“It Was Born in Me,” But Who Was He?

Can we have more detail here?

When Henry Dorwart was arrested for sodomy in May 1889, the word “homosexual” was still three years away from being introduced into English. Yet, it seems that there were some people who were already getting the idea that sexuality was something innate. Even the (now outmoded) term “sexual invert” was only a few years old (and probably hadn’t come to the attention of those who were not in medicine), but still, Henry Dorwart was able to explain what he had done by saying “it was born in me.”

Dorwart was preceded in this by Joseph Carp of St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1883, Carp stated that his “excessive passions were unlike those of other men.” Unlike Dorwart, Carp was given the column inches to make this clear: “He loved his own sex with strong passions” (to quote the St. Paul Daily Globe). The Lancaster Daily Intelligencer didn’t give Dorwart more than the five words, so we don’t even know what happened (but given only one arrest mentioned, we can make a guess or two).

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

The Cabin Boys and the Sodomite Master

Mr. Sowle was not the
cabin boys' favorite

Sure, we know the jokes about the function of cabin boys on nineteenth-century ships. Their official function was to wait on the officers of the ship, but it’s clear from eighteenth-century and nineteetn-century records that some cabin boys were expected to provide sexual favors, willing or no. All in all, I’d rather look at documents that hint at early gay love, but this is one case where the situation is a clear case of a young men being raped. Jonathan Ned Katz does mention this case in his book Love Stories; Sex Between Men before Homosexuality, but he makes it clear this is not a love story.

The law cases of Manuel Enos vs. N. W. Sowle and Manuel Viera vs. N. W. Sowle came up as a question of admiralty law in the Hawaii Supreme Court, with the decision published in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser of December 20, 1860. At this time, Hawaii was nearly a century away from becoming the fiftieth state; it wasn’t even part of the United States at that point, since it hadn’t even been annexed by the U.S. This is a case of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the main issue that had to be decided by the Hawaii Supreme Court was whether the court had any jurisdiction.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

William Reno Escapes Imprisonment for Sodomy — Eventually

"We charged him on the wrong thing"
isn't actually a technicality

It seems that William Reno was already known to the police when he was arrested on December 7, 1910. In 1908, he plead guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced from six months to two years imprisonment. The East Oregonian said that Reno “shot a companion named Goodell about three weeks ago as the outcome of a drunken spree.” But he wasn’t just a fighter. Most of the articles on him, are of a quite different nature.

His 1910 arrest didn’t involve any weapons, as far as we can tell from the news reports. Instead, he was arrested for sodomy.[1] The article seems to be inaccurate on several counts, one of which is in describing the other person involved as a “boy,” which strikes me as a little inaccurate for an eighteen-year-old.[2] I don’t know if Oregon had a different age of consent in 1910, but but I think we can be certain that it was no lower than 18 (which it is now). In 1910, no one could legally consent to gay sex, still the East Oregonian’s use of the word “pederasty” seems somewhat misapplied.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Sexual Perversion in Washington

There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

When I look into the backgrounds for these old stories, I feel like a combination of a private detective and the town busybody. It does take some sleuthing; checking other newspaper accounts to see if I can find out more about the people involved in the story, looking at public records that might shed some light on the matter (for the record, the dead have no privacy rights). Sure, when I look into an early-twentieth century sodomy accusation there’s prurient interest involved. Look: people from a century ago having sex. Forbidden sex.

That’s an important part too. I only have to read the comment on articles about same-sex marriage. I would like to think that referring to gay men as “sodomites” was some queer linguistic habit of a century ago, but the comment still gets made in 2014.[1] It would probably be both difficult and expensive to get the court transcripts of whatever transpired on Friday, November 8, 1901, but the Sunday Morning Globe of Washington, D.C. makes it seem worthwhile, since the testimony “revealed the most indescribable details of sexual perversion,” which the Globe assured its readers were “too filthy and demoralizing to even write about.“

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Two Convicted for Sodomy, One Escapes

I'm rooting for the lad

Were they a couple? That’s one of the questions that is simply unanswerable about two young men who were charged and convicted of sodomy in Washington State in 1910. An October 26 article in the Yakima Herald refers to them as “lads,” and on November 2, the Herald supplies that one of the two, James Nichol, was twenty-one. Unfortunately, even with the biographical detail the Herald supplied, I haven’t been able to make any certain identification of the two.

The name of the other man is given as James S. Ryan, and Washington had an ample supply of men of that name, most of them of about 20 years of age. I was able to find 11 men over the age 17 and under the age of 30 in the 1910 Census. Some were married, most were single. The one James Ryan in Yakima County in 1910 has the improbable origin of “Greece,” as does everyone else in his railroad crew, a few of whom do have Greek surnames. I’ve also checked the 1920 Census to see if any of them vanish from the record, but it wasn’t all that helpful. No Greek Ryans in Yakima in 1920.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

District Attorney Declined to Prosecute Abominable Crime

The Crime-that-Cannot-Be-Named

From my point of view, when a district attorney at some time in the past declined to prosecute a sodomy charge, that was a good thing. It's a good thing that consensual sodomy can no longer be prosecuted. In October 1869, the Washington, D.C. District Attorney declined to prosecute two charges of sodomy.[1] My cursory research turned up that the accused were both well known to the authorities, with charge for various acts of assault or theft attributed to each of them. Further, the news reports made it clear that the two charged were black, and it seems that their alleged victim was as well.

The two were charged separately, but the alleged incidents were on the same date. Each, according to the charges, committed sodomy “upon” on Roy Washington, on August 23, 1869. I am assuming that the “upon” means that Mr. Washington was the receptive partner for either oral or anal sex.[2]

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Naughty Pictures Bring Worse Charge then Burglary

Probably not the Shaws,
but you never know (I've cropped out
the racy bits, sorry).

