They were a bit} ken} 'thon wey} Brian Dempsey seem unpromising, given that very Part 2 few book-length treatments of lgbt life in Scotland have been attempt­ ed, and that Scottish concerns get Gay Liberation Front Ball scandalously marginalised or ignored entirely in supposedly Says Mary to Malcolm, "British" lgbt histories. There is, "If you come then ah'll come however, a huge range of material Dressed up in nothin' at all." waiting to be exploited by the enter­ So Mary and Malcolm prising social historian willing to do Came only in talcum a little digging in the libraries and To the gay people's fancy dress archives. ball The gay liberation Published sources: Non Fiction All over the nation They had a fancy dress ball The leading writer on 'gay' life in They sent invitations modern Britain is undoubtedly Jef­ To folk of all stations frey Weeks and his works, including To Mary and Male first of all Coming Out (1977) and The \.%rldWe Now Malcolm and Mary Have \.%n (2007), are important Were feeling cheery contributions to the topic. Turning With lots of whisky and beer _ to specifically Scottish material one coming out _ They then had some brandy of the earliest contributions was Lil­ } r~f f REY 'NE E. I(.~ Which made them feel dandy lian Faderman's 1983 book Scotch They thought the world had gone verdict, a treatment of the 1812 Pirie queer and Woods case ( described in Part 1 _.. ........... With these spirits they rumbled of this article). The publishers Poly­ .......... Then staggered and stumbled gon made a major contribution ...... Of glue someone gave them a sniff with two anthologies of short pieces Then Malcolm, the braggard of both fiction and non fiction He stoated and staggered called And Thus Will I Freely Sing in Nearly fell over a Cliff 1989 and Crazy Jig in 1992. More Of this situation recently the Edinburgh bookshop The gay liberation Word Power has taken up the chal­ Took advantage and gave them lenge, producing a greatly expand­ some grog ed volume of Bob Cant's ground­ With flesh they were smitten breaking oral history collection, ) Now they dirty up Britain originally published by Polygon in I Polluting the place with pornog! 1993, called Footsteps and Witnesses; Lesbian and gay lifestories from Scot­ From the album Tinny Can On My Tail, land and also Ellen Galford and Ken © estate of Matt McGinn, reproduced by Wilson's Rainbow City; Stories from kind permission of Janette McGinn. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgen­ der Edinburgh. Researchers may also The first part of this article find my own pamphlet, Thon Wey: looked at some of the theoretical Aspects of Scottish lesbian and gay issues around lesbian, gay, bisexual activism 1968-1992 useful (available and/or transgender (lgbt) history free at www.linsert.org). and also gave some examples of Recent years have seen a small what we already know about the his­ but growing body of academic arti­ tory of lgbt people in Scottish his­ cles on Scottish 'gay' history. Roger tory. This part focuses on sources Davidson and Gayle Davis have pro­ that may prove useful for future duced a number of valuable articles research. At first glance the on homosexual law reform in Scot­ prospects of finding sources for land in the 1950s and 60s as well as lgbt history with a Scottish bent work on possibly related social HISTORY SCOTLAND - NOVEMBER/ DE C EMBER 2009 46 questions such as abortion, prostitu­ very mention encouraged immoral ular column in the magazine ScotsGay tion, and sexually transmitted diseases ideas in the newspaper's readers ( cer­ chronicle much homophobic material (see bibliography at www.linsert.org). tainly nothing positive should ever be in modern Scottish newspapers). Even I have written articles on 19th centu­ published), but on the other hand few then, many stories touching on lgbt life ry Scottish sodomy cases and a survey journalists can or could resist what will not have these terms in the head­ of the treatment of sodomy in legal they see as a scandalous story. Reports line and laborious (though rewarding) writing in Scotland, the former in par­ of 'queer life' became more common searching through each edition of a ticular offering possibilities for further in the 1950s but, even as far back as newspaper may be necessary unless research on the lives of those people the 19th century, such stories can be the names of people caught up in a briefly caught in the terrible spotlight identified if one knows how to spot major story are known. of criminal prosecution. them. One approach would be to identi­ Of course approaches change over fy where criminal court reports or Published sources: time. The use of search terms like short news stories appear in the pages Newspapers and magazines 'bisexual' and perhaps even 'lgbt' may of the newspaper in question (sur­ produce a number