Maud Allan

Biography

Maud Allan was a Canadian dancer, chiefly noted for her dance scene Vision of Salome, in which she garnered great attention by performing topless. During World War I, she sued the British MP Noel Pemberton Billing for libel after he alleged that she was a lesbian and that German agents were using her sexual orientation as grounds to blackmail her into spying on the British government. Her lawsuit was unsuccessful. The trial also resurrected public disapproval of Oscar Wilde, whose own failed libel suit had led to his arrest, conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency two decades earlier.