122/8049). This report defines sexual offences as “these offences include homosexual offences, indecent assault, indecent exposure, and rape”. Files from this period reflect changing societal attitudes at this time. The shift towards a medical approach to sexual offences begins to emerge, although in correspondence relating to the case of Mr A F Gardner in 1958, a postal employee convicted of “gross indecency and publishing obscene photographs” and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, states that “there is no evidence that homosexuality is in itself a disease, and a person with homosexual propensities will not necessarily respond to medical or psychiatric treatment” (POST 122/8050). These discussions were occurring against the backdrop of the Report of the Department on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (Wolfenden Report), published in September 1957 and recommending that homosexual activity, in private, between consenting adults should be decriminalised, and stating that homosexuality should not be regarded as a disease.
http://postalheritage.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/homosexuality-in-post-office-history0 -
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I have seen something on Vikings and must have a look .
it could even be a musicalsensibleken wrote: »
edit to add: alternative title for this thread, 'Sodom and Begorrah!'...sorry.
if TG4 ever dub the Carry on Movies ..........0 -
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Here is another Bishop who had legal problems
This is an interesting article which also goes thru other details of how the courts operate
The Bishop of Clogher
[FONT=arial,helvetica] In 1822 Percy Jocelyn, Lord Bishop of Clogher, was caught with his trousers down in the company of a mere common soldier. The story really began in 1811, the year after the Vere Street raid. In that year James Byrne, coachman to the Bishop’s brother John, accused the Bishop of committing an unnatural crime. Clogher denied the facts, and prosecuted Byrne for bringing false charges against him. Byrne was tried and convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison, preceded by three floggings. He nearly died as he was severely whipped at cart’s tail through the streets of Dublin on the first two occasions. The third flogging was rescinded when he agreed to withdraw his accusation. The truth of his charge against Clogher did not emerge until eleven years later. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] On the evening of Friday 19 July 1822 John Moverley, a young soldier in the Foot Guards, of slightly effeminate appearance, went to the White Lion public house, St Alban’s Place, Charles Street, Haymarket. He looked into the pub two or three times before entering, then went in and ordered a pint of porter and took it into the back parlour. Shortly afterwards a Bishop arrived, about 58 years old, six feet tall, stout, with powdered hair, sallow complexion and pointed nose, dressed in his clerical garb. He exhibited the same odd pattern of behaviour before ordering a drink and going into the back parlour. The landlord and his son-in-law immediately suspected that an unnatural assignation was taking place on the premises. Together with some other men from the pub, they went around to the back yard, and observed the proceedings through a window, across which the curtain had been only half-drawn. They were shocked by what they saw. They went back into the public rooms and fetched half a dozen witnesses to go round to the yard to see for themselves, while they went to call a watchman. In short order the entire assembly burst into the back parlour, where both offenders had their trousers down round their ankles. One story claimed that the soldier was just on the point of consummating the act of sodomy upon the exposed posterior of the Bishop. But most accounts claimed that the Bishop was buggering the soldier. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] The Bishop and the soldier were immediately dragged through the streets nearly naked. As they passed the gates of Carlton Palace they were severely beaten and had their remaining clothes torn to pieces by the crowd which had gathered. Bleeding from his nose, the Bishop pleaded for mercy, but both men were locked into cells in St James’s watch house in Vine Street. Next morning they were taken to Marlborough Street station, where both men were much distressed and shed tears at their examination. Crowds of people assembled outside, while six or seven witnesses gave their evidence. Clogher refused to reveal his identity, and as a constable moved forward to search him, he took a paper from his pocket and tore it up and threw the fragments into the fireplace. He wrote a note which he asked the constable to deliver to John Waring of 21 Montague Street, Portman Square, with whom he had been staying: “John; – Come to me directly, don’t say who I am, but I am undone. Come instantly, and inquire for a gentleman below stairs, 12 o’clock – I am totally undone. P. C." (for Percy, and Clogher). The officer refused to deliver this, and it was subsequently produced as evidence in court. Clogher prayed on his knees in his cell all night long, crying for mercy. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] At the examination before the magistrate the following day, both men remained silent and were professionally represented. There had been no fire in the grate, and the torn letter was produced: it was addressed to the Bishop from his nephew the Earl of Roden. Clogher demanded the letter as his property; it was handed to him and he tore it into shreds so no fragments could be produced in evidence at any subsequent trial. But finally Clogher had to divulge his name and address in order to get bail. Mr Waring soon appeared, to give one of the two £500 sureties granted for the Bishop (the other surety was given by his grocer, who lived in Montague Street, Montague Square), and Clogher was granted bail of £1,000 and allowed to leave in safety by a back door. Moverley was committed for trial, where he was visited by Lord Sefton, who said “he is a fine soldier-like man and has not the air which these wretches usually have" [F. H. Amphlett Micklewright, ‘The Bishop of Clogher’s Case’, Notes and Queries, vol. 214 (1969), p. 423.]. (Sefton had previously attended the hanging of White and Hepburn in 1811.) Within a few days, two respectable tradesman appeared to stand bail for the soldier and he decamped. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] Tiny notices of the scandal appeared in the Sunday newspapers and during the following week, though the Bishop’s name was suppressed. But by the end of the following week, everyone knew that the principal actor in the affair was the Lord Bishop of Clogher, grandson of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, brother to the 2nd Earl of Roden, uncle to the 3rd Earl of Roden, and the scandal became the talk of the town. Clogher was noted as a member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, a revival of the earlier Societies for Reformation of Manners. His hypocrisy did not pass unnoticed by the authors of illustrated broadsides, pamphlets, and even epigrams: [/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica] The Devil to prove the Church was a farce[FONT=arial,helvetica](The Moverley family were of French origin in so far as they came over with the Norman Conquest. An alternative version of this epigram substituted ‘Soldier’s’ for ‘Frenchman’s’.) [/FONT] [FONT=arial,helvetica] Clergymen who were seen on the streets of London were jeered at by the populace (according to the Archbishop of Canterbury), and most of them fled indoors. The landlord of the White Lion charged a small fee for showing the room where the horrid occurrence had taken place. The Marquis of Hertford contributed £20 towards a public collection for the wrongly accused James Byrne, whose reputation was cleared though he was never formally pardoned. [ The British Library once had the single sheet of the Subscription for James Byrne with a list of subscribers, and a 36-page Sketch of the Life, and Unparalleled Sufferings of James Byrne, late coachman to the Honourable John Jocelyn, brother to . . . the Lord Bishop of Clogher. Together with some observations on the conduct of the Jocelyn family (1822). These were in a collection of documents about Byrne which was destroyed by bombing during World War II, and I have not located copies elsewhere.] [/FONT]
Went out to fish for a Bugger.
