Seventy-three prisoners were condemned to death at the Old Bailey in 1835 at a time when there were more than 200 capital offences on the statute book. Nevertheless, all had their sentences commuted apart from two: James Pratt and John Smith, who were convicted of ‘the detestable and abominable crime’ of sodomy.
The indictment stated that the accused had been ‘seduced by the instigation of the devil’
‘The love that dare not speak its name’ may forever be associated with Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde, but the same reticence was clearly evident in the first half of the century. When in 1828 Sir Robert Peel introduced the Offences Against the Person Bill, which included a clause to facilitate convictions for sodomy, he refused to speak the phrase ‘the crime against Christians not to be named’ in English, choosing to couch it in Latin.
Between 1806 and 1835, 404 men were sentenced to death for sodomy in England, of whom 56 were hanged and many more transported.
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