2024/08/27 by Joanne Begiato, Michael Brown · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Race, History, and American Society
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/01916599.2024.2396237
openalex publication_date 2024/08/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/18
This article considers a hitherto neglected sexual scandal involving the Congregational minister William Bengo’ Collyer and two young men at a public swimming baths in Camberwell (then in Surrey) in the spring of 1823. It explores the relationships between Congregationalism, and Evangelical Dissent more generally, and the cultures of contemporary masculinity and political radicalism. In so doing, it reveals how radical political figures, notably Thomas Wakley, constructed a masculine identity as upright, honest, and rigidly heteronormative, and shows how this was counterposed to the imagined masculinity of their opponents, who were often figured as effeminised, secretive, and sexually non-normative. Central to this process of rhetorical opposition was an emphasis on openness and public accountability, and this article demonstrates how the scandal that enveloped Collyer in the summer and early autumn of 1823 was framed by concerns over what should be secret, hidden, or exposed and what implications this had for contested notions of the public good.