Escaping court martial for sodomy: Prosecution and its alternatives in the Royal Navy, 1690-1840

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-36
Author(s):  
Seth Stein LeJacq
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
Sexual Contact ◽  
Sex Crimes ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Naval History ◽  
Same Gender

This article reassesses the sailing Royal Navy’s treatment of homoerotic crimes. Historians have argued that same-gender sexual contact was rare and loathed on naval vessels, and that trials were consequently uncommon but produced exceedingly harsh outcomes. Drawing on new archival research, this paper reveals that naval actors had more varied and complex attitudes towards the homoerotic and that courts treated these crimes more moderately on average than has long been assumed. Court martial trials also represented only one – extreme – outcome of an elaborate system that naval actors used to ‘resolve’ detected sex crimes. Summary punishment, flight, dismissal and a range of other routes served as common non-judicial alternatives. Detailed exploration of a protracted late-Georgian dismissal case, that of Lt. Arthur Walter Adair, shows that it is essential to attend to the full range of naval reactions to the homoerotic if we are to fully understand its place in naval history.

scholarly journals The Case of Fabian Philip, Karlskrona’s First Jewish Entrepreneur: A Swedish example of the Port Jews Phenomenon?

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
Harry R:son Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Naval History ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Naval Officers

When studying a local society dominated by naval officers and the extent to which they integrated the Jewish community in their midst, a new perspective on Swedish naval history is revealed. The Swedish Royal Navy has always been internationally orientated, but previous research has not taken this into account. Furthermore, not much research has been undertaken on the Swedish Royal Navy at all. As a metropolitan outpost, Karlskrona has generally been seen, by historians and contemporaries alike, as largely peripheral to the upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jews were not allowed to settle in Sweden until 1779, but in 1782 their settlement was permitted, though restricted to Stockholm, Gothenburg and Norrköping. The naval city of Karlskrona became an exception to the regulations. Previous research on the Jewish parish in Karlskrona was undertaken in the 1910s, and mistakenly concluded that it was the most unfriendly environment for Jews in early modern Sweden. This article seeks to reinterpret old sources and add newly found ones, which together engender a new perception of Jewish integration in Karlskrona. This is done by adopting the Port Jews concept and recognizing naval cities as internationally orientated production centres. In line with this, the article argues that Karlskrona, together with Gothenburg, should be interpreted as a Swedish example of the Port Jews concept.

Sexual Abuse by Psychotherapists: The Call for a Uniform Criminal Statute

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-311
Author(s):  
Michael T. Borruso
Keyword(s):  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sexual Contact ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Criminal Statute ◽  
Effective Deterrent ◽  
Sexually Abuse ◽  
Professional Review ◽  
Adequate Power

Recent surveys show an alarming rate of sexual exploitation of patients by psychotherapists. As such conduct often falls outside the scope of rape, which allows a defense of consent, the psychotherapist is not prosecuted. Although all sexual contact between therapist and patient is prohibited by codes of professional ethics, the licensing boards that enforce these codes do not possess adequate power to deter this behavior. Further, professional review boards have absolutely no authority over unlicensed therapists who sexually abuse their patients. As a result, licensed therapists who have been censured in one state may practice as unlicensed therapists in another state and continue to sexually abuse patients.The only effective deterrent would be a uniform statute, adopted in all states, criminalizing this specific abuse of the unique therapist-patient relationship. Such a statute should include unlicensed therapists as potential offenders and consent to sexual contact should not be a defense. The statute also should provide for enhanced efforts to inform and protect victims. This Note first examines six of the nine criminal statutes that currently exist in order to show the full range of provisions presently in force to deter this conduct. This Note then proposes model provisions for a uniform statute.

Mutinies in Revolutionary Times

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-97
Author(s):  
Keith Grint
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Support ◽  
High State ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Naval History ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Military

This chapter concerns four mutinies that occur against the background of revolutionary times, when the status quo is under threat, the military subordinates are no longer willing to acquiesce quietly, and the establishment is in a high state of nervous anxiety. The first two mutinies, at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, shook the British Royal Navy to its core: in the face of revolutionary acts across the channel in France, the seamen at Spithead effectively stop working until their claims of better pay and conditions are met. Given the precarious nature of the British Admiralty and government at this time, the mutiny is a success, but the consequences for a very similar mutiny just weeks later at the Nore are catastrophic for the mutineers as the British establishment unveils the mailed fist that it had been unable to deploy at Spithead. A few months later, in the same year, the crew of the Hermione undertake one of the bloodiest mutinies in British naval history, but one aimed at disposing of the officers and escaping to foreign lands, not securing improved pay and conditions. Some of the mutineers disappear for good, while others are hunted down and executed in a show of terror as meticulous as the original mutiny. The final mutiny covered here occurs on the Russian ship the Potemkin in 1905. Once again, the action occurs against the background of revolutionary fervour, but the requisite political support remains inadequate and the mutiny ultimately fails.

Prevalence and patterns of same-gender sexual contact among men

Science ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 243 (4889) ◽  
pp. 338-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Fay ◽  
C. Turner ◽  
A. Klassen ◽  
J. Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Contact ◽  
Same Gender

Donald Moodie: South Africa's Pioneer Oral Historian

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 171-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.C. Malherbe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South African ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Orkney Islands ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Social

In “Donald Moodie and the Origins of South African Historiography,” Robert Ross provides an illuminating account of the political agenda which drove Moodie's impressive labor of archival research, transcription, and translation to produce The Record—a title which, abbreviated in this fashion as it normally is, neatly establishes the aura of neutrality which he intended for his compilation of documents. Sections of The Record appeared in print between 1838 and 1841. A decade earlier Moodie had begun to assume the mantle of historian, but his activities then are little known. It appears also that his motives were somewhat different from those behind the later crusade. At a time when the social sciences were embryonic, and Cape historiography was still undeveloped, Moodie's interest was engaged by the relations subsisting between the indigenes and colonists. As investigator he employed certain methods of the fieldworker, notably the oral interview.Moodie has attracted a novelist, but not yet a biographer. In what has been published concerning him thus far, the man remains elusive. The entry in the Dictionary of South African Biography was prepared by the chief archivist of Natal and describes in a few short paragraphs his life before The Record and his transfer to that colony in 1845. Born in the Orkney Islands in 1794, Moodie entered the Royal Navy in 1808. A lieutenant at the time of his retirement on half pay in 1816, he left for India in 1820 but remained instead at the Cape, where his brothers Benjamin and John had settled. The next fifteen or so years, which the DSAB dispatches in a few lines, is the period which is of interest here. During that time he married Sophia Pigot and experienced bouts of insecurity respecting employment—aspects of his personal life with some relevance for the course of action he pursued.

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