From the time of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria, those convicted of the "abominable
crime" of buggery
or sodomy were liable to be executed. In 1861 in England and 1889 in Scotland the maximum
penalty for
homosexual acts was changed to life imprisonment. In the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment
Act, acts of "gross
indecency" not amounting to buggery, hitherto not regarded as a crime, were made subject to
two years hard
labour: it was under this act that Oscar Wilde was prosecuted.