20th Century: The Law

Men continued to be prosecuted for gross indecency throughout most of the 20th century, but cases remained relatively uncommon in Cumbria. The publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957 offered hope of justice for queer men, but there was no change in the law for a decade. Prosecutions increased in the meantime and, even after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was past, discrimination and inequality continued.

Gross Indecency

In 1921, teacher George Makepeace and engine driver John Parker pleaded guilty to attempting gross indecency near Alston. Both the judge and the Penrith Observer’s reporter clearly believed the offence to be a serious one, although the judge dealt leniently with them on account of their youth and good characters, “in the hope that they would never forget the horrible disgrace that had befallen them.”¹ Leniency in this case meant 3- and 2-months hard labour for the men.

Later in 1921, MP Frederick Macquisten proposed a new amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act in the House of Commons, which would place same-sex activities between women on the same criminal footing as men. This was the first time lesbians had been considered in Parliament, but the debates reflect the sort of absurd and contradictory thinking that often comes with bigotry. Lesbians were, on the one hand, a grave threat to the nation, home-wreckers, a symbol of the kind of moral decline that could bring down empires, and a cause of mental breakdowns that was filling up asylums and fuelling a rise in cocaine use. They were corrupted women who sought to spread their corruption. On the other hand, they were so uncommon and women were so oblivious to their existence that there were concerns that legislating against them would only put ideas in women’s heads.

While the Commons passed the amendment, it would eventually be defeated in the House of Lords, based on those fears of advertising lesbianism.²

Wolfenden

The Conservative home secretary David Maxwell Fyfe, who was in position from 1951 to 1954, was a homophobe who used his position to demonise and terrorise queer men, encouraging police to root out sex between men by whatever means possible. Under his direction, arrests and convictions increased and notable trials like those of actor John Gielgud and Tory politician Lord Montagu of Beaulieu attracted scandal. Facing pressure, Maxwell Fyfe set up a committee, led by the academic John Wolfenden, to look at homosexual offences and prostitution in 1954.

Few people who have appreciated the beneficial changes which followed [Wolfenden], are aware of the major role played by E. B. Ford in achieving this objective. Attitudes and opinions have changed so radically during the last few decades that it is difficult to believe how much courage was needed to produce a document of this sort in the fifties and sixties. I saw with the greatest admiration and respect how Professor Ford pursued our aims with relentless tenacity, courage and ultimate success.³

Hyde’s promotion of the Wolfenden reports and other liberal causes would cost him his political career. He was deselected by his party before the general election of 1959. The Commons would eventually vote against the recommendations in 1960 and the issue was quietly shelved.

After Wolfenden

The publicity surrounding the Wolfenden report and the government’s failure to respond to it may have had a negative effect on the queer men of Cumbria. There appears to have been a notable increase in the number of gross indecency cases in the county in the decade from 1957, and particularly of large-scale investigations.

The arrested men were all from Low Furness, ranged in age from 20 to 62, and were mostly working class (although one was a town councillor). They usually met in public but many of the offences were committed in private homes.⁴ Two of the men, W. Lindsay and N. Scudamore, had lived together for a while.

They all pleaded guilty to the Barrow magistrates on 7 September and were sent to Lancaster assizes a month later for trial. Most were refused bail in the meantime as the judge feared they might ‘contaminate’ other men.

The following year a similar incident happened in Kendal after D. Henderson was knocked unconscious and hospitalised for approaching another man on a pathway. Despite being the victim of a homophobic attack, Henderson was questioned and his confession ultimately led to 12 men being brought before the magistrates (without their legal advisors present) and committed to the assizes in Appleby. The judge there, Mr Justice Elwes, was far more lenient than his Lancaster counterpart, admiring the men for their honesty in confessing and sympathising with them as victims of public shame and scorn. All the men were let off with absolute or conditional discharges.

Barrow police took on another investigation in 1961 when 17-year-old W.T. Hullock was reported for having approached a man in the notorious Abbey Road toilets, leading police to watch the site. Again, they revealed a network of men who had met each other, this time generally in their 20s and mostly from the Barrow area. A similar case in Keswick led to the arrest and trial of 10 men in 1964 and another in Carlisle — singlehandedly undertaken by Detective Constable John Taylor — involved seven men.⁵

Impacts of Arrest

The risk of being caught held serious consequences, not only public shame but the loss of jobs and families. One man arrested at Kendal was a schoolmaster approaching retirement, who stood to lose both his job and his pension as a result of the trial. In another case on Walney in 1958 a railway worker just 3 months from retirement was spared prison, which could have jeopardised his pension.

