Hello and welcome to Season 3, Episode 3 of Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated gays in history.

I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, and member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin.

And I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and author.

Last week, we talked about one of the worst U.S. presidents in history devoted ideologically to nothing except for slavery and a sort of bumbling idiot who helped support

the Confederacy and bring about the Civil War. Who were we talking about this week, Hugh?

Well, as it's become an occasional tradition, I'd like to start my profile today with a poem

or part of one. As I lay asleep in Italy, there came a voice from over the sea, and with great power it

forth led me to walk in a vision of poetry.

I met murder on the way. He had a mask like Castleray. Very smooth he looked, yet grim,

seven bloodhounds followed him. All were fat, and well they might, be an admirable plight. For one by one

and two by two, he tossed them human hearts to chew, which from his wide cloak he drew

yet came fraud, and he had on, like Eldon and ermine gown, his big tears for he wept well,

turned to millstones as they fell.

And the little children who round his feet played to and fro, thinking every tear a gem,

had their brains knocked out by them.

Well, that sounds unpleasant.

Yeah.

Well, those are the first five stanzas of the Mask of Anarchy, a satirical campaigning poem by the romantic poet Percy by Shelley

about the attack in 1890 of the Manchester and Solford yeomanry against 60,000 working-class

Lancastrians who had gathered to hear the radical orator Henry Hunt speak in St. Petersburg,

Manchester. 700 of the men, women and children peacefully gathered to fight for their

political and economic rights that day were cut down by the sabres of the yeomanry, and 18 died.

...