Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire (53 page)

After their arrest, Boulton and Park were stripped and examined by a police doctor, who looked for physical “signs” of homosexuality, but the doctor later admitted that he had no idea what kind of markings he was seeking. There was no textbook describing what the physical markers of homosexuality were. Clearly, the prosecution thought they were homosexuals—the “molly” tradition of cross-dressing gay men had not been forgotten—but being a transvestite was not illegal in itself. There was no evidence that Boulton or Park had had homosexual sex at all.

The case drew a lot of press coverage. On their first day in court, as the
Times
of London reported, “Boulton wore a cherry-coloured evening silk dress trimmed with white lace; his arms were bare, and he had on bracelets. He wore a wig and plaited chignon. Park’s costume consisted of a dark green satin dress, low necked and trimmed with black lace, of which material he also had a shawl round his shoulders. His hair was flaxen and in curls. He had on a pair of white kid gloves.” The following day they appeared in court in men’s clothing, much to the disappointment of the assembled crowd. The evidence showed that Boulton and Park often dressed up as women—and very convincingly—but that was the most that could be proven. No fewer than six court hearings only managed to show what many already knew: They were merely two of many London “young men who, for years past, have been in the habit of visiting places of public resort in feminine attire.”

It took the jury just fifty-three minutes to decide that Boulton and Park were not guilty, which was greeted with shouts of “Bravo!” and other loud cheers. The two were dismissed as harmless eccentrics, which they clearly were, but the case also shows a critical early effort at defining a homosexual as a kind of person with certain telltale characteristics, rather than just considering homosexuality a type of sexual activity. In 1870, the view of homosexuality as an inbred (or deeply ingrained) pathology had not yet fully sunk into legal, medical, or popular thought, though before long it would. Had Boulton and Park been put on trial, say, in 1895, when Oscar Wilde was thrown in jail for his relations with young men, they would not have done nearly as well. By then, the image of the effeminate, monstrous, and predatory homosexual was well ingrained, and with the label came powerful hatred and fear at nearly all levels of society.
¹⁹

Around the time of the Boulton and Park trial, when the word “homosexual” was first put to use, medical researchers began to study and label every conceivable abnormal sexual trait. This was when coprophilia (arousal by feces), urophilia (arousal by urine), and mysophilia (love of filth) were identified as separate pathologies, along with necrophilia (sex with corpses), gerontophilia (sex with the aged), and exhibitionism. Homosexuality was just one of dozens of new avenues of research, although its association with sodomy and its ubiquity set it apart. Because homosexuals “wasted” their seed by having sex with no chance of procreation, they were originally likened to the compulsive masturbators diagnosed by Tissot and others as potential psychotics. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was widely accepted that the loss of an ounce of semen was equivalent to the loss of several times that amount of blood; in this light, men who ejaculated with each other were considered as either having been born weak and insane or having engaged in the process of making themselves so. (In France, one medical “expert” cautioned police to look for “signs” of masturbation—tantamount to proof of homosexuality—in all men arrested for public indecency.)

The Boulton and Park trial highlighted the existence of a group of dedicated transvestites, but the link had not been made between homosexual sex and cross-dressing. Soon it would be, however, along with upper-class depravity and an “artistic” temperament. Homosexuals were no longer just sinners. In the late nineteenth century, they were seen as plagued, full-time, with what historian Michel Foucault later called a “hermaphroditism of the soul.” As homosexuality emerged as a full-fledged mental disease, the law responded by reducing the penalties. Yet while it was less risky, legally, for men to have sex with each other, it now became, if possible, even less socially acceptable.

The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act in the United Kingdom took the punishment for sodomy down from death to a prison sentence of ten years to life. Twenty-five years later, “gross indecencies” between men would be punished as misdemeanors with a maximum punishment of two years’ hard labor. These changes were double-sided. On one hand, they showed a measure of mercy for a group of people now thought to be sick rather than blasphemous. On the other, lighter sentences made it easier to secure convictions and opened the door to stepped-up prosecutions against men such as Wilde. People no longer wanted to burn homosexuals alive, but a little prison time seemed appropriate.