He baited his hook with a Frenchman’s arse
And pulled up the Bishop of Clogher. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]The Clogher scandal probably encouraged many gay men to leave the country, and it led to the suicide of a Cabinet Minister. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who was both the Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons at the time, was visibly overwrought throughout June and July. He forgot appointments and his handwriting became hardly legible. He had an audience with King George IV on 9 August to reveal the fact that he was being blackmailed – had had been caught for picking up a soldier, whom he claimed he had thought was a woman – and to confess that “I am accused of the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher." The King advised him to consult a physician. He went to his country seat in Kent, and on 12 August cut his throat with a pen-knife. Castllereagh’s wife later confessed to the Duke of Wellington that her husband was a man who preferred men. [Montgomery Hyde first revealed that Castlereagh’s suicide had been preceded by blackmail in his book about The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh (1959), where he also discusses Castlereagh's wife’s statement to the Duke of Wellington; there is a review of more recent research on the Castlereagh affair in Louis Crompton's Byron and Greek Love (1985).] His visible distress caused by being blackmailed during the last few months of his life was fixed upon as an excuse to say he was not in his right mind when he killed himself. His physician declared him insane, a ploy that some people find preferable to accusing someone of homosexuality. It is clear that there was a high-level attempt to cover up both the Clogher and the Castlereagh affairs. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] Needless to say, neither Clogher nor Moverley showed up when the Clerkenwell sessions commenced on 9 September, and it was not long before the Dublin Morning Post reported that Clogher and Moverley had absconded and forfeited their bails. George Dawson, private secretary to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, believed that “No event in the last century is more to be lamented both on private and public grounds – it will sap the very foundation of society, it will raise up the lower orders against the higher, and in the present temper of the public mind against the Church it will do more to injure the Establishment than all the united efforts of its enemies could have effected in a century." Dawson wrote to the Archbishop of Armargh suggesting that he arrange an “excusable connivance at his escape", and the Archbishop wrote to Lord Roden suggesting that “someone" should tender bail for Moverley for “removing him out of the way". [Matthew Parris, with Nick Angel, “The Crime Not To Be Named: Percy Jocelyn, The Arse Bishop", in Matthew Parris, The Great Unfrocked: Two Thousand Years of Church Scandal (London: Robson Books, 1998), pp. 144, 150. The Church of Ireland refused to let historians examine the correspondence between the Home Office and Archbishop Beresford of Armagh concerning the affair until 1998, when Archbishop Eames, Primate of All Ireland, finally authorized its release to Nick Angel and Matthew Parris.] Lord Sefton provided bail and Moverley disappeared. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] John Moverley’s great-great-great-great nephew Stuart Moverley has researched his family tree, and discovered that John Moverley was born in 1796 in the parish of Bramham, West Riding of Yorkshire, one of eight children of William and Mary Moverley. (This would mean he was 26 years old at the time of the scandal, not 22 as some newspapers suggested.) John Moverley joined the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards (Grenadier Guards) at York on 1 May 1819, when he was described as a “labourer of Bramham", 5 feet 9 inches in height, with dark hair and a light complexion. (One of the newspaper accounts during the scandal described him as of “effeminate appearance".) Records show that he deserted from the 2nd battalion on 7 August 1822, i.e. after being bailed from prison by Lord Sefton. No court martial is recorded in the regimental archive, so presumably he was never caught. Presumably he did not return to his village, nor maintain relations with his family. His father died in 1826, and in his will listed four other sons as beneficiaries, but does not mention John.[Personal communications from Stuart Moverley during 1997 and 1998. The family tree can be seen at Stuart Moverley’s homepage, http://www.btinternet.com/~sfmov.] [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] Clogher, for his part, sailed in a small boat from Ramsgate to Ostend on the very evening he was released from custody. The newspapers railed against the offering of bail to a man who earned at least £20,000 a year and could easily spare the trifling sum of £1,000. The public disaffection would have been even higher had only the Bishop been allowed to escape and the soldier been punished. The Bishop did not disguise his name while in Paris, nor did he change his mode of dress; he was often seen strolling the Boulevards and dining at Very’s the Restaurateurs in the Palais Royale. He was cordially received by French society, and lived in the cottage vacated by the Dublin poet Thomas Moore in 1822. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] A true bill was found against both men in their absence in September. In October the Metropolitan Court of Armagh solemnly stripped the Bishop of his ecclesiastical dignities, but he had already managed to auction off the entire contents of the episcopal palace, leaving it “as a naked ruin", and the revenues to the see had not been stopped in time to prevent him from selling his tithes for a reasonable profit. [The complete record of the proceedings appears as an Appendix to the Annual Register (1822), Chronicle, pp. 425-432. The case is reviewed in the entries for 20 July 1822, p. 126, and 7 August 1822, p. 138. The selling of the tithes is confirmed by Benbow, Crimes of the Clergy, p. 140.] The fate of his “man-mistress", the only servant he had kept with him at the episcopal palace, is not known. