Category Archives: LGBT+ History Month

The life and poetry of Ivor C. Treby

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, LGBT+ History Month, Modern, Spotlight, Uncategorized, ,

Written by Kasturi Pindar, Bodleian Libraries intern, Summer 2023

Ivor C. Treby (1933-2012) was a biochemistry teacher by profession, though outside of his professional life, he considered himself a gay literary activist, as well as being an avid traveller and a collector of sand. He is perhaps best known for his research and work on Michael Field, the pseudonym of the Victorian lesbian poets, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. As a gay literary activist, he wrote his own poetry, which was published in magazines and journals internationally, and in collections released under his own imprint, De Blackland Press. He was also a member of the Gay Authors Workshop from its early years. By the time of his death, he had published five books on Michael Field and over 400 of his own poems. The motifs, imagery and sentiments found in his poems often reflects the various aspects of his life. Though his poetry is less well-remembered, his talent as a poet is clear when exploring his archive. Therefore, this post will highlight some of his poetry through the lens of his life experiences.

Born in Devonport, Plymouth, the son of a shipwright, Treby grew up by the coast. He lived here until he eventually moved to study, attending Exeter College, University of Oxford, where he studied biochemistry. The sea and the shore are themes that run throughout his poetry, testifying to the influence of life by the sea on his formative years. Many of his poems link the sea to his coming-of-age, or to romantic and sexual encounters that impacted his life. Others, such as ‘Respite’, simply express a feeling of calm and restful detachment that he felt when near the sea. His poem, ‘Sea Light’, describes the sea as part of his heritage, as the son of a shipwright, but importantly too as a young, gay man. He references areas of Plymouth that he frequented as a teenager, during his coming-of-age. The first and fourth verses are reproduced below.

‘Sea Light’

The sea was part of my heritage
I know all the old nautical traditions
Have heard of the phantom toffee-gobbler
Could give lessons on how to blow the man down
In a variety of interesting positions
…

Whenever I see a sailor now, I am back on Citadel Hill
Of an autumn twilight. Across the Hoe’s windy arena
The matelots come. My lads do you still
Walk the Barbican, and wait in Devonport Park
Still relish the hand of a youth on your trouser-leg’s dark concertina?
…
MS. Treby 16 © Darren Perry

***
After graduating from Oxford, Treby moved to London to teach biochemistry, working at Concord College in Tunbridge Wells, then Chiswick Polytechnic, before moving to Paddington College (now City of Westminster College). In 1978, he was charged and convicted of gross indecency under Section 13 of the Sexual Offenses Act 1956. By this time, he was out to his family and his colleagues. Nonetheless, he was subjected to disciplinary proceedings by Paddington College, as well as intervention by the Department of Education and Science who considered determining him to be a person ‘unsuitable for employment as a teacher’ as a result of his conviction. Historically, his case is important as it shows the limitations of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which is commonly thought to have legalised homosexuality in the United Kingdom. Though the 1967 act legalised homosexuality under certain circumstances, research has shown that following the passing of the act, policing of homosexual activity increased, and convictions of homosexual men for ‘gross indecency’ went up by more than 300%. Men continued to be arrested for actions as small as winking and smiling at other men in the street, or public displays of affection such as kissing and cuddling.

As his career was jeopardised by the Department of Education and Science, Treby defended himself vocally. In a written response to the Department of Education and Science, he wrote:

I feel myself under no obligation to give a ‘full explanation’ of a matter which,
(a) is totally irrelevant to my abilities as a teacher
(b) could only have arisen in a society with a grotesque attitude toward a minority of its people who obtain sexual fulfilment and love with adult members of their own gender. Kindly note the word love.

His conviction, and his vocal defence of himself, testify to how difficult it was to be openly gay, even 10 years after homosexuality had been supposedly legalised in the UK. His poem, ‘We Who Burn’ was written the year after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 and was one of his earliest open avowals of his sexuality. It was first published in The Gay Journal in the year of his conviction. The poem explores what it meant to Treby to be gay in the mid-twentieth century. Themes of silence, death and darkness are interspersed with the loss of youth and a reference to ‘cottages’. Writing about the poem later in life, Treby suggested that it may ‘have a permanent place in the history of gay poetry.’

