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Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys: Homosex, Masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of Guards, circa 1900–1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

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Research Article
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2003

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References

1 Dawson, Graham, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, 1994), p. 1Google Scholar. See also Bourke, Joanna, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London, 2000), pp. 4468Google Scholar.

2 Dawson, Soldier Heroes, p. 1.

3 The invocation of iconic masculinities in tobacco advertising is discussed in Hilton, Matthew, Smoking in British Popular Culture: 1800–2000 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 83178Google Scholar.

4 While I focus upon the twentieth century, the Guards' sexual practices can be traced through the nineteenth century. See, e.g., Kaplan, Morris, “Who's Afraid of John Saul? Urban Culture and the Politics of Desire in Late-Victorian London,” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 267314Google Scholar; Norton, Rictor, Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700–1830 (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

5 Canning, Kathleen, “The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender History,” Gender and History 11, no. 3 (November 1999): 510CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (London, 1993), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

7 Canning, “Body as Method,” p. 510.

8 I use “homosex” as an “amalgam…[that] indicates sexual activities of various sorts between two males,” without making any assumptions about the conceptualization or organization of those activities—without, e.g., viewing the individuals who engaged in such activities as “gay” as we would use the term today. See Howard, John, Men like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago, 1999), p. xviiiGoogle Scholar.

9 Weeks, Jeffrey, “Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes: Male Prostitution and the Regulation of Homosexuality in England in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Chauncey, George, Duberman, Martin, and Vicinus, Martha (New York, 1989), p. 195Google Scholar.

10 Morton, H. V., London: A Guide (London, 1937)Google Scholar.

11 Legge-Bourke, Henry, The Queen's Guards: Horse and Foot (London, 1965), p. 153Google Scholar.

12 Hutchinson, Harold, Visitor's London: An Alphabetical Reference Book for the Visitor to London (London, 1954), pp. 3334Google Scholar.

13 Morton, London, pp. 109–10, 223–24. See also Muirhead, Findlay, The Blue Guide: London and Its Environs (London, 1927), pp. 71, 115–16Google Scholar.

14 Lock, Ward, Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to London (London, 1933), p. 82Google Scholar.

15 Legge-Bourke, Queen's Guards, p. 8.

16 Legge-Bourke, Henry, The Brigade of Guards on Ceremonial Occasions (London, 1952)Google Scholar.

17 Legge-Bourke, Queen's Guards, p. 57. For this notion, see, e.g., Bourke, Joanna, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Cohen, Deborah, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–39 (Berkeley, Calif., 2001)Google Scholar.

18 Legge-Bourke, Brigade of Guards.

19 Ward Lock, Pictorial and Descriptive Guide, p. 82.

20 Ratcliffe-Evans, Edward, Troopers of the King (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

21 “Troops for China,” Illustrated Police News (3 February 1927), p. 3.

22 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), CRIM 1 480, Rex vs. Herbert W.: Attempting to Procure an Act of Gross Indecency: November 1929: Depositions to the Central Criminal Court: Statement of Mr. L.

23 See, e.g., the registers of the Metropolitan Magistrates Courts, London Metropolitan Archive (hereafter LMA), PS MS A1 35, 12 February 1917; LMA, PS MS A1 55, 16 May 1922: LMA, PS MS A1 79, 18 March 1927; LMA, PS MS A1 83, 5 September 1927; LMA, PS MS A1 110, 11 April 1932; LMA, PS MS A1 160, 16 November 1937; LMA, PS MS A1 267, 28 January 1957. For confirmation of Hyde Park's reputation in the press and published memoirs, see, e.g., “In Hyde Park,” Empire News (26 April 1931), p. 12; “Dangers of Hyde Park,” Daily Express (23 April 1931), p. 7; Ellis, Henry Havelock, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 1, Sexual Inversion (London, 1897), p. 210Google Scholar; Ackerley, J. R., My Father and Myself (London, 1968), p. 135Google Scholar.

24 Michael S., interviewed by Matt Houlbrook, London, July 1999.

25 LMA, PS TOW B01 110, 17 July 1922; LMA, PS BOW A01 067, 8 August 1917; LMA, PS BOW A02 024, 20 March 1942; “Ex-guardsman Asked about the Perils of Piccadilly,” News of the World (28 September 1951), p. 7; “Westminster: Two Men Sentenced,” Illustrated Police News (22 May 1930), p. 7.

