new in the NEWSLETTER \ Issue 24 \ Winter 2008 archive... w ow! New stuff, and then some. perhaps in the Seventies when Ken continued First of all, apologies to Dr Gordon his Filk’n Casuals threadwork alone. Textiles Hunt's sister Gloria for the late – in the form of banners and quilts – also notice of her generous donation of objects feature largely in an enormous deposit made from his estate, including the remarkable by the Diocese of Chichester at the closing of 1958 book Homosexuality: A subjective and the Open Door HIV and Aids drop-in service objective approach, which collects much which Father Marcus Riggs had started earlier information and was entirely new to in 1988. More of this treasure trove and Portrait by anonymous artist in the Open Door Ourstory. Another 24 books (see example top Ourstory's role in documenting Open Door's collection right) kindly came our way sad demise in 2009. we nearly wet from Fiona who had used Textile again was them in her Masters. And our pants... a London Pride 1991 Peter Burton donated the T-shirt sent by Gwen latest in a continuing series of new American along with a copy of the 45rpm vinyl Shout! titles, where queer publishing houses survive in Official Anthem for Pride 88. Thanks to some variety. Gwen for wishing us 'good luck in your Magazines came in abundance. Thanks valuable endeavours'. to Jeremy for a very full run of Bound and Finally, two dusty envelopes came from Gagged (unavailable for open sale in the UK Jim, who'd been their custodian since 1993. y for many years) and many copies of HIM. Mark We nearly wet our pants on finding that ne s sent two bulging carrier bags of important one of them included Bubbles Ashdown's Di ul pornos; many Zippers among them, together collection of the lesbian love poetry she'd Pa with such delights as a single copy of the written and kept from the 1940s onwards delightfully-named Butch Trade. (bottom right). Our apologies to anyone we've twentY anD Early Ourstory note- Peter cleverly found an astonishing kaftan forgotten in this – necessarily – brief listing of books (above and left) with the label of Ken of Lancing, made recent spoils. DeFiniteLY StiLL OUt! SYD LewiS ● We were sad to hear that the lovely and S omewhen during the course of 1988 winding down and being dispersed to the safe- At least 240 people have made a contribution very talented Syd (pictured right) died in – my memory says Spring but I wouldn’t keeping of large institutions, where they remain. to Ourstory’s success over the last twenty years Spain in the autumn of 2008. He hailed from swear to it – at a meeting of the The Lesbian Archive in London was an inspira- – some by telling their story, some by giving Wales and came early to Brighton where he campaign against Section 28 in the Brighthelm tion and so was the London-based Lesbian His- things to the archive, others by acting, designing, became the partner of Tony Stuart, owner of Centre, Tom Sargant (above left) asked me if I’d tory Group. As new kids on the block we learnt cataloguing and (probably the most challeng- the famous 42 Club on Brighton's seafront. be interested in helping set up a lesbian and gay from them all and we plunged in! Just two years ing task) undertaking the management of the Ourstory newsletter 22 displays the graphic history group. He was approaching a number of after we’d begun, our first show, Really Living, group. As we celebrate our twentieth birthday, flair he brought to the presentation of the 42 people he thought might be interested. I said yes was staged – a mixture of memories, music, film we’d like to extend our thanks to all who’ve been Club shows, the programmes for all of which everSO straightaway – I’d long harboured an ambition to and documentary evidence of involved from the founders to Generations of hwHfueiers trd henee isesr tciigitlelen o mhenads sl. o s Akah inenn dutholmay O sba ugsearrrse voteeofd dhr y,it s hww apihlthl etnohnote owhyge, rj woadipinitehh do s.u r Gt ro ana anotnymoeus leFsbiaUn donLor w!ho ser Dickson mont Press httshhaaeoyv usesg) a awhm tge eIa’ d mys tnimrgeehuevtste .ber I eu hp maiand utae sanre edcds o ttthenodivs ew asrossea ne(mtdmioeyenr d mwb reehigfmyoh rTote oru.ym pI t wtWDioahintrahisnti ngoli f ffeH ol euwesraab rysitaes lna,ik rswes a afonosud ro r s gnfiixr ast yhgt eemb noeeonrka. ,- lgeasyb miaenns .a..nd taiath rnweed oOm wuuoledrs snwtt ’ortoe rhuyca ledavnnnet’d thr ebwacepirt puhaieobtsnule et– dty oyo o ugu o collection permanently. Tdoranwy nS tbuya rhti sa s hparosv didipep ae dq uinatrote hr'esr roewntn o pno ocukre ot ftfioc e d by Fraby Beau oI wccausr sth tiort ym-seix n! oI wwo tuhladt hita wvea sm beemcaourisees I– w aansd odldid.. pwreerses .t aAk isntgri nogv eorf Bshrigohwtso nfo Llloibwraerdy wanitdh boyu r1 e9x9h7ib wi-e omnu tsoe uthme (nseexet iesxscuieti n2g3 sotfa tgheis o nf eowpselneitntegr )a. t rial partner Syd and storage premises: thank you! To Styles signented Despite being a callow youth of twenty-two, Tom tion Gay Girls and Bachelor Boys. And we’ve It also wouldn’t have happened in quite the at the Marlborough Hotel for allowing us Depri already had a genius for spotting in history books never stopped - a complete list of our prodigious same way without the generosity of all those to place collection boxes – Ourstory's first 08, uk), and biographies subtle clues about sexuality. He output is on our website (which is, thanks to Alf who’ve supported us financially over the years –ma soaknnin atggh eethm tawet ona tlb:l pathrreas snnekon ywtos uure!n cAdeenirdv eh tdeo r a Nnt ienhwae rfo olavres tr all Ourstory 20dickson.co. carieonsdu l odinf saotlsuitour tcsiooenmea wmlisieuthdn ipt iheieosr cmhiniodgpd hceolnab rfiirtaoy mkheo pvwite twphr.ee jhuidsitcoe- a– ntdhOe uFirrr aslitsvoeerrsy, ,’a st hwsetooirrr kmy oiesfm easortsr iienens itt,si atehlllyfe) .iar bidoeuats p, ethoepirle c re- –osi uoinrnsd eaivlnvidedus ta hnlseo wagno advt e fturhnnemd sientnagrt tbi soo fed anie cwso.o uArrlsad g wrienecg efi unssd- to birthday party be in the form of money for us: on ser Just as Brighton