BBC One’s historical drama, Gentleman Jack, starring Suranne Jones, returned to our screens last weekend.
The period drama, which follows the life of Anne Lister, an English diarist famous for revelations that later earned her the title of ‘the first modern lesbian’, featured Liverpool as a backdrop in season one. Filling the city’s Town Hall and Falkner Square with stunning Georgian costumes and 19th century carriages, the show transported viewers back to 1832, a time in which LGBTQ+ representation and equality was nowhere to be seen.
Gentleman Jack is based on Anne Lister, a woman who was renowned for her charm and dressing head-to-toe in black. Coming from a wealthy minor landowning family in Yorkshire, Anne was known for challenging the status quo by rarely taking part in activities that, in society’s eyes, were for women and quickly became known as ‘Gentleman Jack’ to locals.
One of the best kept secrets of her time was Anne’s lesbian lifestyle. At the age of 15, she began writing personal diary entries, a tradition she carried on till her untimely death from a prolonged fever contracted from a nasty insect bite. It is believed the extremely detailed stories totalled more than four million words with the earliest of entries documenting her first love, a fellow pupil, Eliza Raine.
This passionate love affair wasn’t the only one recounted in her diary with others being included, particularly the relationships she enjoyed from her school days onwards, which often led her astray on long trips abroad. One-sixth of Anne’s diary is said to have been written in a code she created herself. The code, which Anne referred to as her ‘crypthand’ was based on a combination of algebra and the Greek alphabet.
The coded sections contained some of her more sexual encounters and Anne was convinced that no one would ever be able to understand. However, it would later be decoded twice. The first time occurred several decades later in 1887, when a descendant of her family discovered the diaries and cracked the code.
The family member, John Lister, was gay himself and didn’t want to draw attention to his own sexuality so decided to rebury the evidence, leaving Anne’s sexuality a mystery for a few more years yet. However, Anne’s secret would eventually come to light when university student, Helena Whitbread, wandered into the archives looking for a research project in 1982.
Helen had no idea that she would soon decode the diaries of one of the most fascinating characters of the 19th century. The life that Anne lived captured the admiration of today’s modern audience so much so that it has been retold in movie, book and tv form. Despite this, two centuries on from her death, it is still not known where exactly she is buried as her grave was desecrated in the 1870s, only 30 years after she died.
On the 231st anniversary of Anne's birth, Sarah Wainwright, the writer of the hit TV show, urged the vicar of Halifax to help her find the heroine’s final resting place in Yorkshire. Speaking, as flowers were laid to mark Anne’s birthday, Sarah reportedly called for the pioneer’s remains to be found and her grave fully restored. An employee, who was in charge of refurbishing the church Anne is buried at, found broken pieces of her gravestone but hasn’t been able to put it back where it originally was as it has yet to be established where she lies.
Sarah Wainwright said: “This is a very public appeal by me to the vicar of Halifax, to really engage with and get behind the passion there is to locate the exact spot of Anne Lister’s final resting place, and for the church to correct the past and restore her grave – as much as that is possible – to its original state before it was smashed up and removed.
"I’d love to establish a ceremony, a ritual, a tradition, whereby we – Lister Sisters and Misters, Anne Lister scholars, Anne Lister and Ann Walker acolytes and fans, Gentleman Jack fans, people passionate about local history, and anyone who cares about the truth – bring flowers to lay here, around her statue. In the hope that one day we will be able to lay them on her grave, in the Minster, knowing that we are laying them as close to her mortal remains as we possibly can.”