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] Mr Parkins, a former sheriff who saw an opportunity to make some money out of the affair, wrote to Byrne and offered his services as treasurer for handling his subscription and arranging collections for him. He paid for Byrne’s passage to London, and offered to buy him a coach and horses. Placards were printed, public dinners were held in aid of the subscription – at one of which William Cobbett the radical reformer and journalist presided – and money was collected in five dozen tin boxes. The celebrated coachman and his wife and daughter lived in the two rooms above Parkins’ stables, and he had unwittingly become a low-paid keeper of Parkins’ livery. Parkins gave Byrne small amounts of money from time to time, but never enough to provide the capital Byrne needed to fulfil his dream of opening a public house. Parkins pocketed a hefty share of the proceeds for his own expenses, and when the day of reckoning came he refused to give Byrne the surplus of the subscription, and turned him out of the house. The unlucky Byrne finally had to prosecute him in 1824, and was awarded damages of £194.4s.4½d. [“Court of King’s Bench, Westminster. Byrne v. Parkins. 16 February 1824", reprinted in the Annual Register (1824), Chronicle, pp. 55-62.] [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] On 19 December 1824 a notice was read aloud to the congregation of Marylebone Church and then posted by the Bailiff, calling upon the Bishop to surrender to the Sheriff of Middlesex to face charges “or you will be outlawed". Despite being a fugitive, after living for some time in Paris, Clogher eventually seems to have returned to Britain, for reasons unknown, and went to Scotland, where he worked for a period as a butler. In an extraordinary obituary published in The Scotsman and reprinted in the Annual Register for December 1843, he is said to have died incognito in Edinburgh in 1843. He apparently lived for a while in Glasgow, then moved to a house in Salisbury Place, Edinburgh, around 1839, where, under the assumed name of Thomas Wilson, “His mode of living was extremely private, scarcely any visitors being known to enter his dwelling; but, it was remarked, that the post occasionally brought him letters sealed with coronets." “He was very anxious to conceal his true name, having it carefully obliterated from his books and articles of furniture. He gave instructions that his burial should be . . . conducted in the most private and plain manner, and at six in the morning." His body was carried to the New Cemetery in a hearse followed by five mourners in a one-horse coach.[Obituary in the Annual Register, December 1843, p. 330.] The register of Burials in the parish of St Cuthbert’s Edinburgh, states: “1843, Sept. 13, Wilson Thomas, Assumed name Hon. Percy Percyln I]sic[/I Bishop of Clogher, age 83, 4 Salisbury Place".[Mickelwright, “The Bishop of Clogher’s Case", p. 428.] (The age given is incorrect; he was born in 1764 and would be about 79.) No Will was found. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] However, his descendant the Hon. James Jocelyn informed me in 1995 that when the Jocelyn family vault at Kilcoo Parish Church in Bryansford, Co. Down was opened for structural repairs to the church, he went inside the vault and discovered that it contained one more coffin than the number of grave markers would indicate, and that the extra coffin was unmarked. He concluded that this was the final resting place of the Bishop of Clogher. James Jocelyn generously transcribed and sent to me a copy of Clogher’s Last Will and Testament, which he had turned up when sorting out the family papers. The Will is dated 19 May 1836, and was signed in the presence of John McCullough, Newtown, John Catherwood, “Muslin Manufacturer, 62 Queen Street, Glasgow", and George Heaseley, Groomport, County Down. Most of his substantial estate of about £5,000 was left to surviving members of his family, but each of his servants was left a full year’s wages, and additional bequests ranging from £100 to £300 were left to several of his favourite servants, and their sons. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]Clogher left the sum of £2,000 in trust to his one surviving sister Lady Emily Stratton and her son John Stratton, £500 to his niece Mistress Harriet, and another large sum to his nephew Rev. George Stratton. The smaller bequests include £100 “to my former servant John Warren to set him up in some kind of Trade or business", £100 to his wife Mary Warren for her sole and separate use, £100 to their daughter Elizabeth Warren, £50 to their eldest son Leonard John Warren “to set him up in business either as a cabinet maker or in any other line of business he may think most profitable for himself", £100 to any other children of John and Mary Warren living at the time of Clogher’s decease; £100 “to Alexander Murphy my faithful and affectionate Steward"; £100 each to Mistress Anne Collis or Colles and Miss Mary Anne Sempill, presumably servants; £200 to “my valuable and much respected friend" John James Bigger of Dundalk, County Louth, who was one of the trustees of his estate and executors of his will, and £50 to the other trustee/executor William Brownlow Forde of Annahilt, County Down . He hoped that heirlooms would be kept in the family: he left his watch and chain to the Hon. John Jocelyn, son of his brother the Earl of Roden who was now deceased; his sister Lady Charlotte’s writing box to the surviving Countess of Roden; his books to Rev. George Stratton; his silver plate and furniture, his “large lock" and his “Carriage and jaunting car" to relations, and his linen to be divided between his sister and his faithful housekeeper. A small additional Codicil, regarding disposal of linen, is dated 23 May 1836; a second Codicil, dated 28 August 1837, deals with a bond for his sister, and notes that Mrs Colles has “left me and gone to live in Belfast"; the third and last Codicil, dated 1 August 1840, adds another niece Mrs Anne Newson to the bequests, and cancels the bequest that was “left to Leonard Warren Eldest son of John Warren who is now dead by me" (the meaning of this phrase is unclear), and leaves small bequests to other named servants. This last Codicil is witnessed by Goerge Heaseley, Jane Murphy and Eliza Jane Murphy (probably the wife and daughter of his steward Alexander Murphy). [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] Clogher bequeathed “to my good friend and relation The Reverend James Hill Poe of Nenagh in the County of Tipperary the sum of Three hundred pounds late Irish currency as token of Remembrance for all the Kindness and attention which my beloved sisters and myself have uniformly experienced from him for many years past during a period of extreme calamity and misfortune." The most interesting feature of the Will is the following clause: “I desire and request that my remains may be committed to the Grave in the most private