Henry Labouchère
Henry Labouchère | |
---|---|
Member of Parliament for Middlesex | |
In office 15 April 1867 – 21 November 1868 | |
Preceded by | Robert Culling Hanbury |
Succeeded by | George Hamilton |
Member of Parliament for Northampton | |
In office 27 April 1880 – 12 January 1906 | |
Succeeded by | Herbert Paul |
Personal details | |
Political party | Liberal |
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Occupation | writer, publisher and theatre owner |
Known for | Labouchere Amendment criminalising male homosexual activity |
Henry Du Pré Labouchère (9 November 1831 – 15 January 1912) was an English politician, writer, publisher and theatre owner in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He is now most remembered for the Labouchère Amendment, which for the first time criminalised all male homosexual activity in the United Kingdom.
Labouchère, who came from a wealthy Huguenot banking family, was a junior member of the British diplomatic service before briefly serving in Parliament in 1865–68. He lived with the actress Henrietta Hodson from 1868, and they married in 1887. He made a name for himself as a journalist and theatre producer, first buying a stake in The Daily News and in 1876 founding the magazine Truth, which he bankrolled during an extensive series of libel suits.
In 1880, he returned to Parliament as the
Early life
Labouchère was born in London to a family of
Labouchère was educated at
Early diplomatic and political career
While he was in the US, Labouchère (without his prior knowledge) was found a place in the British diplomatic service by his family. Between 1854 and 1864, he served as a minor diplomat in Washington, Munich, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Saint Petersburg, Dresden, and Constantinople. He was, however, not known for his diplomatic demeanour, and acted impudently on occasion.[1] He went too far when he wrote to the Foreign Secretary to refuse a posting offered to him, "I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's despatch, informing me of my promotion as Second Secretary to Her Majesty's Legation at Buenos Ayres. I beg to state that, if residing at Baden-Baden I can fulfil those duties, I shall be pleased to accept the appointment." He was politely told that there was no further use for his services.[7]
The year after his dismissal, Labouchère was elected at the 1865 general election as a member of parliament (MP) for Windsor,[8] as a Liberal. However, that election was overturned on petition,[1] and in April 1867 he was elected at a by-election as an MP for Middlesex.[9] At the 1868 election he lost the seat by 110 votes.[10] He did not return to the House of Commons for 12 years.[1]
Theatre producer, journalist and writer
In 1867, Labouchère and his partners engaged the architect
During the break in his Parliamentary career, Labouchère gained renown as a journalist, editor, and publisher, sending witty dispatches from Paris during the
Labouchère was a vehement opponent of feminism; he campaigned in Truth against the suffrage movement, ridiculing and belittling women who sought the right to vote.[19] He was also a virulent anti-semite, opposed to Jewish participation in British life, using Truth to campaign against "Hebrew barons" and their supposedly excessive influence, "Jewish exclusivity" and "Jewish cowardice".[19] One of the victims of his attacks was Edward Levy-Lawson, proprietor of The Daily Telegraph.[19] In 1879 there was a much-reported court case following a fracas on the doorstep of the Beefsteak Club between Labouchère and Levy-Lawson. The committee of the club expelled Labouchère, who successfully sought a court ruling that they had no right to do so.[20]
Return to Parliament
Labouchère returned to Parliament in the 1880 election, when he and Charles Bradlaugh, both Liberals, won the two seats for Northampton. (Bradlaugh's then-controversial atheism led Labouchère, a closet agnostic, to refer sardonically to himself as "the Christian member for Northampton".)[1]
In 1884, Labouchère unsuccessfully proposed legislation to extend the existing laws against cruelty to animals.[21] In 1885, Labouchère, whose libertarian stances did not preclude a fierce homophobia,[1] drafted the Labouchère Amendment as a last-minute addition to a Parliamentary Bill that had nothing to do with homosexuality.[n 3] His amendment outlawed "gross indecency"; sodomy was already a crime, but Labouchère's Amendment now criminalised any sexual activity between men.[n 4] Ten years later the Labouchère Amendment allowed for the prosecution of Oscar Wilde, who was given the maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour.[1] Labouchère expressed regret that Wilde's sentence was so short, and would have preferred the seven-year term he had originally proposed in the Amendment.[1]
During the 1880s, the Liberal Party faced a split between a Radical wing (led by
Between 1886 and 1892, a Conservative government was in power, and Labouchère worked tirelessly to remove them from office. When the government was turned out in 1892, and Gladstone was called to form an administration, Labouchère expected to be rewarded with a cabinet post.