AS POPULARLY CONCEIVED, the new homosexual personality had a powerful class aspect. Upper-class homosexuals did it for perverted fun (the result of “erotomania,” as Wilde would claim), while lower-class men were pulled into it for money. Many trials against homosexuals were rooted in the belief that well-heeled men were corrupting rough boys, what Wilde later called “feasting with panthers.” There was some truth to this. In an 1881 semifictional autobiography,
The Sins of the Cities of the Plain; or the Recollections of a Mary Ann
, the pseudonymous London hustler “Jack Saul” described a broad subculture of brothels in which rich men paid well for the company of lower-class adolescents, often soldiers. The young men, known as “rent boys” for their tendency to blackmail their customers for rent money, were objects of dangerous and intensely erotic fascination for aristocratic men. Wilde himself read Saul’s book and explored this underworld with gusto; so did a group of aristocrats, whose patronage of a male brothel in London’s Cleveland Street comprised one of the largest scandals of the century.

The Cleveland Street case began in July 1889 at a post office, where a telegraph messenger boy named Charles Swinscow was caught with more money in his pocket than his job warranted. He admitted to police that the money came from “gentlemen” who paid to touch him. He then volunteered that other telegraph boys were doing the same thing, mostly at a brothel run by a man named Charles Hammond. Hammond got wind of the bust and escaped to Paris, leaving his angry young charges to deal with the inquiry by themselves. One of them told police: “I think it is hard that I should get into trouble while men in high positions are allowed to walk free.” When asked whom he was referring to, he responded that Lord Arthur Somerset went regularly to Hammond’s Cleveland Street house, as did the Earl of Euston.

These were two names the police did not want to hear. Somerset was an intimate of the Prince of Wales and ran his stables. Euston was the eldest son of the Duke of Grafton, and a high-ranking Freemason. The case became a hot potato for police investigators, who referred it to ever higher levels of command. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Street brothel was put under observation and within days Somerset, a member of Parliament, and other notables were seen skulking in and out. There was sufficient evidence to arrest Somerset, but to do so would imply that the heir to the British throne—the ambiguous Prince Albert Victor (known as “Eddy”)—also enjoyed “feasting with panthers.” The matter went all the way up to the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, who seems to have barred prosecution of the brothel’s loftiest patrons—especially Somerset. However, the case could not be contained. The conviction of a rent boy and a street-level procurer stirred newspapers to claim that a cover-up was being orchestrated. In the
Pall Mall Gazette
, the two convicted men were portrayed as “wretched agents” who were “run and sent to penal servitude” while “the lords and gentlemen who employ them swagger at large and are even welcomed as valuable allies of the Administration.”

Finally, names were named.
The North London Press
published an article directly implicating Somerset and Euston, and asking why no official charges had been made against them. The paper also hinted that Prince Eddy might be involved. Somerset left the country, never to return, but Euston immediately sued the paper and its editor, Earnest Parke, for criminal libel. At that trial, the newspaper called several witnesses who confirmed that they had seen Euston enter the Cleveland Street brothel, although their stories differed as to details. Euston agreed that he had gone in, but forcefully claimed that he had done so while looking for a female sex spectacle and not a romp with rent boys. Jack Saul was also called to the stand by Parke, which turned out to be a big mistake. By this time he was a weathered thirty-five years old, and his “queen” shtick and braggadocio in describing a life spent servicing rich men only made Euston look that much more like a solid citizen. It took the jury little time to rule against Parke. The judge gave him twelve months in prison.