manner at a very early hour in the morning and that no Publicity whatsoever may attend my funeral, also that no name be inscribed on my Coffin and my age. And I desire no publication of my death to be inserted in any public paper." [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]Three Codicils were added, dated 23 May 1836, 28 August 1837, and 1 August 1840. The Probate, granted in the Court of Prerogative in Armagh, Ireland, is dated 14 October 1843. It is not clear exactly where Clogher was living at the time of his Will or its Codicils. Clogher refers to himself in the 1836 Will as ‘late of Bally William in the County of Down’. Two of the witnesses to the Will in 1836 lived in Scotland (i.e. Glasgow, and “Newtown" which I assume is New Town, Edinburgh), but all the witnesses to the last Codicil in 1840 lived in Ireland. In addition, all of Clogher’s legatees and trustees lived in Ireland, and the 1836 Will has a clause leaving £100 to be “divided among the poor householders of Dundalk . . . as a mark of my remembrance", which would imply that Clogher lived in Dundalk, County Louth, which is where his primary trustee and executor lived. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]William Benbow in Crimes of the Clergy, or The Pillars of Priest-Craft Shaken (1823, p. 44) condemned Clogher as “a deserving ******" for the flames of hell, which may be an early instance of one of the odder terms of abuse applied to homosexuals. Benbow observed that the Bishop’s homosexuality was not a great surprise, for he never engaged in sports while at Trinity College, Dublin. John Brown in his book Historical Gallery of Criminal Portraitures (1823), in a chapter devoted to “the Sufferings of James Byrne, and the Matchless Depravity of Jocelin Percy I]sic[/I, Late Lord Bishop of Clogher", observed that “It has long been understood that the park was a place of nocturnal rendezvous for male prostitutes, who were commonly private soldiers, and that such unnatural wretches as Percy Jocelyn were in the frequent habit of repairing thither to select their mates!" (p. 612). [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] The author of one of the pamphlets about the Bishop of Clogher prefaced his attack with some recent history about London’s gay subculture. He remarked that “the Vere-street gang can never be forgotten . . . who can ever forget the sound pelting that the wretches received", and he lamented that the pillory had been done away with at the time of his writing, 1822 [The Bishop!!, pp. 6-7]. “The crime has considerably increased since its abolition, and it has of late been ascertained that there are various houses in the Metropolis used by such wretches for their nefarious purposes, especially in the neighbourhood of Mary-le-bone." So the molly houses had been moving towards the more fashionable West End, but one gets the impression that they are small back rooms used for private purposes rather than the more sociable taverns of the previous century. Four men were arrested in such a “den" very shortly before the Bishop’s arrest, and another house “was said to be visited and supported some time ago by a nobleman". Apparently the avenues leading to theatres were thronged by gay men, and the galleries were full of well-dressed sodomites looking for simple-minded youths to accost, boys from the country who would have neither the wit nor the rank to press charges. Our pamphleteer observes the class distinctions relative to the prosecution of this offence: men of wealth or distinction are less likely to be charged with the felony; they are charged with the misdemeanour and granted bail; after being released, they either bribe the prosecutors not to press charges, or they forfeit their bail by absconding, and that is the end of it. [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica] According to our pamphleteer, reporters are allowed into court when “poverty-struck wretches" are charged, but they are excluded from the court if persons of consequence go to trial [The Bishop!!, pp. 7-9]. However, I don’t think this particular claim is correct; William Jackson, commenting on a case involving a molly publican in 1806, says that “in such cases the judge generally forbids notes to be made" [The New and Complete Newgate Calendar; or Malefactor’s Universal Register (1818), vol. VII, p. 371], and no official notes were taken during the trial of the soldiers White and Hepburn in 1811 (or else they were totally suppressed). All sodomy trials were far more briefly recorded during the early nineteenth century than they had been throughout the eighteenth century up to the 1780s, to the extent that the trial records cease to be useful sources of information about the gay subculture. The men who jumped bail prior to trial were predominantly tradesmen and middle-class shopkeepers. If upper-class men pulled rank or offered bribes to escape public notice, they usually did so before any formal charges were made, for their names are missing from the Sessions Rolls as well as the trial records. [/FONT]
Here is the link
http://rictornorton.co.uk/clogher1.htm
Here is the site link
http://rictornorton.co.uk/
I am only really interested in Irish stuff0 -
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Bannasidhe wrote: »
Re: Witch Trials - there was one:
Alice Kyteler: Accused Irish Witch
The Woman At the Center of Ireland’s First Witch Trial (1324-1325)
Kilkenny Trial Outcome
Lady Alice’s wealth and family status became her lifesaving supports. Ledrede failed to have her arrested; she used her own authority to have him arrested for seventeen days. Her son William was arrested for heresy, while her maid Petronilla was burned alive after confessing under torture to heresy and orgies. Lady Alice fled and lived out the rest of her life in England, and ironically, Ledrede later was accused of heresy.
These specific ideological developments that occurred within Kyteler’s trial were some of the necessary prerequisites for the commencement and promulgation of the European Witch trials.
In Gaelic Ireland there was no concept of criminal law - all law was 'civil' and based on compensation so witch trials didn't exist.
I looked up some Irish Witchcraft around a year ago
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055739655&page=3
You also had Florence Newton in Youghal - but Alice seemed like an old fashioned bi-sexual money grabbing poison dispensing serial husband killer. :eek:
You have a point on the independence bit and financial jealousy could have been a reason for her to be denounced. Naked dancing allegations could have been a euphenism . I wonder.
