The tragic story of the last two men in the UK executed for being gay: ‘Mercy could not be expected of men like them’
A hanging outside Newgate Prison, early 19th century On the 27th of November 1835, a crowd of people gathered outside Newgate prison in the City of London to watch the first hanging there in two years. Two men were hanged for “the abominable crime of buggery” and became the last men in Britain executed for homosexuality. James Pratt, aged 30, was a horse-groomer, who lived in Deptford, London with his wife and children. John Smith, 40, was from Southwark. Some reports say he was an unmarried labourer, though others sources state he was married and worked as a servant. On an afternoon in late August 1835, Pratt met Smith, and a man called William Bonill in a pub in Blackfriars. The three men returned to Bonill’s room that he rented in Southwark, from landlords George and Jane Berkshire. They had no way of knowing that by that night they would all be arrested. In three months two of them would be dead. Mr Berkshire later claimed that Bonill had frequent m...