GAY RIGHTS IN 19TH-CENTURY BRITAIN

Set in 8,500 acres of land, the Kingston Lacy estate remains an imposing statement of wealth and grandeur in the Dorset countryside. Over the course of more than 350 years, seven generations of the Bankes family left their mark on the huge estate, transforming it from the two-storey red brick country house of the mid-17th century to the enormous Italian palazzo-style building we see today. Stepping into the cool stone hall, Italian and classical influences are everywhere - from red granite tables boasting carved shells, lizards and fruits, to huge marble columns in a Greek style.

Kingston Lacy owes its Italian grandeur to one owner in particular, William John Bankes, who inherited the house in 1834. The house became Bankes’ obsession and he soon set about remodelling it, employ-ing the services of fashionable architect Charles Barry, who clad the building’s exterior in Chilmark stone.

Bankes was fascinated by the culture and history of Italy and ancient Greece, and took much of his architectural and decorative inspiration for Kingston Lacy from both, including the grand marble staircase, based on one he had seen at the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome. In 1812, Bankes set off on a grand tour of Europe and north Africa. This took him to Alexandria where he developed a deep love for ancient Egyptian history. Throughout his travels, Bankes sent objects and artwork back to Kingston Lacy, including a huge granite obelisk discovered by Bankes himself on an island in the Nile in 1815. The obelisk, which features the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, still stands on the southern lawn.

Behind closed doors

To the outside world, Bankes was the quintessential English gentleman: educated at Westminster and then moving on to Cambridge University where he made several high-ranking friends, including Lord Byron.

A Tory MP for many years, he was celebrated in society as a great explorer and collector. But behind his upstanding public persona, Bankes was living a secret life, one which saw him having sex with other men. Such behaviours could be punished with the pillory, imprisonment or (until 1861, if sodomy could be proven) death.

"When studying queer history, it's important to bear in mind that in the 18th and 19th centuries - when Bankes was alive - sexual relationships between men werwn't understood in the same way as they are now. There was more of a tendency to think about sinful or illegal acts than a particular type of person likely to commit them,” says Matt Cook, professor of modern history at Birkbeck, University of London. “People might talk about Mollies or sodomites or suggestively about bachelors, artists or bohemians but not in a way that everyone understood. ‘Homosexual’ or ‘gay’ were identity categories that came later.”

Bankes kept his sexual activities private, but in 1833 he was arrested on suspicion of “attempting to commit an unnatural offence” with a soldier in a urinal outside parliament. The case went to court where Bankes denied all charges and drew on his high-profile acquaintances to stand as character witnesses for him. The Duke of Wellington himself stood up for Bankes in court, declaring: “I should never had believed him guilty of the offence with which he is now charged; his pursuits and habits are honourable and manly.”

After a 15-minute deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of‘not guilty’, adding that “in their opinion, the defendants left the court without the slightest stain upon their characters”. But despite his acquittal, the damage to his reputation had been done and Bankes was forced to retire from public life, whereupon he devoted himself to trans-forming his beloved family home.

“Bankes was almost undoubtedly guilty, but his class background and impressive acquaintances meant he was able to escape punishment on this occasion,” says Cook. “He may have been judged harshly in a moral sense by some, but his high social standing and reputation as a prolific collector and connoisseur - something that people at the time viewed favourably - partially insulated him. If he had been a working man, it’s fair to assume Bankes would have been dealt with more severely.

“There was probably a lot of tacit knowl-edge in elite circles about the intimate and sexual relationships higher class men were involved in. Certainly it was not unusual for men to have extra- or non-marital sex with women and other men. If many felt a sense of immunity in such activity because of their class it nevertheless became hard to defend once it was public knowledge.”

Bankes’ trial was by no means a foregone conclusion, though. The Buggery Act, passed by Henry VIII in 1533, had made sodomy a capital offence and, although it did not specifically target sex between men, the death penalty for the crime was still in place at the time of Bankes’ trial. In fact, between 1806 and 1861,8,921 menwere prosecuted for sodomy - 404 of these were sentenced to death and 56 were executed. The last executions for the crime took place in 1835, just two years after Bankes’ trial.