The two most famous Irish homosexuals of the 20th century were Micheal McLiammoir & Hilton EdwardsThe Boys: A Biography of Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards
Contemporary Review, Jan, 1995 by Richard Whittington-Egan
My father did not know Lloyd George, but he did know - or thought he did - Micheal MacLiammoir, back in the old days in Dublin. What he did not know was that there wasn't an Irish bone - except for the wish-bone - in MacLiammoir's body; or for that matter anywhere in the body of his ancestry.
I, as my father's son, knew, and was known to, Micheal, was hand-fed cherries by him at Chez Solange, as, Oscar Wilde left behind in a dressingroom crumple of fine nineteenth-century velvet and linen, his living shade - ill-fitting toupee'd, orange-faced with heavy-handed pancake refurbishment - held court and ate post-performance supper at his favourite London restaurant.
And never by blink or flicker did that consummate actor, Grand Old Man of the Hibernian Theatre, betray the fact that the greatest role of his life was playing Himself. For the astonishing truth - rarely pure and never simple, as Oscar assayed it - revealed thunderbolt in Mr. Fitz-Simon's sensitively written, outstanding biography, is that Micheal was, like Grey Owl before him, a, literally, self-made man. He was born Alfred Willmore, lived in Purves Road, Kensal Green, and learned the Gaelic at nightschool at Ludgate Circus, long before he had even so much as pointed a toe on the emerald sward. Liam is the Irish form of William. So, Wilimore became, in dog-Erse, Liam moir (for more), with a Mac in front for good measure, and a Micheal for a touch of archangelic luck.
Further passages in this book of revelations disclose the dubious provenance of Micheal's life-long life-partner, Hilton Robert Hugh ('Bobby') Edwards. His easy assumption of public school blazer and brave tales of 'varsity days at Cambridge matched the imaginings of the transmogrified Alfred. But it is not meet to strike judgemental pose, for, whatever the harmless little vanities of their pretences and pretensions, 'the bhoys' were indeed 'true green' in their dedication to their adopted Mammy country, and their joint contribution to Irish theatrical culture, the Celtic limelight, was as solid and impressive as the Giant's Causeway. The Gate became a floodgate of great classical drama.
As the years wore on, Alf from Willesden, the charm school graduate professional Irishman, and Bobby from East Finchley, blossomed now into a grandee of the theatre, trotted in tandem, the stages of the world their artificial pearl oyster. The partners, carrying always, Micheal his make-up box and Hilton his little case of remedies for a vade-mecum-full of complaints to which flesh is heir, stepped, ageing, into the 'seventies. They grew cantankerous, occasioning mutual perturbation, accusatory spats - 'Micheal is so insensitive. We went to this viewing, and in the darkness I took my teeth out ... Micheal stubbed out his cigarettes on them!'
Domestic tensions were unrelieved by the ameliorations of old age. When, following the conferring of an honorary LL.D. of Dublin University upon Micheal, a telephone caller asked: 'Is that Dr. MacLiammoir?' a peeved Hilton replied: 'No, this is Nurse Edwards!'
During the last fifteen years of his life Micheal had a number of operations on his eyes. At last, virtually blind, he underwent brain surgery, emerging from Mount Carmel Hospital, without wig and make-up, a 'distinguished, white-haired, elderly gentleman'.
In this last guise, Micheal MacLiammoir died, in 1978, vir varius et multiplex, of whom Tyrone Guthrie, known for his fierce non-partiality to Gaelic Ireland and its appurtenances, had said: 'He's a very nice, good person under all the disguises'.
Now let his epitaph be written: His life was a brilliant circumlocution. Hilton lingered on alone and lonely in Regency refinement at Harcourt Terrace, their shared Dublin home, for four more desolate years - 'tired of living, and feared of dying' (the quotation is from Jerome Kern's Showboat), crushed beneath a burden of needless guilt by contrite memories of pointless rows and petty spites which had pock-marked their days. The welcome dark visitor arrived one November Thursday in 1982.
On November 22nd, the bogus bhoys, fake and fraud, weighed down with Erse honours galore, were reunited in the soft earth, bedded, 'Until the day breaks', in the long shadow of the Hill of Howth.
RICHARD WHITTINGTON-EGAN
These two were openly gay.
Oh, and McLiammoir claimed to have had a relationship with the Blueshirt Leader General Eoin O'Duffy0 -
Another Irish actor.His early career was that of an Irish Times cub reporter and he trained as an actor in the Abbey & the Gate.
I share a birthday with him and he is Willfred Brambell who played Paul McCartneys Grandfather in A Hard Days Night
He was also Albert Steptoe
A very dapper man he had a difficult relationship with his Steptoe Co Star Harry Corbett who really did not like being famous for that show.0 -
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Fans of the original Knight Rider will know this guy but will not be aware that he was from Carrigaline in Cork.
Mulhare had a cult following and also starred in the Ghost & Mrs Muir.
I included him in the Green & the Greasepaint thread as an actor and Corkman.
So these guys went on the be very sucessful - I do wonder if there is a Heritage story out there from other careers.0 -
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Re: Cork being liberal towards the gays. It's actually the only place I've experienced homophobia on a personal level. I got a filthy look from some old man and I was within ear-shot of a: "be Jaysus boi, there's a fierce amount of quaarreees on this bus". Mind you, this was in 2010.
LOL
There's always one.
I always imagined homophobia as a Dublin thing and that was thru media reports - was there an Irish Culture of Homophobia.
Are there records of incidents ?0 -
LOL
There's always one.
I always imagined homophobia as a Dublin thing and that was thru media reports - was there an Irish Culture of Homophobia.
Are there records of incidents ?
