Prof

by Dermot Turing

  I’ve now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven’t time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I’ve not found out.

  Glad you enjoyed broadcast. [Jefferson] certainly was rather disappointing though. I’m rather afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future

  Turing believes machines think

  Turing lies with men

  Therefore machines do not think

  Yours in distress

  Alan

  He also wrote to Robin Gandy, whose doctoral thesis Alan was supervising. Robin was supportive, as expected: ‘How wretched; I can only say I hope you have a good lawyer & will get off; also that I think that other people are much less inclined to hold these things against one than is usually supposed.’ Unfortunately, some of those other people thought differently. Alan, forever the innocent in worldly matters, had not seen the unfortunate trend in policing in the early 1950s.

  While in 1937/38 the total of 4,448 indictable sexual crimes was made up of 73 per cent. heterosexual and 27 per cent. homosexual offences, by 1954, when the total had increased to 15,636, the respective proportions were 59 and 41 per cent. For every 100 homosexual crimes recorded by the police in 1937/38, 232 were recorded in 1947, as many as 407 in 1951 and no fewer than 530 in 1954.

  During a period of some fifteen years covered by the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, homosexual offences of an indictable character increased between fourfold and fivefold. Offences of gross indecency between males went up from 320 to 1,686. The drive against homosexuals proceeded on a relatively minor scale until 1951, when it suddenly began to be intensified as the result of an incident of international proportions. This was the flight of the two British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in March 1951 and their defection to the Soviet Union.

  Burgess and Maclean were Cambridge Apostles, their flight was high profile, and the Americans had asked the British to weed out homosexuals from the security services because they were open to threats of blackmail. Whether there was indeed a link from those facts to the increase in prosecutions in the early 1950s is not proven; certainly there is no evidence that the Manchester police were mindful of these things, or even aware that Alan held secrets of far more significance than those pertaining to his private life.

  So, on 27 February, Turing and Murray were also committed to follow Thacker to the Knutsford Quarter Sessions, to stand trial for gross indecency. Alan was bailed for £50; Murray was remanded in custody. Alan’s photograph appeared in the local weekly paper. John picks up the story:

  One morning there arrived a letter for me from Alan – a remarkable thing of itself, neither a postcard nor a telegram. I opened it and the first sentence read ‘I suppose you know I am a homosexual.’ I knew no such thing. I stuffed the letter in my pocket and read it in the office. There followed the story of ‘the burglar’. Alan then consulted his University friends, who strongly advised him to defend the case, instruct leading Counsel and heaven knows what else. In the meantime, would I kindly inform our mother of the situation? The short answer to that was that I would not. So I dropped everything and went to Manchester where I consulted Mr G., the senior partner in a leading firm of Manchester solicitors. He in turn saw Alan’s solicitor, Mr C., who persuaded Alan to plead guilty.

  At the end of the following month the Knutsford Quarter Sessions convened. There was a full list of moderately serious crimes: a sexual assault on a young woman, a case of tax fraud, a handful of burglaries, a case or two of butchery in circumvention of the rationing laws, and a clutch of indecent behaviours. A sample of the court’s business1 over the days it sat:

  • Harold Arthur Thacker, 20, no occupation, pleaded guilty to the theft of Alan Turing’s property. Another offence, the details of which have disappeared, was taken into consideration. Thacker was sentenced to Borstal training.

  • Douglas Broad, 31, clerk, and James Wheeler, 16, cotton doubler, pleaded guilty to one count each of committing an act of gross indecency with the other. Broad was fined £25, with the threat of 12 months in jail if he failed to pay. Wheeler was placed on probation for 3 years, with conditions: never to speak to, or have any dealings with Broad; and to join a Club specified by the Probation Officer. Wheeler’s father was required to enter into a recognizance (a form of suretyship) of £10 for his son’s good behaviour.

  • Robert Jones, 61, labourer, and Thomas Evans, 22, labourer, pleaded guilty to one count each of committing an act of gross indecency with the other. Jones was fined £24, and Evans £15, with each of them given 6 months to pay and a threat of 7 months in jail in default of payment.

  Indictment of Alan Mathison Turing and Arnold Murray. King George VI had died only the day before Alan’s arrest.

  • Alan Turing, 39, university reader, and Arnold Murray, 19, spectacle frame maker, each faced 6 counts of gross indecency with the other. Not only was each of them accused of committing three acts of gross indecency, on three different dates, but each of them was additionally accused of being ‘party to the commission of an act of gross indecency’ with the other. Only in this one of the ‘gross indecency’ cases before the court was this dualism in the indictment. Sentencing was different, too. But before sentencing, there were pleas in mitigation.

  Alan’s former second-in-command in Hut 8 was called to testify as a character witness. This was C.H.O’D. Alexander, one of the Wicked Uncles of Bletchley Park who had written to Churchill in 1941. Alexander was now head of cryptanalysis at the highly secret GCHQ, as the Government Code & Cypher School had now become, and the mind boggles at the security difficulties involved. Alexander kindly mentioned that Alan was a ‘national asset’. Another witness was M.H.A. Newman. With such luminaries on his side it was plain that the defendant was someone out of the ordinary.

