The coded passages had revealed her to be a lesbian, though that term was not in use and the ‘predilection’ barely recognised in Anne’s time.Ī dramatisation, however, is an interpretation not a documentary and though the TV drama was convincing it left me with several questions about the script. But years after her death, once the many volumes of her secret diary – some of its passages written in an obscure code – were discovered, and the code was cracked, she became famous. Miss Anne Lister of Shibden Hall near Halifax was known in her own time as an oddity and a woman to be reckoned with, not afraid to assert herself in unwomanly fashion in that patriarchal society. Because of their transgressive content, the diaries were repressed, and it wasn’t until almost a century later that the truth of what the code revealed had fully emerged, thanks to the pioneering work of local historians and academics.If you did not see the BBC TV series Gentleman Jack, scripted by award-winning writer Sally Wainwright, you missed an excellent dramatisation of the life of an extraordinary and most intriguing woman. I thank God for it.’Īnne’s secret code was first broken in the late 19th century by her descendent John Lister, alongside Arthur Burrell, a Bradford antiquarian. ‘How I can write in crypt all as it really is and throw off my mind and console myself. ‘What a comfort my journal is’, she wrote on the 29th April 1832.

The remainder of the densely-packed pages, detailing the public aspects of her day-to-day interactions, are written in heavily abbreviated English, or ‘plain hand’.Īs a way to freely process her innermost thoughts, Anne found her ability to write in code invaluable to the maintenance of her mental health.

Sex, menstruation, money, personal judgments about members of Halifax society, her digestive health - these are the things Anne wished to keep private. The secret code Anne developed – which she created from a mix of Greek letters, numbers and symbols – allowed her to write candidly about love affairs which would have been unthinkably transgressive to the society in which she lived.Īround a sixth of Anne’s diaries are written in code, which she referred to herself as ‘crypt hand’. Anne is probably best known for her lesbian relationships, which she recorded religiously and in tantalising detail. The diaries are startlingly intimate, too.

Gentleman Jack by Anne Choma