Homosexual Blackmail
The blackmailing of wealthy men who had same-sex relationships was rapidly increasing around the turn of the twentieth century. There was growing societal anxiety about masculinity and gender norms, and criminals recognised that large sums of money could be made from it.
One of the first known plays to show homosexual men on the stage took these criminals as its focus. The Blackmailers premièred at an amateur theatrical matinée in 1894 at the fashionable Prince of Wales’s Theatre in London. Amongst the cast was Charles Colnaghi, an amateur who I have identified as likely homosexual, making this also the first performance where a queer man could perform some of their own realities on the public stage.
One of the most fascinating case studies in my research was also a target of blackmailers shortly before his death in 1934. William (Willy) Clarkson was the most prominent theatrical wig and costume maker in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His company supplied costumes and wigs to professional theatres across the country as well as for the leading amateur and private theatrical events. He even tended to the costumes for theatricals organised by Queen Victoria’s immediate family at Osborne House.