The Water Rats 2008

I have a collection of books depicting the work of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, a Victorian photographer who worked out of Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast. I love his scenes of working people - fishermen mending their nets,women gutting fish or winding wool.

His most famous photograph is called the The Water Rats. It shows a group of boys bathing naked by a boat with Whitby harbour framed in the background.

Funnily enough it would probably pass the rigorous identification test imposed by Cann Hall primary School in Clacton, Essex that published photographs of children in its newsletter with smiley faces blanking out the children's images.

None of the faces in the Sutcliffe photograph is clear enough for identification. That did not stop the Whitby clergy condemning Sutcliffe for "corruption of the young." Neither did it stop The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) from buying an imprint. Nor did it stop Sutcliffe making other images of naked boys: Sea Urchins and In Puris Naturalibus, where the boys can be identified.

I don't think it is too much of an exaggeration to suggest that were Sutcliffe alive and taking those pictures today, he would be prosecuted, locked up and have his name placed on the paedophiles' register. What a shame. What a sad world we live in when the behaviour of a perverted minority has imprisoned and debased the most natural reaction in the world - the joy of looking at children.