Continue reading →

Oscar Wilde in the Chancellor’s Court

19th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, LGBT+ History Month, Modern, Oxford University Archives, ,

For LGBT+ history month, the University Archives’ blog looks at one of Oxford University’s most famous alumni: playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde. Wilde was a student at the University in the 1870s. He matriculated from Magdalen College in 1874 and studied classics (Latin and Greek), as did most students at the University the time. A brilliant student, he achieved first class honours in his Classical Moderations examination (or ‘Mods’, taken roughly mid-way through the BA degree) in 1876.

Oscar Wilde 1876

Oscar Wilde as an undergraduate, 1876

Alongside his impressive academic performance, Wilde also cut an equally impressive figure in his personal life, dressing stylishly and somewhat flamboyantly for the time. Having joined Apollo, the University Masonic Lodge, he also developed quite a liking, so the story goes, for masonic regalia. Wilde frequented the jewellers and gentlemen’s outfitters of Oxford to stock up and, as we will see, bought a lot of things which were probably not on the shopping list of your average undergraduate.

In late 1877 Wilde’s spending got him into trouble. He owed money to some of the shops at which he’d bought his goods on credit, and whether he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pay, he ended up before the University’s Chancellor’s Court in the November of that year for non-payments of debts.

The Chancellor’s Court, whose ancient origins lay in the establishment of the post of Chancellor, back in 1214, was the University’s own court. For many centuries it had jurisdiction over University members, both in civil and criminal cases, and for much of that time, also over the people of the city of Oxford. By the late nineteenth century it had lost many of its earlier powers and was chiefly a debt-recovery court, used frequently by Oxford shopkeepers and tradespeople to recoup money owed to them by students at the University.

Two such shopkeepers who were owed money by Wilde did exactly this and took him to the court in November 1877. Wilde received two summonses within that month to appear before the Court.

Oscar Wilde summons 1877

Summons issued to Oscar Wilde, 8 November 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/78:2)

The first summons was for the case brought against him by Joseph Alison Muir, a tailor of the High Street. According to the tradesmen’s bills, submitted as evidence to the hearing on 16 November, Wilde had ordered a considerable number of items from him over a period of two years, which amounted to over forty pounds’ worth of gentlemen’s attire. This would be roughly £4000 today. They included a ‘superior fancy angola [angora] suit’, ‘superior angola trousers’ and ‘India gauze pants’. Wilde had already paid roughly half of the bill but still owed the tailor over £20.

Chancellors Court bills 1877

Bills presented as evidence to the Court, 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/78:1 and 1877/98:1)

His second summons to appear in the court, only two weeks later, was for the case brought by George Henry Osmond, a jeweller of St Aldates’. Wilde had purchased jewellery and Masonic regalia there, including gold and ivory collar studs and a Masonic apron and sword. Again, he had only part-paid the bill of over £15, still owing the jeweller just over £5.

In both cases, Wilde was ordered to pay the money owed, plus costs (for the summons and the hearing itself). The costs were sizeable: for the second case he was ordered to pay nearly £3 in costs (on the original debt of £5). Wilde was so outraged by this that he wrote a very angry letter to the court in protest. The letter survives amongst the papers for that case. The costs, he claimed, were ‘a most extortionate and exorbitant claim’. He was so incensed that he intimated that the procedure of the court itself was so corrupt that it was in need of investigation by the University Commission. By this he meant the University of Oxford Commission (Selborne Commission), which had just begun its meetings at Oxford, looking into the financial arrangements of the colleges. It seems unlikely that Wilde’s plea ever reached the Commission’s ears.

Extracts from letter of Oscar Wilde to the Chancellor’s Court, 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/98:3)

He ended the letter ‘I trust that this monstrous claim will not be allowed to remain’ but it appears that his protests were to no avail. The official accounts of the cases in the Chancellor’s Court registers here in the Archives record that both were settled by payment of the debt in full. There is no indication that Wilde’s letter of protest let him off in any way.

Wilde’s contretemps with the University authorities did not adversely affect his studies, fortunately, and he performed as brilliantly in his final examinations in Literae Humaniores (Classics) the following summer as he had done in this Mods, achieving first class honours again. He also won the University’s prestigious Newdigate Prize for English Verse that year for his poem ‘Ravenna’ (having spent time there the previous year) which he read publicly at the 1878 Encaenia ceremony in June.

