[271] This point is brought forward by Dr. Leon de Rode in his report on “L’Inversion Genitale et la Legislation,” prepared for the Third (Brussels) Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1892.  The same point is insisted on by some of my correspondents.

[272] It is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while homosexuality is today in absolute disrepute in France, it was not so under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The Duc de Gesvres, as described by Besenval (Memoires, i, p. 178), was a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration.  In 1687 Madame, the mother of the Regent, writes implying that “all the young men and many of the old” practised pederasty:  il n’y a que les gens du commun qui aiment les femmes.  The marked tendency to inversion in the French royal family at this time is well known.

[273] A man with homosexual habits, I have been told, declared he would be sorry to see the English law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in his practices.

[274] Blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert runs.  Hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913) that his experience shows that among 10,000 homosexual persons hardly one falls a victim to the law, but over 3000 are victimized by blackmailers.

[275] Krafft-Ebing would place this age not under 16, the age at which in England girls may legally consent to normal sexual intercourse (Psychopathia Sexualis, 1893, p. 419).  It certainly should not be lower.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG TRAMPS.

BY “JOSIAH FLYNT.”

I have made a rather minute study of the tramp class in the United States, England, and Germany, but I know it best in the States.  I have lived with the tramps there for eight consecutive months, besides passing numerous shorter periods in their company, and my acquaintance with them is nearly of ten years’ standing.  My purpose in going among them has been to learn about their life in particular and outcast life in general.  This can only be done by becoming part and parcel of its manifestations.

There are two kinds of tramps in the United States:  out-of-works and “hoboes.”  The out-of-works are not genuine vagabonds; they really want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes.  The latter are the real tramps.  They make a business of begging—­a very good business too—­and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days.  Whisky and Wanderlust, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit.