HISTORIOGRAPHY

In recent decades, the subject of sexuality and sexual practices in twentieth-century Scotland has become the focus of increasing, if somewhat disparate, research by historians and social scientists. Several, sometimes overlapping, areas of investigation may be discerned. Using quantitative data analysis of census and civil registration records, historical demographers have identified trends and regional variations in nuptiality, fertility and illegitimacy rates and their implications for interpreting shifts in sexual behaviour and reproductive strategies. Meanwhile, using more qualitative evidence derived from memoirs and oral history, some sociologists and cultural historians have explored the impact of shifts in social norms and economic circumstances on the nature of intimacy in Scottish society and patterns of courtship, cohabitation and premarital sexual relations Other historians, sometimes from a feminist perspective, have explored the management of sexuality in the young as part of the gendered disciplinary framework of early twentieth-century Scottish society. In addition, again using oral history testimony, recent research has focused on aspects of social change that influenced the acquisition of sexual (pre-eminently contraceptive) knowledge and opportunities for sexual initiation, and that served to shape sexual identities. Finally, a strand of investigation, heavily reliant on the files of Scottish departments of state, has addressed the policy-making process with respect to a range of issues relating to sexual offences, reproduction, sexual health, sex education, and censor-ship in the period after 1950, designed to map the role of Scottish governance in these often contentious and contested areas of civil society.

With few exceptions, however, partly because of the paucity of accessible Sheriff Court records and a variety of restrictions and closures imposed on High Court and Crown Office papers, there has been relatively little use made of criminal prosecution and trial papers and newspaper law reports to provide an insight into sexual behaviours and ideologies after 1900 and how society and ‘the law in action’ responded when confronted by what were deemed illicit and/or unnatural practices.

AIMS

The central aim of this volume is to make good this omission by exploring eight areas of sexual or sex-related practices that featured in Scottish legal proceedings between 1900 and the early years of the new millennium: VD quackery, child sexual abuse, abortion, bestiality, brothel keeping, homosexual acts, the operation of sex shops and the wilful transmission of HIV.