A Comm for Historymemes

1391 readers

589 users here now

A place to share history memes!

Rules:

No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
No fascism, atrocity denial, etc.
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
Follow all Lemmy.world rules.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

905

Alan Turing was a fucking hero, and the British legal system drove him to suicide (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

69 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Poor storage of laboratory chemicals is the alternative explanation. While plausible, suicide seems more likely to my eyes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The story is at least semi-plausible, but Turing also still had friends in the right places (not enough to dig him out of the hole he got himself into with the local plod*) and there was a strong social taboo around suicide.

(* At the time there was good reason to believe that the end of the outlawing of homosexuality was just around the corner, so offering a genuine explanation was not necessarily Turing acting as such a naif as is often portrayed.)