In February we advertised a radio opportunity at ALLfm 96.9 on our Facebook page. Eight people from our LGBTQ+ community across Manchester could volunteer to learn how to make radio shows.
We’ve come together and called ourselves “ALL fm Queeries”. The first live show was broadcast on 1 April! You can listen in here.
We were even given certificates for all the hard work we had put in.
Connect, Learn and Join the PROTEST! – Trafford Archives Session
When: Saturday, 5 April 2025 – 11.00am – 3.00pm
Where: Sale Library, Waterside, Sale M33 7ZF
Come and join us and get connected and to your local LGBT+ History. All of us have a personal archive – in a special box, in a messy drawer, in a cherished album …
We are looking for YOU to share your memories of LGBT+ heritage in Trafford and beyond – badges, gig tickets, posters, home-made banners, zines and almost anything else. We want to digitise and share these important pieces of our shared heritage.
Come and meet our PROTEST! team and get involved – drop in anytime between 11.00am and 3.00pm.
Please consider responding to these research requests. Your assistance will contribute to LGBTQ+ advocacy and improved service provision.
Research for older transgender men, women and non-binary people
Dr Blair Hamilton is a researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University.
They are interested in the bone and muscle health of older transgender people. They are transgender themselves, so they are pretty keen to see what their bone is going to be like when they age!
They are running a focus group for older transgender men, women and non-binary people who have been on hormone treatment for a little while to see what challenges they face and how we can improve their healthcare.
If there are any participants who would be interested, please contact b.hamilton@mmu.ac.uk.
Travel expenses will be paid for those who are involved.
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Research for gay, bisexual and queer men
Luke Sewell is a history undergraduate at Durham University.
His research project Is titled: “What was Princess Diana’s impact on LGBT+ men’s attitude to monarchy?”
He would like to survey and/or interview participants to gather their insights on Princess Diana and the monarchy.
Transcestry celebrates the Museum of Transology’s first ten years of community collecting. The exhibition is the largest display of its kind to date, showcasing over 1,000 objects and stories donated by more than 1,000 members of the community celebrating trans, non-binary, and intersex lives.
Transcestry amplifies underrepresented, and often forgotten, stories from the trans community, and celebrates resilience, identity and creativity.
Transcestry is led by E-J Scott, Founder of the Museum of Transology and Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism & Curation. Central Saint Martins students and staff are actively involved, developing accessibility features and exploring innovative curatorial practices and queer gallery design methodologies.
This programme is generously funded by Art Fund and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Hope Mill is 200
As part of Hope Mill’s 200 Heritage project, they researched the local LGBTQIA+ history. In this video, join Stewart for a tour of the area:
Transcript:
Thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players, Hope Mill Theatre have spent the past year uncovering the history and heritage of our building and the surrounding areas.
Here at Hope Mill, we are very proud to be an LGBTQIA+ led organisation. So of course we wanted to explore the lives of the queer community that came before us.
I’m outside Hope Mill Theatre at the site of what used to be Star Music Hall. In the 1870s and 80s this was a popular venue hosting a variety of entertainment acts. One of the acts that performed here quite frequently was Toots Minstrels a group of actors, comedians and musicians that toured nationwide and abroad.
Ernest Parkinson was a member of this company and listed as a harpist although he was also known as a female impersonator. Ernest was one of the men who were arrested at the Hulme Drag Ball of 1880. The Hulme Drag Ball was a widely publicised event where police raided a private party taking place at the Temperance Hall in Hulme, Manchester.
Police had suspicions about the immoral character of the event. It was officially booked as the Porn Broker’s Assistants Association Annual Ball but organisers are taken care to cover all the windows of the building raising suspicions even further.
Police burst in and arrested 47 men, 19 of whom were dressed in female clothing, Ernest Parkinson amongst them. It’s incredible to think that this place right opposite our building was not only a theatre but showcased incredible men like Ernest Parkinson who lived their lives with a constant fear of persecution.
We’re here on Every Street at the site of what used to be the Manchester University Settlement about a two-minute walk away from Hope Mill Theatre. The Manchester University Settlement was founded in Ancoats in 1895 with the aim of bringing education and culture to poor communities.
Two extraordinary women associated with the Settlement were Esther Roper and Eva Gore Booth. Esther Roper was born in Chorley, Lancashire in 1858. She was one of the first women to study for a degree at Owen’s College, Manchester and in 1895 she helped establish the Settlement.
In 1896 Esther went on holiday to Italy to recover from exhaustion. Whilst recuperating, she met Eva Gore Booth an Irish poet. The two fell in love and were soon living together in Rusholme, Manchester even declaring themselves joint heads of the household in the 1901 census, a bold move for two women of that time.
During their lifetime Eva and Esther fought tirelessly for women’s rights. They organised protests to protect female dominated professions such as barmaids and flower sellers from damaging legislation. They founded a quarterly publication Women’s Labour News and both were very involved in the suffrage movement advocating for working class women to get the vote.
After Eva’s death in 1926, Esther commissioned a stained glass window to celebrate Eva’s life and preserve her memory. It was part of the roundhouse building here on Every Street but sadly the building was demolished in 1986. These two incredible pioneering women are buried side by side in Hampstead, London with a quote from Sappho on their gravestone.
In May 1861 a man called Thomas Green appeared at Salford Police Court accused of failing to pay his debts. This was not the first time Green had been charged with this offence, and it was his reluctance to pay what he owed to a tailor for a suit of clothes that led to his arrest. He was committed to the New Bailey and after being forced to take a bath it was revealed that he’d been assigned female at birth. The newspaper coverage doesn’t have many details of how he lived as a man but we do know is that at a young age he was dressed as a page whilst in the service of a wealthy lady. At the time of the newspaper article, he was reported to be between 30 to 40 years old and had been living as a man all that time.
We don’t have much more information about Thomas except that he worked as a stitcher and hooker in a mill and was married to a woman. We’re very pleased to report that the marriage was described by his neighbours as a very happy one.
Thank you for taking the time to watch and find out more about the history of the LGBTQIA+ community in Ancoats and Manchester.
