Upchurch: "Beyond the Law"

HISTORY | SEXUALITY STUDIES/ SEXUAL IDENTITY | GENDER STUDIES Sexuality Studies series 312 pp. | 6 x 9" 20 halftones $39.95 | £32.00 paper 978-1-4399-2034-3 $110.50 | £88.00 cloth 978-1-4399-2033-6 OCTOBER

also in the series PUBLIC CITY/PUBLIC SEX

Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in NineteenthCentury Paris ANDREW ISRAEL ROSS 978-1-4399-1489-2 $34.95 £26.99 paper

"BEYOND THE LAW"

The Politics of Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain

CHARLES UPCHURCH

A major reexamination of the earliest British parliamentary efforts to abolish capital punishment for consensual sex acts between men

“A triumph of historical detective work. . . . ‘Beyond the Law’ is a very important book that will change our understanding of what happened before 1861 when the death penalty for sodomy in England was abolished.”

—Jeffrey Weeks, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, London South

Bank University

In nineteenth-century England, sodomy was punishable by death; even an accusation could damage a man’s reputation for life. The last executions for this private, consensual act were in 1835, but the effort to change the law that allowed for those executions was intense and precarious, and not successful until 1861. In this groundbreaking book, “Beyond the Law,” noted historian Charles Upchurch pieces together fragments from history and uses a queer history methodology to recount the untold story of the political process through which the law allowing for death penalty for sodomy was almost ended in 1841.

Upchurch recounts the legal and political efforts of reformers like Jeremy Bentham and Lord John Russell—the latter of whom argued that the death penalty for sodomy was “beyond the law and above the law.” He also reveals that a same-sex relationship linked the families of the two men responsible for co-sponsoring the key legislation. By recovering the various ethical, religious, and humanitarian arguments against punishing sodomy, “Beyond the Law” overturns longstanding assumptions of nineteenthcentury British history. Upchurch demonstrates that social change came from an amalgam of reformist momentum, family affection, elitist politics, class privilege, enlightenment philosophy, and personal desires. CHARLES UPCHURCH is an Associate Professor of British History at Florida State University and the author of Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain's Age of Reform.