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Book Review
| Angus McLaren, Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 332. $35.00 (ISBN 0-674-00924-X).
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| In 1938, a Mr. X met a young man in Haymarket Square in London and brought him to his home. Although Mr. X insisted that nothing immoral occurred between them, shortly thereafter a man dressed in clerical garb appeared at his door, requesting that Mr. X provide a significant sum of money to keep the boy out of prison. Mr. X paid the money, but when the cleric returned and demanded almost 2000 pounds, Mr. X contacted the police. They arrested Raymond Mullineux, a convicted blackmailer who had already served four years in prison. Mullineux received a ten-year prison term, but the ordeal proved too much for Mr. X. He died halfway through the trial (123–24). His case, however, demonstrates the fear that being accused of sexual impropriety could cause in the early twentieth century. Homosexual behavior was a crime, and sexual respectability a key component of late Victorian conceptions of character. Mr. X faced both criminal prosecution and public disdain if allegations that he engaged in homosexual conduct became public. Angus McLaren uses blackmail cases like this one to explore how Britons and Americans addressed the complicated questions about morality and criminality such cases raised: How was public order compromised when blackmailers extorted money from those (possibly) engaged in illegal sexual behavior and who was the victim? Was it the young man who accompanied Mr. X to his home, who was presumably corrupted by the unseemly sexual attentions of an older, wealthier man? Or was Mr. X the victim, whose position in society depended upon an unblemished moral character, and for whom allegations of homosexuality would cause social and economic harm? Blackmail flourished when behavior considered sinful was also considered criminal, as many were willing to pay to keep their sexual secrets hidden. Laws against blackmail in America and Great Britain sought to prevent the exploitation of supposedly respectable middle- and upper-class individuals without simultaneously condoning the illegal and immoral behavior the blackmailer threatened to reveal. As McLaren astutely observes, "when morality was made the law's business it often became the criminal's business as well" (5). |
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McLaren's book examines the rise and fall of sexual blackmail from the seventeenth century, when courts sought to protect Englishmen from being accused of sodomy, to the rise of the tabloid expose. Using court records and newspaper accounts of blackmail cases, as well as fictional treatments of the crime, McLaren argues that blackmail stories served as warnings about the dangers inherent in taboo behavior. As Victorian notions of sexual morality were replaced by more liberal sexual attitudes in the twentieth century, legal concerns shifted from protecting respectable women from seduction and betrayal to protecting lustful men from the criminal consequences of ill-considered sexual adventures and crossing class and racial boundaries. A casual fling might unearth a gold-digger who demanded marriage, or worse, a generous alimony settlement. While the label of gold-digger put sexually aggressive women in their place, blackmailers who targeted adulterous women or those seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy reminded all women of the continued value of female chastity and the cost of immoral behavior. |
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McLaren, however, goes beyond tracing how sexual respectability acquired a market value in a modern, commercialized culture. He argues that cases of sexual blackmail provided a forum for subversive discussions of sexual behaviors that were prohibited by Victorian ideals of morality. While such cases warned of the possible (albeit illegal) consequences of immorality, they also acknowledged the existence of prohibited behavior. News accounts, for example, suggested the extent of women's attempts to obtain abortions or the techniques gay men used to find sexual partners. Blackmail cases thus elided the distinction between private behavior and public morality and revealed the gap between idealized sexual norms and actual behavior. At the same time, because those with financial resources were likelier targets, blackmail cases also informed the masses of the sexual foibles of elites, subtly undermining their authority. |
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Although McLaren is adept at tracing the evolution of the nature of sexual blackmail, he admits it is more difficult to determine how the public interpreted the information they received about sexual blackmail. Newspaper accounts of blackmail cases, in an effort to protect public sensibilities, often glossed over the exact nature of a victim's sexual secret and thus purposely sought to limit discussion of taboo behavior. The extent to which these cases created public awareness of and interest in alternative expressions of sexuality is unclear. Did the public accept explanations, for example, that Mr. X innocently invited the young man to his home, foolishly opening himself to blackmail? Or did most readers suspect and envision the activity that might have taken place between them? Certainly such cases created the possibility of subversive sexual discussion. Nevertheless, the larger effect on social attitudes is less clear. |
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Unsurprisingly, greater sexual permissiveness after World War II eroded the economic value of threatening to reveal moral turpitude. After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the exposure of sexual misbehavior became less destructive to one's reputation than the exposure of moral hypocrisy, and sexual blackmail consequently declined. McLaren argues that the moral coercion of the Victorian era enshrined a sexual double standard that armed extortionists. His book is thus valuable for examining sexual blackmail and the relationship among private behavior, public morality, and crime. Although it is easy to get lost in the names and cases, and one wonders if fewer examples would have sufficed, Sexual Blackmail is a useful read. |
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| Lisa Lindquist Dorr
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| University of Alabama |
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