Author: ADAIR (James):
Title: Glimpses behind Edinburgh City Life. An Address. Delivered by request to a body of representative Church and published by certain of their number. For Private Circulation.
Description: [Edinbugh]@ Printed in Great Britain by William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. 1934. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 183 x 120 mms., pp. [3] - 31 [32 blank], with pagination including paper wrappers. A little worn at corners but a very good copy. James Adair, O.B.E. (1886-1982) was the Procurator-Fiscal for Edinburgh from 1919 to 1937. He is very much a bête noire for the LGBT community, and Jeff Meek, in a blog entitled "Queer Scotland Scottish Queer History and Culture," describes him as "unwavering [in his] opposition to homosexual law reform." In this pamphlet, he describes the less salubrious side of life in Edinburgh: drinking habits, prostitution, "coffee-stalls," and directly warns against "men in our midst who have secrets in their breasts that they must keep, and who require courage and help if any of that type prepared to play on their knowledge get a grip of them." Adair was a member of the committee that formed the Wolfenden report, which recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence"; Adair was the only one on the committe to oppose this proposition, Uncommon: the only copy that I have located is in the NLS.

Keywords: law Edinburgh prose


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