Eastern State Penitentiary recently added a new stop detailing the lives of LGBTQ inmates in the prison to its audio tour.
The addition is the culmination of the efforts of Eastern State’s Manager of Research and Public Programming Annie Anderson to find records of inmates who may have identified as LGBTQ. However, finding LGBTQ people in historical documents can be difficult. Gay identity as it is now understood did not exist in the 19th century, and many people did not publicly identify as LGBTQ in the early 20th century.
Anderson based her research on prison records documenting arrests for sodomy, which was often used to criminalize consensual same-sex activities. In total, she discovered over 400 individuals who were incarcerated at Eastern State for sodomy. While the prison records are a rich resource for early LGBTQ life in Philadelphia, Anderson described this as “bittersweet.”
The new stop is a permanent addition to the institution’s audio-visual tour and is accompanied by a small interpretive panel. Anderson told Philadelphia Gay News that she hopes that this effort will expand the interpretation of LGBTQ people at Eastern State Penitentiary.