Where does that come from

column

where does that come from ?

A regular column that examines the history and origins of a particular medical

topic. By Dr Jim Leavesley.

An obscene history of birth control advice

One of the better known one-liners in medical history

occurred in 1960 during the trial of Regina v. Penguin

Books. Under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, the

prosecutor alleged that Penguin Books had published an

unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence’s famous book

Lady Chatterley’s Lover . The prosecuting counsel, Mr

Mervyn Griffith-Jones QC, artlessly asked the jury if this

‘was the kind of book you would wish your wife or servants

to read?’ His query belonged to a bygone era of tales of

fallen women and Dickensian households. The question

may have held some weight in 1877 at another, not

dissimilar trial, which involved an obscene publication.

zeal, mainly to challenge the then-current laws regarding

obscenity which threatened doctors who wrote about

sexual health.

The desired and foreseen heavy-handed effect

was immediate. The publishers were brought to trial

before the exalted presence of the Lord Chief Justice of

England himself. Even the prosecution was lead by

the government’s Solicitor General. The accused con-

ducted their own defence, a risky exercise on such a

stage, but intended to gain a highly visible and widely

publicised platform.

Besant was born Annie Wood and, though assertive

and feisty, had received a strict religious upbringing.

Surprisingly she married a shy clergyman, Frank Besant.

They were ill matched from the start, and her reactionary

disposition led to separation and to her abandoning the

church and embracing atheism. She took to writing

pamphlets attacking the religious hierarchy and it was while

attending a meeting of like-minded people that she met

Charles Bradlaugh.

At the time Bradlaugh was a high-profile leader of the

nation’s free-thinkers movement, editor of its journal, The

National Reformer , an impassioned speaker, fervent

Republican and staunch follower of Thomas Malthus, who

predicted that population would out-run food supply. When

Bradlaugh met Besant he was separated from his wife and

children, but their attraction must have been on a cerebral

plane only because though Besant’s husband had her

followed, he could never prove adultery.

Fatefully, all this coincided with the prosecution of a

Bristol bookseller for displaying Knowlton’s 30-year-old

inflammatory book Fruits of Philosophy . He was found

guilty and given two years. As we have seen, Knowlton’s

book was identified with causes that Besant and Bradlaugh

held dear: population control and women’s rights. So,

determined to make a test case, they printed their own

sixpenny edition of the embattled book. Within 20 minutes

of hitting the shelf, 500 copies had been sold. To agitate

things further, Bradlaugh at once notified the police of their

action. Inexplicably it was six weeks before they were

arrested, by which time 13,300 copies had been sold.

What was that earlier tabloid titillator trial all

about then?

The affair started in 1832 when a Dr Charles Knowlton, a

militant free-thinker from Massachusetts, published his

book Fruits of Philosophy: or The Private Companion of

Young Married People . Though fairly innocuously titled, it

was in fact the first popular tract on birth control to be

written by a physician. It contained nothing salacious and

was from a respectable source, but nonetheless the author

was prosecuted under the State’s obscenity statute.

The publication was only 40 pages long and comprised

four chapters, but it was the last two, ‘Of Promoting and

Checking Conception’ and ‘Remarks on the Reproductive

Instinct’, which were considered controversial, if not

inflammatory. Withdrawal, condoms or vaginal sponges

attached to ribbons were recommended in the first of the

two controversial chapters, while a desire ‘controlled by

reason and chastened by good feelings’ combined with

‘restraint shown until 18 in females and 20 in males for their

health’s sake’, caused contention in the second. While it

might seem fairly innocuous now, it earned Knowlton three

months hard labour.

The case would have passed into well-deserved

obscurity had not a free-thinking English couple, Annie

Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, republished it in London in

1876. Costing sixpence (or 5 cents) it was well within the

scope of all to buy, including hormone-driven lads and

lasses about town. It was released in a bout of missionary

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Eventually the trial was set for June 1877 before Lord

Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn. The charge was for

‘wickedly, knowingly.... to publish and utter.... a certain

indecent, lewd, filthy, bawdy and obscene book.... thereby

vitiating and corrupting morals’. They don’t write such

powerful arraignments nowadays, more’s the pity.

Obscenity as then defined was ‘to deprave and corrupt

those whose minds are open to such immoral influences

and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall’.

To save himself the embarrassment of reading bits out

and so perhaps corrupting his own seemingly undefiled

mind, the Solicitor General furnished each juror with a copy.

Presumably he did not mind tarnishing 12 other

supposedly unsullied minds.

However, the judge was not to be put off and the

mortified lawyer was later to express his pain at having

been instructed to actually read the inflammatory stuff. It

was recounting the signs of pregnancy which most

troubled him. He averred it was designed to deprave the

minds of young people and possibly gratify their passions.

For the next three days a fervent Besant cited school

books that contained illustrations of genitalia, adding

explicit passages from Shakespeare, Sterne and even the

Bible. Her well-researched presentation was actually

commended by the judge and applauded by her followers.

Bradlaugh argued that sexual knowledge was essential

to limit population growth and increase marital happiness.

Another speaker, a female medical student (in 1877 she

must have been one of the very first) dilated on the effects

of grinding poverty on the lives of people with large families.

A Dr Drysdale provided light relief with views regarding the

dubious worth of lactation and coitus interruptus as

preventative measures.

The judge gave what was regarded as a favourable

summing up of the case. However the jury, steeped in

Victorian conservatism, concluded the book was patently

meant to deprave, but generously exonerated the defend-

ants from any corrupt motives. A bemused Cockburn said

that amounted to guilt and sentenced both to six months

and a fine of £200.

Common sense prevailed in the end and the defendants

were released on appeal, which was won on a technicality –

that the prosecution had not ‘expressly set out their case’.

Bradlaugh became a Member of Parliament, though

prevented from sitting for five years because he would only

affirm and not take the oath. Where was common sense

then? He died in 1891.

Annie became a close associate of author George

Bernard Shaw, took up mysticism and in 1907 became

president of the Theosophical Society. She later moved to

India, convinced that she had been there in a previous

incarnation, and died in 1933 aged 86.

Whatever one’s views about these two odd enthusiasts,

they hold an important place not just in the history

of medicine, but in women’s rights and free speech

itself. acsm

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