Georgian Musings on Homosexuality
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eamonn O'Keeffe is a young Oxford Researcher in the midst of a PhD. He stopped off in Wakefield Library to look at a journal Yorkshire farmer Matthew Tomlinson to see if the author had any opinions on the subject of his research: military music. Tomlinson did not. However what O'Keeffe found in the diary proved of infinitely greater interest to the general public than a passion for marching bands. In an entry for 1810 Tomlinson argues that homosexuality is natural. He therefore questioned the death penalty’s application for homosexual activity and sodomy. How can man punish what God has ordained? The announcement of the discovery went viral and I had to get him on the podcast. By chance I am also a big fan of 18th and early 19th Century military music so I got two for the price of one.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello History Hit listeners, as you are listening to this right now at this exact second I am |
| 0:05.8 | currently on an epic cross-country road trip of England. 600 miles and 1 million years of history |
| 0:14.4 | from the first humans through to Stonehenge, Dovercastle, Hastings up to Ironbridge in the |
| 0:19.3 | Black Country and to the northeast where I'm visiting a Cold War bunker in York. |
| 0:25.0 | I want to hear from you. I want to do more stops. Tell me when I should stop. Any local tips or |
| 0:29.8 | hints that you want to share or you want to see me report on on my social media channels and Twitter |
| 0:34.1 | and Instagram etc. just send me a message ds.hh at historyhit.com. That's delta Sierra. |
| 0:41.4 | . hotel hotel at historyhit.com or tweet me at the History Guy. You can keep up with the road trip |
| 0:47.4 | this week on Instagram and Twitter at the History Guy on both and then you can hear the whole thing as a |
| 0:52.1 | podcast series next week. Thanks and enjoy this episode. |
| 1:02.6 | Hello everybody, welcome to Dance and Nose History Hit. I am in Brussels. I have just been at the |
| 1:07.4 | battlefield of Waterloo. Some of you may have heard of it. Some of you may have heard me mention it |
| 1:12.2 | before on this podcast. I like to go there every so often, keep myself topped up, keep myself current |
| 1:18.1 | and this was not exception. It's pretty grim in February. Gotta be honest, the wind hows across that |
| 1:23.0 | field like an advancing Prussian infantry call from the East. Let me tell you. It's pretty grim. |
| 1:28.8 | Anyway, this podcast has got very little to do with Waterloo. In fact, well, very no, it doesn't |
| 1:33.2 | have much to do with Waterloo. This podcast is for everybody who read that story in the press or |
| 1:37.9 | heard about this wonderful discovery the other day. It's story about a young historian doing a |
| 1:43.2 | PhD at Oxford University. Well, they might have Keith. He was like any sane historian. It's |
| 1:48.3 | done in the long 18th century and his specialism is in fact, as you'll hear, military music in the |
| 1:53.2 | long 18th century. Very sound. Very sound way to spend through for years of your life. You know, |
| 1:57.2 | I'm just saying he stopped off in Wakefield Library to check if there was a particular 18th century |
... |
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