| Description | Offprint of British Psychological Society Evidence to the Home Office Committee on the Law Relating to Homosexual Offences prepared by Society Committee comprising Michael Balint, G M Carstairs, May A Davidson, Michael Fordham, T H Pear, Erwin Popper, Seymour Spencer, C Anthony Storr, E B Straus and P E Vernon.
Oral evidence was also given by May Davidson, E B Strauss and P E Vernon.
See also
BPS/001/3/02/02/05 Council Papers V 1955 which includes contains typed memoranda, meeting notes, appraisals, lecture extracts, a report from the Roman Catholic Advisory Committee and other evidence prepared for the BPS Working Party on the Law relating to Homosexuality and Prostitution.
BPS/001/3//02/01/10 Council Papers 1955 includes setting up of committee and drafts of the evidence submitted. |
| AdminHistory | In 1885 the Criminal Law Amendment Act made homosexual acts between men illegal and by 1954 the number of men imprisoned for homosexual acts had risen to over one-thousand a year. This led to calls for an enquiry into the legality of homosexuality and prostitution. In August 1954 the Government set up the Wolfenden Committee, named after its chairman, John Wolfenden. The report was published 5th September 1957 and attracted a large amount of publicity. The report proposed that there ‘must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law’s business’ and recommended that homosexual acts between two consenting adults should no longer be a criminal offence. The report’s findings were debated in Parliament but a motion in 1960 to implement the report’s findings was lost and efforts to implement the report’s findings were stalled.
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| Copyright | Subject to the condition of the original, copies may be supplied for private research use only on receipt of a signed undertaking to comply with current copyright legislation. Permission to make any published use of material from the collection must be sought in advance from the Head of the History of Psychology Centre and Archives and, where appropriate, from the copyright owner. Where possible, assistance will be given in identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material |