indecency". Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce his libido. He accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections. Much lesser-known individuals were also victims of the law and of violent crime perpetrated by their fellow countrymen. On 31 July 1950, in Rotherham, an English schoolteacher, Kenneth Crowe, aged 37, was found dead wearing his wife's clothes and a wig. He had approached a miner on his way home from the pub, who upon discovering Crowe was male, beat and strangled him. John Cooney was found not guilty of murder and sentenced to five years for manslaughter. In response to the violence and unfair treatment of gay men, the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was passed. It maintained the general prohibitions on buggery and indecency between men, but provided for a limited decriminalisation of homosexual acts where three conditions were fulfilled. Those conditions were that the act had to be consensual, take place in private and involve only people that had attained the age of 21. This was a higher age of consent than that for heterosexual acts, which was set at 16. Further, "in private" limited participation in an act to two people. This condition was interpreted strictly by the courts, which took it to exclude acts taking place in a room in a hotel, for example, and in private homes where a third person was present (even if that person was in a different room). The Sexual Offences Act 1967 extended only to England and Wales, and not to Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, where all homosexual behaviour remained illegal. 1989–1990: West London murders Towards the end of 1989 and the start of 1990, there were a series of unsolved murders in west London over a period of six months. In September 1989, Christopher Schliach, a barrister who was gay, was murdered in his home; he was stabbed more than 40 times. Three months later, Henry Bright, a hotelier who was gay, was also stabbed to death at his home. A month later, William Dalziel, a hotel porter who was gay, was found unconscious on a roadside in Acton, west London. He died from severe head injuries. Three months after this, actor Michael Boothe was murdered in west London (see below 2007 Met review). In July 1990, following these murders, hundreds