The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2019
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The discovery of the diaries of 19th-century Englishwoman Anne Lister, who wrote in secret code about her love affairs with women and has been called the first modern lesbian. A landowner and a businesswoman, she defied the conventions of the time and was nicknamed by local people in the Yorkshire town of Halifax where she lived 'Gentleman Jack' because of the way she dressed and acted. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Helena Whitbread, who discovered Anne Lister's diaries in 1983 and spent five years decoding them.
Picture: portrait of Anne Lister, of Shibden Hall, Halifax (credit: Alamy)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Louis Adaglo. |
| 0:39.0 | We're going back to 1983 and the discovery of the diaries of Anne Lister, a 19th century English woman who's been called |
| 0:46.2 | the first modern lesbian. A landowner and a businesswoman, Anne Lister recorded her affairs with |
| 0:51.7 | women in a secret code at a time when the word |
| 0:54.7 | lesbian hadn't even been coined. In 2019 I spoke to historian Helena Whitbread who |
| 1:00.7 | spent five years decoding Anne Lister's diaries, to tell her story for the first time. |
| 1:06.0 | Behind her back, she's gentleman Jackie Oaks, a lady of renown, |
| 1:11.0 | ever saw bang or toe the line. I think Anlister's journals must have been the best kept secret in Halifax for going on 200 years. |
| 1:18.0 | An Lister was born in Halifax in Yorkshire Northern England in 1791. |
| 1:24.6 | Fiercely independent, she defied the conventions of her time and adored women, |
| 1:30.0 | falling passionately in love time and again. |
| 1:33.0 | If you are seduced by unlister either in bed or on paper, |
| 1:37.8 | you remain seduced. |
| 1:40.4 | And were you seduced? |
| 1:41.5 | I was seduced by the romance and the originality and not least the fact that she lived in my hometown. |
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