The verdict did not calm the controversy, however. The outraged newspaper headlines kept coming, this time joined by a homophobic member of the House of Commons, Henry Labouchere (of whom we will learn more soon). It was out of the noise of the Cleveland Street affair, and the growing feeling that perverted rich men were taking advantage of underprivileged boys, that Wilde was put on trial in 1895. The great writer, wit, and snob had been publicly accused of being a sodomite and, like Euston, sued his accuser for libel. However, the Wilde case turned out much differently. Unlike Euston, who returned to his life with his reputation as a heterosexual intact, Wilde ended up in jail doing hard labor.
²⁰

MUCH WAS ALREADY aligned against Wilde when his sexual life came up for public review. Times had changed since the simpler days of the Boulton and Park trial, when the flirtatious habits of two transvestites were treated as a light joke. Now the mood against homosexuals had turned dark indeed. They were seen as predators ready to waste the country’s youth with “unnatural” lusts. Wilde fit that mold, and added to it a flamboyance and a knack for making enemies as easily as he tossed off witticisms. His only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, oozed with decadence and boy love. The book tracks the life of a gorgeous young man who trades his soul to keep his beauty. As Gray chases a life of sexual dissipation, his sins are etched magically onto a painted portrait he keeps locked in a closet. Gray comes to a bad end, but that was lost amid the book’s thick homoeroticism.

Dorian Gray
was first published in
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine
in 1890, to deadly reviews. Said
The Scots Observer
:

Mr. Oscar Wilde has been writing stuff that were better unwritten; and while
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. . . is ingenious, interesting, full of cleverness and plainly the work of a man of letters, it is false art for its interest is medico-legal; it is false to human nature—for its hero is a devil; it is false to morality—for it is not made sufficiently clear that the writer does not prefer a course of un-natural iniquity to a life of cleanliness, health and sanity . . . Mr. Wilde has brains, and art, and style; but if he can write for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys, the sooner he takes to tailoring (or some other decent trade) the better for his own reputation and the public morals.

The reference to the Cleveland Street affair was direct: Wilde was yet another dirty man lusting after England’s youth.
Lippincott’s
wholesaler pulled the issue out of circulation immediately. The novel was published in book form, with six additional chapters, but carried the same scandalous message. Wilde’s indiscretion about his sexuality, plus his dandyish arrogance, would ensure that he paid the price for all men with a taste for the likes of “perverted telegraph boys.” To Wilde, the intimate company of adolescent boys was stimulating. To most others it was simply a crime.

Wilde met his own Dorian Gray in the person of Lord Alfred Douglas, a uniquely handsome Oxford dropout he affectionately called “Bosie.” Until his trial in 1895, Wilde and Bosie lived the life described by Saul in
Cities of the Plain
. Wilde was married with two children, but that did nothing to interfere with his escapades. He rented rooms in Piccadilly, ostensibly to work undisturbed but also to entertain the rent boys he and Bosie met through a pimp, Alfred Taylor. Wilde’s recklessness was matched only by his triumphs as a writer and personality.
Dorian Gray
was not an instant hit, but Wilde’s plays did very well. During the same period when, as he later wrote, he “went to the depths in search for new sensations,” he reached the apex of commercial success. Wilde cut a unique public figure, but from his perspective it was working. He was the toast of the society that mattered to him.

Not everyone was charmed. Bosie’s father, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, a truculent little man best known for penning a set of boxing rules, developed an obsessive hatred for his son’s companion. His threats to cut off Bosie’s money unless he stopped seeing Wilde were unsuccessful, so Queensberry started to threaten Wilde himself. One day in June 1894, he appeared without warning at the London house Wilde shared with his family, accompanied by a prizefighter. The interview did not go well. Queensberry threatened to “thrash” Wilde if he showed his face in public with Bosie again; Wilde threatened to sue him for libel.

Not long before that, Wilde had had a series of other visitors: rent boys looking to blackmail him over some passionate letters he had written to Bosie, which had gotten into their hands. One of the letters, addressed to “My own boy,” later found its way into court as evidence against Wilde. The writer appeared unfazed, telling one of the blackmailers that the letter was a “prose poem,” the “art” of which “is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.” Nevertheless, Wilde paid, and then he paid some more, but the letters had already been copied. A duplicate of one of them, in which he tells Bosie that “it is a marvel that those rose-red lips of yours should have been no less for music of song than for madness of kisses,” eventually fell into Queensberry’s hands. He was not amused.