I know of several serious incidents in Limerick over the last 20 years. A friend of mine was jumped by a gang of about 6 teenagers a few years ago and they tried to beat the living crap out of her. What they didn't realise was that the entire pack from Munster's women's team were following on behind - lets just say those lads got more than they bargained for!
Many urban centres now have dedicated Garda Liaison officers for the LGBT community - they would have figures, but to be honest most people don't bother reporting it as the response is usually being told you have to take out a civil action against your abuser.0 -
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So gay bashing exists but is it part of "Irish Culture". Where are attitudes recorded and how do we assess it ? This is a History & Heritage Forum .
There were gay murders & there was a social scene . What were they.
You wont have prosecutions but are there records in the press or books to it.
Was homosexuality discussed in the Dail.
Sir Roger Casement's body was repatriated and he was held in high esteem by the Irish people and Eamonn Devalera put that in a letter to the British Government.
So people like Eamonn DeValera & Willie Cosgrave who both were Taoiseach at various times and fought in 1916 would have probably known him or known of his sexuality.
What were their attitudes and do we know ?
If we do a cut off point in the mid 80's what was Ireland like?
Just to set the scene here , in the 1970's 80's RTE had an openly gay TV & Radio presenter Vincent Hanley who died are an Aids related illness and an RTE Set Designer Charles Self was murdered[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]page: 1 2 3 4 [/SIZE][/FONT] [/FONT] [FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif] [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif] [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Glbtq people were long a largely invisible segment of the population and absent from the public discourse. A rare exception came when the government banned a novel, The Land of Spices (1941), by lesbian writer Kate O'Brien (1897-1974). At issue in the case was the depiction of gay male rather than lesbian desire. O'Brien did write of lesbianism in other works such as her 1958 novel As Music and Splendour.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]In many countries the 1960s were a time of considerable social and political activism, but for gay men and lesbians in Ireland little changed. Emigration, often to England or the United States, was the choice of many glbtq people seeking to escape the homophobia<a href="/glossary.php?word=homophobia&part=" target="_blank">homophobia</a> of Irish society.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]
<img src="http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035232&c3=&c4=&c5=&c6=&c15=&cj=1" /> <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/p-85pvd3d23u7MU" target="_blank"><img src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-85pvd3d23u7MU.gif" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt="Quantcast"/></a>
[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Post-Stonewall Organizing[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]A watershed event for the Irish gay rights movement occurred not in the Republic but rather in New York City. The riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 proved the catalyst that led to the formation of gay rights organizations in Ireland. According to activist Kieran Rose, the "gay liberationist values [of American organizations] were to provide the ideological bases of the first generation of Irish gay rights activists."[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Among the earliest of the Irish gay rights groups to achieve a certain visibility and prominence was the Irish Gay Rights Movement (IGRM), founded in Dublin in 1975. In addition to providing social activities for gay men, IGRM had a telephone help-line, a women's group, and a law reform committee. Branches were established in other cities around the Republic including Cork.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]The law reform group had the goal of expunging the repressive 1861 and 1885 statutes from the books. To this end David Norris, an activist and James Joyce scholar, mounted a challenge to the constitutionality of these laws. Begun in 1977, this action initiated an odyssey through the courts of Ireland and Europe.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Faced with financial difficulties and divisions over mission and direction, IRGM disbanded in 1983. Meanwhile other gay and lesbian associations had organized, including the Cork Gay Collective and the Gay Defence Committee, which evolved into the Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men's Collectives (DLGMC).[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Murders of Charles Self and Declan Flynn[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]The Gay Defence Committee formed in response to the actions of the gardaí (police) after the murder of Charles Self, a gay man.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]Self was stabbed to death in his Dublin home on January 20, 1982, perhaps by a man whom he had met in a gay cruising area that night. The gardaí, who had a description and sketch of the suspect, interrogated, photographed, and fingerprinted nearly 1,500 gay men, almost none of whom resembled the man sought. The interrogations often centered on the private lives of the men questioned rather than the solution of the murder.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]The Gay Defence Committee spearheaded the effort to end the harassment. They organized a picket of the main gardaí station on Pearse Street (ironically, named for the writer of homoerotic verse). Support from other civil rights groups--including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties--and media coverage of the gardaí's practices eventually brought a halt to the wholesale interrogations.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]The gardaí never arrested anyone for the murder of Charles Self.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]A few months after Self was killed, another man, Declan Flynn, was beaten to death by a homophobic gang of youths in Fairview Park, a gay cruising spot. This time the assailants were brought to trial and found guilty, but the judge suspended the sentence and released the convicts, whereupon they held a "victory march" in Fairview Park. The DLGMC countered with a second march calling for an end to violence inspired by homophobia and violence against women. The march, which had the strong support of feminist groups, drew a large crowd but unfortunately did not lead to any improvement.[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Trebuchet,Times,Times New Roman,serif]http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/ireland,2.html
[/FONT]
Also, did we have prominent gays in media & entertainment, sports and politics.
Irelands drag queen from the 1970's was an Englishman Alan Amsby " Mr Pussy "
There was even a Mr Pussy's Resteraunt run by Bono's older brother NormanBig brother
THE nuances are too fleeting for a photograph to capture, but as soon as he opens his mouth and looks sideways out of his blue eyes it's there in spades.
"You're very like him, " I can't help saying. "You think so? If I dyed my hair black, " Norman Hewson says, grasping tufts of white hair with a broad grin, "I could have a third stab at life perhaps. Except I can't sing. But then he couldn't either when he started."
We are sitting in the window of Hewson's Nude restaurant in Dublin. Like an elephant in the smoothie fridge, the subject of Being Bono's Brother has to be faced. Norman Hewson has pointed out (extremely pleasantly) in the run-up to the interview that while he is indeed Bono's brother it is not the only thing he is in life.
