Dan Snow's History Hit - Georgian Musings on Homosexuality

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Eamonn O'Keeffe is a young Oxford Researcher in the midst of a PhD. He stopped off in Wakefield Library to look at a journal Yorkshire farmer Matthew Tomlinson to see if the author had any opinions on the subject of his research: military music. Tomlinson did not. However what O'Keeffe found in the diary proved of infinitely greater interest to the general public than a passion for marching bands. In an entry for 1810 Tomlinson argues that homosexuality is natural. He therefore questioned the death penalty’s application for homosexual activity and sodomy. How can man punish what God has ordained? The announcement of the discovery went viral and I had to get him on the podcast. By chance I am also a big fan of 18th and early 19th Century military music so I got two for the price of one.For ad free versions of our entire podcast archive and hundreds of hours of history documentaries, interviews and films, signup to HistoryHit.TV. Use code 'pod3' at checkout.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan's Nurse History Hit. I am in Brussels. I have just been at the battlefield of Waterloo. Some of you may have heard of it. Some of you may have heard me mention it before on this podcast. I like to go there every so often, keep myself topped up, keep myself current. And this was no exception. It's pretty grim in February, gotta be honest. The wind howls across that field like an advancing Prussian infantry corps from the east, let me tell you. It's pretty grim. But anyway, this podcast has got very little to do with Waterloo. In fact, it's got, well, no, it doesn't have much to do with Waterloo. This podcast is for everybody who read that story in the press or heard about this wonderful discovery the other day. It's a story

about a young historian doing a PhD at Oxford University called Eamon O'Keefe. He was, like any sane historian, studying the long 18th century. And his specialism is, in fact, as you'll hear, young historian doing a PhD at Oxford University called Eamon O'Keefe. He was like any sane historian studying the long 18th century and his specialism is in fact as you'll hear military music in the long 18th century. Very sound, very sound way to spend three or four years of your life if you don't mind me saying. He stopped off in Wakefield Library to check if there was a particular 18th century journal that might have some useful sources, might have some useful material in it but he didn't discover anything useful about Mediterranean music. He discovered instead the musings of a farmer about homosexuality and whether or not it was natural, whether or not it should therefore be punishable

by the justice system. This went viral internationally. It's an astonishing, fantastic story. And of course, we got him on the pod straight away away so this is Eamon O'Keefe talking about his discoveries in 18th century sexuality if you do enjoy films about the battle of Waterloo we've got one available on History Hit TV it's like Netflix for history we've got lots of films on there about lots of things in fact but we've got one about Waterloo just go on there use the code pod6 pod6 which gets you exclusive podcast listener offer six weeks free of charge you can list the podcasts no ads on there you can watch hundreds of history documentaries you can have a great old time in fact and if you do that you can have six weeks absolutely free of charge so please please head over there and do that now in the meantime everyone

enjoy the remarkable story of Eamon O'Keefe's discoveries in Wakefield Library. Eamon, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's been quite the few days for you, buddy. Congratulations. Certainly has been. Were you expecting this? Well, I was hoping because it's LGBT History Month that there would be high profile for this story, but I've really been heartened by the amount of media attention and the excitement that I've seen very widely

expressed over this discovery. And I've had a lot of friends and acquaintances over the last few days reach out to me to congratulate me and offer their support and enthusiasm for having made this really chance discovery in my PhD research, but one that promises to help enrich and complicate our understanding of how Georgian people understood sexuality. So for all those people who have not heard, what is this chance discovery? Right, so I was investigating the diaries of Matthew Tomlinson, a 45-year-old tenant farmer who's living just outside of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. And in a diary entry in January 1810, having read a report in the media, a newspaper report of the execution

of a naval surgeon for sodomy, Tomlinson confides in his diary that he wonders whether homosexuality is innate and something that shouldn't be punished by death. He claims that he's been informed by others that homosexuality is in some men's nature from childhood and thinks that the death penalty is therefore a cruel method of treating a God-given trait. And then he embarks on further religious introspection, claiming he thinks it's strange that a just God could create people with natural same-sex desires and yet then punish them with death if they ever tried to act on those feelings. Why has this created such a stir within the historical community?

