Hordes of Lesbians Descending Upon Halifax: Fan Tourism, Identity and Pilgrimage

Gentleman Jack (2019-2022) is a historical drama created by Sally Wainwright and co-produced by BBC and HBO. Set in the 1830s, the series is based on the life of lesbian landowner and industrialist Anne Lister who lived at Shibden Hall near Halifax. The series takes its name from the derogatory epithet given to Lister by tenants and neighbours who ridiculed her appearance – she dressed entirely in black, which was normal for men at the time, rather than the pastel dresses worn by women – and sexuality. Lister defied expectations, becoming the first woman to be elected to the committee of the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society, opening and owning a colliery, and travelling extensively throughout Europe and beyond. Lister kept a series of diaries throughout her life, many of which were written in a secret code as they recounted the range of lesbian relationships she had. The diaries were deciphered in the 1930s by one of Lister’s descendants, John Lister, and his friend, Arthur Burrell. On discovering what the code actually said, Burrell advised Lister to burn the diaries. Lister did not, but he did hide them behind a panel at Shibden Hall. Although various books and programmes have been written about Lister, including Helena Whitbread’s two books on the diaries, published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jill Liddington’s 1994 biography, and a 2002 radio play for BBC Radio 4, it wasn’t really until Gentleman Jack that her story became more well-known and fans began flocking to Halifax.

Calderdale Council reported on the impact of season one of the show, highlighting income for museums, local businesses, hotels, events and attractions (including a 40% increase in visitors over to Halifax Minster over the summer period (500 to 700 in a week) and a celebration of diversity. American author Janet Lea carried out research into “the Gentleman Jack effect”, receiving survey responses from over 500 women in 48 countries who talked about the impact of the show on their own self-perceptions, behaviours, and attitudes. 20% of those who responded to the questionnaire had already been to Shibden and 62% were planning to visit in the future. The emotional impact of the show, and its real-life locations, was evident when I visited Halifax.

I travelled to the market town for the 2023 Anne Lister Birthday Week, a celebration of the life of Anne Lister (and her wife, Ann Walker). The Anne Lister Birthday Week (ALBW) was created by American fan Pat Esgate after she saw Gentleman Jack in 2019. She visited Halifax for a weekend before returning a couple of weeks later to attend the Anne Lister Weekend (organised by Calderdale Council), which took place following the season one finale. The Anne Lister Weekend included an exhibition of costumers worn by the cast, talks about Anne Lister’s life, and a tour of Halifax Minster where she was buried. Pat was inspired by her second visit, writing: 

“That visit was even more amazing. Sitting in the Minster, surrounded by women every bit as inspired as me, hearing Helena Whitbread and Jill Liddington speak of the life of the real Anne Lister, was positively transformative. I felt seen, and heard, and understood in a way I’d never experienced in my life. And from what I saw in the tear-streaked faces of the rest of the audience, I wasn’t the only one who was having that moment.”

The following month, she reached out to some of those involved in the Anne Lister Weekend and arranged a four-day event to take place in April 2020, including talks, tours, and visits. Of course, Covid put a spanner in the works, and the 2020 in-person event was postponed (eventually taking place over a week in April 2022). Many of those who attended the 2023 event were returners, having visited in 2022. For many it seemed like the visit was not only a form of screen tourism – during the two tours to York tours we were shown clips from Gentleman Jack while standing in the real-life filming locations – but also a sort of pilgrimage. I interviewed a representative from Calderdale Council prior to visiting Halifax who said:  

“women go to the Minster to sit and so on. So yeah, I mean they are pilgrims. They want to go to Halifax because they want to see where she lived and they want to, you know, walk where she was. I mean, you can literally walk from Shibden over Beacon Hill, you can drop down into town, and you can walk the streets that she used to walk. And that is just, you know, really, really powerful. You can walk in her footsteps so you can be a pilgrim and you can do it because that’s what she did. But you can also do it and, you know, sort of almost say thank you to her for that.”

This idea of pilgrimage has also been suggested by ALBW’s founder Pat Esgate, referring to Halifax as a “Lourdes for lesbians”, and this certainly seemed evident during ALBW 2023.

An evening event in Halifax Minster Estate discussed the impact that Lister has had on Helena Whitbread, Jill Liddington, and series consultant Anne Choma before opening it up to the floor. The Minster was packed with attendees, mostly women, mostly lesbians, who shared their experiences. Many of the stories were similar – these were mainly older women who had grown up believing there was something wrong with them for their attraction to women; they had attempted to live ‘normal’ (read: heteronormative) lives, sometimes marrying and having children; they had been deeply unhappy. But after watching Gentleman Jack they had learned – or realised – that there was nothing wrong with them; and if Lister could accept and embrace who she was 200 years ago, there was no reason why they couldn’t now.

These stories were incredibly emotionally affective and spoke to the impact that a text can have on people as well as the importance of travelling to a location in order to connect with a history, a community, or oneself. While Shibden Hall has seen increasing visitor numbers, the Holy Trinity Church in York has also embraced Lister, displaying a rainbow plaque (commissioned in 2018) to mark Lister and Ann Walker taking the sacrament (which they saw as committing to each other for life) on Easter 1834. The church was a location on one of the tours I attended, and while no one knows which pew the two Ann(e)s sat in, several of my fellow tourists sat in the pew which was used in Gentleman Jack. Of course, Gentleman Jack is a dramatized account, while Lister was a very real woman. But for many ALBW attendees, their introduction to Lister came through the show, and the two are deeply intertwined. Visiting locations used for filming, many of which are places Lister would have known and visited during her life, enabled fans to get closer to the real woman and connect with “the first modern lesbian”.

This research was funded by the University of York.

Biography

Bethan Jones is a Research Fellow at the University of South Wales. She has written extensively about anti-fandom, media tourism and participatory cultures, and is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang) and the forthcoming Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom (under contract with University of Iowa Press). Bethan is on the board of the Fan Studies Network, co-chair of the SCMS Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group co-editor of Popular Communication.