1730

A wave of persecution started in Utrecht

Between 1730 and 1732, more than 300 people in the Netherlands were charged with sodomy, of whom at least 75 were executed. This was the largest such crackdown in the country’s history, and it was unprecedented both domestically and abroad. Hundreds of others were exiled or fled, forced to live dangerous, clandestine lives under assumed identities.

18th century – Sodomy – Barend Blomsaet and 17 other men were convicted and executed by strangulation in Utrecht. Their deeds concealed.

This text on the memorial stone placed on Utrecht's Domplein in 1999 reminds us of the persecution of men who had sex with each other.

Sodomy

The word sodomy is derived from the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18-19. In it, the men of Sodom demand that Lot brings out his male guests so they can “know” them. In contemporary English, this translates to: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may have sex with them.” The Quran contains a similar story. In a narrower sense, sodomy was anal sexual intercourse between man and woman, man and man or man and animal. Until the 20th century a sodomite was - in everyday speech - a man who commits fornication with another man. In legal terms, it involved anal penetration with ejaculation, a crime punishable by death in our country until the early 19th century.

The role of the sexton

The prosecution began with a statement by the sexton of the 'Domtoren' (tower of the cathedral), Josua Wilts, on 12 January 1730. He told the court that he and his sons had caught lime carrier Gillis van Baaden and barber's assistant Willem Luyten in the Michael's Chapel in the tower about six months earlier. They had watched the men's lovemaking through the hoist hatch in the sexton's house above. Wilts then shot the men, but they remained where they were and threatened Wilts with knives before leaving. His statement was probably an attempt to save his own skin because he was in danger of ending up in a reformatory due to excessive drinking.

Molly houses and cruising areas

According to the court, the arrest of Gillis van Baaden exposed ‘the thread of a tangle of this Godlessness’. The court reports describe a network of sodomites who met in inns or molly houses. In Utrecht these were ‘De Wijnkrans’ (The Wine Wreath) near the Pauluspoort (on the border of the current Korte and Lange Nieuwstraat), ‘De levendige Dood‘ (The Lively Death) in the Korte Elisabethstraat, the ‘Kasteel van Vredenburg‘ (Castle of Vredenburg) on the corner of the Ganzenmarkt and the Minrebroederstraat and the molly house of Hendrick Coopman outside the Tolsteegpoort. In the latter pub there was said to have been a ‘separate Camertie’ [= small room] for men’ where ‘weak things were stiffened’.

Outside the molly houses, men met at 'cruising areas (cruysbanen)' in the open air such as the city ramparts, Janskerkhof, the 'Academy' (the cloister of the cathedral), the street behind the cathedral and near the ruins of the cathedral's central nave, which collapsed in 1674. Sodomites sometimes called each other 'cosine', 'cousin', 'aunt', 'miss' or 'niece'. Several researchers consider the existence of their own language, culture and networks to be the first traces of something like a modern 'gay identity'.

With a population of over 30,000, Utrecht was already one of the largest cities in the Netherlands at the time.

Persecution

The arrest of Van Baaden and Luyten was followed by a two-year prosecution on sodomites. The Utrecht court sentenced 18 men to death. In the basement of Hasenberg (now part of the city hall), they were tied to a pole and then strangled. The defendants - such as wine merchant Barend Blomsaet, who was probably the only one also tortured, and soldier Zacharias Wilsma - repeatedly revealed new names. This produced a list of 144 names that was shared with other courts and led to dozens of arrests and trials in other cities.

Evert van der Veen and Maurice van Lieshout