The Chancellor’s Court continued its decline and was used less and less as the nineteenth century wore on; very few cases were held throughout the twentieth century. The very last case to be put before the court took place in 1968 and eleven years later, in 1979, the court was formally abolished.

Wilde’s time at Oxford is discussed by Richard Ellmann in his 1988 biography ‘Oscar Wilde’ as well as within his many other works on Wilde.

For more information about Wilde’s involvement with freemasonry whilst at Oxford, see the article by Yasha Beresiner at OSCAR WILDE Freemasons (freemasons-freemasonry.com)

Stories about Wilde’s time in Oxford, and of other LGBT+ students at the University throughout its history, can be found on the ‘Queer Oxford’ website at Queer Oxford – Celebrating 600+ years of LGBTQ+ history and heritage in the city Oscar Wilde called ‘the capital of romance’.

 

Thomas Baty, gender critic

19th century, 20th century, LGBT+ History Month, Oxford University Archives, Spotlight, Uncategorized,

February is LGBTQ+ history month, an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the often overlooked and hidden histories of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. Although LGBTQ+ students will have been part of Oxford University throughout its existence, for most of that time, they were unable to freely be themselves whilst here, and so many of their stories, unrecorded in the University’s archives, remain untold.

LGBTQ+ student societies only began to be formed about 30 years ago. The implementation of anti-gay legislation by the government, such as Section 28 in 1988, caused serious concern for the welfare of LGBTQ+ students. Until this point, their voices had been very rarely heard. Many students in previous centuries had to live a double life, presenting the facade of a ‘conventional’ student whilst living privately in a very different way.

One such student was Thomas Baty. Born in Carlisle in 1869, he was admitted to the University in 1888, a member of Queens College. A talented student of law, he achieved second class honours in Jurisprudence in 1892 and his BA was conferred that same year. He then went on to obtain a Bachelor of Civil Law in 1894 and became a Doctor of Civil Law in 1901. A high-achiever, he also obtained two degrees in law from Cambridge University during this period.

List of successful candidates for the BCL, 1894 (from OUA/UR 3/4/16/1)After his degrees, Baty lectured and examined for the University, holding a law fellowship at University College. There followed a distinguished career in international law, with numerous legal publications to his name. He moved to Japan in 1916 to work as a legal adviser to the Japanese government which he stayed for the rest of his life until his death in 1954.

Thomas Baty as an examiner for the BCL, 1908 (from OUA/UR 3/4/16/1)

But Baty led a very different life away from the University and the law. Only after leaving education does it appear that he began to be free enough to explore all elements of his personality. Regarded today as a gender pioneer, he described himself as a radical feminist. He railed against the restrictive gender conventions of his day, defying those conventions in his private life.

In 1993 it was discovered, by scholars Daphne Patai and Angela Ingram, that from 1909 Baty had been writing books and articles on gender under a different identity. Writing as Irene Clyde, he published works which argued against the strict binary division of gender into male and female. Genderfluid himself, he opposed the artificial gender conventions which society had constructed on biological sex. He thought they served only to create barriers between people. His 1909 novel as Irene Clyde, Beatrice the Sixteenth, was set in an imaginary utopian genderless society. In 1912 he founded the ‘Aëthnic Union’, and in 1915 he and a number of other influential individuals also founded the privately-circulated magazine Urania. Baty used both these channels to attack the system of two rigidly-defined genders.

Thomas Baty, c1915 (source: Bain News Service collection, Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/ggbain.22216/ )

None of Baty’s queer identity can be found in the records here. These document his academic career only and shed no light on these other important aspects of his life. Tracing the experiences of LGBTQ+ students like him in the archives here is virtually impossible; nevertheless, we should not allow the silence of the archives themselves to keep these histories hidden.

Much of the information here about Baty’s life after Oxford has been taken from a series of interesting blogs by Ealasaid Gilfillan available at:

Thomas Baty | LGBT+ Language and Archives (wordpress.com)

Thomas Baty and Gender | LGBT+ Language and Archives (wordpress.com)

Reflections on Thomas Baty | LGBT+ Language and Archives (wordpress.com)

The blogs also give links to further reading on Baty concerning both his professional and personal lives. The discovery of Baty’s identity as Irene Clyde is discussed in Daphne Patai and Angela Ingram’s 1993 book Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939 (‘Fantasy and Identity: the Double Life of a Victorian Sexual Radical’, pp265-304).