Ives was born at Frankfurt in Germany in 1867, the illegitimate son of Gordon Maynard Ives (1837–1907), an English army officer, and Jane Violet Tyler (1846–1936).[1] He was brought up by his paternal grandmother, Emma Ives, daughter of the 3rd Viscount Maynard, with whom he lived between Bentworth in Hampshire and the South of France. Ives met his birth mother only twice and had a fraught relationship with his father.
Ives was educated at home and at Magdalene College, Cambridge,[2] where he started to amass 45 volumes of scrapbooks (between 1892 and 1949). These scrapbooks consist of clippings on topics such as murders, punishments, freaks, theories of crime and punishment, transvestism, psychology of gender, homosexuality, cricket scores, and letters he wrote to newspapers. His interest in cricket led him to play a single first-class cricket match for the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1902.[3]
Ives was a member of the Humanitarian League, a radical advocacy group, which operated between 1891 and 1919.[4]
Ives met Oscar Wilde at the Authors' Club in London in 1892.[5] Ives was already working for the end of the “oppression” of homosexuals, what he called "the Cause." He hoped that Wilde would join "the Cause", but was disappointed.[6] In 1893, Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair, introduced Ives to several Oxford poets whom Ives also tried to recruit.[6]
The same year, Ives visited Edward Carpenter at Millthorpe. This marked the beginning of their friendship.
In 1911 Ives was living at 196 Adelaide Road, London. He employed his life-long friend James Goddard (born 1868 Bentworth, Hampshire) as his valet. Goddard's wife and children were also employed by Ives during their lifetimes.[9][10]
Ives also visited prisons across Europe and specialised in the study of penal methods, particularly those of England. He lectured and published books on the topic.
He died in 1950, aged 82, in London. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.[11] He expressed a wish in his will that "No Jewish or Christian Texts or Emblems shall be placed on my tomb."[12]
At his death in 1950, George Ives left a large archive covering his life and work between 1874 and 1949. The papers were bought in 1977 by the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. They have been divided into four sections as follows:
This section groups examples of Ives' published works, lectures, notes and samples of verse, both as typescripts and holographs. The topics represented include: prison reform, crime and punishment, historical views of sexuality, religion.
The bulk of the material consists of 122 volumes of diaries kept by Ives from the age of nineteen until about six months before his death at age eighty-two. Most of the diaries have daily entries for the period from 20 December 1886 to 16 November 1949. The view Ives provides in his diary of the life of an upper-middle class English homosexual from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century is of particular interest for understanding the homosexual movement in England during this time. The content varies from descriptive impressions of social events to detailed examinations of his friends and acquaintances, analyses of the treatment of criminals, and the workings of prisons. From volume thirteen on, Ives indexed his diaries, and he often used them when he was preparing for a lecture or other writings.
This section includes the rules and wax seal impressions for the Order of Chaeronea, along with a library catalogue for the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, and a scrapbook of reviews and loose clippings for three of Ives' books, Eros' Throne (1900), A History of Penal Methods (1914), and Obstacles to Human Progress (1939). There is also a galley proof of George Bernard Shaw's preface to English Prisons Today (1922), prior to alterations.
He was the model for Raffles, the fictional Victorian gentleman thief, according to Andrew Lycett.[13] Lycett says that the creator of Raffles, E. W. Hornung, "may not have understood this sexual side of Ives' character", but that Raffles "enjoys a remarkably intimate relationship with his sidekick Bunny Manders."
In the autumn of 1893, George Ives set up a secret male homosexual society. His diary entry for October stated that his time was, 'so full of plotting and planning'. The secret society was named the order of Chaeronea after the battle of the same name where the male lovers of the Sacred Band of Thebes were killed in 338 BC. The 'rules of purpose' stated that the order was, 'A theory of life', although its purpose was mostly political. Many of the members were gay men although some were lesbian women.
The 'service of Initiation' for the Order of Chaeronea still survives and contains the 'Vow that shall make you one of our number' :
That you will never vex or persecute lovers.
That all real love shall be to you as a sanctuary.
That all heart-love, legal and illegal, wise and unwise, happy and disastrous, shall yet be consecrate for that love's Holy Presence dwelt there.
Its unknown exactly how many people were a part of Ives's Order of Chaeronea as no membership lists survive and the members most likely referred to each other by initials if at all. However, at the Orders peak it most likely had perhaps two or three hundred members. Ives made sure that the order was kept secret and that it was kept vital, telling new members that, 'Thou art forbidden to mention who belongs to anybody outside it.' According to George Ives the order was not set up so that men could meet for sex, writing that sex 'is forbidden on duty.' He continued to say that, 'All flames are pure.' It is said that Oscar Wilde was an early recruit of the Order of Chaeronea, with Ives writing in his diary that 'Oscar Wilde's influence will be considerable, I think'.[14]
^It has been suggested that Ives' mother was an Austrian aristocrat or Violet Malortie, a Spanish-Jewish baroness (see British Sexological Society: An Inventory of Its Records at the Harry Ransom Center), but Tyler's name is recorded in the Frankfurt birth records (see Raimund Wolfert, "Ives, George Cecil", in Frankfurter Personenlexikononline). Tyler later married Karl von Malortie (1838–1899), a son of the Hannoverian theater director Hermann von Malortie (1807–1866) and his wife Karoline née von Bismarck-Bohlen (1819–1908).
^Weinbren, Dan (1994). "Against All Cruelty: The Humanitarian League, 1891-1919". History Workshop (38): 86–105. ISSN0309-2984. JSTOR4289320.
^Brand, Adolf; Browning, Oscar; Carpenter, Edward; Cazalett, William Marshall; Ellis, Havelock; Evans, Caroline A.; Gale, Norman; Hare, Augustus J. C. (Augustus John Cuthbert); Jones, Ernest. "George Cecil Ives: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
^Kaylor, Michael Matthew, ed. (2010). Lad's Love: An anthology of Uranian poetry and prose. Volume I: John Leslie Barford to Edward Cracroft Lefroy. Kansas City: Valancourt Books. p. lv.
^The 1911 Census lists James Goddard, his wife Sylvie Beatrice Goddard, daughters Adele Sylvie and Therese Adele, and son James Edwin Goddard all living at 196 Adelaide Road. James junior,age 18 in 1911, was chauffeur for Ives. He died during World War One. James Goddard, the valet and life long companion, died 24 Mar 1939 and is buried in Bentworth. His wife Sylvie died the following year on 8 March.
^The Man who created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Andrew Lycett pages 229–230 (2007, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London & Viking, New York) ISBN0-7432-7523-3
