Montague Glover

Montague Charles Glover was a British freelance architect and private photographer born in 1898 in Leamington Spa.

He joined the Army in the Artists Rifles Regiment in 1916 and was promoted to Second Lieutenant in the Territorial Force in 1917. He was awarder the Military Cross for Bravery in 1918.

He is most notable for his depiction of homosexual life in London during the early to mid-20th Century through private photographs taken primarily for his own enjoyment. His photographs tend to document 'rough trade', the working class male prostitutes of the period, making distinctive note of the divisions of social class as depicted by dress. Many of his photographs also depict members of the military.

Glover is also notable for his depictions of his partnership with his lover, Ralph Hall, one of the very rare documented examples of a gay long-term relationship prior to the legalization of homosexuality in Britain in the 1960s. Hall, born in 1913, was a working class lad from the East End of London. The two met around 1930 and Glover employed him as his manservant, perhaps to provide a social alibi for two men living together. The relationship lasted for more than 50 years, surviving the Second World War during which Hall was drafted to the Royal Air Force.

Much of their latter years were spent at Glover's country house, 'Little Windovers', in the village of Balsall Heath near Coventry, where Glover's sister, Ellen, lived with them until her death in the mid-1950s. Glover himself died in 1983 at the age of 86 leaving Ralph Hall as his sole heir. Hall died four years later after suffering a gradual decline in health.

In his later years Glover was described by friends in Belsall Heath as "charming, if somwhat reserved", and Ralph as an "outgoing cheerful cockney" ^[1]

'Little Windovers' and Glover's possessions were put up for auction in 1988 by Hall's next of kin. One lot was a cupboard box that contained much of Glover's collection of negatives from photographs he had taken since serving in the trenches in the First World War, as well as journals, and letters and correspondence from his many lovers during the decades, including letters from Hall written during his air service in WW2. Much of the collection was published in a book in 1992 with text by James Gardiner; 'A Class Apart - The Private Pictures of Montague Glover' (ISBN 1852427280), and is a great insight into the underworld of gay British society in the early 20th Century.

Notes

1. ^ James Gardiner (1992). A Class Apart - The Private Pictures of Montague Glover. London ; New York : Serpent's Tail. pp. 136. 

External links

• Excerpt from 'A Class Apart' from walnet.org
• 'A Class Apart' at Amazon.co.uk