Ourstory Project was being ativity, intuition and inspiration. Also their organi- spend, spend, spend, you can do nothing better thank you! We love cash: it underwrites our Brighto@fra born, the pioneering Hall Carpenter Archives, sational flair, technical wizardry, abilities to sort to help the country than by giving money to us work and keeps us moving forward. © (inf started by community activists in London, were and sift, and willingness to get on with the job. – because we need to spend, spend, spend on our museum! And to keep the archive in fine fettle. We have all made Ourstory’s past and we Brighton Ourstory PO Box 2861, Brighton BN1 1UN Visit us online at www.brightonourstory.co.uk can go on to make a very fine future. Linda Pointing UncOverinG LOSt wOrLDS Museum of London Suffragette Fellowship Collection Curiouser and Curiouser.. was the title of this year's LGBT History and Many of the earlier 19th-Century Archives conference held by London Metropolitan Archives on Saturday 6 pictures of the town, like this detail of a lithograph of the Kemp December. As part of a thrilling day's happenings and exchanges Brighton Town seafront, show men together Ourstory gave a talk with the title Sodomy and Suffrage. It was very well - marvelling at the town received. Focussing on the joys and perils of this kind of research – much of it being done in readiness for our trial museum opening in 2009 – Linda spoke about lesbianism among the Suffragettes in the Edwardian town and Tom gently knocked the audience sidewise with a six-minute tour of his three years investigating local pooviness from 1800 to 1900. BrOther Sea View boarding house 1916 SODOMiteS t he public record of same-sex activities Robert Henry Cliburn, one of Oscar Wilde's among men on the streets and in the renters, began his blackmailing career in the law courts of 19th-century Sussex town as a very young man. The list goes on. is dazzlingly rich. So far we have collected Sodomitical history is not a matter of the around 200 legal cases, which begin to cluster occasional outbreak of activity but rather a and multiply in Brighton from the 1820s steady blizzard across the country during the onwards. It's no longer possible to pretend that century. Tracing it all in its entirety is probably 'unnatural' men have been invisible or played a an impossible task; but one worth attempting negligible role in creating the Regency city we if only for the sake of justice, of truth and the Brighton Aquarium was a know and love today. riveting human interest of the tales revealed. great meeting place in the To take just one example we might focus The glad news is that items held by the later Victorian period on the case of Charles Allen Grover who Brighton History Centre, Brighton Museum met a London postman called William John and Art Gallery, East Sussex Record Office, Minnie Turner by Clark on the seafront one private collectors and Ada Schofield Know your roots Poor Mr Grover! He probably September evening in Brighton Ourstory itself only wanted a little human if you wish to 1889. They talked and together show the strength contact. Brighton Guardian SiSter SUFFraGetteS walked eastwards to a flourish... of the safety and 2 October 1889 spot close to the Aquarium solidarity offered where Charles apparently became amorous by the men who lived here - and also i n 1910, as women’s battle for the vote Suffragette on the streets of Brighton (actually, and William became alarmed. The case was some of the sad stories triggered by escalated, Miss Minnie Turner, a militant in the gutters, so that they couldn’t be heard by the bench of magistrates soon after others - often outsiders – who did member of the Women’s Social and charged with obstruction) and holding weekly and sent to the Assize court in Lewes. Charles not understand the ways of Sussex Political Union (known as Suffagettes), ‘at homes’, where new members could learn appeared there in December, respectably and Brighton men. opened a guest house at 13 Victoria Road in the ropes. dressed and with a blue piece of ribbon in his In case the Nineteenth Century Brighton. Called Sea View, it operated as a We’re still hot on the case looking for coat. He denied the charge and was found not seems irrelevantly distant to younger home, a refuge, a place of convalescence for lesbians among the Suffragettes (see guilty. Lucky man! What happened to William is queers today, it's important to women who’d suffered ill- newsletter 23). There we’re still hot currently unknown but it's more than possible remember that older people have sex treatment in prison and a are plenty of candidates this was not his first or last brush with the law. lives too, and messages of survival place to stay for the many on the case... (most of the militants This story of The Postman and The Gent is to impart to a new generation, and WSPU speakers who were single – either just one of many. Men with a fringe involvement that some of these old and dusty came to Brighton. At this stage, Minnie was in unmarried, divorced or widowed) and Minnie in the famous London 'Men in Woman's examples of men in terrible trouble or her mid-forties and had been living in Brighton Turner could well be the jewel in a dyke’s Clothes' case of Ernest Boulton and Frederick triumph still – like the famous trials of for about twenty years. crown. Certainly she never married and seems Park were later found to have taken refuge in Oscar Wilde – echo down the years Sea View acted as a hub for WSPU only ever to have had women guests during Brighton, getting into fresh trouble down here. and flavour and inform our lives today. activities. These included a punishing Sea Views forty-year history. Tom Sargant Collection Brighton programme of open air meetings on the seafront (a bit like Speaker’s Corner), running ● To learn much more about Minnie and Call Brighton Ourstory on 01273 206655 or contact us by email on [email protected] their shop near the ClockTower, distributing her mates, come to Linda’s talk for the their papers, Votes For Women and The Friends of Brighton Ourstory in January