Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 1 of 4

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Byron-esque Jacky, preferring books to boys, takes a blue-stocking approach to sexuality yet still gets the hots for a classmate, with kissing and light operetta.

Jacky goes from studious swot to finding her lifelong partner in this entertaining and insightful extract from a longer interview. More interested in books than boys, Jacky was a voracious reader, even reading about homosexuality, though there was never any mention of that subject in the family home. Seeing herself as a 'Byron-esque' figure, Jacky felt somewhat detached from society, thinking that her sexuality was something rather special.

Striving to gain an intellectual understanding of her sexuality, Jacky admits that a class dimension was important in that process. Though the gay characters she came across in literature always came from the upper class, Jacky herself, though attending a 'posh school', came from a working-class family. From the age of 14, Jacky had an 'affair' with a classmate, which she describes as holding hands and becoming 'D'Oyly Carte groupies'.

Unusually, Jacky also 'came out' to one of her English teachers, who though not gay herself, greatly influenced the teenager. However, Jacky and her 'amour' also feared that they would be expelled from the school should their relationship ever be exposed. That relationship, however, did finally end when Jacky got a place at St Anne's College, Oxford. After a brief dalliance with a 'boring boyfriend', Jacky decided that she'd gone too far into lesbianism to ever be straight and was looking, sub-consciously, for someone more suitable. Then she met Jane and they've been together ever since.

Born into a working-class family in 1945, Jacky was a bright girl who would eventually study at St Anne's College, Oxford. Here she met her lifelong partner, Jane.

Jacky remained in academia while Jane became a teacher and lived in both London and Oxfordshire until both retired. Together, they've written lesbian fiction under the pen name of Jay Taverner.


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From the collection

GLAM Before Stonewall: LGBT Oral History Project

This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, from individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community.
‘Before Stonewall: An Oral History of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community’ was a Heritage Lottery Funded project organised in 2003 by a Brighton-based organisation 'Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media', otherwise known as GLAM. The project sought to record for posterity the first-hand recollections of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from across the United Kingdom and beyond, of a time before the events in New York’s Greenwich Village which culminated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This was a time which was very different, and in many respects more oppressive for homosexual and transgender people, than the one we’re familiar with today. This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, of over one-hundred individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community. With recollections that reach back as far as the 1920s, what all of the interviews describe and reveal is the whole gamut of human experience, from the deeply tragic to the exhilaratingly joyous - all from the perspectives of a section of society that has often been considered to be ‘different from the others’. Journalist Charlotte Cooper, who worked for the gay press at the time, co-ordinated the project’s video-recording with volunteers and conducted many of the interviews herself. Charlotte describes her time on the project as both a revelatory and profoundly moving experience. Screen Archive South East has made available from across this collection a total of eighty four extracts from thirty individual interviews. Together they give an insightful and first-hand account of what life was like for LGBT people, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and in both the years before Stonewall and after.

75 videos in this collection

1

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 1 of 4

2

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4

3

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 3 of 4

4

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Chris's Interview Clip 1 of 1

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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 1 of 2

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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 2 of 2

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Before Stonewall: Anthea's Interview Clip 1 of 1

15

Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 2 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 3 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 4 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 5 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 6 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 2 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 3 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 1 of 5

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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 2 of 5

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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 4 of 5

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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 5 of 5

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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 2 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 3 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 2 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 3 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 1 of 2

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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 2 of 2

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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 1 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 2 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 3 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 4 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 5 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 6 of 6

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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 2 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 3 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 1 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 2 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 3 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 4 of 4

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Before Stonewall: Peggy's Interview Clip 1 of 1

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Before Stonewall: Patricia's Interview Clip 1 of 1

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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 1 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 2 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 3 of 3

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Before Stonewall: Charlie's Interview Clip 1 of 1

75

Before Stonewall: Gay's Interview Clip 1 of 1

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