Please have a look at our website for more information.
International Transgender Day of Visibility
Each year on 31 March, we honour International Transgender Day of Visibility. We celebrate the joy and resilience of trans and non-binary people everywhere by elevating voices and experiences from these communities.
If you are frustrated with the “erasure of trans history” and continued anti-trans narratives and constantly having to remind opponents that trans people have always been here, read this (rather long) article by Dr Laurie Marhoefer from the University of Washington:
In July 2022, Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, a biology graduate student at Humboldt University in Berlin, got into a debate about history on Twitter. The thirty-two-year-old Vollbrecht had already gained national attention in Germany for her anti-trans, “gender-critical” feminism. She was no stranger to heated exchanges on the social media platform. On this occasion, the debate was about the history of the Holocaust. In a series of tweets, Vollbrecht disputed that the Nazis had persecuted transgender people. To describe trans people as victims of the Nazi state “mocks the true victims of the Nazi crimes,” she wrote.
Vollbrecht’s opponents on Twitter responded, arguing that this was not the case. The debate escalated. Vollbrecht’s critics began to use the hashtag “#MarieLeugnetNS-Verbrechen” (“Marie denies Nazi crimes”). This was a serious accusation. Vollbrecht later asserted that it amounted to saying that she was denying the Holocaust. She responded by filing a lawsuit, in which she alleged that the use of the hashtag violated her rights.
In fall 2022, I was asked by a transgender NGO to write an expert statement (Gutachten) on this case for the court in Cologne (Landgericht Köln). The NGO is the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Transidentität und Intersexualität e.V. (DGTI) (German Society for Trans Identity and Intersexuality), founded in 1998 as a self-support group for and by trans people. DGTI’s mission is to promote social acceptance of trans people. A Twitter account that DGTI helped to run had used the #MarieLeugnetNS-Verbrechen hashtag, and they were one of the parties that Vollbrecht sued. Other historians also wrote expert opinions in this case. Bodie Ashton of the University of Erfurt wrote on behalf of the DGTI. Alexander Zinn of the Fritz Bauer Institute wrote in support of Vollbrecht.
The crux of the lawsuit was whether it was accurate to say that Vollbrecht lied about Nazi crimes against trans people. That is, were transgender people victims of the Nazi state? As it turned out, historians did not agree. The case thus became one of those rare – and sometimes critically important – lawsuits in which a court ruled on the facts of history.
In November 2022, the court in Cologne ruled against Vollbrecht. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a German court has recognised transgender people as victims of the Nazi state.
What follows is the expert statement I wrote for the case. I offer it here with some caution – my work is ongoing and my findings are somewhat preliminary. At the same time, the lawsuit is national news in Germany. The public has a right to know what the state of research on this issue is – even more so since the question of whether the Nazis persecuted transgender people is coming up more and more often, on Twitter and elsewhere.
There is a pernicious assumption that sometimes creeps into this debate: that we can only recognize the humanity of trans people if they suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis. I reject that. Everyone must recognise the humanity of trans people, regardless of this debate. Moreover, we do not commonly base our ethical principles on what the Nazis did or did not do. Nor should we.
At the same time, historians ought to answer the question. At the moment, we have not done so. The peer-reviewed scholarship on transgender people in Nazi Germany is small. Some of it is fundamentally flawed, as I discuss in the expert statement.
Vollbrecht asserted that to discuss trans victims of Nazism is to “mock” other (that is, cisgender) victims of Nazi violence. She used the term mock, which I take to be a gesture toward the old anti-trans trope of trans people as ridiculous, objects of scornful laughter. Trans people, Vollbrecht suggested in her tweet, are ridiculous. Thus one cannot speak of them in the context of the Holocaust because we cannot laugh about the Holocaust. Here is the flaw in this argument: trans people are not ridiculous, nor was their suffering under the Nazi state. In order to show that, it seems important to publish the statement I provided to a lawyer in the case.
***
Six anonymous German subjects, most likely transmasculine people from circa 1910
Expert statement (Privatgutachten) Dr Laurie Marhoefer, Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Report on the Situation of Trans People during the Nazi Period. 10 October 2022.
The first scholarly publications on transgender people under National Socialism argued that they were not persecuted. To be more specific, one foundational essay argued that they were not persecuted, and another argued that some trans women were, but only insofar as officials mistakenly believed them to be cisgender gay men. This, however, is not accurate. Newer research shows a more complex and more violent situation. The newer scholarship also makes the case that racial status and other factors mattered when trans people ran into trouble with the Nazi state. Trans people were at risk. The risks they ran varied according to other things in their lives. Not all trans people suffered violence. Yet there is a pattern of state hostility and police harassment of trans people, particularly trans women. In some cases, it ended in murder. This change in the literature is due to the growing number of scholars working on the topic, to changes in how we conceptualise Nazi violence more broadly, and to changes in how scholars conceptualise transgender people. It also owes to the digitisation of archival records, which has made police files easier to find.
I am at present engaged in a large research project on transgender people under the Nazi state, part of a broader project on sex and gender “crimes,” funded by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington and the Holocaust Education Foundation at Northwestern University. From my years of research and from the published literature, I have knowledge of about twenty-seven cases of transgender men and women in the Nazi period. To my knowledge this is the largest number of cases ever discussed at once. Most scholarship deals with a much smaller number.
