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 and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

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 Methodist F ...

preacher and superintendent of the

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William Crosland (son of cloth manufacturer Thomas Crosland, of Isles House, Holbeck, Leeds) and Hannah, daughter of farmer John Hodgson. He was an associate and friend of Lord Alfred Douglas, who was Oscar Wilde'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 in ...

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 sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to pe ...

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 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 daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

''. 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 Canadian-British journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend and literary executor. A grandson of the Canadian ...

, 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 (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. 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. 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)
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