Definition
"And perversion of" is not a standalone legal term but a cross-reference fragment appearing in Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) as part of a cluster entry directing readers to related offenses. In context, it points toward legal concepts involving the unnatural or criminal misuse of sexual conduct — specifically sodomy, pederasty, and related offenses historically grouped under statutes criminalizing non-procreative or non-consensual sexual acts. The phrase functioned as a shorthand connector in 19th- and early 20th-century legal writing to signal that a defined act involved not merely a prohibited act but the corruption or misuse of a natural function.
As a research artifact, "and perversion of" is best understood as a classificatory signal rather than a defined term in its own right. It marked a category of offenses that legislatures and courts grouped together on moral grounds, linking them under the broader heading of crimes against nature or unnatural offenses.
Common Confusion
Modern researchers may encounter "and perversion of" in historical statutes, indictments, or legal encyclopedias and mistake it for a term with a precise technical definition. It does not have one. It was a rhetorical and organizational connector used in legal drafting to extend the reach of prohibitory language — a drafting convention rather than a term of art. Confusion also arises because "perversion" in 19th-century legal usage carried a specific moral-legal charge (the corruption of a natural faculty toward an unnatural end) that is largely absent from modern statutory language, which tends to define prohibited acts with specificity rather than relying on normative characterizations.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in 19th- and early 20th-century criminal law sources will encounter this phrase most often in two contexts: (1) statutory construction arguments where defense counsel challenged indictments for vagueness, and (2) cross-reference structures in legal dictionaries and encyclopedias where editors grouped morally proximate offenses without fully defining each.
The key navigational point is that "and perversion of" in historical sources almost always signals a cluster of offenses rather than a single crime. When tracing a historical indictment or statute that uses this language, researchers should follow the cross-references to sodomy, pederasty, and crimes against nature, since the underlying substantive law will be found there, not under any entry for "perversion" itself.
Corpus researchers should also note that the moral-legal vocabulary of "perversion" was borrowed from natural law theory and ecclesiastical law, which means that the same phrase may appear in very different doctrinal registers — criminal law, ecclesiastical proceedings, and civil commitment records — across the same time period.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) does not define "and perversion of" as an independent entry. The phrase appears only as a cross-reference marker, directing the reader to INSANITY, PEDERASTY, and SODOMY. This is consistent with the 19th-century editorial practice of grouping offenses by moral category rather than by doctrinal structure.
What is notable is what Black's does not do: it does not define the scope of "perversion" as a legal concept, leaving the term's reach to be inferred from the associated entries. This omission is itself historically significant. The vagueness was not accidental — legislatures and courts of the period deliberately used broad, morally charged language to preserve maximum prosecutorial flexibility, and dictionary editors reflected rather than resolved that vagueness.
No competing historical dictionary definition is available in the source material for direct comparison.
Jurisdictional Note
Because "and perversion of" was a drafting convention rather than a defined term, its legal significance varied substantially depending on how individual state legislatures incorporated similar language into their criminal codes. Some states defined crimes against nature by enumeration; others relied on precisely this kind of open-ended moral language. Researchers should treat any historical statute using this phrase as jurisdiction-specific and consult the applicable state's case law for interpretive gloss.