"Beyond the Law"

In nineteenth-century England, sodomy was punishable by death; even an accusation could damage a man’s reputation for life. The last executions for this private, consensual act were in 1835, but the effort to change the law that allowed for those executions was intense and precarious, and not successful until 1861. In this groundbreaking book, “Beyond the Law,” noted historian Charles Upchurch pieces together fragments from history and uses a queer history methodology to recount the untold story of the political process through which the law allowing for the death penalty for sodomy was almost ended in 1841.Upchurch recounts the legal and political efforts of reformers like Jeremy Bentham and Lord John Russell—the latter of whom argued that the death penalty for sodomy was “beyond the law and above the law.” He also reveals that a same-sex relationship linked the families of the two men responsible for co-sponsoring the key legislation. By recovering the various ethical, religious, and humanitarian arguments against punishing sodomy, “Beyond the Law” overturns longstanding assumptions of nineteenth-century British history. Upchurch demonstrates that social change came from an amalgam of reformist momentum, family affection, elitist politics, class privilege, enlightenment philosophy, and personal desires.

“Convincing and stimulating, Upchurch’s book is grounded in a rich and complex archive and is a triumph of historical detective work. His patient piecing together of quite disparate materials to develop a case strengthens the sense that he is genuinely breaking new ground. ‘Beyond the Law’ is a very important book that will change our understanding of what happened before 1861 when the death penalty for sodomy in England was abolished.”—Jeffrey Weeks, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at London South Bank University, and author of Between Worlds: A Queer Boy from the Valleys, “‘Beyond the Law’ reveals hitherto almost unknown efforts to repeal the death penalty for sodomy in the early nineteenth century in England and provides a new interpretation of the 1885 Labouchere Amendment on that topic. Upchurch offers amazing research, new discoveries, and fascinating stories of the people behind these legislative efforts, as well as rich discussions of the tragic persecutions of many men who had sex with men. His book is a very interesting and compelling read.”—Anna Clark, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, and author of Alternative Histories of the Self: A Cultural History of Sexuality and Secrets, 1762–1917, "[I]t is a great pleasure to receive a work based on such deep and solid scholarship as this book by Charles Upchurch. What Upchurch meticulously uncovers are the unfulfilled possibilities that the death penalty for the ‘crime unfit to be named’ might have been abolished well before the Offences against the Person Act (1861) undertook a major tidying-up of the legislation across a range of crimes falling under that heading.... The author demonstrates a thorough grasp of the legal and political contexts, and a nuanced apprehension of the ways particular individuals might intervene to ameliorate the severity of laws that could still only be discussed obliquely and euphemistically."—English Historical Review, "Where Upchurch has done much valuable service has been through his detailed research into the personnel involved in the various inconclusive parliamentary debates. This research has exposed a mass of interesting information about the progress of the movement for reform.... Historians of sexuality can benefit from Upchurch’s heavy hinting that there is a bigger historical project waiting to be carried out into the queer reasons why so little was done and by so few."—Journal of the History of Sexuality, "[A] comprehensive picture of the experience and politics of same-sex desire in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century. It should be of value to those generally interested in the history of sexuality in Britain, to historians of the queer past, and to scholars of British politics in a complex period of change. It is a rich study that connects the personal and the political, the intellectual and the social, based on the results of amazingly diligent sleuth work.... Upchurch has deepened our understanding of the politics of sodomy law reform at the tail end of Britain’s great nineteenth-century age of reform."—History: Reviews of New Books

Charles Upchurch is an Associate Professor of British History at Florida State University and the author of Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain's age of Reform.