Polari — The Slang of Gay London

Blaze
2 min readNov 30, 2020
Rainbow Plaque From Leeds (West Yorkshire) Attribution: Chemical Engineer, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s no secret that until the end of 1960s homosexuality was criminalized in England. Many homosexuals were prosecuted under these laws, including most famously war hero Alan Turing who was chemically castrated and subsequently committed suicide. So as an act of self-preservation various types of slang were developed and adopted to allow them to speak openly without the fear of lilly law getting in their eeks (the police getting in…

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Blaze

A lover of learning in all it's varieties. History, science, technology and beyond