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Fashioning Fetishism from the Pages of London Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Lisa Z. Sigel
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 664 - 684
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2012

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References

1 Despite the wealth of ideas in its pages, few scholars have examined London Life in any depth. Shorter, Edward mentions London Life in passing; see Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire (Toronto, 2005), 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar. David Kunzle, an art historian, used the magazine to discuss fetishism during the 1920s and 1930s and provides the most detailed discussion of the magazine; see Fashion and Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing, and Other Forms of Body-Sculpture (Gloucestershire, 2004)Google Scholar. Valerie Steele, a fashion historian, mentions London Life in the context of the corset, while Robert Bienvenu, a sociologist, examines it to consider the emergence of sadomasochism as a symbolic system; see Steele, Valerie, The Corset: A Cultural History (New Haven, CT, 2001)Google Scholar; Bienvenu, Robert, “The Development of Sadomasochism as a Cultural Style in the Twentieth-Century United States” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1998)Google Scholar. Peter Farrer has republished the correspondence from Bits of Fun, London Life, and other sources concerned with cross-dressing and sexual discipline in a series of volumes; Farrer, Peter, ed., Confidential Correspondence on Cross-Dressing, 1911–1915 (Liverpool, 1997), Confidential Correspondence on Cross-Dressing, pt. 2Google Scholar, 1916–1920 (Liverpool, 1998); Cross Dressing between the Wars: Selections from London Life, 1923–1933 (Liverpool, 2000); and Cross Dressing between the Wars: Selections from London Life, 1934–1941 (Liverpool, 2006)Google Scholar.

2 Betty, , “The Thrills of Freedom,” London Life, 1 November 1930, 20Google Scholar.

3 “Memoirs of a Lady Tattooist,” London Life, 3 January 1931, 23Google Scholar.

4 Bourke, Joanna, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (Chicago, 1996), 15Google Scholar.

5 Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995), 2Google Scholar.

6 Koven, Seth, “Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers, and the Great War in Great Britain,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (October 1994): 1167–1202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 2.

8 Winter (Ibid., 2–5) provides a summary of the discussion of the impact of the war on traditional versus modern motifs in art history.

9 Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.

10 Eksteins, Modris, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 290–91.

12 Francis, Martin, “The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity,” Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (September 2002): 637–52, quote at 641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See, e.g., Mackenzie, John M., “The Imperial Pioneer and Hunter and the Masculine Stereotypes in Late Victorian and Edwardian Times,” in Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940, ed. Mangan, J. A. and Walvin, James (Manchester, 1987), 179–98Google Scholar; Dawson, Graham, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Roper, Michael, “Between Manliness and Masculinity: The ‘War Generation’ and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914–1950,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 342–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 168–69; McLaren, Angus, The Trial of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870–1930 (Chicago, 1997), 233–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Roberts, Mary Louise, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France (Princeton, NJ, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, 2002)Google Scholar; Kent, Susan Kinsgsley, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton, NJ, 1993)Google Scholar.

15 Melman, Billie, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs (New York, 1988), 19–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17 Kent, Susan Kingsley, Gender and Power in Britain, 1640–1990 (New York, 1999), 285–86, 292–93Google Scholar.

18 Illiteracy, measured by the inability to sign one’s name, had fallen to one percent of the population by 1914. Further, a survey published by Mass-Observation in 1947 suggested that “only 3 per cent of the general population said they never read anything at all.” See Bloom, Clive, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction since 1900 (Basingstroke, 2009), 29Google Scholar; Mass-Observation, The Press and Its Readers (London, 1949), 11Google Scholar. Scholars have noted the long history of censorship and suppression by the British state and government-sanctioned agencies. See, for example, Hyde, H. Montgomery, A History of Pornography (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Fryer, Peter, Mrs. Grundy: Studies in English Prudery (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Marshik, Celia, British Modernism and Censorship (Cambridge, 2006)Google Scholar; Kendrick, Walter, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Travis, Alan, Bound and Gagged: A Secret History of Obscenity in Britain (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Parkes, Adam, Modernism and the Theater of Censorship (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Ladenson, Elisabeth, Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita (Ithaca, NY, 2007)Google Scholar; Sigel, Lisa Z., Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002)Google Scholar, and “Censorship in Inter-war Britain: Obscenity, Spectacle, and the Workings of the Liberal State,” Journal of Social History 45, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 61–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 For the discussion of censorship in libraries, see Thompson, Anthony Hugh, Censorship in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom during the Twentieth Century (Epping, 1975)Google Scholar; Mabro, Judy, I Ban Everything: Free Speech and Censorship at Oxford (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