26 Ackerley, My Father and Myself, pp. 71, 135, 190; “Hard Labour and ‘Cat’ for Two Guardsmen,” Illustrated Police News (26 February 1931), p. 3; “Drama in a Taxicab,” News of the World (22 September 1929), p. 11; “Artist Arrested,” News of the World (20 June 1926), p. 12; Farson, Daniel, Soho in the Fifties (London, 1988), p. 75Google Scholar.

27 Mayne, Xavier, The Intersexes: A Study of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life (printed privately, 1908; reprint, New York, 1975), p. 213Google Scholar.

28 See Nicholson, B. D., “Drink,” in The New Survey of London Life and Labour, vol. 9, Life and Leisure, ed. SirLlewellyn-Smith, Hubert (London, 1935), p. 254Google Scholar.

29 For the problematic status of the category “prostitution,” see Brown, Alyson and Barrett, David, Knowledge of Evil: Child Prostitution and Child Sexual Abuse in Twentieth-Century England (Cullompton, Devon, 2002), pp. 57Google Scholar.

30 Raven, Simon, “Boys Will Be Boys: The Male Prostitute in London,” Encounter 15, no. 5 (1960): 20Google Scholar.

31 Lehmann, John, In the Purely Pagan Sense (London, 1976), pp. 5455Google Scholar.

32 See also “Blackmailer's Pose as Clergyman,” News of the World (4 November 1934), p. 10; “Father Ingram Is Sent for Trial,” News of the World (6 June 1954), p. 2.

33 See Wright, Adrian, John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (London, 1998), p. 62Google Scholar; Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, pp. 55–56.

34 Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World (London, 1995), p. 97Google Scholar.

35 Davies, Andrew, “Street Gangs, Crime, and Policing in Glasgow during the 1930s: The Case of the Beehive Boys,” Social History 23, no. 3 (October 1998): 251–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourke, Joanna, Working Class Cultures in Britain, 1890–1960: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity (London, 1994), pp. 4243, 130Google Scholar.

36 Williams, Emlyn, Emlyn: An Early Autobiography (London, 1970), p. 19Google Scholar. See also Isherwood, Christopher, Christopher and His Kind: 1929–39 (London, 1977), p. 35Google Scholar.

37 PRO, CRIM 1 480: November 1929: Statement of PC 504 B George Wardle.

38 See, e.g., the accounts of guardsmen boasting openly about their sexual encounters in Daley, Harry, This Small Cloud: A Personal Memoir (London, 1986), pp. 8485Google Scholar.

39 “Tower Bridge: Committed for Trial on Blackmail Charge,” Illustrated Police News (13 March 1924), p. 7; “Hyde Park Episode,” News of the World (19 January 1936), p. 12; “Hyde Park Scene,” News of the World (19 January 1936), p. 10; “Hard Labour and ‘Cat’ for Two Guardsmen,” p. 3; “Bail for Two Guardsmen,” People (25 January 1931), p. 3; “Drama in a Taxicab,” p. 11; “Rector in Role of Prosecutor,” News of the World (11 November 1934), p. 6.

40 PRO, MEPO 3 362, Roland B.: Attempted Murder of Philip E., 1929–31: Minute 9a, DDI Bradley to Supt. C., 18 November 1929: Attached: Rex vs. B. and M.: Summary of Report on Statements: Report of Insp. Bradley to Insp., 26 August 1929.

41 See, e.g., “A Mystery of Mayfair,” News of the World (18 August 1929), p. 5; “Brutal Attack on Man in Mayfair Flat,” Illustrated Police News (22 August 1929), p. 2; “Mayfair Flat Outrage,” Illustrated Police News (5 September 1929), p. 5.

42 PRO, MEPO 3 362, Minute 9a: Attached: Rex vs. B. and M.: Summary of Report on Statements: Report of Insp. Bradley to Insp., 26 August 1929; “Met in Piccadilly,” News of the World (8 September 1929), p. 6; “Upheaval in Flat,” News of the World (1 September 1929), p. 12; “Flat Victim's Ordeal,” News of the World (15 September 1929), p. 6. For the relationship between masculinity and violence, see the essays in d'Cruze, Shani, ed., Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850–1950: Gender and Class (London, 2000)Google Scholar.

