Gerald Haxton

Frederick Gerald Haxton (1892–1944), a native of San Francisco, was the long term secretary and lover of novelist and playwright W. Somerset Maugham.

He and Maugham met at the outbreak of World War I when they both began serving as part of a Red Cross ambulance unit in French Flanders.

Maugham, and to a lesser extent Haxton, had been affected by the trial of Oscar Wilde. Common to men who were either homosexual or in the case of Maugham who had sexual relationships with both men and women, (Maugham had had an affair with the actress Sue Jones before meeting Haxton and later had a child with Syrie Wellcome whom he married) neither spoke of their situation for fear of recrimination.

However in November 1915 Haxton and another man, John Lindsell, were arrested in a Covent Garden hotel in London and charged with gross indecency. Military policemen, whilst looking for deserters, had burst into the hotel room of Haxton and Lindsell to find them committing a homosexual act that was not buggery. On December 7 that same year both men were indicted under the same law that had been used to prosecute Oscar Wilde. However, unlike Wilde, when the two men appeared in the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey on December 10 they were both acquitted.

Haxton left England shortly thereafter.

After touring the South Pacific islands, Haxton was aboard the Hitachi Maru en route to South Africa when the ship was captured by the German raider SMS Wolf in September, 1917. Haxton was a prisoner aboard the Wolf until February, 1918 when the Wolf returned to Germany and he was transferred to a German prison camp. He was reunited with Maugham in 1919.

On attempting to return in February 1919 he was deported from Britain as an undesirable alien and was never allowed to enter the country again. The papers providing reason or reasons for this deportation were placed in a special access category for 100 years and are still closed from the public view.

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