Joannervej

Henry Scott Tuke with lesser-known artist William Ayerst Ingram (left), who founded the Falmouth Boys' Club with fellow philanthropist Charles Masson Fox – later subject to homosexual blackmail. An insightful book about their circle has yet to be written.

One of the lovely photos of Geoffry Wheatly Cobb and his crew that have been hidden away in dusty albums for far, far, far too long. That purposely neglected gay history is about to end.

"You do not know how I love you, And even if you knew, you would not believe; That such desires reside within me, Of which I dare not speak." The future Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse (right) in 1887 to his adjunct and first love (left), Alexander von Frankenberg und Ludwigsdorf.

The notorious Harry Smith – as President (centre) of a New Zealand fruitgrowers association!!!! Of his wild youth, to echo Lady Bracknell: to be seduced by one duke’s son may be regarded as good fortune; to be seduced by two looks like shamelessness.

The past is another country. Illustrator Ernest Prater's amusing image of 1909 was used by Fry's chocolate on cards and in advertisements. While most would have read it innocently, its ambiguous flirting must have given many chaps a knowing laugh, as it was surely intended to.

Such a sweet open face. The young Giovanni Montini, later Pope Paul VI, for whom every sperm was sacred. At the link is his sometime boyfriend, actor Paolo Carlini, who was 25 years younger, warbling on Italian TV in 1958. Ah, la dolce vita!
youtu.be/mUnNynnrBvo?...

Gestapo photographs of Alfred W., an 18 year old telephone operator at S.S. head office in Berlin; arrested after being denounced by a sex partner. His youth likely saved his life, as remarkably he was only sentenced to 4 months in prison rather than a concentration camp.

What's the point of having a boyfriend if you don't immortalise them? In 1907 the cosmopolitan Count Harry Kessler commissioned Aristide Maillol to preserve the willowy youth of Gaston Colin as a bronze focal point of his Weimar salon.

Andrew Kozak

Carlos McClendon, 1947. George Platt Lynes.

@troytagger.bsky.social Willy Schmeltzkopf by an unknown photographer, c. 1913

Andrey Avinoff

Bob Delmonteque

In his diary he noted his frequent visits and sexual encounters. Unfortunately for the closeted Grand Duke, he also suffered that which was most dreaded, being blackmailed by someone who learned his secret.

Perhaps the two most notorious of these St. Petersburg institutions were the Znamensky and Usachevikh Baths. The latter happened to be a favorite hunting ground for Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich.

While bathhouses served an important and traditional function, by the turn of the century some were notorious for being little more than male brothels. As one attendant noted, “all the money we got for that we put together and then divided it up on Sundays.”

And then, of course, there were the bathhouses. Many were staffed by recent arrivals from the countryside who were only too willing to learn from their comrades how they could earn a few extra kopeks.

For 25 kopeks, a soldiers would allow his genitals to be fondled; if a client wanted sex, the charge was usually 3-5 rubles.