I reach out to Professor Matt Cook, a cultural historian at Birkbeck, the University of London, for some answers. Which raises some questions: did Sheffield - and Millthorpe, the village nine miles outside of Sheffield where Carpenter resided for much of his life - help save Carpenter from Wilde’s fate? Despite the clichés about London as a tolerant, cosmopolitan metropolis, was Sheffield and the surrounding area actually an easier place to live as an openly gay man back then? Carpenter - who was raised in Brighton, later studied at Cambridge and spent stints in London - found the first romantic happiness of his life in Sheffield. The pair would remain together for the rest of their lives (though the relationship was never an exclusive one) and would openly cohabit from 1898 onwards. Regardless, Carpenter took Merrill’s name and address before he left.Įdward Carpenter (right) with his partner George Merrill. Merrill suggested Carpenter ditch his guests and come with him to Sheffield, but he was too dutiful to do so. But as Rowbotham tells it, Merrill decided to make a move and trailed the group, and eventually Carpenter fell back to engage this handsome young man in conversation. Plus, the pair couldn’t have been more different: Merrill was 22 years’ Carpenter’s junior, he had grown up in the slums of Sheffield, while Carpenter hailed from a well-to-do family.
#OSCAR WILDE GAY VOICE FREE#
Two decades later, Carpenter would recall how Merrill stood out from the group of men he was with thanks to his “somewhat free style of dress” and how they “exchanged a few words and a look of recognition.” As Rowbotham puts it in her masterful biography of Carpenter, Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love, things could have been very different - Carpenter was waiting on the platform for some visitors, and this shared look could have been the beginning and end of the tale. has been very foolish (and naughty),” he wrote in a letter at the time - as Carpenter’s biographer Sheila Rowbotham suggests, he was sad to see the “Philistines” winning.įour years prior to Wilde’s conviction, Carpenter had first spotted the love of his life, George Merrill, on the Totley train. On hearing that Wilde had been provoked into bringing a charge of libel against the father of his lover, the act that set Wilde’s downfall in motion, the social theorist and poet Edward Carpenter was downbeat.
In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this.” Wilde would be sentenced to two years’ hard labour. I shall under such circumstances be expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows. On delivering his sentence, the judge said: “It is the worst case I have ever tried. On 25th May, 1895, Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency.
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