And classism struck again: being an aristocratic gay was one thing (whilst frowned upon, not deadly dangerous), but being gay and working class (plebeian, poor, you name it) was a whole different story.
“Their humble roots also pose problems for their biographer. Apart from the court record (deemed so offensive it was published as an appendix to the official Proceedings of the Old Bailey), neither man left any direct testimony. Although Pratt confessed shortly before his execution that ‘his crime is abhorrent and his punishment just’, it may well have been a journalistic fabrication. Bryant has therefore relied on bald entries in parish, census and employment records. Such archival detection work is particularly exacting when one of the subjects happens to be called John Smith, of whom at least 67 were baptised in Worcestershire between 1793 and 1801.That trial is the centrepiece of the book and Bryant describes it in painful detail. The indictment stated that the accused had forgotten ‘the order of nature and had been seduced by the instigation of the devil’. The men, cowed by the panoply of the law, offered no defence except to enter a plea of innocence. The prosecution made much of the salacious testimony of Bonell’s landlord and the arresting policeman. The jury took a few seconds to convict the men. After two months in Newgate, where they were held in isolation lest ‘their presence would disgrace and contaminate the others’, they were hanged. ©
...Horrible.
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