43 See Partridge, Eric, The Dictionary of the Underworld (Hertfordshire, 1995), pp. 356, 433, 462, 525, 527, 684, 748Google Scholar. For guardsmen's deployment of these terms see, e.g., PRO, MEPO 3 362: Minute 9a: Attached: Rex vs. B. and M.: Summary of Report on Statements: Ins. Bradley to Insp., 26 August 1929; Ackerley, My Father and Myself, pp. 136, 139, 190–92; Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, p. 167.

44 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 226.

45 For guardsmen's desire to acquire the money to buy themselves out of their regiment, see Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, p. 127; Worsley, T. C., Fellow Travellers (London, 1984), pp. 9, 16Google Scholar; Nelson, Michael, A Room in Chelsea Square (London, 1958), p. 73Google Scholar.

46 This account draws upon “Hyde Park after Dark,” News of the World (26 April 1931), p. 5; “In Hyde Park,” p. 12; “Dangers of Hyde Park,” p. 7; “Night Perils of Hyde Park,” Morning Advertiser (23 April 1931), p. 8; “Perils of Hyde Park after Nightfall,” Illustrated Police News (30 April 1931), p. 5; PRO, HO 45 24960, Homosexual Offences Conference, 11 May 1931.

47 PRO, HO 45 24960, transcript of Homosexual Offences Conference, 11 May 1931.

48 Weeks, “Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes,” p. 195.

49 PRO, HO 345 8, Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, 1954–57 (hereafter CHP) 47, memorandum submitted by the War Office. For the careful transformation of recruits' “puny bodies” into the muscularity of “prime manhood” through basic training, see, e.g., Roland, Alan, Guardsman: An Autobiography (London, 1955), pp. 8, 33Google Scholar.

50 The emphasis upon the aesthetics of male beauty is explored through a discussion of the League of Health and Strength in Bourke, Dismembering the Male, pp. 137–40. For the 1950s, see Gordon Westwood [Michael Schofield, pseud.], A Minority: A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain (London, 1960), pp. 8990Google Scholar.

51 Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, pp. 129, 164, and 54, 127, 162–63, 249, 251.

52 Hoare, Philip, Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (London, 1997), p. 30Google Scholar.

53 Bourke, Dismembering the Male, p. 128.

54 Roland, Guardsman, p. 37. See also King, Francis, My Sister and Myself: The Diaries of J. R. Ackerley (London, 1982), p. 38Google Scholar.

55 Ackerley, My Father and Myself, p. 23.

56 Roland, Guardsman, p. 107.

58 Gardiner, Simon, A Class Apart: The Private Pictures of Montague Glover (London, 1992), pp. 29, 32–38, 45, 50–57Google Scholar.

59 Michael S., interviewed July 1999.

60 Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, p. 50–51; Weeks, “Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes,” p. 203.

61 The investment of these qualities in the working-class body, a sense of selfloathing at being removed from this realm, and the erotic charge generated by that distance had wider resonance in bourgeois culture. For queer expositions on these themes, see, e.g., Grosskurth, Phyllis, ed., The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds (Chicago, 1984)Google Scholar; Carpenter, Edward, Towards Democracy (London, 1914)Google Scholar, and Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society (Manchester, 1894)Google Scholar; Forster, E. M., Maurice (London, 1972)Google Scholar. These mentalities are also explicit in very different texts. See, in particular, Orwell, George, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterley's Lover (London, 1961)Google Scholar.

62 See Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

63 Bartlett, Lee, ed., Letters to Christopher: Stephen Spender's Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929–39 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1980), p. 45Google Scholar.

64 Weeks, “Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes,” p. 203.

65 In this the guardsman was thus only the most striking figure within a queer imagination that eroticized working-class men per se, including sailors, laborers, and “down and outs.” I discuss these wider patterns in Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London: Space, Identities, and Male Practices, 1918–1957 (Chicago, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

66 “Shadowed in Strand,” News of the World (27 June 1926), p. 14; see also “Artist Arrested,” p. 12; “Believed the Sailor,” News of the World (21 May 1922), p. 5.

67 “Ex-guardsman's Fate in Colonel's Flat,” News of the World (12 July 1936), p. 16.

68 Ackerley, My Father and Myself, p. 136.

69 Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, p. 129. See also Farson, Soho in The Fifties, p. 75; David, Hugh, The Fitzrovians: A Portrait of Bohemian Society, 1900–1955 (London, 1988), p. 170Google Scholar.

