Codebreaker Page #5

was the threat of the law

because male homosexuality

was totally illegal

whether in public or in private.

Turing, at a certain point in Manchester,

met a young man named Arnold Murray.

Meeting Murray started this chain of

misfortunes that eventually led to his arrest.

So what happened?

I met a young man - Arnold Murray -

in Manchester. On the Oxford Road.

He looked hungry,

so I bought him a meal.

I gave him my address and later

he came to my home to see me.

He spent the night.

He was 19.

He didn't have a privileged upbringing

but he has aspirations.

I know in a sense he brought me down

but I feel sorry because

I brought him down as well.

I think Turing, like many other

men of his generation

would've felt they were living on the edge.

Not all the time

but were aware that one step into the wrong

direction could push them over the edge.

He would've been aware of the risk.

Perhaps he wasn't entirely surprised

when disaster struck.

I think he stole from me.

A few pounds,

but I couldn't be certain.

I accused him. He became angry.

I weakened.

He spent the night again.

This theme repeated itself

throughout our acquaintance.

And then one day I came home

and found I'd been burgled.

Alan invites this young man into his home.

And the result of this encounter

or series of encounters

is that my grandfather's pocket watch

which was given to Alan

as a very special gift, was stolen.

So I confronted Arnold.

I believed him when he said

he'd had nothing to do with it himself.

He'd been chatting

to a friend of his

Harry, who was a proper renter

not like Arnold,

who appreciated favours

but would absolutely accept no cash

unless it was dressed up as a loan.

Anyway, this Harry, he'd seen a letter

Arnold was posting to me.

He'd seen my address.

Arnold talked to him about me,

told him that I worked

on the electronic brain.

And this must have suggested privilege.

So Harry concocted this

burglary in Arnold's company

but Arnold did nothing

to warn me about it.

In his defence, when I confronted him,

he spilled everything.

Turing was such an honest person

and he was so much

the opposite of calculating

he was not Machiavellian in the least.

He'd been robbed.

When you're robbed you go to the police.

He was naive, in a lot of ways.

He had faith that the

system would protect him

and that turned out to be a

disastrous misstep on his part.

And of course the police then discover

that they'd hit the jackpot.

They'd discovered that he had

a young man in his house

and there couldn't be any sensible

reason for him being there

other than something

which was criminal, disgusting

and, you know, possibly a security risk.

The police didn't care about the robbery.

The police were much more interested

in arresting a professor

on charges of gross indecency.

So what did you say to the police?

I told them everything.

I told them I'd been having

an affair with Arnold Murray

and that he'd given my

address to a young man

who was known to burgle

men he'd met for sex.

And you told the police

that you had sex with Murray?

They asked me what we got up to.

I told them we engaged in mutual masturbation,

soixante-neuf, and inter-genital friction.

Soixante-neuf?

Sixty nine.

Yes I know what it means.

I was just wondering,

why you would say that to the police?

I told you. I revealed everything.

I was wondering

if you cloaked it in elitist language

to keep the police in their place.

They're unlikely to speak French,

aren't they, the police.

To say that they may be the foot soldiers

that are out there to enforce the law

but you, who speak French,

are amongst the lawmakers

the politicians, the inventors,

the forgers of new paths.

I wanted my watch back,

my father's watch.

I wanted them to do their job.

But as soon as they knew

you were a sodomite

you gave up your right

to command them.

You became their prey.

I didn't go down for sodomy.

I'm sorry, I thought you

practised sodomy with Murray?

For God's sake, would you stop saying

'practised sodomy' as if it were the bloody piano.

And the charge was not buggery

it was 'Gross indecency contrary to Section 11

of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885'.

It was the same law

that convicted Oscar Wilde.

It's good to know things are moving forwards.

You're right, by the way.

As soon as they learned I was a homosexual

the burglary more or less vanished.

One of them actually said to me

'if you consort with naughty people,

naughty things are bound to happen'.

As if by having sex with another man

it was fit and proper that burglary

should follow close on its heels.

[Turing's voice]

Dear Norman

I've now got myself into the kind of trouble

that I have always considered

to be quite a possibility for me

though I have usually rated it

at about 10 to 1 against.

I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a

charge of sexual offenses with a young man.

The story of how it all came to be found out

is a long and fascinating one.

No doubt I shall emerge

from it all a different man

but quite who I've not found out.

Yours in distress, Alan.'

In March 1952, Alan Turing

was convicted of Gross indecency.

He'd become well enough known

for it to be a public disgrace.

What the court ordered was effectively

to have Turing chemically castrated.

That was to effectively remove his body

of the male hormone testosterone.

He's given a choice. He could go to jail

or he could agree to this treatment.

He chose the so-called organo therapy

which amounted to chemical castration.

Turing was probably given a drug

that we now know as stilboestrol.

That is a synthetic version of the

female sex hormone, oestrogen.

He had to attend the

Manchester Royal Infirmary

on a monthly basis

for the first 9 months.

He had to take daily tablets

and then for the final 3 months

an implant was put into his thigh.

'Chemical castration' they call it.

Very civilised.

I take it every day and once a month

I get tested at the hospital

to make sure I don't have any of that

naughty testosterone in my blood.

It's meant to cure me of my desires.

The kinds of the things that Alan Turing

would have experienced

would have been an

immediate change in his libido

his inability to get an erection.

He would have become impotent.

His testicles would have shrunken in size.

He would've stopped shaving.

Over time, he would've grown breasts.

And that would have been the distinctive signature

of somebody who was chemically castrated.

He was told the effects

of the treatment were reversible

and no doubt that was part

of the reason he agreed to it.

The arrest was, I think,

a turning point in his life

because it was at that moment

that for the first time

he understood how untrustworthy

British society was

and the he was very, very expendable.

I think it was a demoralising experience

and embittering experience for him.

And he was never the same afterwards.

I mean what's going on, partly, in the

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