Jeffrey Meek - Böcker

This book explores the history of marriage and marriage-like relationships across five continents from the seventeenth century to the present day. Across fourteen chapters, leading marriage scholars examine how the methodologies from the new history of emotions contribute to our understanding of marriage, seeking to uncover not only personal feeling but also the political and social implications of emotion. They highlight how marriage as an institution has been shaped not just by law and society but also by individual and community choices, desires and emotional values. Importantly, they also emphasize how the history of non-traditional and same-sex relationships and their emotions have long played an important role in determining the nature of marriage as an institution and emotional union. In doing so, this collection allows us to rethink both the past and present of marriage, destabilizing a story of a stable institution and opening it up as a site of contest, debate and feeling.

This book is the first scholarly work to explore male homosexual prostitution in interwar Scotland. The male prostitute occupies a contested position within interwar society – depending on the perspective he was representative of a descent into turpitude, of tenacious organised criminality or of exploitation. The book explores connections between male prostitution and criminal gangs prevalent during the interwar period, by detailing the emergence and activities of Glasgow’s notorious ‘Whitehats’, a gang composed of a number of queer male prostitutes and led by William Paton. This book discovers that although Paton’s activities were representative of a career criminal, the young men who joined the ‘Whitehats’ were often driven by poverty and social isolation. This book explores the experiences of Edinburgh police detective William Merrilees and his war on homosexuality in Edinburgh during the 1930s through examining the tactics used to regulate homosexual trade and the implications this held for the men involved. The book not only explores the attitudes, opinions and actions of police officers, politicians and the legal process but also uncovers fragments from the lives of the men involved, through personal reflections and letters. The book explores the anxieties that the trade in homosexual sex provoked, not just for understandings of sexuality but also of gender and nationhood, and offers a comparative perspective of the forms of homosexual trade in Scotland, England and major foreign cities. This book will have broad appeal to academics and students in the field of social, sexual and gender history as well as the social and criminal histories of Scotland and Britain.

This book is the first scholarly work to explore male homosexual prostitution in interwar Scotland. The male prostitute occupies a contested position within interwar society – depending on the perspective he was representative of a descent into turpitude, of tenacious organised criminality or of exploitation. The book explores connections between male prostitution and criminal gangs prevalent during the interwar period, by detailing the emergence and activities of Glasgow’s notorious ‘Whitehats’, a gang composed of a number of queer male prostitutes and led by William Paton. This book discovers that although Paton’s activities were representative of a career criminal, the young men who joined the ‘Whitehats’ were often driven by poverty and social isolation. This book explores the experiences of Edinburgh police detective William Merrilees and his war on homosexuality in Edinburgh during the 1930s through examining the tactics used to regulate homosexual trade and the implications this held for the men involved. The book not only explores the attitudes, opinions and actions of police officers, politicians and the legal process but also uncovers fragments from the lives of the men involved, through personal reflections and letters. The book explores the anxieties that the trade in homosexual sex provoked, not just for understandings of sexuality but also of gender and nationhood, and offers a comparative perspective of the forms of homosexual trade in Scotland, England and major foreign cities. This book will have broad appeal to academics and students in the field of social, sexual and gender history as well as the social and criminal histories of Scotland and Britain.