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my darling morris
just to note which i feel i must write
or
should i say type to you
i was very very disappointed to find out
that you weren't coming to the club
tonight
as ever since i phoned you on monday and
made arrangements i just lived for
tonight
when i was to have seen you darling
as a matter of fact i stayed in bed all
day yesterday
didn't even get up to eat and just
thought of you
and counting the hours until i should
see you
in our collections is this amazing
letter which is a really rare example of
a relationship between two men in the
1930s the letter is from cyril to his
darling morris
and it really shows kind of an open
expression of sexuality
and his feelings for his lover at the
time
he essentially describes himself in the
1930s as queer
um so that's the kind of language that
i'll use to describe him so essentially
he's uh 22 at this point uh and he's
come to london and seemingly is kind of
trying to explore his sense of self and
identity
i didn't wish that i was going away with
you just you
and i
to eat
sleep
and make love together
this is a really uh rare example of an
open expression of queer identity in
this period because essentially it was
criminalized for men to have sexual
relations with other men essentially
gay relationships were pushed
underground they had to be kind of
hidden
so what that meant for many people was
having to
really risk a lot to to be their kind of
full cells i love you darling morris
honestly i do
[Music]
it's two years almost since we first met
then i was crazy about you
but you just seemed to disappear i never
saw you for months and i tried to forget
and now since seeing you
it's all started again and i just had to
let you know how i felt
i think it's fascinating that despite
the targeting and surveillance of the
queer community at the time
there's this really thriving underground
queer culture
and it's kind of like a club scene
really um so particularly around central
london and soho there are increasingly
in the kind of 20s and 30s these spaces
that provide for gay men at the time
so there's some really interesting um
kind of clubs that pop up throughout
this era the caravan club is this kind
of incredible venue um it was described
on the ticket as unconventional the
greatest bohemian rendezvous is what
it's kind of sold at and promoted as
and essentially in using these kind of
coded words they were able to appeal to
a kind of a queer clientele at the time
and within this venue it was a
relatively safe space for people to be
themselves to dance with members of the
same sex have relationships all those
kind of things that were much harder
outside of a space like the caravan club
on the flip side of that they were also
very risky
and they were
under police surveillance often the
caravan club was uh eventually raided in
august 1934 there'd been a series of
public complaints that had drawn police
attention to the venue they'd been
undercover surveillance and then finally
this this kind of raid on the venue so
103 people were arrested including the
proprietors of the venue they were they
were taken to the local police station
uh on the way cyril uh kind of ever a
character in defiance
says to police officers well i don't
mind this beastly raid but i would like
to know if you can let me have one of
your nice boys to come home with i am
really good we do know that the majority
of people in the venue were found not
guilty
of aiding and abetting the venue but the
two proprietors were sentenced to hard
labor
the extraordinary thing about the raid
on this venue the caravan club is that
it actually allows us to have this
amazing unique letter
that survives from the raid so the
letter was actually found with cyril um
during the raid it was torn up
originally and kind of he tried to hide
it under his seat in the caravan club
um the police then found it they typed
it up as evidence and that's the copy
that now survives in our collections
so there's this ultimate contradiction
that it's because of the policing that
we have this amazing insight into queer
love in the 1930s
please don't think i'm foolish morris
but i love you such a lot
so please if you don't feel this way to
me promise that we should always be
the best of friends
we don't know much more unfortunately
about cyril he's one of those kind of
figures from history
that is incredible in this moment but
he's kind of an every man i think i hope
knowing cyril that he continued to kind
of defy the law to live and love
who he wanted
it would take until
1967
so 33 years later for the law to change
to allow homosexual acts in private so
hopefully cyril live to see that outcome
well maurice darling until we meet
i'm yours
with all my love forever
and always
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