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The British Sexological Society was founded 12 August 1913—tentatively named the British
Society of Psychiatry—by Edward Carpenter, Magnus Hirschfeld, Laurence Housman, George
Ives, and others, an all-male group predominantly interested in homosexual law reform.
The name was changed in 1914 to The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology
and again in 1930 to The British Sexological Society. |
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The Society sponsored regular meetings for its members and guests where papers were
read and discussion was encouraged; it also maintained a lending library and published
seventeen pamphlets during its existence. Some of the topics addressed by the Society
were the promotion of the scientific study of sex and a more rational attitude towards
sexual conduct and problems, questions connected with sexual psychology (from medical,
juridical, and sociological points of view), birth control, abortion, sterilization,
sexually-transmitted diseases, and prostitution. |
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Other members (some of whom served as Secretary of the executive committee) included
C. R. Ashbee, Frank F. Bennett, Dion Byngham, E. Lonsdale Deighton, Havelock Ellis,
E. M. Forster, Edward Garnett, Harley Granville-Barker, Leonard H. Green, Georg Groddeck,
Norman Haire, Vyvyan Holland, Hugh Northcote, Eden and Cedar Paul, Lewis H. Plummer,
George Bernard Shaw, Montague Summers, and Edward Westermarck. Female members were
elected as early as 1914. Women were consistently represented on the executive committee,
and women's sexual concerns were a significant part of the group's focus. Among the
female members were Marie Barquet, Louisa M. Best, Stella Browne, Dora F. Kerr, Helene
Stöcker, and Harriet Shaw Weaver. |
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By the time the Society ended its activities in the 1940s, it had been "instrumental in helping to form a new public opinion--or a new open-mindedness towards
sex," as Housman claimed in a letter to Ives. |
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George Ives Biographical Sketch |
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George Cecil Ives, born 1 October 1867, was the illegitimate son of Gordon Maynard
Ives, a British colonel, and Violet Malortie, a member of the Austrian nobility. He
was raised by his paternal grandmother, the Hon. Emma Ives, in England and France. |
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He graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1885 and then devoted his life
to social reform and his favorite hobbies: zoos, cricket, and chess. As an activist,
he focused his energies on prison reform and improvement in the legal status of homosexuals.
One of his efforts in the latter direction (which he termed, "the Cause") was to found a secret organization for gay men known as the Order of Chaeronea.
Several letters among Ives's incoming correspondence bear the seal of the group, and
there is more material related to the Order in the Ransom Center's George Cecil Ives
Papers. |
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Ives was one of the founders of the British Sexological Society, and he remained closely
associated with the organization throughout its existence. He apparently came into
possession of the Society's records after its demise, and they were somehow mixed
with a portion of his own papers before the collection came to the Ransom Center several
years after his death in 1950. |