He is a 52-year-old successful restaurateur with an idea that one day may go global, and a kid brother who's more famous than God.
Hewson is proud of the cafe, with its clever lime green, brushed steel and bare concrete look. When he looks down over the refectory tables towards the busy till he can remember the smoke-filled room of banquettes, the mezzanine floor where the Thursday-night transvestites used to sit, and before that the steak restaurant for which his customers queued down the street.
The building on Suffolk Street has been his home as a businessman for nearly two decades. First as Dillons Steakhouse in 1986, then on through the lunacy and mayhem that was Mr Pussy's Cafe Delux, finishing with Nude. It is not difficult to see number 21 as a reflection of the city's changing palate. Here it has shifted from coronary-on-a-plate steaks through the best fun (but least lucrative time) of his career with Mr Pussy's to now. Chick pea salads, wheatgrass shots and ambitious plans to take on Michael O'Leary and Ronald McDonald.
Is it hard not to be wistful for a time when the only shots consumed on the premises had strictly no health-enhancing properties? Not really. The Mr Pussy days . . . "two years of total insanity" . . . nearly killed him.
Why the heavy toll? "Because I always had somewhere to go after the nightclubs closed.
I was coming home at seven, eight o'clock in the morning, hammered out of my head. The kids would be getting up going to school and I'd say, 'this has got to stop.' Mr Pussy's was ahead of its time and it was too small and it never made any money. But it was great fun."
One famous night went down as life's most memorable dinner for a handful of customers.
As they ate, the door opened and a man walked up through the restaurant to a table at the top with a tiger on a lead. He sat down at the table as if to order and the tiger lay at his feet.
Forks had frozen midway to mouths as the animal's powerful flanks passed within inches of diners' legs. Then the Chipperfields Circus handler took his animal onto the stage and customers realised it was another Mr Pussy's event.
His favourite Mr Pussy story centres on the night of the trannies and the dentists. Thursday nights was Name that Tune night MC-ed by Mr Pussy, Alan Amsby. The clientele ranged from the regular group of about eight transsexuals and a group of dentists on a night out.
One from each group was pulled up as a contestant along with a third punter.
"It was always cheesy Eurovision hits. I'd be up here running the tunes. The tranny never answered any of the questions, even under prompting from Mr Pussy. At the end of it all one of the guys won and Mr Pussy said to me 'I'm going to go find out why he didn't participate. He knew all the answers. He was here every Thursday. It's the same **** every Thursday.'" Amsby got his answer when the silent tranny told him the dentist was his next-doorneighbour. Underneath the heavy panstick and wig he had been struck dumb with the fear that if he uttered a syllable his neighbour might recognise his voice.
Dumbstruck trannies were a long way from Craig Gardner, the old Dublin accountancy firm where Hewson started his career, training to be an accountant.
Somewhere in this dim, distant past his younger brother Paul was plugging away at the band stuff. Being seven years older, Hewson was part-time band driver.
"In fact, I drove them to the Late Late Show when they were first on it. I think it was myself and Adam Clayton's mother. There were two of us anyway.".
2005-08-21 12:00:00#
http://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2005/aug/21/big-brother/0 -
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An alternative history of Bishop Atherton
Peter Marshall explains how a chance reference in an old local history book led him to reconstruct the story of a 17th-century church scandal, and its afterlife in literature, culture and politics.
Sometimes historical research and writing is a thoroughly methodical business involving the testing of carefully-formulated hypotheses. At other times it feels much more akin to investigative journalism: the historian senses a ‘story’, follows up intriguing leads, and seeks to make connections. Just such a process has led me over the past few years to a preoccupation with the life, and violent death, of John Atherton (b.1598), Protestant bishop of Waterford and Lismore in Ireland. Atherton was hanged in Dublin in December 1640 for the crime of sodomy, making him the only Anglican ‘gay bishop’ ever to pay the ultimate penalty for his orientation.
The trail leading me to the extraordinary career of Bishop Atherton began with a ghost – not metaphorically, but literally. Some years ago my attention was drawn to a set of papers in the National Archives. This contained the testimony of a group of people from Minehead in Somerset, who in 1637 claimed under oath to have witnessed several apparitions of a recently deceased old lady.
The lady in question was Susan Leakey, widowed mother of a distressed Mine*head merchant named Alex*ander Leakey. The witnesses included Alexander’s young wife, Elizabeth, who had actually spoken with the ghost during a tense encoun*ter in her bedchamber. Seven*teenth-century ‘ghosts’ were often seen as a way of sorting out disagreements about property and inheri*tance, and on the surface this case seemed to fit the pat*tern. The apparition, so Eliza*beth claimed, had assigned her and her husband owner*ship of a valuable golden chain, currently in the possession of a kinswoman in Barnstaple. There was also something about a secret message to be delivered to Alexander’s sister, Joan Atherton, in Ire*land, which Elizabeth refused to divulge, a detail which seemed inter*esting, but obscure and unfathomable.
At the time I was col*lecting materials on ghost beliefs in early modern England, and there was much of interest here. Elizabeth reported that Mother Leakey had on her deathbed threatened to return ‘in the devil’s likeness’. She also linked the apparitions with the loss at sea of several of Alexander’s ships. But I was missing something vital, and failing to ask myself an (in hindsight) obvious question. Why were the authorities taking such an interest? The statements were collected by three Justices of the Peace, and sent up to the royal Council in London, where they were carefully scrutin*ized by Charles I’s leading minister, Archbishop William Laud. Neither the state nor Church authorities usually paid much attention to stories about ghosts, unless some crime were being alleged, or the reputation of some great personage was involved.In the spring of 2001, while working in the Somer*set Record Office, I hap*pened to pull off the shelves a History of Minehead, pub*lished by a local vicar in 1903. He blithely informed me that what I had assumed to be an obscure nugget of cultural history was in fact ‘the famous Minehead ghost story, immortalized by Sir Walter Scott’. From that point, I became increasingly obsessed with trying to establish how the Minehead ghost had come to the attention of Scot*land’s greatest Romantic novelist, and why the tale was evidently still familiar at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. What I began to dis*cover was that the depositions from Minehead represented only the tip of an iceberg of rumour and scandal.
