ere victims of anti-gay injustice had in fact found been guilty of sexual offences against children and animals.
Dr Sweet told The Telegraph: “Dr Wolf has misrepresented the experiences of victims of child abuse and violent sexual assault. This is the most profound offence against her discipline, as well as the memories of real people on the historical record."
In the book Dr Wolf tells of a William Mepham, writing that he was indicted for b*****y and sentenced to two years hard labour. She fails to record however that the victim was a child.
A contemporary newspaper report of the Mepham case, published on Feb 29 1860 and available in The British Newspaper Archive, reported that: “William Mepham, 43, carman, was indicted for committing a heinous offence upon a boy named Peter Paskerell.”
Dr Wolf also writes of another case: “Sentencing became more aggressive: John Spencer, a sixty-year-old man, was tried three times, accused of ‘b*****y’ with three different men.”
However, she does not mention that according to contemporary newspaper accounts from 1860, held in the British Newspaper Archive records, Spencer was a 60-year-old Hackney schoolmaster and that his three alleged victims were in fact not adult men, but schoolchildren, named Reuben Brascher, Leon Moresco and Wiliam Roberts.
Moresco was aged 12 at the time of Spencer’s trial, and would have been aged 10 or 11 at the time of the offence. Roberts was aged 13 at the time of the trial. Brascher’s age was not recorded in the newspaper accounts, but the only Reuben Brascher in the census of 1861 would have been aged 12.
It gets worse.
Two other cases cited by Dr Wolf in a way that suggested the Victorian courts victimised young gay men and teenagers are those of Stephen Alexander and William Tibble, both 15, who were found guilty of attempted sodomy. Alexander received a six-month sentence, while Tibble was sentenced to a year in prison.
But Dr Wolf fails to report that the offences involved animals. In Tibble’s case the offence is recorded as “B*****y with an Ass, while Alexander was indicted for “bestiality”.
Dr Sweet said: “This matters because scholarship matters and history matters. If one of the world’s most prestigious universities can award a doctorate for work that is sloppy or inaccurate, that’s a cause for concern. In half an hour’s work online, I was able to discover the flaws in her work – that some of the men she identifies as consensual lovers persecuted by the state were rapists or abusers of children and animals.”
Dr Riddell added: “It’s deeply embarrassing for Virago that they didn’t request that these checks be made for the paperback. The paperback edition is when you put things right and she hasn’t done any of that, despite Matthew presenting her with the evidence.
“Historians have to justify that everything they write is true. There’s been a failure at university level and a catastrophic failure at Virago, but ultimately the blame must lie with Naomi.”
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