Intense male friendships

“There was a definite shift in attitudes towards close male friendships in the Victorian period,” says Cook. “In the early- mid-19th century, the development of all-male environments such as public schools, universities and gentlemen’s clubs encouraged intense friendships between men. There was a romanticisation of male companionship as being the ultimate friendship - a belief that two men together could be, and achieve, more as friends than a man and a woman could. Intense friend-ships between middle-class women, too, were also encouraged on the grounds that they could provide a foretaste of marriage.”

But by the end of the 19th century, the balance had tipped. Close male friendships began to be viewed with suspicion and anxiety. To the Victorian eye, homosociality could all too easily slip into homosexuality, so it was deemed necessary to police all-male environments carefully. This shift coincides with developments in sexology - the science of human sexual relationships and sexuality - and the subsequent pathologisation of same-sex friendships.

Bankes fostered many close male friend-ships, both at school and then at university, but seems to have chosen to conduct his sexual affairs away from his private space at Kingston Lacy. Instead, he preferred the relative anonymity of London’s notorious cruising grounds.

There were many localised subcultures available in the capital, including Molly Houses where mostly working-class homosexual men met. According to Cook, Bankes is unlikely to have visited such institutions. What we do know is that Bankes continued to have sex in public spaces with men - and often lower class men (even more of a transgression!). In 1841 he was arrested again, this time for “indecently exposing himself with a soldier of the Foot Guards in Green Park”.

A no-doubt terrified Bankes initially gave a false name to the police and was indicted on five counts. Fearing the outcome of another trial, Bankes decided to flee the country, travelling first to France and then on to Italy. He was officially declared an outlaw, forbidden to return to England, but managed to sign the Kingston Lacy estate over to his brothers, George and Edward, to avoid it being forfeited to the crown.

Life in exile

Bankes settled mainly in Venice and from there devoted the next 14 years to remodel-ling and redecorating Kingston Lacy from afar, sending detailed letters to his sister, Anne, with instructions as to how certain artworks should be displayed.

Among the pieces he sent back to Dorset during his exile were painted ceiling panels and leather wall-hangings bought from Renaissance palaces in Venice. These were hung in Bankes’ most prized space: the Spanish room, which still houses his collection of 16th-century and 17th-century Spanish paintings. He put his artistic talents to good use, too, designing 12 door panels which illustrate the seasons.

Crate upon crate of paintings, furniture, precious objects and sculptures arrived at Kingston Lacy during the 1840s and 1850s, all carefully arranged in the house as if their owner would return soon. The sad truth, however, is that Bankes probably only saw the fruits ofhis labour once before he died in 1855. Terminally ill, he is believed to have slipped into the country through Poole in the year before his death, to see the house he loved so dearly one last time. In 1855, despite his remaining an outlaw until his death, Bankes’ body was smuggled into the country and interred in the family tomb in Wimborne Minster after a secret funeral.

“Bankes was just one of many men throughout history who have been punished for engaging in same-sex relationships”, says Cook. “Although the death sentence for sodomy was abolished in 1861, men could still be imprisoned for sodomy or attempted sodomy and in 1885 an extra measure was introduced against all acts of gross inde-cency between men. Arrests of men now increased - most famously of Oscar Wilde, who was prosecuted under this new act.”

Persecution ofhomosexual men contin-ued into the 20th century, peaking in the 1950s when as many as 1,000 men were incarcerated everyyear in a police clamp- down on homosexuality. It wasn’t until 1967 that the Sexual Offences Act was passed, partially decriminalising homosexual acts between two men over the age of 21. It was an important change but arrests and prosecutions of men for having consensual sex with each other continued after this date.

In any case, these changes to the law came far too late for William Bankes. Despite his enviable society connections, he was forced to live out his life in exile, away from his beloved home, friends and family. His legacy is Kingston Lacy, which serves as a tribute to his passion for collecting and his determina-tion to create the house of his dreams.

By Matt Cook in "BBC History Magazine", UK, September 2018, excerpts pp.82-85. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.