Catching up on journal literature and chapters XII

Adrian Ager and Catherine Lee, 'Prostitution in the Medway Towns, 1860-1885', Local Population Studies, 83, 2009, 39-55: a really useful piece on the local factors affecting the extent of prostitution in the Medway towns (the pull factor that there was a major military presence, the push factor that the social make-up of the area was that there was not a huge demand for domestic service and no industries employing women, and also the fact that some of the economic activity of the region, e.g. hopping, was highly seasonal). Show what can be done by looking at an array of source and the possibilities of recreating at least some information about individuals from their encounters with police, prison, poor law institutions, etc . Not sure that this would be possible for London? or would it, if one started focussing in on particular areas - question of whether there was actually a downward eastward shift in the prostitute career (?suggested by Walkowitz I think) over time, or whether they stayed closer to any particular base. There's also the question (this may apply less in an area like the Medway towns) of non-street forms of prostitution in which the women were less publicly visible and disturbing - these are touched on in the 1916 volume Downward Paths as existing but much harder to investigate. Thus, Ager and Lee's confirmation of the poverty/prostitution link may be about one particular form of sex-work. But this is still a really valuable piece of work.


Two papers by Roger Davidson and Gayle Davis, from their detailed and industrious investigation of sexuality and governance in late C20th Scotland: '"A Field for Private Members: The Wolfenden Committee and Scottish Homosexual Law reform, 1950-1967", Twentieth Century British History, 15, 2004, pp 174-201, and '"A Festering Sore on the Body of Society": The Wolfenden Committee and Female Prostitution in mid-C20th Scotland', Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 24, 2004, pp 80-98: full of dense and juicy material, but the take-home impression is that the Scots thought they were already managing both problems a lot better than the English; and that the level of homophobia was if anything even greater (to the extent that the only way to pass the 1967 Act was to exclude Scotland from its provisions to prevent Scottish MPs from voting against it).


James Vernon, '"For Some Queer Reason": The Trials and Tribulations of Colonel Barker's Masquerade in Interwar Britain', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26, 2000, 37-61. A very juicy piece about the problematic 'Colonel Barker' (Valerie Arkell Smith) and the questions it raises about gender. sexual, identity, masquerade, etc at the period, as well as the claiming of Barker by various contemporary groups as a precursor. Lots of resonances with other phenomena of the period (e.g. a trial which becomes less about the main charge of perjury than Barker's masquerade and nature of the 'marriage' - cf Lucy's work, and Stopes vs Sutherland).


Lutz D H Sauerteig and Roger Davidson, Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in C20th Europe (2009)
Intriguing piece from a rather different perspective by Ann Blair and Daniel Monk, 'Sex Education and the Law: The Importance of Legal Narratives' pp 17-51: though again, the tension/boundary between health and the child-in-educational-setting does seem to be significant. Problems of having to obey a set of rules and how  they are interpreted.
Roger Davidson (solo), 'Purity and Pedagogy: The Alliance-Scottish Council and School Sex Education in Scotland, 1955-1967' pp 91-107: role of alliances between official bodies and voluntary organisations - also, the place of specific dedicated individuals who try and get things done - the actual messages (within the standard medico -moral policing context - purity and danger.
Barbara Crowther, 'The Partial Picture: Framing the Discourse of Sex in British Educative Films of the early 1930s' pp 176-196: really not much of a genre for the period in question. There is 1936 specifically VD propaganda film A Test for Love in fictional cautionary tale format; 1931 How to Tell, produced by BSHC and is about what parents should tell children about sex - use of nature analogies, reproductive imperative, heteronormativity; The Mystery of Marriage 1931 an info-tainment work drawing parallels, with voice-over narration, with various animal species, plants, and exotic peoples from a long way away - humorous tone.

Catching up on journal literature VII

Carol Smart 'Reconsidering the Recent History of Child Sexual Abuse, 1910-1960' Journal of Social Policy 29 (2000), p. 55-73: v useful piece on this subject - a) it was not just the evil influence of psychoanalysis that militated against people realising the prevalence of child sexual abuse, the way the courts and the criminal justice system dealt with it was really very very problematic and was pretty much set into assumptions that children lie and that false accusations were rife and failing to take on board the trauma of court appearance for children etc (plus, incestuous fathers still had huge legal patriarchal powers) b) but feminist and social purity organisations and women doctors and a few concerned magistrates were already saying this in the 1920s - there was a 1920s Royal Commission on Sexual Offences Againt Young People

Ivan Crozier,'Rough Winds do Shake the Darling Buds of May. A Note on William Acton and the Sexuality of the (Male) Child', Journal of Family History 26 (2001), p. 411-420 : Acton and educating (warning/terrifying) the young boy as the best strategy against the evils of self-abuse.

Elizabeth Stephens,  'Pathologising Leaky Male Bodies: spermatorrhoea  in C19th British medicine and popular anatomical museums', Journal of the History of Sexuality  17 (2008), pp 421-438: excellent - points out that it was not just imposed by evil docs, men themselves bought into the pathologisation of the leaking oozing male body. Shift from anatomical museums to docs warning against 'quackery' at time of the Medical Act,  but still promoting spermatorrhoea as a disease entity. Wider discourse of problematic male sexuality  - suggests that the fearful secret was becoming like the femininised body, weak, feeble, excessive etc

Philip Howell, 'Sex and the City of Bachelors. Sporting Guidebooks and Urban Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America' Ecumene 8 (2001), p. 20-51: v good, about how to know the city, the city as male space, the need for knowingness and initiation, these guidebooks as aspirational texts (cf M Collins on Playboy etc) for wouldbe working/lower middle class 'swells' rather than actual men about town. Bachelor culture 'The city is/as woman/women' - desires and fears 

Katie Hindmarch-Watson, 'Lois Schwich, the Female Errand Boy. Narratives of Female Cross-Dressing in Late-Victorian London' GLQ. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14 (2008),pp 69-98: the different narratives in different places about Schwich, young woman of 20 who had masqueraded as an adolescent errand boy, found out largely through involvement in criminal activities (theft, and trying to incriminate other people) at work. Class, gender, issues, etc, questions of particular urban spaces. As a boy she was very much in the working class 'swell' mode of dress, also smoking etc. Paper points out that much of the historiography and stories of female cross-dressers involves criminality (which may just be because those are the cases that came to light???)

Pamela Cox,'Compulsion, Voluntarism, and Venereal Disease. Governing Sexual Health in England after the Contagious Diseases Acts' Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), p. 91-115: really useful piece about the means of compulsion outside actual practices of articulated governance employed upon various groups who didn't match the model of citizen capable of taking responsibility/being responsible for their own health - predominantly women/girls/children. The invisibility of these processes and the involvement of voluntary philanthropic bodies.