One subtext to the history of English legal handling of lesbianism is a rebuttal of any notion that laws and attitudes have historically moved in a consistent direction. It's particularly important to keep this in mind when writing historical fiction set before the 20th century. (This applies generally, but particularly in England.) There was a scene in the tv series Gentleman Jack where Anne Walker freaks out over the thought of legal prosecution for her relationship with Ann Lister. Perhaps it made dramatic sense as a contributing motivation for the character's ambivalence, but the simple fact is that threat she imagined did not exist. They faced social hazards, but there was no laws at that time under which anything they were doing as a couple could be prosecuted.
Derry, in diving deeply into the legal cases that can be identified, somewhat inadvertently makes this point. The contexts in which the law was applied were very specific and narrow anddid not address lesbianism itself as a "crime" -- only as a situation that perhaps left courts looking more closely for something else they could prosecute. Derry's main thesis is that the goal of laws around lesbianism was to keep it as invisible as possible, for which goal prosecution was counter-indicated. I'll touch back on this more in my overall comments when I've finished the book.
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