Often when one sees the term “persecution (Verfolgung)” in the context of the Nazi state, one thinks foremost of the persecution of Jewish Europeans. The Nazi state systematically rounded up whole communities of Jews and Roma – gay as well as straight, cisgender as well as transgender – deported them, and murdered them. This did not happen to “Aryans.” It did not happen to “Aryans” even if they were accused of “crimes” having to do with sex and gender, such as male-male sex (§175) or “public indecency (Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses)” (§183), a charge made against trans people. Without ever losing sight of the Holocaust, we should, however, allow that a group could be “persecuted” even if its members did not face highly organised violence like what Jews and Roma faced. So, for example, we correctly recognise gay men (regardless of racial designation) as a persecuted group. We do so despite the fact that Nazi authorities treated “Aryan” gay men and Jewish gay men in very different ways. “Aryan” men accused of breaking §175 could usually retain a lawyer. They often had a trial before a judge. They were not always found guilty. Most men convicted under §175 served their sentences in prisons, not concentration camps. Some were murdered in the camp system. Some were sent to the camps without trial. That did not happen in all cases. The majority of the approximately 50,000 men convicted under §175 in the Nazi period were “Aryans” who survived the Nazi regime. Alexander Zinn writes in his 2017 book on gay men under the Nazi state:
Magnus Hirschfeld’s 4th, 7th and 6th patients circa 1910
It is time for a paradigm shift. The reduction of the situation of homosexuals in the “Third Reich” to a history of victims, the focus on an allegedly all-powerful apparatus of persecution and a supposedly deeply homophobic population that used denunciation to help the state exclude homosexual men from the “Volksgemeinschaft” – all of this obstructs one’s view of the considerably more complex picture that emerges when one reads the sources against the grain.
Zinn also argues that “in practice, the National Socialist persecution of homosexuals was certainly considerably less consistent and goal-oriented” than a lot of people believe. Indeed, it is very possible that only a minority of the cisgender men who had sex with men in Nazi Germany ran into trouble with the police, though doubtless all feared the police. Many decades ago, people who opposed recognising gay victims might have asserted that gay men simply had to stop going to bars or having relationships and that then they would be safe, so long as they were “Aryan.” A gay man in Nazi Germany who wanted to be absolutely safe from the police would, indeed, be well advised to avoid bars and relationships. But to move from that reality to a claim that gay men were not victims is nonsensical because we recognize being gay as a fundamental part of a person, one denied only at an unacceptable cost. The same is true of gender identity.
Like “Aryan” gay men, if trans people had “Aryan” status, they were not subjected to a systematic round-up such as what the Nazi state carried out against German Jews. They did, however, face state hostility, harassment, and violence because they were transgender.
Nazi officials generally had negative views of transgender people. In what may be the only Nazi-era book on the topic, the 1938 Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Transvestitismus (Marburg: Hermann Bauer), Hermann Ferdinand Voss writes: “Their asocial mindset, which is often paired with criminal activity, justifies draconian measures by the state.” Prior to the Nazi “seizure of power,” not enough could be done about trans people, he wrote, but happily now, “There is the possibility of putting the people in question in protective custody or possibly having them castrated or, via temporary ‘appropriate detention (entsprechende Internierung)’ to impress upon them that they must put their inclination on hold.” In 1933, Hamburg officials wrote, “Police officials are requested to observe the transvestites, in particular, and as required to send them to concentration camps.” (Historians now recognise that the category “transvestite” corresponded very closely to our modern concept of “transgender.”)
At the time, many countries had anti-cross-dressing laws. Often, these were written to cover other “crimes” as well and used language about “public decency” or similar. They were, however, always intended to police cross-dressing. Between 1848 and the First World War, forty-four American cities passed such laws. So although the Nazi-era penal code does not explicitly refer to “cross-dressing,” it contained two laws that we can now see were intended to suppress it. Police and prosecutors used §183 and, less often, §360 (public nuisance, grober Unfug) against persons who wore clothing that did not correspond to their birth-assigned sex. For example, in the winter of 1944, a Berlin court tried Bruno Erfurth under §183 because Erfurth allegedly went out in public in a woman’s blouse and an “artificial lady’s bust” as well as other pieces of women’s clothing and thereby “caused a public outcry.” There was no allegation of homosexuality recorded in this file. It was purely a cross-dressing case. (Erfurth was found not guilty.)
1920: Magnus Hirschfeld celebrates the Institute of Sexual Science with a costume party months after it opened in 1919.
The Nazi state made transgender lives difficult in another way: by revoking the limited gains won under the Weimar Republic. Even under the Kaiser’s regime before 1914, some police jurisdictions gave permits to “cross-dress” known as “transvestite passports” or more accurately “transvestite certificates” (“Transvestitenscheine”). In the Weimar period (1918-1933) some transgender people legally changed their names. Also in the Weimar period, a very small but vibrant transgender public sphere grew. Transgender people had their own magazines and organisations. Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science helped transgender people with legal name changes and police permits and medical treatments. Much of this was destroyed by the Nazis. Hirschfeld was driven into exile and his Institute for Sexual Science was dismantled. Transvestite magazines were shut, as were nightclubs like the Eldorado (Berlin) that showcased trans performers. Because the transvestite certificates had always been locally administered, what to do about them after 1933 seems largely to have been a decision for local officials. Overwhelmingly, police did not honour them after 1933. Not infrequently, they explicitly revoked them, such as in the case of “R” of Berlin, who was directed to stop living as woman, though she had done so for years.
There are a very few known cases where transvestite certificates were reissued under the Nazi state or where a person was allowed a legal name change. They are the exception rather than the rule. By chance, some of these cases came to the attention of historians early on, leading to conclusions that I now question. More and more, historians who work on other aspects of the Nazi state are noticing inconsistencies, even in Nazi racial policy – indeed, as Nunn cogently points out, inconsistency is a feature of modern states. As Zinn notes in the previous quotation, we see complexity in cases of cisgender gay men, too. Indeed, inconsistency in policing, as well as police and prosecutor discretion in enforcing law, are features of modern states. Moreover, even in these cases where trans people got certificates reissued or changed their names under the Nazi state, there are signs of violence. For example, a trans man in Berlin had his permit renewed, but only after he spent months in a concentration camp. Perhaps most importantly, these cases do not tell the whole story. In the large majority of the cases I have seen, permits were revoked and police forced people to stop living as their self-confirmed sex. This caused trans people extreme distress. At least one person seems to have been driven to suicide. In her comments on Twitter, Vollbrecht pointed to the “transvestite certificates” as evidence that trans people were not persecuted by the Nazi state. Looking at the historical record, however, the frequent revocation of these certificates helps to show us the pattern of anti-trans state actions, though that pattern also displays some inconsistencies.