Is there a dearth of other source material on this topic? Well, yes, I think there certainly is. Obviously, we have to remember that Tomlinson is expressing what, by all appearances, is a minority viewpoint. He's swimming against the current of rampant intolerance towards same-sex relationships in 18th and early 19th century Britain. That said, the argument that same-sex activity was natural and innocuous, there are some occasions of it being expressed in England during the 18th century. So you have this burgeoning of Enlightenment thought on individual liberties, legal reform, that helps spur calls for Britain to emulate continental counterparts by abolishing the death penalty for homosexual activity. But this often is still twinned with

this idea that sodomy is a detestable crime, but nonetheless, maybe the death capital punishment is too harsh. What's really striking about Tomlinson's account is that he argues that homosexuality is natural. And this, again, isn't the first time that this is expressed in English. So in 1749, Thomas Cannon pens a tract making similar arguments, but he's forced to flee the country. making similar arguments, but he's forced to flee the country. No full copies of that tract survive, and we only know about it from a legal report of evidence compiled at the King's Bench that survives in the National Archives. We know that some Georgian men and women, undoubtedly, who engage in same-sex relationships, they did think of their sexuality as something that was innate. So Halifax landowner Anne Lister, who has recently been the subject of the BBC

series Gentleman Jack, she justified her lesbian feelings in her diaries in 1823 as natural and instinctive. And I think most prominently, the utilitarian philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, he expressed the view that homosexuality should be decriminalized, expressed the view that homosexuality should be decriminalized, arguing in various writings that sodomy statutes stemmed from, and I'll quote him, no other foundation than prejudice. But the important thing to bear in mind is that Bentham, he didn't dare publish these radical views in his lifetime, because this was a time when even spreading false allegations of homosexual behavior, this was considered by some commentators as akin to committing murder. Such was the reputational damage, the social death that

the accused person would face. So we really see this as a dangerous and controversial view. And it's really surprising to have evidence that a Yorkshire farmer in 1810 is seriously considering the prospect that homosexuality is something that is innate and deserving of acceptance. I love how you found this because you weren't actually looking for it at all and there was nothing in the text about what you were looking for. No, so I'm doing a PhD on military music in the Napoleonic Wars and I was coming back from a conference in Leeds and the Wakefield Libraries, I knew they had this diary. I'd seen a colorful passage cited in another book. And I thought, maybe let's see what this farmer says about life in wartime Britain

during the Napoleonic Wars. Does he hear any military musicians? Does he encounter any recruiting parties or participate in patriotic pageantry? And actually, there wasn't very much on that. Tomlinson was firmly disdainful of patriotic ceremonial in all its guises. He clearly liked the quiet life, which is useful in itself to get that opinion of someone who wasn't so interested in celebrating, say, the anniversary of the King's accession, who was living a little bit further out of the country and isn't exposed to war's alarms, to the bustle of volunteer parades and reviews and recruiting parties. So it did actually give me some insight into life at the time, but what really stood out was this passage on homosexuality, which seemed really unique and

surprising. But again, while I'm really interested in the history of the long 18th century, I mean, sexuality isn't my specialty. And so then it was a question of reaching out to experts in the field who could give me a sense of this diary, which seemed unusual to me. Is this something that is really actually unique and significant, or there are sort of 15 diaries like it? And the answer was, well, yes, this actually is a really rare and exciting find that gives us a sense of what an ordinary person, a Yorkshire farmer, who is a casual observer, who's reading about something in the press

that talks about the unnatural offenses committed by a naval surgeon. He questions really casually in his diary, saying, well, are these offenses as unnatural as I'm being told? Are these homophobic assumptions that I've encountered in society that I'm reading about in the paper, do they really hold up to scrutiny? And he's very tentative. He's not sure. And it's important to note that he seems to first take the argument that homosexuality is natural, and therefore the people who have same-sex desires are blameless, shouldn't be punished. But then he

says, I'm not really sure. And then he says, because he's a farmer, he says, I haven't seen any evidence of same-sex relations among my farm animals. So maybe this is a choice. Maybe this is something that is a vitiated or a corrupted inclination that stems from lust. And if that's the case, then it should still be punished. And he even argues that maybe instead of capital punishment, castration is a more lenient way of punishing sodomites by reducing their libido. So that's a very jarring statement

that contrasts with the earlier, much more recognizably modern views that he expresses. So he's clearly of two minds. He's really not sure. But even though his reflections are inconclusive, even though he hasn't quite made his mind up as to what to think of homosexuality, it nonetheless gives us really fascinating insight into the efforts of a person of faith, a Christian,

to grapple with questions of sexual ethics more than 200 years ago. Is this whole thing slightly infuriating for you? Because you're trying to do your PhD, and yet now you've become an expert in 18th century sexuality. Well it's certainly been an adventure but one that I've been really happy to undertake. I think it's very meaningful to have to be able to share your research with a wider audience and this is something that when I discovered it when I noted the the passage it just stood out to me as something that was surprising and it it seemed like this could be something that helped contribute to our knowledge of what 18th and 19th century people thought about

sexuality, giving us a sense of, if not what the man on the Clapham omnibus was thinking, well then maybe at least the man on the Wakefield farm cart was thinking about homosexuality. This certainly wasn't the mainstream opinion, but it gives us a sense that even in times of persecution of homosexuality, of sexual diversity, that people could hold more sympathetic, more open-minded views than we would often think. So how common is this? Are there hundreds of diaries and letters yet to be read out there from that period? Are we going to be making more and more discoveries like this? Well, there are. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of diaries from the long 18th century in Britain, depending on sort of the parameters and the dates you set and how you count them.