  The Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser had nearly enough copy to fill a whole column:

  PARTICULARLY HONEST

  Maxwell H. A. Newman, a professor of pure mathematics at Manchester University, called as a witness for Turing, said Turing was particularly honest and truthful. ‘He is completely absorbed in his work, and is one of the most profound and original mathematical minds of his generation,’ said Newman.

  Mr Lind Smith, defending Turing, said: ‘He is entirely absorbed in his work, and it would be a loss if a man of his ability – which is no ordinary ability – were not able to carry on with it. The public would lose the benefit of the research work he is doing. There is treatment which could be given to him. I ask you to think that the public interest would not be well served if this man is taken away from the very important work he is doing.’

  Defending Murray, Mr Emlyn Hooson said: ‘Murray is not a university reader, he is a photo-printer. It was he who was approached by the other man. He has not such tendencies as Turing, and if he had not met Turing he would not have indulged in that practice and stolen the £8.’

  The court did not need long to decide the matter. Taking up Lind Smith’s suggestion, the judge made the following order.

  Turing:- Placed on Probation for a period of Twelve Months. To submit for treatment by a duly qualified medical practitioner at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

  Murray:- Bound over to be of good behaviour for Twelve Months. When passing sentence, the Court took into consideration at the request of the prisoner, one outstanding offence, which he admitted.

  Murray’s additional offence was that ‘at Wilmslow, in the County of Chester, in the dwellinghouse “Hollymeade”, Adlington Road, feloniously did steal £8 in cash, the property of Alan Mathison TURING. Contrary to Section 13 of the Larceny Act, 1916.’

  Hollymeade (on the left), Alan Turi
ng’s home in Wilmslow.

  Treatment of offenders

  So Alan, the victim, was put on probation, and Arnold, who may have been a spectacle-frame-maker, or even a photo-printer, but was certainly dishonest, was let off scot free – freer even than the other young men, similarly convicted, who had not even asked for a theft to be taken into consideration. Can this have been right? Given the differences in sentence at the Quarter Sessions, one might be tempted to assume that what happened to Alan Turing was exceptional, that he had been singled out for special treatment. What was the law?

  The punishment prescribed by law for homosexual offences is imprisonment. This is in accordance with customary legislative practice; but the general criminal law provides other methods by which the courts can deal with persons brought before them on criminal charges. These methods apply to persons convicted of homosexual offences just as they apply to other offenders. Probation is frequently used by the courts in dealing with homosexual offenders, and 24 per cent. of the persons convicted during 1955 of homosexual offences punishable by imprisonment were put on probation.

  Revelations in the Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser, 29 February 1952.

  Probation was still relatively new in 1952. In some form it had existed since 1887, essentially providing for an offender who was bound over – obliged to pay a fine if a further offence was committed during a given period – to be under the supervision of a named person. With the Criminal Justice Act 1948, the law was reformed and codified. The first two sections show its liberal intentions: they fall under the heading ‘Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour, prison divisions and sentence of whipping’. Next come ten sections on ‘Probation and Discharge’. Section 3 was about probation, which said that ‘the court may, instead of sentencing [a convicted person], make a probation order, that is to say, an order requiring him to be under the supervision of a probation officer for a period to be specified in the order of not less than one year nor more than three years’. Further: ‘a probation order may in addition require the offender to comply with such requirements as the court considers necessary for securing the good conduct of the offender or for preventing a repetition by him of the same offence or the commission of other offences’.

  But ‘treatment’ such as was ordered by His Honour Judge J. Fraser Harrison was not ‘requirements for securing good conduct or preventing the commission of other offences’. ‘Treatment’ was something for people with mental disorders:

  4. Probation orders requiring treatment for mental condition

  (1) Where the court is satisfied, on the evidence of a duly qualified medical practitioner appearing to the court to be experienced in the diagnosis of mental disorders, that the mental condition of an offender is such as requires and as may be susceptible to treatment but is not such as to justify his being certified as a person of unsound mind under the Lunacy Act, 1890, or as a defective under the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913, the court may, if it makes a probation order, include therein a requirement that the offender shall submit, for such period not extending beyond twelve months from the date of the order as may be specified therein, to treatment by or under the direction of a duly qualified medical practitioner with a view to the improvement of the offender’s mental condition.

  It is quite evident from the inconsistency of the sentences being dished out at the Knutsford Quarter Sessions that in 1952 the courts could not make up their minds whether homosexual offences were being committed because the offenders were wicked, or because they were unbalanced. Alan Mathison Turing, MA, Ph.D, OBE, FRS was ordered to receive ‘treatment by a duly qualified medical practitioner’ with a view to the improvement of his mental condition. He was going to be dealt with as a mental case.

