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This entire book is based on Naomi Wolf (an American liberal progressive feminist author, journalist, and former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton) misunderstanding a British legal term ("death recorded") which meant just the opposite of what she thought it did.
Naomi thought "death recorded" meant the person was executed, and proceeded to write a whole book about how so many people in Britain were executed for being homosexuals. She described case after case after case. Turns out not a single person was executed. 1/
In British courts, beginning in 1823, a sentence of "death recorded" meant that the judge was abstaining from voicing a sentence of capital punishment in cases where the judge foresaw that a royal pardon would be forthcoming if a proper death sentence were to be issued. 2/
In other words, "death recorded" was a death sentence in name only. In reality, it was the equivalent of a death sentence that is declared and commuted simultaneously. Naomi didn't understand that and wrote a book length thesis about something horrible that never happened. 3/x
So please note that books are not peer reviewed for accuracy before publication. Publishers and editors do some sanity checks for grammar, language appropriateness, and any content that is incorrect on the face of it, etc., but nobody does a deep-dive on factual accuracy.
