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vintage sailors

#sailors

postcard-from-the-past

French sailors unloading a 75mm field gun from the transport ship Shamrock during the 1907 Casablanca campaign, Morocco

French vintage postcard

vintage sailor

vintage sailor

vintage sailor

Born into immense privilege, a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) and was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, Lord Ronald Gower (1845–1916) was a prominent Victorian aristocrat, politician, and sculptor and gay. He never married and homosexuality was an open secret in high society. He famously inspired the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. He lived his life in elite queer circles and amongst his friends was Oscar Wilde but due to his immense wealth and royal connections, he was able to avoid the criminal prosecutions that destroyed the lives other gay men of his era. In 1889 Lord Gower was implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal, which exposed a male brothel operating in London that employed telegraph boys and catered to wealthy aristocrats. Because his sexuality was already an open secret, Gower was immediately suspect in the scandal and because he did not flee abroad, Gower faced the immediate brunt of the Victorian social backlash. He suffered severe social isolation and was famously "cut" (shunned) by former friends and colleagues at his elite London clubs. After the scandal Gower withdrew into a more private domestic life, centering his world around his relationship with journalist and author Frank Hird and in 1898, to legally camouflage the true nature of their partnership and justify living together in Victorian society, Gower legally adopted Hird as his son. In 1911 the couple was bankrupted forcing Gower to sell their beloved country estate along with his valuable art collections, to cover the debts. Moving the a smaller residence, the couple remained steadfast though Gower’s final years were lived in greatly reduced financial circumstances as Hird would care for him through declining health. Gower passed away at the home they shared in 1916 at the age of 70. Frank Hird’s death would come in 1937 with his ashes interred alongside Lord Ronald Gower.

#faces