PART ONE: LEWIS CARROLL THE PAEDOPHILE

A lot has been said and written about Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the author of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.  One thing no one seems able to agree on is whether he was the shy, beloved author of children’s books or a predator, preying on children and hiding in plain sight.  After going through the evidence, there’s no doubt in my mind that he was the latter.  Here was a man who managed to fool everyone about who he was, managed to molest children while posing as a serious don and clergyman, and went on to confess his misdeeds in coded language in his famous book.  I have read a lot about how the Victorian age was different from our own, and how he should not be judged by today’s standards, but all that is nonsense, much like the nonsense he wrote.  Predators existed even in Victorian times, and just like today, they blended into society so convincingly that they could commit their crimes unnoticed for years.  That’s what Lewis Carroll did. 

Let’s look at the evidence.

1. He liked children – but not little boys

The first and most obvious clue about his true nature is the fact that he supposedly loved children, except boys.  This outrageous idea should make it obvious to everyone that his love for children was not genuine.  If he found children innocent and adorable, then logically, he should have loved all children, not just little girls.  The fact that he tirelessly looked for little girls everywhere he went, and lured them with games and puzzles – much like predators today lure children with sweets and ice-cream – tells us that he was not an innocent lover of children but a shameless predator.  Not only did he love little girls, but he also photographed them nude.  Why would anyone think of this as innocent?  The defence usually given about this behaviour is that it was common in Victorian times to photograph children in the nude, and in fact, other photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron did the same.  I’m quite sure that Julia Margaret Cameron did not walk around with little gifts to lure children to be photographed.  This is the behaviour of a predator.  Even in Victorian times, Carroll’s obsession with photographing young girls was problematic, which led to his abandoning photography in 1880.

2. Rift with the Liddell family

When Alice was 11 years old in 1863, a rift occurred between Lewis Carroll and the Liddell family.  Lewis Carroll was briefly suspended from Oxford before returning a short while later.  While his relationship with the parents was restored later, it was never the same, and he was never allowed near the children again.  We do not know exactly what happened to cause the rift, because the diary pages during this period (June 27–29, 1863) were cut out.  Many theories have been put forward about what could have happened, but the one clear thing is that his relationship with the Liddell family changed after that.  The parents maintained their relationship with Carroll to save face, but they must have discovered something serious enough to cause them to ban him from seeing the children.  A relative of Dodgson later inserted a note indicating that the missing diary pages were about a rumour regarding Dodgson’s possible interest in either the governess or Lorina.  To me, this doesn’t explain why Dodgson was suspended and why he was never allowed to see the children again.  The logical conclusion is that he was found out and banished, and the incident was kept quiet to protect the reputations of the girls and of the University.

3. Missing diaries

Dodgson’s diaries between April 1858 and May 1862 went missing sometime after his death.  The family claimed that the diaries were lost during a move, but this is not a convincing explanation.  Why this specific period? What were they trying to hide?  The period corresponds to when Alice was 6 to 10 years old.  What did Dodgson confess to that was so egregious that his family chose to destroy the evidence rather than allow it to fall into the wrong hands?  It must have been serious enough for such a drastic action to be taken, given how famous Dodgson was.  Logically, the family would have wanted to keep his diaries for future reference, maybe for biographies or just a record of his life.  Why did the family remain mum over the years, refusing to give interviews?  What was the sin that Dodgson continually referred to in his diaries when he said he was a ‘vile and worthless man’?  Is it possible he was referring to the fact that he was a paedophile?

4. Isa Bowman

Isa Bowman was one of Dodgson’s ‘child friends’ (aka victims).  In 1899, after his death, she wrote a short memoir about him.  In it, she gives an incident in which Dodgson “kissed her passionately” when she was about 10 or 11 years old.  If we are to assume that this is how he treated his child friends, then it’s clear that his relationships were anything but platonic.  He used to holiday with Isa in Eastbourne, and she “was always at Oxford”, where she would visit him and stay outside Oxford, then spend her days with him.  Clearly, he had unrestricted access to her, which meant that he could do whatever he wanted.  It’s not clear why this damning evidence has always been ignored.  Instead, a fiction was created in which they met for the first time on 27 September 1887 when Isa was 13 years old, which directly contradicts what she says in her memoir.  It appears that there are people out there who are so determined to protect Carroll’s image that they are ready to dismiss a clear indictment by one of his child friends.  They then went on to say that none of his child friends had ever said anything negative about him, but the one person who did was immediately dismissed. Also, why would anyone want to confess to being molested by Carroll, given how society, even today, always protects the perpetrators, especially if they are powerful?  Why would anyone want to risk damaging their reputation?

5. Full frontal nude photograph of Lorina Liddell

A few years ago, a BBC documentary claimed that a full-frontal nude image of Lorina Liddell had been unearthed, attributed to Lewis Carroll.  The photograph was found in a museum in France.  The BBC went to great pains to verify that the photograph was of Lorina Liddell, and they concluded that it was indeed her.  The photograph was the right age and used the same technique that Lewis Carroll used in his photography.  The documentary was viciously attacked by defenders of Lewis Carroll, and the BBC was forced to stop airing it any further.  But the damage was already done, for those who cared to listen.  The photograph could only have been taken by Dodgson, which should be obvious to anyone who is not biased.  This tells us that his interest in children was not innocent.

6. Confession in Alice in Wonderland

There has always been some controversy about Alice in Wonderland, leading to the book being banned in certain parts of the world.  Apparently, the book is not as innocent as it appears, and in fact is not a children’s book at all.  Consider this passage.

“Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate, it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders.”

Do you see it?  A curtain with a little door behind it.  A small passage not much larger than a rat-hole.  The loveliest garden you ever saw.  Alice (Lewis Carroll) expressing frustration at not being able to fit through the door.  If this isn’t a coded description of a paedophile’s frustration at not being able to access a young girl’s private parts, I don’t know what is. And please remember, in the book, after much effort Alice (Lewis Carroll) is eventually able to enter through the door. What does that tell you? And this isn’t the only sexual innuendo in the book.  The book is so full of sexual innuendo that it was banned in the US in the1900s. 

7. Alice in Wonderland is popular with paedophiles

Society may have refused to acknowledge what Alice in Wonderland was really about, but paedophiles certainly didn’t.  They knew full well what the book was talking about, which is why Wonderland Club, an international online network of paedophiles involved in the production, distribution, and live-streaming of child sexual abuse material, existed between 1995 and 1998.  The club, named after Alice in Wonderland, facilitated the trafficking of children through the creation and exchange of over 750,000 images and 1,800 videos of abuse.  On 2 September 1998, 104 suspects were arrested worldwide.  The case prompted significant legal reforms in the UK, including the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which increased maximum penalties for child sexual offences to 10 years (which, in my opinion, is still too lenient.  It should be life in prison surely, for such crimes.)

Conclusion

We live in a world where predators are protected while victims are punished.  Just look at the Jeffrey Epstein saga.  After the release of millions of files, with multiple mentions of perpetrators, no one has been arrested.  Despite direct witness testimony of criminal activity, including abuse of minors, nothing has happened.  The perpetrators continue to walk free, while the victims are re-victimised and endangered through the release of their unredacted information.  That is the world we live in.  It should therefore not surprise anyone that Lewis Carroll has been vigorously defended, and his open paedophilia denied.  We live in a world where people like Jimmy Savile can operate openly, without consequences.  Lewis Carroll was a predator, and the world protects his reputation because that’s what it does.  In his hubris, Lewis Carroll went ahead and told us what he was doing in Alice in Wonderland, almost as if he was telling us to ‘Catch me if you can.’

(Part two of the series to follow)