You know, many of them will just be writing what the weather was that day. Many will be rambling on, you know, their own hypochondria of the author or their personal opinions on faith or taking out the dog that morning. And so they may not necessarily always be of wider historical relevance. out the dog that morning. And so they may not necessarily always be of wider historical relevance. And there certainly have been some that have been published and that have been serialized as radio editions or being read widely. I'm thinking of, for instance, the diary of Parson Woodford from Norfolk, who gives a sense of what it was like in his community. So there are some very good writers whose diaries have received acclaim, but there are many others that still remain relatively unexplored. In this case, the Tomlinson diary, there are a couple of historians who have looked at it because he

writes about popular politics, about the rambunctious elections that were happening during his lifetime. Also, Luddite activity, later Captain Swing, these attempts to push back against labor-saving machinery by rural agricultural workers. So in his case, Tomlinson, he has threshing machines and stays up all night with a firearm expecting to be attacked by the Luddites who are sending him threatening letters saying, we're going to come for your threshing machine if you don't voluntarily destroy it yourself. So it really gives a fascinating insight on many different issues. But there are hundreds and hundreds of pages in these diaries. And as with many of other diaries, not every page is being comprehensively explored and looked at.

People, historians, doctoral students, are approaching them with different views in mind. They're trying to maybe look, what does this tell us about Luddism? What does this tell us about military music? And I think LGBT history is obviously something that in the last few decades has received a lot more attention. And many historians probably who, if they were paying attention and read this diary entry in their own research, would probably thought, wow, this is unusual. But maybe, you know, before the last few decades, it wouldn't have really been something that people thought was worth paying attention to. So I wouldn't be surprised if there are more comments like this in other diaries of the time. And I mean, certainly, it's not a surprising view either today or 200

years ago that all sorts of people have idiosyncratic and diverse opinions on everything. But there's a difference between supposition and hypothesizing about that and actually being able to find evidence of ordinary people thinking about questions of sexuality in a way that we can then prove that at least in the case of this Yorkshire farmer, and in the way he phrases it, it seems like he's had these discussions with his social circle that recognizably modern attitudes towards sexuality were circulating in British society more widely and at an earlier date than commonly assumed. Now I can't let you go just yet because obviously I am obsessed the long 18th century it's where my heart lies and I'm the only interviewer that you have talked to during this

gigantic press extravaganza you've been on I'm the only interviewer that you have talked to during this gigantic press extravaganza you've been on. I'm the only one that's going to ask you about your doctoral thesis because military music, let me tell you, I'm fascinated by military music. Tell me all about that. Are we talking, it's tactical use on the battlefield for coordinating troops? Are we talking as a recruitment tool? Well, a combination of things, obviously. So recruiting parties did crisscross Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars. And military music, a combination of things, obviously. So recruiting parties did crisscross Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars, and military music was a way of attracting recruits to join the army, of helping the government raise manpower for a war of unprecedented scale

and duration. But it was also very important, these bands, these fifers and drummers, keeping up morale in camps, in garrisons, on campaign, in foreign fields. And what we learn as well is because of the investment in military music, the expansion of the armed forces due to the need to fight this global war, due to the concern that France is going to invade, there are all of these home defense units that are created, the volunteers, the militia on a county basis, as well as an expanded regular army. And every colonel wants to have his own band of music, fifers and drummers. So there's an enormous amount of energy and money expended by the army, by officers on military music.

And one of the knock-on effects of this is it trains ordinary people in how to play music. It gives ordinary people new opportunities to learn musical skills. And then you see that later on in the 19th century, many of these veterans of the martial music project during the Napoleonic Wars will then go on to train bands in the colliery districts or open up music shops in Southampton or in Montreal or Sydney, really expanding and enriching musical culture across Britain, across Ireland and the wider British Empire. So the army in a way has an unexpected role in popularising musical skills, popularising instrumental entertainment. That's just as interesting to me as your work on sexual attitudes. So thank you very much. Come back on the pod and talk about that soon.

It's been a pleasure, Dan. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour,

it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts.

It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.