It is the case that some transgender men and women were able to escape violence. For example, in one case, a police search of a person’s apartment found an “artificial lady’s bust.” The accused person said they only wore women’s clothing at home, never in public. Police let this person go but made the person promise to stop wearing the garments in private. In another case that Jane Caplan first brought to light, that of Gerd Kubbe of Berlin, police at first reacted harshly but later showed surprising leniency. Kubbe’s transvestite permit was revoked in 1933. Accused of wearing men’s clothing in public, he was sent to a concentration camp in 1938. Some months later, however, he was released and granted permission to wear men’s clothing and to use the first name “Gerd.” I referred to this case previously as one that demonstrates both violence and state accommodation of transness. It is difficult to know what to make of it. I am not sure that I do yet. I can say, however, that it is unusual. It was, unfortunately, one of the first cases to be published and set a flawed paradigm.
In terms of assessing how often trans people escaped violence, we are at a bit of a loss because the bulk of our evidence is police files. We know about people who ran into trouble with police but have a more limited ability to examine cases where people did not run into trouble with police. Police and prosecutors were ready to resort to violence with relatively little provocation in enough cases that I am comfortable asserting that trans people ran a general risk and were well advised to avoid police.
1921: four trans activists stand outside Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, 12 years before Nazis stormed the facility and burned its books
The Nazi state reserved its worst violence for trans women. In particular, women who came to the attention of police as they continued to live publicly as women after 1933 were in danger. So were transgender women who sold sex. These trans women kept living as women because the alternative – being forced to live as a man – was unbearable, something Nunn shows in R.’s case. One such woman was H. Bode of Hamburg, who often went out in public dressed as a woman, dated men, and had previously held a transvestite certificate. Over the Nazi period, she racked up convictions under §360 and §175. Hamburg officials finally sent her to Buchenwald, where she died in 1943. (I believe Dr. Zinn refers to this case in his Gutachten. Bode was arrested after a night out in Hamburg with her aunt. I want to note that Dr. Zinn does not report the outcome. Bode was murdered. It is clear from the file that her “transvestitism” played a large role in that murder. On this see also Herrn, who reports her death.)
In 1933, Essen police withdrew Toni Simon’s permit and told her to stop wearing women’s clothing. She fled town. Later, she came back, and repeatedly got into trouble – insulting police officers, cavorting with known homosexuals, and breaking a law against anti-regime statements (the Heimtückegesetz), for which she served a year in prison. The final document in her file recommends sending her to a concentration camp. Though police had many reasons to deem Simon a threat to Nazi society, the fact that she was a “pronounced transvestite” was among the central ones.
Liddy Bacroff of Hamburg got a transvestite pass in 1928. She made her living selling sex to male clients. They understood her to be a woman. After 1933, she repeatedly ran into trouble with police. According to what police wrote in her file, she was “fundamentally a transvestite.” That, along with sex work, made her a “morals criminal of the worst sort” who “must therefore be ausgeschaltet (eliminated) from the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community).” Bacroff was sent to Mauthausten and died there in 1943.
If I may address one final point – some earlier histories asserted that people like H. Bode, Toni Simon, and Liddy Bacroff were only sent to concentration camps because police believed they were gay men. It is the case that Nazi officials denied the gender identification of transgender people. For example, they claimed that Liddy Bacroff was a man even though she lived as a woman and many people whose words are recorded in her file thought she was a woman (including men who had sex with her). Police referred to her as a man although she told them, “My sense of my gender is fully and completely that of a woman.” When trans people gave true accounts of their gender, Nazi police refused to listen. We should not. Trans people were a distinct community of people. They are distinguished by their quests to live as their self-confirmed sex. Determining whether they suffered persecution has nothing to do with the question of why Nazi officials believed they ought to be persecuted.
Moreover, Nazi officials did not simply think trans women were gay men. They recognized trans women as different from gay men in ways that mattered. Nazi officials had a concept of “transvestitism” as distinct from, though related to, homosexuality. To quote Voss’s 1938 book: “By transvestites we generally mean those persons who have the wish to primarily wear the clothing of the other sex and to act more or less as the opposite sex.” In all of the cases I have examined, state officials refer to the accused people as “transvestites,” even when they also identified them as homosexual (which they did not always do). Officials often claimed that transvestitism was an aggravating factor, something that made the case more dire, the accused person more deserving of a heavier sentence. In general, transgender people who could distance themselves from homosexuality were more likely to get off with a warning from police. Yet I have seen cases in which transgender people whom police deemed “heterosexual” nevertheless suffered. One such case is R.’s – police forced her to detransition and she spent time in a concentration camp.
To conclude: though there is a bit of variation and disorganisation, and race matters, we see a pattern of state violence and oppression here, motivated by a hostility specific to transgender people.
Architects Bradshaw, Gass & Hope based in Bolton were the masterminds behind some of the most incredible buildings in the north west during the Industrial Revolution. These included Manchester’s Stock Exchange (1904-06) and the Royal Exchange (1914-21) alongside Leigh Spinners Mill, an iconic Grade II* listed building residing within a large eight acre site.
We visited Mill 2, which was built in 1925. It’s an iconic landmark in Leigh and now 100 years later is a community hub, housing a number of tenants including the North West Computer Museum on the 4th floor. Luckily, the lift was working!
Whilst there we had a coding taster session on BBC Micro 32K computers which dated back to the 1980s. Liz, our tutor, gave some examples of coding. It’s amazing how computers have changed in such a relatively short period of time.
There was so much to see with hands on exhibits, dating from the 1970s to the present day, including retro arcade games and an internet café.
Tony was tasked with writing down everyone’s lunch orders in the café and was rewarded with a free cup of coffee!
This year’s State of Ageing report paints a picture of the older population in England, using a variety of national data sources.
The Centre for Ageing Better’s new analysis shows that quite simply, where you are born in England determines how long you live and how well you age.
Living in the poorest parts of England can cost you almost five years of your life. Men living in the poorest areas of the country can expect to live 4.4 fewer years on average than those living in the wealthiest areas of England.