20 Booksellers tried to avoid stocking obscene books. See, for example, Memo regarding M. W. J. Magenis, n.d., The National Archives (TNA): PRO, HO45/15139.

21 Doan, Laura, Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of Modern English Lesbian Culture (New York, 2001), 133Google Scholar.

22 Leavis, Q. D., Fiction and the Reading Public (London, 2000), 10Google Scholar.

23 Orwell, George, “Boys Weeklies,” in An Age like This, vol. 1 (New York, 1968), 460Google Scholar.

24 Graves, Robert and Hodge, Alan, The Long Weekend: A Social History of Great Britain (New York, 1994), 1Google Scholar.

25 Orwell, “Boys Weeklies,” 461.

26 Kunzle, Fashion and Fetishism, 212.

27 Latimer, G., “Appeal to Silent Readers,” London Life, 24 August 1935, 26Google Scholar.

28 See, for example, the Louise Lawrence Collection at the Kinsey Institute. Lawrence informed Alfred Kinsey about the transvestite and transsexual community in California after World War II. In her collection are newspaper clippings, letters, and scrapbooks about cross-dressing and sadomasochism from the 1890s and 1900s. She also copied materials from her own collection and from her colleagues and friends about those topics for Kinsey, including magazines like Illustrated Bits, London Life, New Fun and books like Gynecocracy. The materials accumulated by George Ives also stand as evidence to this claim. His scrapbooks included topics like murders, punishments, freaks, crime and punishment, cross-dressing, homosexuality, and cricket scores. See Sieveking, Paul, Man Bites Man (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

29 An example of the trade in older magazines comes from the correspondence of Mervyn Hyde and William Benbow, TNA: PRO, CRIM 1/234. See also Cocks, H. G., Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Column (London, 2009), chap. 5Google Scholar.

30 For a description of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine from the 1860s, see Beetham, Margaret, “‘Natural but Firm’: The Corset Correspondence in The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine,” Women: A Cultural Review 2, no. 2 (1991): 163–67Google Scholar.

31 The Publisher, “Notice to Newsagents” London Life, 2 December 1939, 4Google Scholar.

32 Edward Shorter suggests that the editors themselves wrote the letters, though he provides no evidence for his claim. Shorter, Written in the Flesh, 223. Valerie Steele (The Corset, 90) argues that letters like those in London Life and the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, an earlier publication, should be read not as readers’ letters but as fantasies that reveal “the existence of sexual subcultures.” In contrast, David Kunzle leaves room for the existence of the letter writers, though he too stresses the fantasy space that such correspondence created.

33 Answers to correspondents, D. S. F. Harris (Bristol), London Life, 6 December 1930, 27.

34 London Life, 12 February 1927, 26–27.

35 Bozo, , “Questions for Corset Wearer,” and Inquisitive, “Doubts ‘High-Heeler’s’ Bona-Fides” London Life, 28 November 1931, 77Google Scholar.

36 The father and original proprietor, Charles Froment Hayes, was convicted twice for obscenity: on 9 July 1890 he was sentenced to three months’ hard labor, and on 19 February 1901 he was sentenced to six months’ hard labor for mailing indecent matter; Jesse W. Keech, Chief Inspector, Report, Metropolitan Police, CID New Scotland Yard, June, 1935, TNA: PRO, MEPO3/2459. After the father died in 1931, the son, Charles Harold James Haynes, took over the business and continued the enterprise until after World War II despite arrest, fines, and continued surveillance; report, Metropolitan Police, CID, 29 December 1936, TNA: PRO, MEPO3/12459; report, Metropolitan Police, St. Ann’s Road Station, “n” division, 7 December 1950, TNA: PRO, MEPO3/2459.

