Shining a Light on The North East’s LGBT+ History

Anne Lister was an internationally famous diarist who lived near Halifax but travelled to the North East regularly throughout her life.

Her diaries, which record the details of a number of relationships with women, provide a window into everyday experiences of the North East in the early 1800s. We have objects from Anne’s home, Shibden Hall in our collection, brought into the museum by our founder, Frank Atkinson.

Born into a poor family as Robert Coulthard, much of Jenny’s life remains hidden history. Living at times in Gateshead, North Shields, South Shields and Hartlepool, Jenny became national news in the early twentieth century, when she refused to be shamed by local magistrates for living as a woman.

Born in Hartlepool, Ivor later moved to London where he became the first Black person to obtain a position in the Colonial Office in 1941. He later became Secretary to the Advisory Committee on the Welfare of Colonial People in the United Kingdom and achieved and OBE at a time when very few people of colour were recognised with this title.

Ivor was part of an active, underground gay community in London in the 1930s and 1940s at a time when sex acts between men were criminalised. Ivor’s work advocating for immigrant workers earned him the nickname “the gay father of the Windrush generation”.

Councillor Sam Green is believed to have become the first openly gay politician elected in the UK when he was elected to the now-abolished Durham City Council in 1972.

Sam was a member of the Gay Liberation Front and a local psychiatric nurse, elected for the Liberal Party representing the Crossgate ward.

In 2025, a blue plaque was installed at his childhood home in Durham City, I attended the unveiling of the plaque with the museum’s Chair, Chris Loughran.