All of us deserve the best possible lives as we grow older, and our whole society reaps the rewards when people can age well. The Centre for Ageing Better’s new analysis of the state of ageing in England in 2025 reveals millions more of us are living into our seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond, in good health, working for longer and supporting our communities through volunteering and caring.
But this report also highlights that this rosy, positive picture of ageing is unobtainable for many, such as those who are living in poor housing, in poverty and poor health, and who are isolated from their communities and society. The report shows the impact of regional inequalities that determine the quality of people’s later life. Quite simply, where you are born in England determines how you live and how well you age.
This summary report and the accompanying chapters draw attention to the disparities in resources, opportunities and outcomes that exist between different geographic areas – whether regions or local authorities. Inequalities between places in things such as access to decent and affordable housing, access to jobs (and good jobs), and the extent to which these places provide and maintain infrastructure such as transport and public services, give rise to inequalities in outcomes for people, including life expectancy and health.
We need the government and others to take inequalities in ageing seriously and address the lack of political focus that has meant chronic underinvestment in helping people to age well. We also need to address the pervasive ageism in society that produces negative and distorted views of ageing and older people. By doing this, we can properly value and benefit from the contributions of older people to our society.
Lawrie Roberts, Pride in Ageing Manager at the LGBT Foundation, will be speaking today (27 March 2025) about LGBTQ+ communities at the Age Friendly Futures Summit on a panel titled “Understanding differing experiences of ageing”.
Queer Treasures at the Manchester Central Library – 5
‘A History of Penal Methods: Criminals, Witches, Lunatics’ by George Ives
This is the fifth in a series of articles about queer treasures that are currently found in the Archives held at Manchester Central Library.
George Cecil Ives
George Cecil Ives (1867-1950) was an English writer of Uranian poetry and an early campaigner for homosexual law reform. Whilst at University at Magdalene College in Cambridge, he became interested in penal reform, and being gay himself, was particularly concerned with the way that the state dealt with those minorities whose lives involved transvestism and homosexuality. He was also a successful cricketer, briefly playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club.
In 1892 he met Oscar Wilde and endeavoured to recruit him to ‘the Cause’, which Ives defined as the ending of the legal and social oppression of homosexual love. The following year he also met Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair.
By 1897, Ives had founded the Order of Chaeronea, a secret organisation for homosexuals, whose members occasionally gathered together and talked about their own lives and about how positive legal and social changes for homosexuals could be effected. Ives was also a friend of Edward Carpenter and, in 1913, he, together with Carpenter, Magnus Hirschfeld, Laurence Houseman and others, founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, which aimed to bring about progressive social change by promoting and supporting the scientific study of sex. Ives visited prisons across Europe, took part in international conferences on penal reform and wrote books and articles to promote his ideas.
George Ives
Out of this study of, and engagement with, prison reform, came his 1914 work, on ‘A History of Penal Methods’. After looking at a variety of criminal behaviours and, in particular, the treatment meted out historically towards those who do not conform to rigid social norms, such as witches and the mentally ill, he turned his attention to homosexuals, pleading for a radical legal transformation in society’s approach to the whole issue. In his writings his employment of language can be seen to reflect the vocabulary of his age, by his use of the terms ‘sexual inverts’ and ‘homogenic attraction’ to refer to LGBT men and women.
Ives chided the fact that there was limited general understanding about sexuality, as the subject was often deemed unsuitable for public discussion. He argued however, that ‘if the legislator makes one theory of the psychology of sex the basis for passing a law which sends citizens to penal servitude, it is impossible to shut out such a theory from public discussion’ (p291). He was determined to argue the case for the reform of laws that constrained LGBT people, which he did for the rest of his life.
Ives posited same-sex attraction as ‘an innate instinct’(p294) and that –
The sexual inverts may be compared to the left-handed. They are indeed always a minority in every population, but an eternal minority which neither laws nor even religious systems have ever altogether swept away … the names of some of them are written for all time in the world’s history. (p292)
He maintained that sexual inversion was ‘A deep inevitable impulse’ which ‘could never … be penalised out of existence’ (p295) but that legislators had refused to listen and so, ‘hopelessly, the unfortunate inverts have been left to policemen.’
In his book, Ives reviews the theories of progressive contemporary British and Continental sexologists to suggest a ‘latent bisexuality in each sex’ (p299) but that ‘Custom, education, costume and maternity have all tended to accentuate the difference and obliterate the likeness of the two sexes …’ (p299). Human variety had not however been totally eradicated and ‘thus among the infinite kinds of combination we also find the homogenic union’ (p300).
Ives points towards continental criminal codes (France, Italy etc) where ‘an age of consent is allowed for homosexuality to both sexes above which the law refrains from interference’(p361) and urges that this be applied to other penal codes. Sadly English ‘inverts’ had to wait almost 100 years later, until 2001, for an equal age of consent to become a reality.
Generally less well-known than Edward Carpenter or Magnus Hirschfeld, Ives was nevertheless at the forefront of campaigning for the equal treatment of queer people before the law in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He, and other reformers who worked energetically for what were, then, unpopular causes, laid much of the groundwork for the rights we enjoy today.
Audre Lorde, writer feminist, poet and civil rights activist, during her 1983 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. (Robert Alexander / Getty)
International Women’s Month
This year, the theme of International Women’s Day was “Accelerate Action.” The theme emphasises the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality.
Every March, Women’s History Month seeks to raise awareness of the social and historical contributions and achievements of women. This year’s theme is “Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations”.
In light of that, we decided to look at LGBT+ women from history who took bold, brave steps to live their lives as they wanted to, refusing to let prejudice or misogyny prevent them from being themselves. From 17th century sword-slingers to 20th century movie stars and activists, here are some favourite trailblazers.
1. Julie d’Aubigny (1670 – 1707)
Julie dAubigny
Where to start with Julie? Better known as Mademoiselle Maupin or La Maupin, this 17th century sword-slinger and opera singer became involved with a young woman, whose parents later put her in a convent.
In order to get her lover back, she entered the convent, stole the body of a dead nun, placed it in her lover’s bed and set the room on fire so that they could escape together.
What a woman!
