LGBT History in The United Kingdom - 20th Century

20th Century

• 1906 Dr. Louisa Martindale set up a private practice in Brighton and became the first woman GP. With a group of other Brighton feminists she developed the New Sussex Hospital for Women and Children, where she was Senior Surgeon and Physician. She later became a specialist in the early treatment of cervical cancer and was awarded a CBE in 1931. Louisa lived with her partner Ismay FitzGerald for three decades, and wrote of her love for her in her autobiography A Woman Surgeon, published in 1951.

• 1910 London homosexuals began to gather openly in public places such as pubs, coffee houses and tea shops for the first time. Waitresses ensured that a section of Lyons Corner House in Piccadilly Circus was reserved for homosexuals. The section became known as the Lily Pond.

• 1912 London's first gay pub (as we now know the term), Madame Strindgberg's The Cave of the Golden Calf opened in Heddon Street, off Regent Street.

• 1913 The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology is founded by a group of theorists and activists, with Edward Carpenter as president. Carpenter was a proponent of the theory of the homosexual as a third sex, and lived openly with his lover, George Merrill. The society was particularly concerned with homosexuality, aiming to combat legal discrimination against homosexuality with scientific understanding. Members included George Cecil Ives, Edward Carpenter, Montague Summers, Stella Browne, Laurence Housman, Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Jones.

• 1918 The gay English poet and writer W. H. Auden attended his first boarding school where he met Christopher Isherwood; when reintroduced to Isherwood in 1925, Auden probably fell in love with Isherwood and in the 1930s they maintained a sexual friendship in intervals between their relations with others.

• 1921 The Criminal Law Amendment Act was amended in the House of Commons to include a section to make sexual "acts of gross indecency" between women illegal, and was passed in the House of Commons. However the section was defeated in the House Of Lords and thus never became law.

• 1924 Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger worked on an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II about the homosexual life of Edward II and Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall that proved to be a milestone in Brecht's early theatrical and dramaturgical development.

• 1928 The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape. This sparked great legal controversy and brought the topic of homosexuality to public conversation. James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, began a campaign to suppress the book with poster and billboard advertising. Publisher Jonathan Cape panicked and sent a copy of The Well of Loneliness to the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks (a Conservative) for his opinion; he took only two days to reply that The Well of Loneliness was "gravely detrimental to the public interest" and if Cape did not withdraw it voluntarily, criminal proceedings would be brought against him. Cape suppressed the book after only two editions.

• 1929 The death of Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929), an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist.

• 1932 Sir Noël Coward wrote "Mad About the Boy", a song which dealt with the theme of homosexual love. It was introduced in the 1932 revue, but due to the risque nature of the song, it was sung by a woman. The News of the World published a story, 'Amazing Change of Sex', about a trans man from Sussex who transitioned 'from Margery to Maurice'. Colonel Sir Victor Barker DSO (1895 - 1960) married Elfrida Haward in Brighton. Barker's birth sex (female) is later revealed and the marriage is consequently annulled. Barker went on to appear in 'freakshow' displays in New Brighton, Southend-on-Sea and Blackpool.

• 1936 A 30-year-old British athletic champion, Mark Weston of Plymouth, transitioned from female to male. The story appeared in some national newspapers, including the News of the World (31 May 1936). The reportage was accurate and sensitive. In the words of Mr L.R.Broster, the Harley Street surgeon who treated him, 'Mark Weston, who has always been brought up as a female, is a male and should continue to live as such'.

• 1939-1945 World War II Over five million men served in the British armed forces during World War II. Of these, it's likely that at least 250,000 were gay or bisexual (based on projections from the 1990-91 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles which found that six per cent of men report having had homosexual experiences).

• 1945 Sir Harold Gillies and his colleague Ralph Millard carried out female-to-male confirmation surgery on Michael Dillon. Sir Harold Gillies developed his pioneering pedicle flap surgery with injured soldiers from World War II. Initially developed as reconstructive surgery, phalloplasty is now offered as a genital surgery option for trans men. Dillon underwent at least 13 surgeries between 1946 and 1949 and was elected for surgery on the pretext of treating a malformation of the Urethra (hypospadias), in order to conceal the exact nature of the surgery.