A North Dakota couple, Elmer and Emma Shaw, were arrested in 1917 on suspicion of burglary and in searching through their possessions, the police found photos of the couples. Now they were really in trouble. I haven’t been able to find any information on the couple’s arrest, or for that matter much information about them in general. I might have written this up earlier were it not for an error on the part of a compositor.[1]

The earliest reference I can find to this story is in the Bismark Tribune of October 9, 1907, but I didn’t find that one due to a typographical error (which I’ll explain in detail soon, since I keep harping on it). The article which actually came to my attention was in the Ward County Independent, of Minot, North Dakota, on October 25, 1917, and was titled “A Revolting Pair,”[2] referring to the Shaws.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Sodomy Trial Leads to Acquittal for Accused, Jail for Witness

Don't mess with the courts

There’s tantalizingly little information about the 1899 sodomy trial of one John H. Williams in Montana. The name is common enough that in looking at one newspaper, the Anaconda Standard in that year, I was able to find several men named John Williams, not all of who could be same man: the new father, the dog racer, the retired military man, the (dead) miner, the partier, the con man, the thief, the sodomite. The first two reports on the case, refer to the accused as “John X. Williams,” but in the final story, he’s listed as “John H. Williams.” The “H” is probably correct. Likewise, John Lynch, the alleged witness, could be one of several men (although there are several men of the name in the Anaconda Standard of the time who couldn’t be the witness).

Williams was arrested on June 3, 1899 on the charge of sodomy. He was arraigned on June 5, with a hearing on June 6, leading to a trial on September 13. When the case came to court, he was acquitted, due to a lack of evidence.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Insisted on Trial after Sodomy Charge

Was Mr. Farrell naughty too?

In the midst of reading old newspapers today, my attention was drawn to the case of Margaret Delf, who was (repeatedly) charged with prostitution and brothel keeping in 1884 St. Paul. The search term that lead me to Margaret was “sodomy,” which was not one of the things she was charged with, but was the charge for the case described immediately after hers.

Unlike Ms. Delf, for whom this was to be the last reference in the St. Paul Daily Globe, there is a follow-up to the second story. I’ll give it all here.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Not His First Time

Somebody did
something

In digging through newspaper archives, I’ve been using the word “sodomy” as one of my search terms. Most of the items I find are either quite brief (a list of upcoming court cases and the charges) or are just too horrific to make light of here (bluntly, homeless men molesting small children). But there was an odd comment in this article on a sodomy trial, published in the Bismark Daily Tribune on June 25, 1900.

The complaining witness was a 16-year-old boy who has been living with the hoboes and it is stated that this is not the first time he has been before the court as a witness in a similar case.

Clearly, being homeless should not make you a target for sexual assault. And, in 1900, it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that if a teenager has been sexually assaulted you might want to get him out of that situation. Perhaps some of the evidence introduced did deal with the young man’s recurrent testimony. It does, however, carry on a theme I’ve seen in which those accused of sodomy, when there are details, are often described as “hobos.”

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

The Late News

This happened a while ago.

In reading nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century newspapers (disclosure: many of the articles I've discussed are from the Chronicling America site of the Library of Congress, which covers American newspapers from 1836-1922), I've often been surprised how fast news travels. Of course, there was that wonder of modern technology, the telegraph to consider. Often I will see that newspapers are reporting on stories within a day or two of when the events happened.

And sometimes it's slower. I found an short item that was printed in various newspapers on June 19, 1895:

The application for the release of Oscar Wilde pending steps for a new trial has been refused.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

If He's from Tennessee, It Can't Be Sodomy, Right?

I've been trying recently to keep these "old news" posts more-or-less in sync with the calendar day on which they were reported. I'm not waiting for the 17th for this one.

You want to know what the
testimony was. Admit it.

In a piece headlined "Depravity in the Capitol Building," the Evening Star of Washington, D.C. ran an article on an arrest and rapid prosecution for sodomy. There are some odd things about the article. There was clearly no delay in getting Frederick Lawrence and Charles W. Carter off to court after they were arrested at about 1:30 p.m. on June 16, 1882. It was a Friday and so business in the Capitol was probably pretty slow, but whatever they were doing was witnessed by a Mr. William Moss, who is described as an "employee at the Capitol."

Mr. Carter is described as a lawyer, and it seems he knew what to do; after being held in jail, he paid $50, was released and never charged. The article notes that Mr. Carter did not show up at the Police Court, but as he wasn't charged, maybe he wasn't obligated to.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Just Like Oscar Wilde, Except that Gay Stuff

Not like Wilde
that way!

Just over 119 years ago, the Los Angeles Herald that Reverend Kadir Edwards Davis was getting new advertising materials printed up, since his old ones described him as "the American Oscar Wilde." According to the article, Reverend Davis matched the popular view of Wilde, in that he had flowing locks and wore a sunflower in his hair. Another news item identified Davis as the pastor of the Central Christian church of Oakland, California.

In additional to his duties at Central Christian (where, according to news reports, he once danced through a sermon to show the harmlessness of the waltz), Reverend Davis gave lectures on aesthetic principles, dressed up to fit the part. Reverend Davis may have mistaken the Gilbert and Sullivan parody in Patience, where the aesthetic poet (who is a sham) says,

If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.

But Wilde had said that anyone could walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily, it was much harder to not do it and leave everyone certain you had. Davis might have taken further warning from W.S. Gilbert, as Patience was based on an earlier poem by Gilbert, "The Rival Curates."

It's not clear how long Davis had been styling himself "the American Oscar Wilde." Wilde had toured the United States thirteen years before in 1882. It was only after his American tour that Wilde did the things that gave him lasting fame, The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest, and losing a sodomy trial.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!