O my poor Arse, my Arse can best tell

Ordinary Witnesses, Surgeons, and the Sodomitical Body in Georgian Britain

Abstract

Common law criminal courts regularly tried homoerotic crimes in the Georgian era (1714-1837). English criminal law placed great emphasis on the question of anal penetration and ejaculation inside the body, forcing courts to consider sodomy forensics as they investigated the mechanics of illegal sex acts. Scholars have assumed that medical men, particularly surgeons, claimed sodomy forensics, regularly acting as expert witnesses in these trials--an early step in the medicalization of unauthorized sex. Drawing on a database of over 500 homoerotic crimes prosecutions, this paper shows that medical witnesses in fact played only a marginal role in sodomy adjudication. Practitioners resisted participation and refused to develop expertise in the homoerotic. They left the investigation and interpretation of allegedly sodomized and sodomizing bodies to ordinary witnesses, laypeople who practiced “vernacular forensics.” Drawing on their own sources of knowledge about sexual bodies and the homoerotic, laypeople investigated and testified about purportedly “nameless” offenses. They looked, listened, touched, and even smelled to gather evidence. Investigations were often invasive, with ordinary people probing bodily interiors, grasping offending genitals, and puzzling over suspected body fluids. In court, these witnesses spoke about what they had found and offered their interpretations of their evidence. Even young, poor, and working-class Britons could speak in ways that judges and juries found credible and convincing. Their testimony constitutes a unique archive of knowledge and speech about the sodomitical body, much of it from groups scholars have found challenging to study. Careful study of this archive allows us to explore the body history of sodomy and sexual violence against males.