37 Freda, , “What I Like in ‘London Life,’” London Life, 3 January 1931, 27Google Scholar.

38 The Scribe, “What We Think of ‘London Life,’” London Life, double issue, 29 August 1931, 46Google Scholar.

39 The definition of pornography has generated any number of position papers, monographs, books, and essays to no clear consensus. Instead of looking for an unchanging definition and seeing whether London Life would fit, it becomes more relevant to say whether the state treated it as obscene. Though there were a large body of magazines deemed obscene and confiscated by Customs and the Postal Office, London Life remained legal, though it received complaints, and the Home Office kept an eye on it. For a discussion of the evolution of pornography as a form and as a definition, see Hunt, Lynn, ed., The Invention of Pornography (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; and Kendrick, The Secret Museum. For a discussion of obscenity in the interwar years, see Lisa Z. Sigel, “Censorship in Inter-war Britain.”

40 Cocks, H. G., Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago, 2006)Google Scholar; Doan, Fashioning Sapphism.

41 Doan, Fashioning Sapphism, xiv.

42 Houlbrook, Matt, “Sexing the History of Sexuality,” History Workshop Journal 60, no. 1 (Autumn, 2005): 216–22, espCrossRefGoogle Scholar. 217.

43 That extension of queer theory makes sense given that the division between straight and gay as an organizing principle remains recent; Halperin, David M., How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago, 2002), 3Google Scholar.

44 According to Foucault’s model of identity-formation, once codified, these typologies affected how people saw themselves. Felski, Rita, introduction to Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires, ed. Bland, Lucy and Doan, Laura (Chicago, 1998), 2Google Scholar.

45 Oram, Alison, Her Husband Was a Woman! Women’s Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (New York, 2007), 4Google Scholar.

46 Most famously, Richard von Krafft-Ebing defined sexuality by its pathologies and each volume of his work included ever finer distinctions. See Oosterhuis, Harry, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar; and Hauser, Renate, “Krafft-Ebing’s Psychological Understanding of Sexual Behavior,” in Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: A History of Attitudes to Sexuality ed. Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikulas (Cambridge, 1992), 210–27, for discussions of his rubric for understanding sexualityGoogle Scholar.

47 Bingham, Adrian, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press, 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 In the column, the writer suggested that the two girls were “chums,” but they signed their letter as Marie, and Ilkley, Doris, “Wrestling for Girls,” London Life, 11 August 1923, 4Google Scholar.

49 Miss, Muscular, “Self-Defense for Girls,” London Life, 30 May 1931, 43Google Scholar.

50 Freda, H., “How A Girl Punished A Bully,” London Life, 1 December 1923, 6Google Scholar.

51 London Life, 4 October 1930, photgraph on 8.

52 M.G.C, , “Wrestling Girl Defeats Soldier,” London Life, 1 November 1930, 27Google Scholar.

53 Weston, Harold L., “Wonderful Women Wrestlers,” London Life, 22 December 1923, 22Google Scholar.

54 Gymn, , “Woman’s Superior Strength,” London Life, 17 August 1929, 26Google Scholar.

55 Summers, Leigh, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset (New York, 2001), 210–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Ibid., 200.

57 Buckley, Cheryl and Fawcett, Hillary, Fashioning the Feminine: Representation and Women’s Fashion from the Fin de Siècle to the Present (London, 2002), 87Google Scholar.

58 The Dresser, “Fashions, Fads and Fancies,” London Life, 22 September 1928, 15Google Scholar.

59 Alverez, Madeline, “Figure Training throughout the Ages,” London Life, 27 January 1934, 21Google Scholar.

60 C. H., , “Wasp-Like Waists,” and Staylace, “Historical Tight-Lacers,” London Life, 19 April 1924, 15Google Scholar.

61 Corset, , “The Wasp-Waist Cult,” London Life, 2 January 1926, 15Google Scholar.

62 “Wasp-Waist on the Continent,” London Life, 31 January 1931, 50–51.

63 “Dora, the Dominant,” London Life, 31 January 1931, 40.