70 Lehmann, Purely Pagan Sense, p. 49.

71 Ibid. p. 52.

72 Ibid. pp. 245.

73 Worsley, Fellow Travellers, pp. 46–47, 62–65; see also David, Hugh, Stephen Spender: A Portrait with Background (London, 1992), pp. 64, 164–67Google Scholar.

74 Parker, Ackerley, p. 114.

75 King, My Sister and Myself, pp. 46–48.

76 Worsley, Fellow Travellers, pp. 68, 181–82, 191.

77 King, My Sister and Myself, p. 52.

78 Davidson, Michael, The World, The Flesh, and Myself: The Autobiography of Michael Davidson (London, 1962), p. 134Google Scholar.

79 Dawson, Soldier Heroes, p. 2.

80 “In Hyde Park,” p. 12; “Hyde Park after Dark,” p. 5; “Perils of Hyde Park after Nightfall,” p. 5; “Night Perils of Hyde Park,” p. 8.

81 “Hyde Park after Dark,” p. 5.

82 “We Expose a Blackmail Gang,” John Bull (16 November 1929), p. 8.

83 PRO, HO 345 8, CHP 47, Memorandum Submitted by the War Office.

85 It was inevitable, noted Legge-Bourke, that the Guards' image would become “tarnished…from time to time…London being the metropolis it is.” Legge-Bourke, Queen's Guards, pp. 155–56.

86 “This Was the Story of a Lost Soul,” News of the World (15 April 1951), p. 2; see also “Five Troopers Punished by Court Martial,” News of the World (29 April 1951), p. 2; PRO: HO 345 12, CHP TRANS 6, Testimony of Theobald Mathew, Director of Public Prosecutions, 7 December 1954; PRO, HO 345 14, CHP TRANS 7, Testimony of Sir John Nott-Bower, Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, et al., 7 December 1954.

87 “Five Troopers Punished,” p. 2.

88 “This Was the Story of a Lost Soul,” p. 2; “Perils of Hyde Park after Nightfall,” p. 5; “Night Perils of Hyde Park,” p. 8; “Hyde Park after Dark,” p. 5; “Men Who Prey on Guardsmen,” News of the World (4 November 1956), p. 1.

89 PRO, HO 345 7, CHP 12, Memorandum Submitted by Lord Chief Justice Goddard.

90 “This Was the Story of a Lost Soul,” p. 2. For these patterns, see also the sentences handed down in LMA, PS MS A1 55, 16 May 1922; LMA, PS MS A1 35, 12 February 1917; LMA, PS MS A1 79, 18 March 1927; LMA, PS MS A1 83, 5 September 1927; LMA, PS MS A1 110, 11 April 1932; LMA, PS MS A1 160, 16 November 1937; LMA, PS MS A1 267, 28 January 1957; LMA, PS BOW A01 067, 8 August 1917.

91 For the ways in which guardsmen's status and service record could create a sympathetic response in court, see, e.g., “South-Western: Prison for Guardsman,” Illustrated Police News (22 October 1925), p. 7; “Two Guardsmen Sentenced for Brutal Assault on Police,” Illustrated Police News (23 September 1926), p. 4; “Ex-guardsman's Good War Record Reduces His Fine,” Illustrated Police News (27 January 1927), p. 7.

92 PRO, HO 345 13, CHP TRANS 25, Testimony of G. C. G. Dodds et al., 25 May 1955.

93 “This Was the Story of a Lost Soul,” p. 2.

94 Ibid.

95 “Five Troopers Punished by Court Martial,” p. 2. For this notion of “a chance of becoming a man again,” see also “Mayfair Flat Outrage,” p. 4.

96 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, Calif., 1990)Google Scholar.

97 Legge-Bourke, Queen's Guards, pp. 155–56.

98 PRO, HO 45 24960, Homosexual Offences Conference, 7 May 1931.

100 During his basic training in 1936, Alan Roland thus recalled “revealing and often entertaining…lectures…on vice.” Sitting in the lecture room, he would “listen…to a red-eared young officer, hesitant and stammering…as he told us of buggery and perverts.” For this and Roland's apparent internalization of dominant understandings of the queer—at least publicly—see Roland, Guardsman, pp. 107–8. These lectures continued into the 1950s. See PRO, HO 345 8, CHP 47, Memorandum Submitted by the War Office.