2. The Ladies of Llangollen (1739 – 1829, 1755 – 1831)
Portrait of The Rt Hon Lady Eleanor Butler & Miss Ponsonby “The Ladies of Llangollen” (Wikimedia Commons)
The Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, were two upper-class Irish women who lived together in Llangollen, Wales, and whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries.
Some consider Butler and Ponsonby’s relationship to be a Boston marriage, or a romantic relationship between two women who chose to live together and have “marriage-like relationships”.
3. Anne Lister (1791 – 1840)
Anne Lister was a prolific diarist in the 19th century. (Public Domain)
Anne Lister was a landowner, diarist, mountaineer and traveller who kept diaries which chronicled her life, including her lesbian relationships.
However, the LGBT+ info was written in code, derived from a combination of algebra and Ancient Greek.
She had an affair with a wealthy heiress called Ann Walker, who she later married (without legal recognition), provoking uproar in polite society.
4. Jane Addams (1860 – 1935)
Jane Addams in 1926 (Wikimedia Commons)
Jane Addams was a pioneering figure in the American suffrage movement. Also an activist, social worker, public philosopher and author, she was involved with several women throughout her lifetime.
Most significantly, Addams was in a relationship with Mary Rozet Smith, and according to historian Lilian Faderman, she addressed Mary as “My Ever Dear”, “Darling” and “Dearest One” in letters.
The couple were together for 40 years and wrote to each other constantly when apart. “I miss you dreadfully and am yours ‘til death,” read one letter from Addams to Smith.
5. Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)
Virginia Woolf. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty)
Writer Virginia Woolf’s bisexuality is pretty hard to argue with. She had a relationship with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West in the early 1920s.
In a letter to Vita, Virginia described telling her sister Nessa about their affair, where she wrote: “I told Nessa the story of our passion in a chemist’s shop the other day. ‘But do you really like going to bed with women’ she said – taking her change. ‘And how’d you do it?’ and so she bought her pills to take abroad, talking as loud as a parrot.”
6. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)
Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American author, diplomat, humanitarian, and 32nd First Lady. Undated photograph.
Eleanor Roosevelt was known to have been allowed to have an affair by her straying husband – and she chose reporter Lorena ‘Hick’ Hickock.
Following Eleanor’s death, a series of letters were unearthed. Although most were destroyed by the Roosevelt family, one letter read: “I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth.”
In another 1933 letter, Eleanor wrote: “I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close … Your ring is a great comfort to me. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it.”
7. Mercedes de Acosta (1893 – 1968)
Mercedes de Acosta (Wikimedia Commons)
An American poet, playwright and novelist, Mercedes de Acosta wasn’t famed for her writing, rather for her many lesbian affairs with Hollywood stars.
She’s possibly best-known for her long-term romance with Greta Garbo, and was also involved with Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina.
8. Alla Nazimova (1879 – 1945)
Alla Nazimova in 1913 (Wikimedia Commons)
Alla Nazimova, an actress, was credited with coming up with the phrase ‘sewing circle’ as a code name for her and her fellow lesbian or bisexual Hollywood actresses.
She openly had relationships with women, and her Sunset Boulevard mansion was believed to be the home of some pretty exciting parties.
9. Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992)
Google celebrates acclaimed poet Audre Lorde for Black History Month. (Google)
African-American writer Audre Lorde was also a civil rights activist who famously said: “Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill.
It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”
10. Ruth Ellis (1899 – 2000)
Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis was an African-American woman and LGBT+ rights activist who came out when she was just 16.
In the 1920s, she met her partner of 30 years, Ceciline ‘Babe’ Franklin, and their Detroit home became a refuge for African-American LGBT+ people.
11. Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1900 – 1993)
Marion Barbara Carstairs
A wealthy British power boat racer, Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs often dressed as a man, had tattoos and loved adventure and speed.
She was openly gay and had many affairs with women, including Dolly Wilde (Oscar Wilde’s niece), Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich.
12. Gladys Bentley (1907 – 1960)
Gladys Bentley (Wikimedia Commons)
Gladys Bentley was an American blues singer, pianist and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance, and is a significant figure for the LGBT+ community and African-Americans.
She dressed in men’s clothes when she performed, backed up by a chorus line of drag queens, played piano and sang in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.
Gladys Bentley, and all of the other women on this list, helped move things forward for women’s and LGBT+ rights just by being so unapologetically themselves, at a time when women were expected to conform to men’s expectations.
George House Trust celebrates 40 years of helping people with HIV
It’s 40 years since George House Trust was set up in a small office in central Manchester, starting as a once-a-week helpline run by volunteers.
Since then it is estimated to have helped over 100,000 people across the North West providing advice, support and information for those living with and affected by HIV.
It started in 1985 when six gay HIV activists set up Manchester AIDSline in response to the arrival of the HIV virus in Manchester. The City Council formed an ‘AIDS Working Party’ and the North Western Regional Health Authority began to support Manchester AIDSline financially. As support developed, they began providing more targeted and tailored services, such a befriending support and information resources for professionals. The AIDSline changed it’s name to George House Trust in 1990.
Anita Binns is one of those who’re grateful for their help.
Anita Binns (2nd from left) is fundraising for George House Trust
In 1995, after giving blood, she found out she was HIV positive, along with her husband and young son. George House Trust helped her navigate a path through what was a very scary time for Anita, who was completely in the dark about living with the disease.
She said: “At the time there was no medication so we were literally given an aids diagnosis, we had to put our life in order to make sure our family would be looked after.”
“We didn’t know if we were going to live, would we be there for our children would we die before our children?”
They also supported her when she was discriminated against at work because of her diagnosis. “When you walked through the door they could answer your questions, if it wasn’t for George House Trust I wouldn’t be here” she told Granada Reports.
This year as it celebrates its 40th anniversary ,the charity will use a £150,000 grant from The National Lottery to tell the story of HIV across Greater Manchester and the associated activism, heroism, passion and loss.
The project manager Joseph Tanzer is working with Manchester Archives+ to appraise and catalogue George House Trust’s physical and digital archive material and preserve this by depositing it at Manchester Central Library.
