Edward Carpenter,

pioneering gay activist from Victorian England, was in touch with the nudist colony's founder, Charles Edward Gordon Crawford. All letters to Carpenter are

postmarked ‘Thana’.

England

rings

eyeglasses

The Swimming Hole, an 1885 oil painting by Thomas Eakins

India

Library

London

Ratnagiri

District

nudist colony

Government of India

All letters are addressed from Thana at the top right | The section from a letter in which Crawford mentions his time spent naked at Tulsi Lake

British Naturism

City

This was proved by four letters - copies of which are with Mumbai Mirror - written by the founder to Edward Carpenter, English socialist, philosopher and gay activist, between August 19, 1891 and June 5, 1892.A close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, Edward Carpenter was also a founding member of the Fabian Society, a leading Socialist think tank of its time. These letters prove that the commune functioned out of Matheran, the neighbourhood hill station, and Tulsi Lake, which supplies parched Mumbai with water even today.The club boasted of only three members: C.E.G. Crawford, an English widower, and Andrew and Kellogg Calderwood, the sons of a missionary. While one woman did express a desire to belong, she never gathered the gumption to engage with it.It is the club’s philosophical connect to the sepia-tinted beginnings of the queer movement in Victorianthat makes it even more exotic. Sample this correspondence between Crawford and Carpenter:“Andrew Calderwood and I were up at Matheran having two days’ holiday to spend naked from breakfast to evening. But that was only by shutting ourselves up tight in our room... Being indoors at our FNT meetings does not of course employ quite the same shutting up as it does in England.The room where we have “met” in this house is upstairs, lofty and spacious, and full of windows. In June, Andrew Calderwood and I had a grand day. We went away to a bungalow in the Tulsi Lake without servants and spent from dinner time Saturday till 5 pm Sunday in nature’s garb.Servants are the great difficulty, because they are everywhere. At Tulsi, where we were quite isolated, we were able to stroll about in the verandah and round the house. I am writing this in “uniform” and we have retired to a secluded room for the purpose of spending a few hours so.”The club required members to go stark naked, but accessories such asand false teeth were permitted.Carpenter, in his replies to Crawford, suggested that FNT develop women's branches, an idea the founder welcomed. However, one of the Calderwood brothers had issues with this since “he did not want to encourage timidity too much.” Women would have to wear their hair loose without ribbons, combs or hairpins. The use of rouge or powder was prohibited.The FNT required members to be plainspoken when discussing sexual taboos. Anyone could be admitted if nominated by two members. Despite the radical nature of the club, sectarian and political discussion was forbidden.C.E.G. Crawford's pedigree as a civil servant in Britishwas confirmed by the British's Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections in. “He does appear in a few editions of the India Office List.This was an annual list produced by the India Office that contains lists of officers and higher ranking civil service staff, including judges. In the 1894 edition, he is listed as a 3rd class Sessions Judge in,” cited a reference specialist.On Crawford's end, though, there was fear, and even a subdued guilt about this enterprise. “I am perhaps an abomination of desolation, being with these, my heretical views, one of those grave and revered elders known asand Sessions Judges. Hence my desire not to have my name blazed about,” he wrote to the queer icon, urging anonymity.It turns out that the trailblazing gay activist had travelled through India and Sri Lanka in 1890-91 and already knew of thisA manuscript of his book, From Adam's Peak to Elephanta: sketches in Ceylon and India, might have contained a mention of the Fellowship of the Naked Trust. “I am delighted with the extract from Notes in Ceylon and India. I think it is excellent and would make no change in it, except that I would ask that the words “officials even, strange as it may appear” should be omitted.You will think me unduly cautious but the, being the meanest of mankind, are quite capable of calling upon every official in the service, to disavow membership of any such society, should what you say attract any public attention, which I hope it may,” warned Crawford.The Fellowship of the Naked Trust was sadly a short-lived flash in the pan.In a year from its inception in 1891, Crawford remarried: during a vacation in Matheran, he found a woman, Florence Ethel Willis, who shared his democratic proclivities and was aware of his recreational ones. She however did not express the candour of his erstwhile (deceased) spouse.Speaking of his first wife, Crawford wrote: “Till I married I always supposed that shame or false modesty was so strong in clothed women…but to my surprise, when talking of being wrecked among savages and being forced to go stark naked like them, my wife said that that she would not mind a bit, every one about her being naked.”C.E.G. Crawford and Florence Ethel Willis tied the knot in August 1892, confirms Michael Farrar, an archivist at, England's leading nudist organisation. He was eventually transferred to Ratnagiri.From the other two members of The Fellowship of the Naked Trust, Kellogg Calderwood moved to Burma, but he did manage to take a photograph of himself in ""the uniform"" of the FNT. ""I have asked him if he can send you one. Kellogg is an amateur photographer, and I am a proud possessor of one of him, taken by himself in puris naturalibus,"" boasted Crawford in his letter to Carpenter.Andrew Calderwood eventually left the club, and was jobless for a while. ""His father was a missionary and he would not be one. He is one of the unemployed. India is no place for men without definite work. I think he is going to British Columbia in March. Meanwhile he is spending the cold weather with his mother and sister at Umballa,"" wrote Crawford.Crawford was planning a six-month sabbatical in 1893 to visit England, hoping to meet Carpenter, ""to making your acquaintance in the flesh."" This never happened: the founding father of naturism died on 4 May 1894, a fact confirmed by the 1895 edition of the India Office List at the British Library.As per the letters exchanged between Crawford and Carpenter, nudist colonies were also functional out of Vienna and Munich at around the same time. But despite their mention in these no written evidence of them exists.Clea Nellist and Benjamin Longden from SheffieldCouncil: Libraries, Archives and Information, SheffieldMichael Farrar from British Naturism, NorthamptonPaul Jokinen-Carter from The British Library, LondonEdward Carpenter (1844 -1929) was an English socialist, philosopher and gay activist. A close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, he was in touch with many luminaries of his time such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan and Mahatma Gandhi.Carpenter produced his most impassioned political writing to fight homophobia through the 1890s. His 1908 tome, The Intermediate Sex, became a seminal text for the LGBT struggle of the 20th century.Living in a gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both DH Lawrence and EM Forster. After a visit to the couple in Millthorpe in 1912, EM Forster was inspired to write his gay-themed novel, Maurice.Carpenter regarded marriage in England as enforced celibacy and a form of prostitution. He did not believe women would truly be emancipated until a Socialist society was properly established. He considered civilization a disease that human societies pass through.His antidote for this was Socialism, which he believed would also create a profound change in human consciousness. In this new stage of society, Carpenter theorized, mankind would return to an atavistic ecstasy: ""The meaning of the old religions will come back to him.On the high tops he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of the young moon."" (Civilization: Its Cause and Cure, 1889).Carpenter and his lover Merrill escaped scandal and arrest in the hostile social climate of Victorian England thanks to the seclusion afforded them; it was an isolation that also allowed Carpenter to practice nudism. He was an icon for the first generation of Labour politicians, having been a longstanding member of the Fabian Society, a leading Socialist think tank.