Lesbianism and the Criminal Law

Caroline Derry is Lecturer in Law at the Open University, UK. She taught for fifteen years at London Metropolitan University where she was a senior lecturer in Criminal and Evidence Law and Gender and Law, and LLB course leader. She has been a visiting lecturer in Criminal Law at SOAS and at Paris Descartes. She is a co-author of Complete Criminal Law (OUP, 2018) and Gender and Law (Routledge, 2018).

• 1.Introduction.- 2.Mary/Charles Hamilton: eighteenth-century female husband prosecutions.- 3.Louise Mourey and the ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’.- 4.‘Gross indecency between females’: the 1921 Parliamentary debates.- 5.Victor/Valerie Barker: sexology and challenges to silencing.- 6.The Wolfenden Report: a shift in silencing.- 7.Allen: sexual offences prosecutions in the late twentieth century.- 8.McNally: sexual offences, gender and consent.- 9.Conclusion.