Through the 1890s, Labouchère was a critic of both Liberal and Conservative Imperial policies; he demanded an enquiry into Rhodesian policy in 1893–94, and in 1895 sat on the commission enquiring into the
Retirement
When the
He retired to Florence, where he died seven years later, leaving a fortune of half a million pounds sterling[n 6] to his daughter Dora, who was by then married to Carlo, Marchese di Rudini.[1]
Sources
- ISBN 1-902301-70-6.
- Bogdanor, Vernon (1997). The Monarchy and the Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829334-8.
- Jenkins, Roy (1998). The Chancellors. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-73057-7.
- Sherson, Erroll (1925). London's Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century. London: Bodley Head. OCLC 51413815.
- Thorold, Algar (1913). The Life of Henry Labouchere. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Further reading
- OCLC 221085405.
- "Henry Du Pre Labouchere". The Twickenham Museum.
Works (examples)
- Diary of the besieged resident in Paris, Hurst and Blackett, London 1871
- The Brown Man's Burden, a parody by Labouchère of Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden"; Truth and Literary Digest (Feb. 1899)
Notes and references
- Notes
- ^ The family name is variously given as Labouchère or Labouchere; both he and other members of his family used both forms during his lifetime.
- Labouchere system, a betting strategy for organising play at roulette and other games of chance.[5]
- ^ The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 1885 was introduced to outlaw sex between men and underage girls.[22]
- ^ Labouchère's contemporary Frank Harris wrote that Labouchère proposed the amendment to make the law seem "ridiculous" and so discredit it in its entirety; some historians agree, citing Labouchère's habitual obstructionism and other attempts to sink this bill by the same means. Others write that Labouchère's role in the Cleveland Street scandal makes it plain that he was strongly in favour of using the criminal law to control male sexuality, despite his own irregular private life.[23][24][25]
- George VI vetoed the appointment of Hugh Dalton as foreign secretary by Clement Attlee in 1945.[28] Roy Jenkins, however, notes that Attlee ignored the king's advice, which was given on 26 July 1945, and offered the foreign secretaryship to Dalton the following day, later changing his mind after receiving representations from Herbert Morrison and senior civil servants.[29]
- ^ £500,000 in 1912 equates to around £52,670,000 in 2024, according to calculations based on the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation.[31]
- References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34367. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Thorold, p. 16
- ^ "Labouchere, Henry Dupré (LBCR850HD)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Thorold, p. 22
- ^ Holmes, Luke. "The Labouchere System – Analysis & Review", Roulettesites.org., accessed 17 June 2021
- ^ Thorold, p. 26
- ^ Thorold, p. 65
- ^ "No. 22991". The London Gazette. 14 July 1865. p. 3529.
- ^ "No. 23242". The London Gazette. 16 April 1867. p. 2310.
- ^ "Election Intelligence", The Times, 27 November 1868, p. 5
- ^ Sherson, p. 201
- ^ Labby and Dora, Labouchere.co.uk, accessed 1 April 2008
- ^ London Facts and Gossip, The New York Times, 17 January 1883, accessed 1 April 2008
- ^ Feature on Hodson in Footlights Notes Archived 7 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Henry Du Pre Labouchere", The Twickenham Museum, accessed 3 March 2014
- ^ Thorold, pp. 125–140
- ^ The Times, 31 December 1957, p. 6
- ^ Vorder Bruegge, Andrew (Winthrop University). "W. S. Gilbert: Antiquarian Authenticity and Artistic Autocracy" Archived 10 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine . Paper presented at the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States annual conference in October 2002, accessed 26 March 2008
- ^ a b c Hirshfield, Claire. "Labouchere, Truth and the Uses of Antisemitism", Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall, 1993), pp. 134–142
- ^ "High Court of Justice, Nov. 28, Chancery Division", The Times, 29 November 1879, p. 4
- ^ "Cruelty to Animals Acts Extension Bill" Archived 3 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Hansard, 7 February 1884
- ^ Text of the 1885 Act, accessed 7 March 2012
- ISBN 9780801436789.
- ISBN 9780415159838.
- ISBN 9780415902304.
- ^ Ponsonby, Arthur, ed. (1943). Henry Ponsonby: His Life From His Letters. p. 215.
- ^ a b c Bogdanor, p. 34
- ^ Beckett, p. 199
- ^ Jenkins, pp. 447–448
- ^ "The stock-jobbing of Henry Labouchere", LSE Selected Pamphlets, 1897, accessed 28 May 2011 (subscription required)
- ^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
- ^ "Review of The Life of Henry Labouchere by Algar Thorold". The Athenaeum (4486): 409–411. 18 October 1913.
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Labouchère
- Works by Henry Labouchere at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Henry Labouchère at Internet Archive
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905. .