Last edited: February 14, 2005


Peter Wildeblood Dies

Associated Press, November 23, 1999

VICTORIA, British Columbia (AP) - Peter Wildeblood, who gained attention for writing about his imprisonment under Britain’s anti-homosexual laws, has died. He was 76.

Wildeblood died Nov. 14 at his home in Victoria, British Columbia. No cause of death was announced, but he had been paralyzed by a 1994 stroke.

Along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Michael Pitt-Rivers, Wildeblood was convicted in 1954 in Britain of charges relating to indecency between males and sent to prison for 18 months.

His 1955 book, "Against the Law," is credited with intensifying protests over Britain’s laws prohibiting homosexual sex and ushering in their demise, the Guardian newspaper reported in his obituary last week.

The book prompted a debate in the House of Lords and the publication of a 1957 government committee report calling for the decriminalization of gay sex for over 21-year-olds. The law was changed 10 years later.

He became a writer and producer for television in Britain, and in the early 1970s moved to Toronto to work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and became a Canadian citizen, The Times reported.

He retired to a wooden cottage in Victoria, but five years ago a stroke left him speechless and quadriplegic.

Information on burial and next of kin were not available Tuesday.


[Home] [World] [United Kingdom]

 

 

1