At the end of the project in March 2026, people can learn about the history of HIV activism in Greater Manchester and this will lead to change in outdated perceptions and increased awareness about HIV and tackling HIV stigma.
Paul Fairweather, the co-founder of George House Trust said: “People are now so much more aware, we talk to a lot of young people and I think they are far more aware about the facts around HIV, but there are still many people whose physical health is fine but their mental health isn’t, they are isolated and have not told anyone about living with HIV”
To bring transmission rates down the Government has pledged £27 million for opt-out testing in emergency departments, something George House Trust is helping to deliver.
Dr Orla McQuillan is a consultant at the Northern Sexual Health and HIV Service, she said: “The most important thing is to get tested and get diagnosed because we know know that HIV is a different world and once you are diagnosed we can look after you and treatment is actually quite easy to take.”
George House Trust has scooped one of this year’s GSK Impact Awards, a sought-after accolade for health care charities in the UK.
The awards are widely seen as a mark of excellence in the charity health sector and are designed to recognise outstanding small and medium-sized charities working to improve people’s health and wellbeing in the UK.
As an award winner, George House Trust will now receive £40,000 in unrestricted funding, as well as a place on a highly sought-after leadership development programme provided by The King’s Fund.
Amongst other services – destitution payments, formula milk donations, support groups – George House Trust has also played a vital role in reaching out to the fastest-growing, yet often underrepresented, demographic of people living with HIV – over 50s.
Naomi Sloyan, 58, a user of George House Trust who now works at the charity, said: “I went through a year of being desperately ill, often hospitalised. It was quite a traumatic experience, really, because it wasn’t picked up early.”
But Sloyan believes her story, as well as George House Trust’s Ageing Well programme, is breaking down the stereotypical image of someone living with HIV, meaning faster treatment and support for people in whom the disease may previously have gone undiagnosed.
The GSK Impact Award will further raise George House Trust’s profile, helping to achieve its aims of normalising, de-stigmatising, and combatting HIV throughout the Northwest.
Rainbow Lottery Super Draw!
Please support Out In The City by buying a Rainbow Lottery ticket or two (or more!)
With each Rainbow Lottery ticket, you are not just entering to win exciting prizes, you are also supporting our mission to support older LGBT+ people.
It’s a vital part of our fundraising as we receive 50p for every £1 spent and you have the chance to win cash prizes each week from £25 for three numbers up to a jackpot of £25,000 for six numbers – while helping us to achieve more for the LGBT+ communities over 50 years.
In this weekend’s Super Draw (Saturday, 29 March) one lucky supporter will win an amazing Home Robot Bundle – or of course, a £1,000 cash alternative or the option to plant 1,000 trees with projects available all around the world!
Put your feet up and relax, while your new Roomba Combo J5 takes care of all the floors in your home with its vacuuming AND mopping options, while outside, your Lawnmaster L12 Robot Mower is hard at work, keeping your lawn under control, all whilst you kick back with a cup of tea (and we’ll even throw in the teabags!)
Or as always, the winner can opt for the £1,000 cash alternative, and spend it your way or plant 1,000 trees if the main prize doesn’t appeal to you!
Halle St Michaels, 36-38 George Leigh Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5DG
Performance & Social
On Sunday 27 April at 7.00pm, we will share a relaxed, informal performance lasting about 20 – 30 minutes. It’s the perfect chance to showcase your wonderful voices to family and friends!
Get involved
The participation fee for the project is £40 (but the fee is negotiable).
We enjoyed our meal at The 1853 Restaurant. It has become a favourite for the group as it is renowned for its exceptional cuisine, which seamlessly blends traditional British fare with modern culinary techniques. The menu is a carefully crafted selection of dishes that highlight seasonal ingredients and local produce, ensuring that each meal is a celebration of Manchester’s rich culinary heritage.
At the 1853 Restaurant, exceptional service is a cornerstone of the dining experience. The attentive staff go above and beyond to ensure that each guest feels welcomed and well cared for. The restaurant also hosts themed nights and seasonal events, offering something new and exciting for patrons to look forward to.
Abraham Lincoln had a male ‘roommate’ who he shared a bed with for years
It’s a question that has plagued historians and journalists for decades. Now, the perpetual debate has reared its head once again: was US President Abraham Lincoln gay?
Several of Lincoln’s biographies have alluded to him having same-sex relationships. Publications from Vanity Fair to The Guardian have discussed it at length. The subject of Abe’s sexuality even has its own Wikipedia page.
It seems that everyone is desperate to know whether Lincoln – ironically, the first Republican president – was actually gay.
The discussion was reignited once again a couple of years ago when journalist Alex Abad-Santos shared a snippet of a The New York Times article, which made reference to Abraham Lincoln and his lifelong “friend” Joshua Speed.
“Abraham Lincoln and his friend Joshua Speed, a Springfield, Illinois., shopkeeper, had a rare intimacy,” the extract reads. “The two shared Speed’s bed for years in Springfield after Lincoln told Speed he couldn’t afford a mattress. Historians still debate the nature of this relationship.”
Abad-Santos shared the snippet along with the caption “Abraham Lincoln had a ‘roommate’”, making reference to the enduring meme where historians take evidently queer relationships and position them as simple friendships.
More recently, in 2024, a documentary was released that again suggested that ex-president had a secret, gay sex life, calling it an “important missing piece of American history.” The film, titledLover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln, explores the rumour that Lincoln was gay using historical recreations and never before seen photographs and letters.
It also features an expert stating: “Lincoln probably slept in the same bed with more men than he did with women.”
Lincoln’s relationship with Joshua Speed has been debated since the early 20th century.
In one Lincoln biography published in 1926, author Carl Sandburg wrote that the pair’s relationship had “a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets”. The phrase was later understood to imply homosexuality.
Speed isn’t the only special pal that Lincoln is rumoured to have spooned with. In his 20s, the former president spent time spooning his friend Billy Greene.
Greene seemed to be a fan of the arrangement, having allegedly said: “When one turned over the other had to do likewise … his thighs were as perfect as a human being could be.”