In the 1957 Barrow case, defendant G. Cummings, said “My wife will finish with me now,” while G.G. Finlayson had said to the police “It is disgraceful. Will it get into the papers? My father will kill me if he gets to know.”

The risks of arrest weren’t enough to deter some people. Finlayson was in court again the following year and other men appeared in multiple cases. Young W.T. Hullock, whose actions had started the 1961 investigation, was in court two years later with two other men, having been caught again at Abbey Road toilets. In a separate case in 1957, J.M. Abbott and A. Chambers were placed on probation after admitting to gross indecency with each other, but shortly afterwards moved in together in Barrow. They were both later sent to prison for two years.

Stan Blacklock, who was one of the men arrested in Carlisle in 1967, has written about his experiences. He was initially caught in a police raid, taken to the police station and questioned. He recalls watching a news report about the arrests with his parents, who were oblivious to his part in the case. He was later arrested again at work and taken into custody for a week.

The months between arrest and trial were tough, with Stan experiencing depression and even suicidal thoughts. He struggled with the public exposure, the uncertainty, and the fact that he had been arrested for a consensual, victimless act. While the press coverage made sure that rumours spread about him, his family, friends and colleagues were largely sympathetic and supportive throughout. The publicity even had its benefits as offers from closeted men began to arrive through his door, allowing him to avoid the risk of being caught in public again.

Stan and his co-defendants were eventually tried at the Cumberland assizes and given one week in prison while the judge decided on their sentences. He received three years’ probation.

Decriminalisation

Eventually, the key reforms of the Wolfenden report were passed by parliament as the Sexual Offences Act 1967. But the act was a long way from bringing equality, only applying to men over the age of 21 (it was 16 for heterosexual sex) and to acts committed in ‘private’ (meaning that no more than two people could be present). It did not decriminalise homosexuality in the armed forces or on merchant navy ships and it offered little legal protection to queer men from blackmail and harassment, which was one of the main purposes of the law.

Continued Persecution

Cases of queer men being blackmailed were still being reported in Cumbria in the 1980s and there were a number of cases in West Cumbria in which violence and even theft were blamed on unwanted homosexual advances.

Police continued to target queer men and it was only after two Workington men took their own lives following raids on public toilets in the town in 1997 that they began to change their attitude. Ronald Heron and Norman Irving were among 15 men arrested as part of an undercover police operation, which was criticised by Stonewall as being outdated and hard-line. Although the police refused to admit wrongdoing at the time, they did take the opportunity to work with the local gay community, including the group OutReach Cumbria, to improve their approach to dealing with queer men in the county.

In 1987 a lawyer defending a Barrow man for gross indecency with an 18-year-old highlighted the unfairness of the law, saying “What has occurred would not have been an offence with someone over 21. It would not be an offence between a man and a woman.”⁶

Efforts to reduce the age of consent to 18 for homosexual males floundered in the 1970s and were only brought into law in 1994. When the European Commission for Human Rights ruled in 1997 that maintaining a distinction between heterosexual and homosexual ages of consent was discriminatory, the Labour government repeatedly tried to change the law, only to be blocked by the House of Lords. It was eventually forced through in 2000.

All references to biological sex were removed from sex-related legislation in 2003, which effectively removed the privacy requirements for homosexual sex.

Men who had been convicted under the repealed laws have been able to have convictions removed from their record since 2012, but the Alan Turing Law, which automatically gave posthumous pardons to all men convicted came in 2017. Stan Blacklock was officially pardoned in 2021.

Notes

1. ‘A Serious Offence Near Alston’ in Penrith Observer, 18 January 1921. ↩︎
2. Lawson, J. (2025), ‘”Sapphic Sedition”: Lesbians and Law in the 1921 Criminal Law Amendment Act’ on The Law Bod Blog [accessed March 26] ↩︎
3. Rothschild, M. (1984). ‘Dedication: Henry Ford and Butterflies’ in R.I. Vane-Wright and P.R. Ackery (1984). The Biology of Butterflies, London: Academic Press. ↩︎
4. Locations for meeting included the toilets in Abbey Road, those behind the Cross Keys Hotel (off Cavendish St), in Vickers, or in Ulverston “where the men met, almost by chance, in the open.” ↩︎
5. Taylor later became the head of the Cumbria C.I.D. A 1986 article in The Cumberland & Westmorland Herald states that he was commended by the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1965 “after his one-man investigation let to the arrest of nearly sixty homosexuals in Carlisle.” (23rd August 1986, 5). I have been unable to find any further evidence of this. ↩︎
6. Barrow Evening Mail, 25 July, 1987, 3. ↩︎