A Caveat : Across the world, Lesbian visibility in historical records are H. D to find. In the past British gay men were imprisoned and in some cases, executed while homosexuality has always been legal for women in the UK. Having lovely gay pals, I can't exclude a heart-felt mega brief glimpse, at the end of the timeline, in to their fight for equality.
Nicholas Church, in the small village of Etchingham, England, there is a brass memorial from , commemorating two women buried together: Elizabeth Etchingham died 3 December and Agnes Oxenbridge died 4 August A Latin inscription under Elizabeth Etchingham identifies her as the first-born daughter of Thomas and Margaret Etchingham, died on December 3, Elizabeth was in her mid-twenties when she died, while Agnes died almost three decades later when she was in her mid-fifties.
They defo weren't mother and daughter. Both women must have requested to be buried together and both families must have considerately agreed for it to happen. In the brass etching: Unmarried - They are identically dressed. Elizabeth, on the left, is depicted with loose hair flowing down to her hips while Agnes, on the right, is considerably larger than Elizabeth, and her hair is tightly coifed, but not covered. The difference in height and hair styles most likely reflects their age difference at death.
The lack of a head covering on either woman suggests that they were unmarried. The specially designed brass memorial romantically suggests that the space between them was finally ended by death. The Buggery Act did not explicitly target homosexual acts between men as it also applied to sodomy between men and women and a person with an animal.
The precise sexual acts described as "sodomy" were rarely defined in the law, but are typically understood by courts to include any sexual act deemed to be "immoral" or "unnatural" e. However, it was male homosexual convictions that were by far the most common and publicised. Convictions under the Buggery Act were punishable by death. Though the author of Poem 49 is anonymous the poem is unambiguously written in the voice of a woman and is addressed to another woman: praising the bond between two women in a way that is homoerotic rather than platonic.
