1922

Mary Louisa Gordon (1861-1941), a British physician, prison inspector, and author publishes Penal Discipline advocating reforms to the prison system. In the book she recalls:

I came across another young woman who was continually in prison for stealing men’s clothes. She had several long sentences. I asked her what would keep her out of prison, and she replied, “If I could go to sea.” On investigation I found that she felt it impossible to live as a woman, but could live as a man, and enjoyed men’s work.

I told her that there was no law against her wearing men’s clothing decently, if she did not steal it. After she had two more convictions, I fitted her out with the clothes she wanted, and paid her fare to South Wales. she got work in a night shift, and lay on her back in a coal-pit hewing coal. All the year she did well, and wrote that she was living respectably. In her letter she said: “This is the first Easter for ten years that I have spent out of prison.” She suffered many severe vicissitudes, including a mental attack, but came to prison very little in after years. To make useful citizens out of lost vagabonds cannot be done on prejudice of any kind.

Source: Penal Service by Mary Gordon (George Routledge and Sons Ltd, 1922) p.71-72

1925

Richard Burton is born in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan. He played a gay character in the film Staircase.         

1929

Radclyffe Hall, an English poet and author, is best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness in which the love interest, Mary Llewellyn, is Welsh. In 1929 the South Wales Miners’ Federation issued a letter of support to stop the book from being banned.