  It was textbook thinking in the post-war period that homosexuality is a form of mental abnormality, calling for therapeutic measures. In various pieces of published research, doctors earnestly tried to find the link. Doctors D. Curran and D. Parr studied records of 100 of their homosexual patients: ‘only’ 49% showed significant psychiatric abnormalities. Thirty per cent of these cases were on the doctors’ books because of a criminal charge. Dr F.H. Taylor studied 96 men who had been remanded to Brixton Prison on being charged with a homosexual offence. Thirty-four out of the 66 ‘pseudo-homosexuals’ had some form of mental abnormality. In a third analysis ‘the proportion of homosexual cases with associated psychiatric abnormality was estimated at 57 out of 113 cases’. The good doctors were chasing their tails, by assuming the thing they were trying to prove. The abnormality they had discovered was homosexuality itself.

  The received wisdom was bunk. An academic study was carried out at Oxford University on offenders convicted in 1953 who were ordered to have probation with ‘treatment’ under Section 4. The 414 offenders who received Section 4 orders also included people of both sexes, convicted of theft, indecent exposure, heterosexual offences, violence and attempted suicide. The breakdown of ‘medical diagnoses’ of these unfortunate people shows no meaningful difference in diagnosis between the 11% who were homosexual offenders and the remainder of the group, giving the lie to the idea that homosexuality is a special clinical condition.

  Cycling, chemicals and the couch

  Thus in 1952, if you were not going to be punished for gross indecency, you could be ordered to be treated for your mental condition. As to the purpose of the treatment, according to the Wolfenden Committee, appointed in 1954 to conduct an inquiry into the law and practice relating to homosexual offences:

  There are broadly three possible objectives: (i) a change in the direction of sexual preference; (ii) a better adaptation to the sexual problem and to life in general, and (iii) greater self-control. Treatment is not generally specifically aimed at achieving only one of these objectives.

  ‘Treatments’ attempted for a homosexual condition have included severe and fatiguing bicycle riding, surgery, visits to prostitutes, aversion therapies of various types (electric shocks, sniffing repulsive chemicals, fluid deprivation, inducement of anxiety etc.), hypnosis, fantasy satiation, religion, drugs and psychoanalysis. In Alan Turing’s case, cycling was not suggested; the treatment he got consisted of drugs and psychoanalysis. It could, indeed, have been worse: aversion therapy using electric shocks was reported to be successful in 1967.

  Various types of drug have been suggested over the years for the treatment of homosexuality. Earnest researchers had startling disregard for the interests of their subjects. One example is probably more than enough:

  A 1940 report claimed that the administration of metrazol was capable of liberating the fixation of libidinal development responsible for homoerotic dispositions and making psychosexual energy free once more to flow through regular physiological channels. In this study, men and women from the ages of nineteen to thirty-four were treated with metrazol, inducing grand mal convulsions up to fifteen times per person. In one case, though nine treatments seemed to have eliminated all homoerotic desire from a man, he was subsequently convulsed six more times in order to, additionally, eliminate all feminine traits from him as well.

  Rather less extreme were experiments with hormone treatment. At first, homosexual men, thought to be too feminine, were given testosterone, but this didn’t work: it appeared to heighten sex drive rather than change its direction. So then the researchers tried the opposite, to see whether oestrogen would depress sex drive. By 1949, they concluded that this, by contrast, did work:

  The Criminal Justice Act, 1948, has emphasised the duty of the community to provide treatment for the habitual sexual offender. We decided to offer a course of hormone therapy to abolish libido temporarily in persons complaining of an uncontrollable sexual urge that had led to trouble. Libido was rapidly removed in all our thirteen cases. In view of the non-mutilating nature of this treatment and the ease with which it can be administered to a consenting patient we believe that it should be adopted whenever possible in male cases of abnormal and uncontrollable sexual urge.

  One might grumbl
e that the Criminal Justice Act in fact said nothing about sexual offenders, let alone their prescribed treatment. One might also take issue with ‘non-mutilating’, in light of the observations made in earlier literature about the side-effects of hormone treatment. But the authors of this article in The Lancet were countering ‘a widespread demand that habitual sexual offenders should be castrated’. The side-effects previously noted had included, ‘after 75 days’ therapy a swelling was felt below each nipple, and subsequently well-marked gynaecomastia developed. At the end of the treatment double testicular biopsy showed degenerative changes.’ So, if you were a man given Stilboestrol, the drug of choice, you were likely to grow breasts and suffer genital degeneration.

  The judge sitting in the Knutsford Quarter Sessions may or may not have had these thoughts at the back of his mind when passing sentence on 31 March 1952. In any case, it’s not at all certain that he applied the law according to the book.

  The administration of justice

  A person put on probation under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 should have been shown to have a mental condition, which is susceptible to the treatment proposed. A medical report, or the spoken evidence of a medical practitioner, is the first step in the process. In Alan Turing’s case, there is no indication that any such medical report or evidence was provided. Surely the no-juicy-bits-omitted Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser would have mentioned something as significant as a mentally disordered university reader? And it was not only the procedure that was deficient. The actual treatment he received was probably illegal too.