[Ads-l] Antedating of Earliest Publicly Printed Use of the Word "Homosexual"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Until a few years ago, the OED's earliest citation for the English word "homosexual" was from Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1892 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's landmark book Psychopathia Sexualis.  I then contributed to the OED a prior (1891) use of "homosexual" in the privately published book by John Addington Synonds, A Problem in Modern Ethics.

I have now found the earliest known publicly printed use of "homosexual."  This use occurred in a newspaper report of Alice Mitchell's Memphis, Tennessee trial for the murder of Freda Ward, the trial that first brought widespread attention to lesbianism.  This citation is clearly earlier than the Chaddock translation of Krafft-Ebing, which has a preface dated November 1892.  I am not sure where the small-town journalist writing the story picked up the term.  Perhaps there were medical experts, testifying at the trial, who were familiar with the German publications of Krafft-Ebing.

Here is the citation to the newspaper:

1892 Pickens (South Carolina) Sentinel 4 Aug. 4/5 (Newspapers.com)  Yesterday an inquiry into the mental condition of Alice Mitchell was begun in the criminal court. ... The girl was not regarded as insane until whe shed the blood of her homo-sexual affinity.

Because the word appeared at the end of a line it is not clear whether the spelling was intended to be "homosexual" or "homo-sexual."

Fred Shapiro



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