64 A.D.T., , “Victorian Figure Training,” London Life, 30 May 1931, 42Google Scholar.

65 Elsie, J., “A Defense of the Wasp Waist,” London Life, 12 November 1927, 31Google Scholar.

66 A.C.B., , “The Appeal of Complete Weakness,” London Life, 3 January 1931, 26Google Scholar.

67 The Dresser, “High Legged Boots,” London Life, 22 September 1928, 15.

68 K.P., , “If That Is Pleasure, What Is Pain,” London Life, 6 December 1930, 26Google Scholar.

69 My copies of these letters and stories comes from the website http://www.overground.be/londonlife/. It appears that these stories and letters came from someone’s clipping file. The website thanks an anonymous friend for the scans or copies. I have checked the online version against print copies of London Life at the Kinsey Institute and found the transcriptions to be accurate.

70 London Life, 4 October 1924, 14.

71 Stortt, Wallace, “The Fascination of the One-Legged Girl,” London Life, 27 October 1928, 18–19Google Scholar.

72 Stortt, Wallace, “The Confessions of a One-Legged Bride,” London Life, 26 July 1930, 16–17, 20–21, 24–25Google Scholar.

73 Stortt, Wallace, “The Strange Experiences of a Lover,” London Life, pt. 2, 29 April 1933, 30–32Google Scholar.

74 Stortt, Wallace, “Dr. Nicholas,” London Life, 8 December, 1928, 18–19, 22–23, 26–27, 30–31, 34: 34Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., 34.

76 Stortt, Wallace, “The Strange Quest of Anthony Dress,” London Life, 31 August 1929, 31, 36, 37, 40; continued on 31 August 1940, 10, 27–34, 39–40Google Scholar.

77 “One Legged but High-Heeled,” London Life, 22 August 1925, 15.

78 Legless, , “Why the Limbless Are Interested in Life,” London Life, 11 May 1935, 23Google Scholar.

79 A New Monopede, “A Little Advice Wanted,” London Life, 24 November, 1934, 48Google Scholar.

80 L.N., , “Advice Wanted,” London Life, 8 December 1934, 23Google Scholar; L.N., “Advice Wanted,” London Life, 23 February 1935, 91.

81 One Legged-Ursula, “A Cripple’s Story: Peg-Leg or Crutch?” London Life, 9 March 1935, 22Google Scholar.

82 L.N., , “Where Were Her Sympathizers?” London Life, 22 June 1935, 20Google Scholar.

83 “A Welcome Criticism,” London Life, 22 August 1931, 11.

84 Crippled Girl, “Advice to Monopedes,” London Life, 19 October 1935, 24Google Scholar.

85 “A Reply to ‘Forward Minx,’” London Life, 12 September 1931, 27.

86 Admirer, Monopede, “Monopede Psychology,” London Life, 9 November 1935, 22Google Scholar.

87 Husband of Single-Heel, “The Penalty of a Leg” London Life, 21 December 1935, 23Google Scholar.

88 Magpie, S., “A Definition,” London Life, 25 April 1936, 9Google Scholar.

89 This problem of how to model oneself is central to an understanding of the history of disability. See, for example, Gerber, David, “Anger and Affability: The Rise and Representation of a Repertory of Self-Presentation Skills in a World War II Disabled Veteran,” Journal of Social History 27, no. 1 (Autumn 1993): 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Koven, “Remembering and Dismemberment,” 1169.

91 Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 33.

92 Eksteins, Rite of Spring, 297.

93 A Happy Couple, London Life, 27 June 1931, 25.

94 Gladys, , “Advice to Monopedes,” London Life, 13 May 1933, 22Google Scholar.

95 A One-Legged But Not Deluded Girl, “I Contradict Wallace Stort [sic],” London Life, 15 August 1936, 24.

96 Kaplan, Louise, Cultures of Fetishism (New York, 2006), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Kripps, Henry, Fetish: An Erotics of Culture (Ithaca, NY, 1999), 7–8Google Scholar.

98 Single Leg, “Questions for Girls to Answer” London Life, 19 October 1935, 24Google Scholar.

99 Happy With One, “Happy One-Legged Mother and Wife” London Life, 13 April 1935, 22Google Scholar.