of references for prisingly difficult at times) and then try Examination of mainstream newspa­ articles published in recent years, but to remain sensitive to any possibility of per reporting on lgbt issues reveals a searches of older material may have to relevant materials being hidden confused approach. On the one hand deploy less positive terms like behind the headline. Another would be newspaper editors and owners were 'sodomy', 'indecency', 'immoral', or to take a known point of interest, for often hostile to the idea of even men­ 'unnatural' (this is not to suggest that example the Scottish connections to tioning that same-sex love and same­ more recent coverage is always more the Boulton and Park case of 1870, the sex sexual activity existed in case the positive or balanced. Garry Otton's Oscar Wilde trial of 1895, the {%l[ of 2001 book Sexual Fascism and his reg- Loneliness trial in 1928, the Wolfenden Oscar Wilde Report of 1957, the enacting of 'Sec­ tion 28' in 1988, and so on: not only might there be interesting and relevant articles, editorials and letters about the particular subject but such events often seem to encourage coverage of similar cases. Searching for coverage of a sodomy case in Dundee in 1870 in The Dundee Advertiser I happened across a short report, described in Part 1, of cross-dressing 'foolish girls' who were convicted of breach of the peace. Many of the journals aimed at an lgb and/or t readership are noted in my Pink Papers:AnAnnotated bibliography of lesbian and gay journals, available free at www.linsert.org. The leading British 'gay' journals, which did often run reports from Scottish correspondents alongside articles which tended to mis­ lead by failing to note that England is not a synonym for Britain, were Gay News (1971-1985) and Gay Times ) (1984 to present). The two longest I lived British lesbian titles were Arena Three (1964 to 1972) and Sappho (1972 to 1981). There is a wealth of material avail­ able in the long-running Gay Scotland, journal of Scotland's main 'gay rights' organisation (the organisation was called the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG) 1969 to 1978; then the Scot­ tish Homosexual Rights Group (SHRG) 1978 to 1992, and finally Outright Scotland 1992 to c.2003). Gay Scotland was first produced in the 1970s as a newsletter and then as a publically-available monthly maga­ zine (1982 to 1998 and 2002 to 2003) and is available in a number of public libraries. Local gay rights groups also HISTORY SCOTLAND - N O VEMBER/DECEMBE R 2009 47 "Some may consider that Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Fred Urquhart's Time Will Knit published in 1938 Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other 'gothic' texts can sus­ touched slightly more openly on matters homosexual. tain a 'queer reading'. produced newsletters which may or nanced. All the important relationships Urquhart's first novel) it was nonethe­ may not have made their way into local in the novella are homosocial (ie. less an act of some bravery. Walter libraries and there is a whole range of between men) and Stevenson makes himself is only too aware of'what hap­ (usually short-lived) magazines listed explicit reference to the classical story pened to Uncle Arnold', a gay pacifist in Pink Papers, including The Tartan of the love and trust between the two in WWI who lost his partner to con­ Skirt for the transvestite/transsexual youths Damon and Pythias. scription. Uncle Arnold could not community, Red Herring, a radical les­ One pre-WWII novel that touched bring himself to live a lie by marrying bian journal published in St Andrews slightly more openly on matters a good woman, lost his head, 'inter­ between 1975 and 1976, and various homosexual was Fred Urquhart's fered' with an apprentice at his work­ 'scene' journals. Time Will Knit published in 1938. place and was consigned to a mental Urquhart was gay and had worked in institution were he killed himself. Published sources: Literature an Edinburgh bookshop: one of the Much of Urquhart's output is younger characters, Walter, laments informed by his sexuality. A particu­ The use of Scottish literary material to that he is accused of having a 'dirty larly touching and understated short ) reveal something of'gay' life is gener­ mind' for reading certain titles in the story, Robert/Hilda, explores possibil­ I ally underdeveloped. This may be bookshop where he works, ities of cross-dressing and personal because there is little to find or identity in the fictional East Lothian because there has been limited literary That's the trouble with people in town of Curlerscuik. Urquhart's criticism research on Scottish lgbt-rel­ our class - they don't know any­ papers are held by Edinburgh Uni­ evant literature but some possible thing about psychology and things versity's Library (ref.