Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (21 July 1865 – 23 December 1924) was a British author, poet and journalist.

Biography

Crosland was born in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

in 1865, the son of

Methodist New Connexion The Methodist New Connexion, also known as Kilhamite Methodism, was a Protestant nonconformist church. It was formed in 1797 by secession from the Wesleyan Methodists, and merged in 1907 with the Bible Christian Church and the United Methodis ...

preacher and superintendent of the

Prudential Assurance Company Prudential plc is a British-domiciled multinational insurance and asset management company headquartered in London and Hong Kong. It was founded in London in May 1848 to provide loans to professional and working people. Prudential has dual p ...

William Crosland (son of cloth manufacturer Thomas Crosland, of Isles House,

Holbeck Holbeck is an inner city area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It begins on the southern edge of Leeds city centre and mainly lies in the LS11 postcode district. The M1 and M621 motorways used to end/begin in Holbeck. Now the M621 is t ...

, Leeds) and Hannah, daughter of farmer John Hodgson. He was an associate and friend of

Lord Alfred Douglas Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford University he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carr ...

, who was

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...

's lover. The bitter feud between Lord Alfred's father the

Marquess of Queensberry Marquess of Queensberry is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. The title has been held since its creation in 1682 by a member of the Douglas family. The Marquesses also held the title of Duke of Queensberry from 1684 to 1810, when it was i ...

and his son resulted in Wilde suing the Marquess for libel at Douglas's urging. Subsequently, Wilde was charged with

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexu ...

after the Marquess produced evidence of Wilde's behaviour as justifying the libel. In 1895 Wilde was found guilty and imprisoned. After the trial Crosland united with Douglas, who had become a pious Catholic, and together they persecuted Robbie Ross in the civil courts in a variety of actions. They also repeatedly wrote and visited the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions, trying to ensure Ross's arrest for homosexual offences. In 1913 the author

Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...

recalled "the rather endearing story of his (Crosland's) first arrival in London from Yorkshire, by road, pushing a perambulator that was shared by manuscripts and a baby". This was at the trial of Ransome and others for libelling Douglas in Ransome's 1912 book on Wilde; Crosland and the impecunious Douglas had hoped for substantial damages but lost. When Douglas was declared bankrupt in February 1913, his solicitor had informed the court that damages of £2,500 "a fortune", were expected, which alarmed Ransome when he saw it in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

''. The judge was rather scathing about Douglas's behaviour in the box, and the jury found that the words complained of were a libel but were true. Ransome's biographer referred to Crosland as a "shady associate" of Douglas, and Ross's biographer calls him "a narrow-minded bigot" and a "right-wing Tory". Crosland wrote a condemnation of Wilde's '' De Profundis'', in verse, titled ''The First Stone'', in 1912, and ghost-wrote Douglas's memoir ''Oscar Wilde and Myself'' in 1914. In 1914,

Robbie Ross Robert Baldwin Ross (25 May 18695 October 1918) was a British journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend, lover and literary executor. A grandson of the Canadian r ...

, Oscar Wilde's literary executor and rival for Wilde's affection, charged Crosland with criminal libel, plus writs for criminal conspiracy and perjury against Douglas and Crosland jointly. Crosland was found not guilty, though the judge did say that acquittal would not imply that Ross was guilty of any offence.

Personal life

Crosland was a humanitarian who frequently wrote in his poems about the impoverished and sick and unemployed, especially caring about returned soldiers in the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. In 1894 he married Annie Moore. They had three sons: William Philip; John Jordan; and Laurence Oldmeadow. After many illnesses, he died in Surrey in 1924, survived by his wife and their son John. John Crosland was father of the journalist

Philip Crosland Philip William John Crosland (30 July 1918 – 14 July 2012) was "one of the last of a group of British journalists to make a career working in the Indian national press." Life Crosland was born in Guildford, Surrey, eldest of four children of ...

. A biography, ''The life and genius of T. W. H. Crosland'', by W. Sorley Brown was published in 1928.

Publications

*The Unspeakable Scot (1902) *The Egregious English (1903)
The Truth about Japan (1904)
*The Wild Irishman (1905) *The Suburbans (1905) *Taffy Was A Welshman (1912)
The First Stone: On Reading the Unpublished Parts of 'De Profundis'
(1912)
The collected poems of T.W.H. Crosland
(1917)
The fine old Hebrew gentleman
(1922)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Crosland, Thomas William Hodgson English male journalists 1865 births 1924 deaths Writers from Leeds English male poets