![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I haven't read any of her work, nor am I likely to, but this is pretty amazing. I found it via John Kovalic's Twitter feed, someone posted an excerpt from a radio interview where the host basically said 'Uh, excuse me, but the phrase 'death recorded' does not mean they were executed' and that was the primary thesis of the book was that all of these gay men were executed under sodomy laws under Victoria's reign!
From the post:
Wolf, the author of the acclaimed early ’90s bestseller “The Beauty Myth,” argues in “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love” that some gay people received the death penalty in 19th-century England because “death recorded” was the documented outcome of their cases.
“I found several dozen executions, but that was only looking at the Old Bailey records and the crime tables,” she told historian Matthew Sweet on the program “Free Thinking.” Old Bailey was a major 19th-century courthouse in London.
“I don’t think you’re right about this,” Sweet told her, followed by a painful pause. He went on to explain that the Old Bailey website defines “death recorded” as a 19th-century term referring to cases in which a judge pardoned the defendant for his or her alleged crime. In other words, the “death” was on paper only.
Sweet, who specializes in Victorian history, pointed to the specific case of Thomas Silver, who Wolf claimed was executed for sodomy. Sweet said he found Silver’s date of discharge, indicating that the 14-year-old had not been executed.
“I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened,” Sweet said. Ouch.
He also noted that sodomy laws were broadly defined and included child abuse in addition to gay sex, muddying the details of each individual crime.
To their credit, both the author and the historian handled things remarkably well from then on, with Wolf pledging to review her research and Sweet thanking her for doing so.
“Dr. Sweet, my thanks to you is substantial. These records of early prosecutions for sodomy and offenses by what we would call gay men, deserve to be pored over in this way,” Wolf wrote on Twitter. “The records are not unambiguous as you usefully pointed but are so important out and I am sincerely grateful,” she continued.
Sweet said her reaction was “very welcome and interesting” and that he eagerly awaited the results.
“My expectation is that you will find no evidence that any man was executed for sodomy during [Queen] Victoria’s reign, that some of the cases you cite in the book are for nonconsensual acts,” he said, adding that he believed the Old Bailey records were “too scant to determine who ― if anyone ― consented to what.”
The publisher said that although we have lots of editors and checkers and such, we assume that the author did the primary fact checking, and that we're in discussions with the author as to what to do.
From the post:
Wolf, the author of the acclaimed early ’90s bestseller “The Beauty Myth,” argues in “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love” that some gay people received the death penalty in 19th-century England because “death recorded” was the documented outcome of their cases.
“I found several dozen executions, but that was only looking at the Old Bailey records and the crime tables,” she told historian Matthew Sweet on the program “Free Thinking.” Old Bailey was a major 19th-century courthouse in London.
“I don’t think you’re right about this,” Sweet told her, followed by a painful pause. He went on to explain that the Old Bailey website defines “death recorded” as a 19th-century term referring to cases in which a judge pardoned the defendant for his or her alleged crime. In other words, the “death” was on paper only.
Sweet, who specializes in Victorian history, pointed to the specific case of Thomas Silver, who Wolf claimed was executed for sodomy. Sweet said he found Silver’s date of discharge, indicating that the 14-year-old had not been executed.
“I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened,” Sweet said. Ouch.
He also noted that sodomy laws were broadly defined and included child abuse in addition to gay sex, muddying the details of each individual crime.
To their credit, both the author and the historian handled things remarkably well from then on, with Wolf pledging to review her research and Sweet thanking her for doing so.
“Dr. Sweet, my thanks to you is substantial. These records of early prosecutions for sodomy and offenses by what we would call gay men, deserve to be pored over in this way,” Wolf wrote on Twitter. “The records are not unambiguous as you usefully pointed but are so important out and I am sincerely grateful,” she continued.
Sweet said her reaction was “very welcome and interesting” and that he eagerly awaited the results.
“My expectation is that you will find no evidence that any man was executed for sodomy during [Queen] Victoria’s reign, that some of the cases you cite in the book are for nonconsensual acts,” he said, adding that he believed the Old Bailey records were “too scant to determine who ― if anyone ― consented to what.”
The publisher said that although we have lots of editors and checkers and such, we assume that the author did the primary fact checking, and that we're in discussions with the author as to what to do.