101 PRO, HO 45 24960, Homosexual Offences Conference, 7 May 1931.

102 Ibid. For the initiation of this discussion, see PRO, MEPO 2 5815, Supt. A Bean to Commissioner, 28 April 1903.

103 “Ex-guardsman Asked about the Perils of Piccadilly,” p. 7.

104 PRO, HO 345 8: CHP 47, Memorandum Submitted by the War Office; PRO, HO 345 13, CHP TRANS 25, Testimony of G. C. G. Dodds et al., 25 May 1955.

105 Ibid.

106 PRO, HO 45 24960, Homosexual Offences Conference, 7 May 1931.

107 Ibid.

108 Butler, Bodies That Matter, pp. 1–6.

109 For the interconnections between national citizenship and notions of normative sexualities, see also Grant, Kevin, “‘Bones of Contention’: The Repatriation of the Remains of Roger Casement,” Journal of British Studies 41, no. 3 (July 2002): 329–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dean, Carolyn, The Frail Social Body: Pornography, Homosexuality, and Other Fantasies in Interwar France (Berkeley, Calif., 2000)Google Scholar.

110 Grosz, Elisabeth, “Inscriptions and Body-Maps: Representations and the Corporeal,” in Feminine, Masculine and Representation, ed. Threadgold, Terry and Francis, Anne Cranny (Boston, 1990), pp. 65, 71–72Google Scholar.

111 “Blackmailer's Pose as Clergyman,” p. 10.

112 “Ex-guardsman Asked about the Perils of Piccadilly,” p. 7.

113 “Mayfair Flat Outrage,” p. 4.

114 “Death Sham in Flat,” News of the World (27 October 1929), p. 6.

115 “Flat Victim's Ordeal,” p. 6; “Mayfair Flat Outrage,” p. 3.

116 “Mayfair Flat Outrage,” p. 4.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid. For the currency of this kind of defense, see also “Hyde Park Episode,” p. 12; “Stamping Out Night Terrorism,” News of the World (16 February 1936), p. 14; “Drama in a Taxicab,” p. 11.

120 “Highway Robbery,” Illustrated Police News (19 December 1929), p. 5. See also the recorder's comments following Cecil E.'s conviction in “Perils of Hyde Park after Nightfall,” p. 5.

121 Legge-Bourke, Queen's Guards, pp. 155–56.

122 See, in particular, Thane, Pat, “Population Politics in Postwar British Culture,” in Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–64, ed. Conekin, Becky, Mort, Frank, and Waters, Chris (London, 1994), pp. 114–33Google Scholar; Giles, Judy, “Help for Housewives: Domestic Service and the Reconstruction of Domesticity in Britain, 1940–1950,” Women's History Review 10, no. 2 (2001): 299324CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finch, J. and Summerfield, Penny, “Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1945–1959,” in Marriage, Domestic Life, and Social Change, ed. Clark, D. (London, 1991), pp. 732Google Scholar; Weeks, Jeffrey, Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London, 1989), pp. 232–48Google Scholar; Osgerby, Bill, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 1782Google Scholar.

123 Hoggart, Richard, The Uses of Literacy (London, 1957)Google Scholar. See also Abrams, Mark, The Teenage Consumer (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Bogdanor, Vernon and Skidelsky, Robert, eds., The Age of Affluence, 1951–63 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Steedman, Carolyn, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Zweiniger-Bargeilowska, Ina, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consumption, 1939–55 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

124 For an alternative conceptualization of this crisis, see Waters, Chris, “‘Dark Strangers' in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–63,” Journal of British Studies 36, no. 2 (April 1997): 207–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Frank Mort, “Mapping Sexual London: The Wolfenden Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, 1954–57,” New Formations, no. 37 (Spring 1999): 92–113. For the origins of the committee, see Higgins, Patrick, Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Post-war Britain (London, 1996), pp. 312Google Scholar; Chris Waters, “Disorders of the Mind, Disorders of the Body Social: Peter Wildeblood and the Making of the Modern Homosexual,” in Moments of Modernity, p. 134.

126 Westwood, Gordon [Michael Schofield, pseud.], Society and the Homosexual (London, 1952), p. 85Google Scholar.

127 Ibid. 1955.

128 PRO, HO 345 13, CHP TRANS 24, Testimony of Peter Wildeblood, 24 May

129 PRO, HO 345 14, CHP TRANS 25, Testimony of G. C. G. Dodds et al., 25 May 1955.