Other historians however have noted that it wasn’t ‘unusual’ for men to share a bed in the 1800s when no other option was available.
They also point to the fact that Lincoln had a wife and four children as evidence against his rumoured queerness, though most know this isn’t exactly a robust defence.
Despite Lincoln’s sexuality being explored intently over the past 100 years – including in a scientific paper – the debate rages on. It’s likely we’ll never know if the seminal US president really did share a bed and “rare intimacy” with his friends simply because he couldn’t afford a mattress, rather than because he was, you know, gay.
The Lavender Scare: The Case Against Homosexuals
President Dwight D Eisenhower delivering a speech sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 1958. (Photo: The US National Archives)
House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, the Red Scare and homosexuals
The Red Scare – the threat of communists infiltrating American society at every level in the 1940s and 1950s – gave birth to the Lavender Scare: a belief that homosexual men and women were seen as “sexual perverts”, “deviants” and a national security threat. Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy spread rumours about communists in the US government decades ago.
Many of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans at that time – including President Dwight D Eisenhower – supported McCarthy’s dogged work to weed out communists in American society, but it was also a bipartisan effort with some Democrats supporting McCarthy as well. Democrats were also actively engaged in the homosexual purges that led to the Lavender Scare in which McCarthy claimed that homosexuals were more vulnerable to blackmail from the Soviets, and were therefore a national security risk and posed a significant threat to the country as the Cold War ratcheted up.
In 1947, the US Park Police started their “Sex Perversion Elimination Programme,” which targeted gay men for arrest and intimidation. In 1948, Congress passed an act “for the treatment of sexual psychopaths” in the nation’s capital. That law facilitated the arrest and punishment of people who acted on same-sex desire and also labelled them mentally ill.
The subversive aspects of both homosexuality and communism began to be linked. In 1950, even the Communist Party had issued a warning about the threat of homosexuality.
McCarthy’s efforts to eradicate communists and his focus on homosexuals in particular brought a significant number of closeted writers, actors and even politicians before his House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings. Ironically, his main support for his work was his assistant, 26-year-old Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man who would later become Donald Trump’s attorney.
Executive Order 10450 fuels Lavender Scare
The direct connection between McCarthy and HUAC to Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, issued on 27 April 1953, which led to the expulsion of homosexuals from all levels of American government, remains unclear, but a link certainly existed. The policy was succinct and unforgiving: anyone suspected of being a lesbian or gay man was summarily dismissed from their positions, no matter what the placement.
The HUAC and Lavender Scare impact was extraordinary – and largely hidden. Around one million gay or lesbian individuals were prosecuted in the US from 1945 to 1960 and that by the end of the 1940s, Washington officials announced the “Sex Perversion Elimination Programme.”
Executive Order 10450 was not rescinded until 1995 and continued to bar gays from entering the military until the establishment of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which in turn was not repealed until 2011.
The purge of homosexuals was ongoing
But this assault on homosexuals was not just about McCarthy, nor was it solely the purview of Republicans. The Subcommittee on Investigations was chaired by Democratic Senator Clyde R Hoey from 1949 to 1952 and investigated “the employment of homosexuals in the Federal workforce.” McCarthy embraced this theme in the HUAC hearings as The Hoey Report stated that all of the government’s intelligence agencies “are in complete agreement that sex perverts in Government constitute security risks.”
The head of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department vice squad, Lieutenant Roy Blick had testified that 5,000 homosexuals lived in Washington, DC, and that around 3,700 were federal employees. This lit a fuse to weed out these men and women from the government.
Examining the Lavender Scare
Eisenhower’s association with McCarthy highlights how he was far from a benign leader and was in fact one of the most dangerous for lesbians and gay men both at the time and historically. Renowned activist Harry Hay said “We lived in terror almost every day of our lives.”
One example is Madeleine Tress, 24, who worked as an economist for the US Department of Commerce when two investigators told her they had evidence of her lesbianism. She was asked to swear an oath. She asked for an attorney and was told she could not have one. Tress lost her job.
The incidental aspects of Executive Order 10450 – one young lesbian economist’s life being upended and virtually ruined – exemplifies what the confluence of McCarthy and Eisenhower did to gay men and lesbians with the Lavender Scare. But the impact went far beyond job losses. Some people died by suicide after being outed, as the repercussions were so devastating on multiple levels that they couldn’t bear the fallout. They were labelled as deviants and ostracised in their respective professions.
Activist response to the Lavender Scare
Frank Kameny was working for the United States Army Map Service as an astronomer when he was fired in 1957 for being homosexual. Kameny tried repeatedly but was unable to find another job in the federal government after that firing due to the Lavender Scare.
The impact that had on Kameny propelled him into becoming one of the most pivotal LGBT+ civil rights leaders, devoting his life to the gay-rights movement. Kameny was instrumental in creating the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1960. In 1965, four years before the Stonewall Riots, Kameny picketed the White House on the grounds of gay rights. That same year, Kameny led a picket line for gay rights at Independence Hall on 4 July, which included veteran Philadelphia lesbian activist Barbara Gittings.
This history shows what a seemingly benign president and an ideologue of a senator can do to threaten, terrorise and even lead to the deaths of whole groups of marginalised people. It’s a lesson worth reviewing and a history that continues to impact LGBT+ history – past and present.
Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly
Sick of Labour Politicians claiming to respect trans people while attacking trans rights? Want them to take concrete steps to keep trans people safe? Make sure they know about it!
Manchester Trans Liberation Assembly is holding a workshop for you to write to decision makers.
There are no staff onsite on Wednesdays, apart from at reception, but we’ll be at the door!
Not familiar with trans rights in the UK? The session will start with a talk and Q&A, so everyone is up to date before they decide what they want to write.
Don’t think your MP will listen? There are other groups we need to reach, including Unions and LGBTQIA groups within Labour. And even if you think your MP won’t change their mind, there is a good chance they will reply, which will help build up a picture of what positions MPs have taken on trans rights and guide future campaigns. Above all, you will not be the only person writing to your MP for trans rights! Your message might be a start, even if it isn’t enough on its own.
Out in the City 