Scott (who referred to the case in his poem Rokeby and in his 1830 Letters on Demon*ology) got his information from a printed source of the early 1700s. From there I worked back to a set of pamph*lets about the case pub*lished in the mid-seven*teenth century, and began to piece together the con*nec*tions between the Leakeys and Bishop Atherton. Atherton was a Somerset clergyman who had married Mother Leakey’s daughter Joan in 1620. In 1630 he took his family to Ireland, where his career was advanced by the Lord Deputy, Sir Thomas Wentworth. Thanks to Wentworth’s good offices the king appointed him bishop of Waterford in 1636 (an event that seems to have been the trigger for Elizabeth Leakey’s visions).
Atherton’s elevation had nothing to do with spiritual qualities, and everything to do with his abilities as a tough church lawyer. The established Protestant Church of Ireland in the 1630s was in deep crisis. Not only was the great mass of the population, in defiance of the law, still Catholic, but many of the Church’s lands had fallen into the hands of (usually Protestant) lay landowners. The diocese of Waterford was in a partic*ularly impoverished state, and Atherton’s brief was to use the courts aggressively to over*turn leases and return revenues to the Church. In the process he made enemies, not least the great*est landowner in Ireland, Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, who had acquired numerous ecclesiastical estates. Atherton also ant*agonized many Prot*es*tants among the English and Scots settlers. Deputy Wentworth, like Archbishop Laud in Eng*land, was keen to restore ceremony and ritual to Pro*testant services, and Atherton was in the vanguard of this movement. To oppo*nents, this seemed tanta*mount to bringing back ‘popery’. Little wonder then, that, that Laud’s ears should have pricked up when he heard ‘strange news out of Somer*setshire’ about super*natural messages for Bishop Ather*ton, or that he kept Went*worth closely briefed about developments, includ*ing the Justices’ conclusion that it was all an ‘imposture, device and fraud’.
At the beginning of the 1640s, a wave of Protestant hostility to ‘Laudian’ innov*ations swept across Charles I’s three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The king was forced to summon parliaments in both England and Ireland to raise money to repress Scottish rebellion, and those parliaments them*selves were soon centres of resistance. In June 1640, the Irish opposition in Ireland gained a notable scalp. The parliament in Dublin received a petition from Bishop Atherton’s steward, accusing him of a capital offence – sodomy with the steward himself. Atherton was arrested, and accusations of other acts of sodomy, as well as fornication with single women, and adulteries with married ones, began to pour in. In November, Wentworth himself was put on trial in the House of Lords of the Long Parliament. One of the charges was that he had pro*moted ‘popish and infamous persons, as the Bishop of Waterford and others, to the prime rooms in the Church of Ireland’.
Atherton was tried and convicted at the end of that month, and hanged in Dub*lin on December 5th. Because the new Lord Deputy had died suddenly two days earlier, a ceremony of ‘deconsecration’ had to be cancelled, and Atherton died wearing his cassock, still fully a bishop. The case caused huge interest for a few weeks, until greater events overtook it: Catholic rebellion in Ire*land in 1641, and Civil War in England the following year.
But what of the ghost and its message? At this point a whole other dimension of the case began to open itself. A scurrilous pamphlet published a few months after Atherton’s death claimed that he had first fled to Ireland because of ‘incest committed with the sister of his wife’, and that this was the crime the ghost wanted him to repent. This revelation sent me back to the records of the Somerset church courts, which confirm that in 1623 Joan Atherton’s younger sister Susan Leakey had been charged having with sexual relations with her brother-in-law, and that parishioners believed there had been a child.
There were attempts to keep these skeletons firmly in the cupboard. In 1641, the clergyman who had minis*tered to Atherton in prison, Nicholas Bernard, published a long account entitled The Penitent Death of a Woeful Sinner. Bernard sought to deflect damaging scandal from the Church by stressing Atherton’s remarkable final repentance of all his sins. He made no mention of a ghost, of incest, or even of the crime for which Atherton was convicted, and urged readers to ‘let him die in your thoughts for his life, but let him live in your memories by his penitent death’. The work was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century.
The ghost, however, made a dramatic comeback. In 1709-10, two London ‘Grub Street’ publishers, Edmund Curll and John Dunton, printed a lurid account of the ghost story, now including, among other colourful details, the claim that Mother Leakey and Atherton had together murdered the illegitimate child, and hidden its body after smoking it in a warming pan, ‘that it might not stink’. The ghost’s message thus concerned infanticide. Their source was a manuscript by a south-western Presbyterian clergy*man, John Quick, who in 1690 had written down what local people were telling him about the case in the 1660s. These new revelations sparked a counter-attack from some ‘high Anglicans’, who interpreted them as an attack on the Church. They began to insist that Atherton had been innocent of all serious charges, and was in fact framed by his enemies, including the earl of Cork. In the eighteenth century, Ather*ton’s memory became something of a political foot*ball between Whigs and Tories, with the latter tending to give him benefit of the doubt (an exception was the Irish-born Jonathan Swift, who wrote scathingly about him in a poem of 1730). In the course of these debates, some new and frankly bizarre allegations emerged, such as that the cause of Atherton’s downfall was ‘the sin of unclean*ness with a cow and other creatures’.
http://www.historytoday.com/peter-marshall/sex-scandal-and-supernatural0 -
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