by Simon Lemieux
If you have read any of my previous pieces linked to the
D&I newsletter, you will know what really fascinates me are those
individuals who as well as belonging to groups either marginalised or discriminated
against, or indeed both, challenge some our traditional assumptions about
previous episodes in our past. Even for someone who like myself is more on the
conservative spectrum socially and culturally, there is much to admire and
inspire. Of no one is this truer perhaps than Harry Daley. His life is truly
fascinating in all manner of ways.
What are our assumptions about homosexuality in Britain before more progressive times starting with partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967? I guess most of us would reply it was largely out of public view, necessarily so given its illegality, and when it did exist which of course it did, we might presume it was mainly among those involved in the arts, from the middle class or higher, think Oscar Wilde for starters. But coming from a working class background and serving as a policeman in the England of the 1920s and 1930s, I think not. Or if they did exist, it would either have been a tale either of tortured repression, or scandal, shame and exclusion. The other problem for historians is source material. LGBT individuals from the middle and upper classes might have left behind journals, letters etc, as well as perhaps cultural output such as pictures, plays and novels. But queer folk from the working class, are by nature of both social class and sexuality, far less likely to leave behind many records of their lives, lusts and struggles. Harry Daley is one of the few exceptions. He was openly gay, came from a working class background, and enjoyed a full career in the Metropolitan Police until his retirement in 1950. And remember at this time, leading a sexually active life as a male homosexual was illegal. He also very unusually wrote an autobiography, ‘This Small Cloud’ that was posthumously published in 1986. So who exactly was Harry Daley?
As Stephen Bourne notes in his article in HA News of Spring
2021, he was born in 1901 into a close-knit, working class family and spent his
earliest years in Lowestoft. His father was a fisherman who was lost at sea in
1911. Harry’s older brother was killed in the final days of the Great War, and
just previously, his widowed mother had moved to Dorking in Surrey. Harry found
work as a grocery delivery boy but was also fascinated by the bright lights of
London with its theatres, cinemas and art galleries. Aged 24, he decided to
join the Metropolitan Police and made London his home. Unlike many gay men at
that time, he saw no need to be closeted in his sexual preferences yet also
seems to have been tolerated and largely left alone by his fellow officers,
largely because in pretty much all other respects he ‘fitted in’. A reminder
perhaps that we should not assume that all openly gay people were ruthlessly
and mercilessly persecuted before an era of more liberal attitudes. He does
though recall in his autobiography, one inspector who made his life pretty
miserable, so life was not all plain sailing for him.
For a working class copper though, he certainly mixed in
some interesting circles. Firstly, he made BBC radio broadcasts about life as a
London policeman and the work of Lowestoft fisherman, which featured on
programmes including ‘Children’s Hour’ (1929) and ‘Workers in Europe’
(1933). Sadly, the recordings themselves are lost but the scripts survive. Perhaps
less surprising was that he got his radio break due to a personal contact. He
enjoyed a long-lasting intimate friendship with J.R. Ackerley who was talks
producer at the BBC. As ever in the world of showbiz and the arts, as indeed
much else, who you know counts and helps, and not just for government PPE
contracts today!
Daley was more though than just a gay policeman with a side-line in broadcasting. He also mixed for a while in the sexually permissive circles of the Bloomsbury Group which was a broad circle of artists, writers and intellectuals including Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster and the artist Duncan Grant. The latter painted this portrait of Harry in 1930 now in the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London.
Along with the portrait, his introduction to the group also led to an affair with the famous novelist, E.M. Forster. Daley’s lack of discretion about his sexuality though proved too much for the closeted Forster who ended the relationship, which hurt Harry deeply. Interestingly, in his otherwise full and frank autobiography, he fails to mention his affair with Forster. Years later in fact, when Forster was in a relationship with Bob Buckingham, a young married policeman, this bitterness led Daley to inform Bob’s wife of the relationship. As a policeman, Daley appears to have been widely respected for his friendliness and approachability, he got on well with all ranks of society, including even some of the criminal underworld. As his entry on the exploringsurreyspast website records, He was kind to the criminals he encountered, many of whom were simply petty thieves from the same class as himself. Commenting in his autobiography on the fact that the 1920s Depression had driven many middle class public schoolboys to become policemen, Daley remarked that for the first time the police were better looking than the criminals. He was perhaps the epitome of genuine community policing. He was affable, gregarious, and had a good sense of humour. And thus ‘got away’ with his homosexuality one suspects, precisely because he was well-liked and professionally respected. He retired from the police in 1950 and then spent eight years in the merchant navy. Having lived in police hostels during his career with the Met, he went and lived at his mother’s cottage in Dorking which she had shared with his younger brother, also gay, and his male partner until her death in 1944.
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| Harry Daley directing traffic on Hammersmith Bridge, 1929 |
Harry was apparently aware of his sexuality from an early age. As he noted himself, when well-meaning guardians and their neighbours tried to find him a girlfriend, he knew this was not what he wanted: “Throughout my life I have had a recurrent nightmare in which, having just been married, I lead my beautiful bride to the church door. At this point I cry out in despair “Oh what a bloody fool I am” and I wake sweating gradually realising that I have not really ruined two lives.” No ‘lavender wedding’ for Harry, and this is what really stands out in his life. In an age when fear and scandal forced many gay men and women understandably to keep their sexuality secret and discreet, Daley had no such reservations. He was open and proud about who and what he was, and by so doing one suspects, perhaps had a greater impact on social attitudes.
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| Harry
with a male friend at a London swimming pool in the 1930s |
Harry,
second from right, with a group of
London friends in the 1920s
So, among all the high profile and better known figures in
recent gay history whose lives were often tortured and even ended as a result
of their sexual orientation, the WW2 codebreaker Alan Turing for one, Harry
Daley is something of a one off. One can view him as an example of a
self-taught working class lad who followed his own path in life, and followed
his dreams, refusing to be constrained by his background. He is also someone
who was proud of and confident in his own identity despite much cultural
prejudice and hostility. And lastly, he serves as a prime example of a historical
figure who forces us to reconsider some of our attitudes and assumptions about
the past. The last words should though go to Harry himself,
“My life has been delightful and given a chance by God or
somebody of another life at the end of this then I’d say without hesitation,
Same Again, please!”
Wider reading and watching
Although Harry’s autobiography is currently out of print,
there is a whole chapter about him in Stephen Bourne’s ‘Fighting Proud’
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fighting-proud-9781784538743/
Other
interesting articles can be found below
https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/people/notable_residents/harry_daley/
www.pressreader.com/uk/the-oldie/20191201/281590947356262
A video by Stephen Bourne
A video by Di Stiff, Collections Development Archivist at
Surrey History Centre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZTeT-qMMU&t=19s
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