MIDDLE TEMPLE LGBTQ+ FORUM
SIMON ROWBOTHAM
Speech at the Inauguration of the Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum Thursday 14 November 2019 Simon Rowbotham practises at 7BR and recently moved to London from Manchester, where his practice included all areas of family and Court of Protection law. He has built a solid private client practice, with regular instructions from top family law solicitors in the North West and further afield. Simon is Vice-Chair of the Middle Temple LGBTQ+ Forum.
The need for LGBTQ+ members to be supported at the Inn came to the fore in 2017, following the report of Marc Mason and Dr Stephen Vaughan at University College London (UCL); Sexuality at the Bar: An Empirical Exploration into the Experiences of LGBT+ Barristers in England & Wales. The authors conducted a survey of LGBTQ barristers, in which they found that just over half of those consulted reported having experienced discrimination in some form; one third had suffered bullying or harassment. Sadly, the Inns of Court came in for particular criticism ‘for not doing enough to signal their support for LGBT+ members of the Bar’. One student described an occasion when a Bencher at a qualifying session was heard to say ‘I don’t trust fags like you’. The Inn in question was not identified but it is a huge source of sadness and anger to me, that any member of an Inn might feel ashamed or attacked for who they are. There is no record of the first LGBT individual being Called to the Bar. However, since at least the century
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in which the Inn was established, Fleet Street and Chancery Lane were known for their ‘suspect’ houses. Perhaps unwittingly, the Inn itself has played some part in LGBTQ+ history in ways that are now largely forgotten. Gossip surrounded the Knights Templar. There were rumours abounding that it was a directive to copulate and bugger as part of their order and two attempts were made to bring to trial knights for allegations of sodomy. In reality, such rumours likely came – as rumours do today – from ignorant people but they do perhaps hint at a queerer history than one might suppose for the Temple. Later, when Twelfth Night was performed in Hall, the roles of Viola, Olivia and Maria were almost certainly played by young men. In their effeminate roles, these men would later become associated with the French word ‘gai’ (cheerful), which overtime gave us the term ‘gay’. Perhaps a more fun (if seedier) side of history comes from the fact that it was – along with Lincoln’s Inn Fields – a place to meet like-
2020 Middle Templar
minded people in public facilities, popularly known in the 18th Century as ‘bog houses’ or ‘the markets’. In 1701 the London Post ran a story concerning a young man ‘sitting in Lincolns-Inn house of office’ when another young man ‘happened to go into the same box, whom the other welcomed, afterwards entered into a discourse with him, pretending great kindness for him etcetera. But at last discovered his intention, to commit the filthy sin of sodomy…’. Upon crying for help, the Inn’s porters ran to his assistance and ‘cooled the spark’s courage, by ducking him in the said house of office, and afterwards left him to shift for himself’. Quite what the alleged victim thought would happen when he welcomed his would-be attacker ‘into the same box’ we can only guess. While some gay men of the Inn presumably had fun of an evening, the Temple district was also an area in which some of the worst persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals was displayed. In 1810, the White Swan on Vere Street was raided by officers of the court, who were horrified to find an establishment containing beds, a ladies’ dressing area and a ‘chapel’ for gay marriages to be celebrated. It was reported at the time that the chaplain who officiated had also recently enacted a birth, in which two men (dressed as midwives) used a pair of bellows to expel a Cheshire cheese as a new-born baby. 23 men, including a butcher, a
