How to make money from sex without having any.

Sexual Blackmail: A Modern History. By Angus McLaren. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002, 332 pages. Cloth, $35.00.

This history of sexual blackmail gives new insights into what was once (and in many cases still is) forbidden sexuality. The term blackmail originally had nothing to do with either reputation or the sending of letters; instead, it referred to extortion that Scottish barons levied on farmers in Tudor times in the north of England, promising them not to attack in return for a monetary payment. In 1601, acts were passed in Scotland outlawing "black mayle" (the word mayle at that time meant tribute or rent), and up to the 18th century the term meant protection money paid to robbers.

The meaning of blackmail was subsequently extended to menacing letters that caused unrest and could result in giving up property out of fear of being accused of serious crimes, particularly sodomy. Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century utilitarian philosopher, wrote that there was such strong moral hostility to sodomy that a criminal possessed an easy instrument of extortion, whether or not the individual was guilty of this practice. An accusation was enough to ruin an individual, and this could be true even today. The English parliament responded by imposing harsh penalties on those who made charges of sodomy, temporarily making it a capital crime if blackmail could be proven. After 1837, such accusations no longer resulted in the death penalty but rather in long prison sentences and/or transportation to a penal colony.

When the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 criminalized all indecent sexual acts between males, the risk of blackmail increased since male prostitutes by definition were criminal and had little to lose by picking up some money on the side. Interestingly, whereas blackmail in England focused on sodomy from the mid-18th century on, such charges were rarely prosecuted in America. This disparity, according to McLaren, played a role in reinforcing the American notion that homosexuality was an English vice. In fact, in American films and theater productions the "nance" was inevitably presented as English. This was reinforced in fictional portrayals of the time and in the popular press. Blackmail themes even played a role in some of the sympathetic fictional portrayals of homosexuals such as Mark, the main character in Blair Niles's Strange Brother (1931).

There are comparatively few court records of blackmail, even though it was probably widespread. To find evidence of it, McLaren turned from court cases to other kinds of references: the writings of homosexuals such as Edward Prime Stevenson (known as Xavier Mayne); memoirs and biographies of a wide variety of other individuals; and the newspapers and scandal sheets of the day, which often headlined alleged cases of blackmail if only to draw moral lessons about the "depravity" of such sexual practices.

The first publicized case of blackmail in the United States involved Alexander Hamilton paying money to John Reynolds, with whose wife he had been sexually involved. To end the blackmail, Hamilton went public with a pamphlet about his involvement, thereby denying what he felt was a more serious charge against him ("pecuniary speculation") while in office. Apparently he considered adultery a lesser crime than financial chicanery, and by pleading the one, he avoided the other. McLaren believes that Hamilton's political friends and rivals who had a similar "weakness for the ladies" (including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr, among others) no doubt shared this view. Hamilton never took his case to court because, legally speaking, heterosexual blackmail did not exist in the 18th century. Only in the later half of the 19th century, when the concern for sexual respectability became pervasive, was the legal definition of blackmail extended to cover the exploitation of heterosexual acts.

As McLaren points out, English and American societies in the 19th century were characterized by men maintaining a sexual double standard on the one hand while parading a chivalrous concern for the "weaker sex" on the other. The first legal reference to a woman being blackmailed took place in the 1840s when a man named Hamilton threatened that unless the woman paid him he would tell her father, brother, friends, and the newspapers that she had been at a brothel with an officer. The court decided that the truthfulness of Hamilton's claim was unimportant, and in fact it was his attempt to blackmail her which led him to being transported.

It was not until the late 19th century in England that criminal courts assumed the task of "defending the respectable" from those who sought to exploit their victims' sexual past. Similarly, it was only after the 1870s that heterosexual blackmail in the United States emerged as a preoccupation of public commentators. Such charges proliferated in the first decades of the 20th century and became an item of popular consumption in such journals as the Police Gazette. Charges of blackmail peaked in the inter-war decades of the 1920s and 1930s and have been declining since. Sexual blackmail became a fictional theme for a variety of authors, from C. K. Chesterton to Henry James, John Galsworthy to George Bernard Shaw, Saki (H. H. Munro) to H. H. Menkin, and a host of lesser known writers. The blackmailers themselves were a varied lot, but a significant number were involved with police or law enforcement, if only because they had easier access to the necessary information.

The most wide-scale blackmail attempt in English history took place as a result of the criminalization of abortion. Three brothers named Chrimes advertised in cheap English newspapers and sold by mail a variety of pills and potions that promised to remove "obstructions." After two years they had a file of the names of approximately 10,000 women who had sent for these abortifacients. In September 1898, the brothers began to extort a few pounds from each victim by threatening to reveal that she had attempted to induce a miscarriage. An estimated 8,100 women were sent threatening letters and nearly 3,000 responded by sending in the 2.2s [pounds sterling]. When caught, the brothers were sent to jail for 7 to 12 years.

McLaren believes that it is impossible to know the full extent of blackmail, although he believes that what we do know provides a rather unique opportunity for listening in on English and American conversations about a range of illicit sexual practices and their relationships to issues of class, race, gender, and sexual identity. The result is an excellent source for looking at changing attitudes toward both sex and gender. The repressive 19th-century sexual morality cloaked an institutionalized double standard that had been created by and served the interest of a White male elite. All male institutions, including the courts, the churches, the press, and professions, used such accounts for their own purpose of protecting masculine sexual prerogatives. In blackmail trials, the authorities sought to ensure social conformity, shore up morality, and, if possible, rationalize away the guilt of respectable victims. The trials emphasized the intention of the authorities not merely to punish evil-doers but also to define sexuality in a way that reflected the dominant cultural expression. On the other hand, to be blackmailed one had to fear the loss of a reputation for respectability, and this meant that those who most sought respectability were the most likely victims. Professional men, ministers, physicians, business executives, and politicians were the most vulnerable.

While changes in laws about divorce, abortion, contraception, interracial marriage, homosexuality, and premarital sex (all of which are discussed in this book) lessened the likelihood of blackmail, it still has not disappeared. In 1992, for example, a lawyer threatened his male lover that if he was not given $10,000 per month for life he would reveal that his partner was a homosexual and had a lover infected with AIDS (the lawyer). The partner paid for several years, but when the payments were stopped in 1995, the lawyer filed a $20 million breach of contract lawsuit. The court dismissed the suit and the New York Bar Association subsequently disbarred the lawyer who performed the blackmail. In this instance the threat involved disclosure of the lover's disease rather than the victim's sexual orientation.

McLaren concludes that we might well owe a debt of gratitude to the blackmailers of the past. Their activities forced people to pay attention to the ways in which, over many generations, the law, morality, and prejudice and social inequality created conditions that heightened the dangers of sexuality and limited its pleasures.

Reviewed by Vern L. Bullough, Ph.D., 3304 West Sierra Dr., Westlake Village, CA 91362-3542; e-mail: vbullough @csun.edu.