From the 1870s, social reformers began to defend homosexuality, but due to the controversial nature of their advocacy, kept their identities secret. A secret British society called the "Order of Chaeronea" campaigned for the legalization of homosexuality, and counted playwright Oscar Wilde among its members in the last decades of the 19th century. The society was founded by George Cecil Ives, one of the earliest gay rights campaigners, who had been working for the end of oppression of homosexuals, what he called the "Cause". Ives met Wilde at the Authors' Club in London in 1892. Wilde was taken by his boyish looks and persuaded him to shave off his moustache, and once kissed him passionately in the Travellers' Club. In 1893, Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair, introduced Ives to several Oxford poets whom Ives also tried to recruit. In 1897, Ives created and founded the first homosexual rights group, the Order of Chaeronea. Members included Charles Kains Jackson, Samuel Elsworth Cottam, Montague Summers, and John Gambril Nicholson.