Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made gross indecency a crime in the United Kingdom. The Act contained no definition of "gross indecency," as Victorian morality demurred from precise descriptions of activity held to be immoral. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy (meaning, in this context, anal intercourse) could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy (until 1861 it had been death) was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. They were both repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which decriminalized homosexual behaviour.
Most famously, Oscar Wilde was convicted under section 11 and sentenced to 2 years' hard labour, and Alan Turing was convicted under it and sentenced to chemical castration.
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It was named after Henry Labouchere, who added it to the Act at the last minute. Frank Harris, a contemporary, wrote that Labouchere proposed the amendment in order to make the law seem "ridiculous" and thus discredit it in its entirety; some historians agree, citing Labouchere's habitual obstructionism and other attempts to sink this bill by the same means, while others write that his role in the Cleveland Street scandal and the context of the law in controlling male sexuality suggest a sincere attempt.[1][2][3] The amendment was rushed through and passed in the early hours of August 7, 1885,[4] becoming section 11 of the Act. One member, Mr Charles Warton,[5] questioned whether Labouchere's amendment had anything to do with the original intent of the bill, the prohibition of sexual assault against young women, and prostitution. Speaker Arthur Peel responded that under procedural rules any amendment was permitted as long as Parliament permitted it.
The former Attorney-General, Sir Henry James, while supporting the amendment, objected to the leniency of the sentence, and wanted to increase the penalty to two years' hard labour. Labouchere agreed, and the amendment was passed.
Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures, or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
As a result of the vagueness of the term "gross indecency," this law allowed juries, judges and lawyers to prosecute virtually any male homosexual behaviour where it could not be proven that the defendant had specifically engaged in homosexual anal intercourse, also known as sodomy or "buggery". The sentence was relatively light compared to the penalty for anal sodomy, which remained a separate crime.
Lawyers dubbed section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the "blackmailer's charter,".[6] It was famously invoked to convict Oscar Wilde in 1895. Wilde was given the most severe sentence possible under the Act, which the judge described as "totally inadequate for a case such as this".[7] The law was repealed in part by the Sexual Offences Act 1967 when homosexual acts were decriminalized in England and Wales, with remaining provisions being deleted later.
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