Besant, decided to resist, by setting up the Free Thought Publishing Company to provoke a test case. In 1877 they republished the book in a new, cheap edition, and told the police what they were doing. To provide some sort of moral context, the age of consent in Britain at the time was 13 and was onlyraised to 16 in 1885 – and then after fierce resistance. Incest was only made illegal in Britain in 1908.
The case of Regina v Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant proved a lengthy business. They were charged with publishing material that was ‘likely to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to immoral influences’ and were initially sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The pair won their appeal against conviction in the High Court, but the greater victory was the PR coup that the pair had managed to pull off: their case threw birth control ‘on to the breakfast tables of the English middle classes’, said one observer.
Sales of The Fruits of Philosophy shot up from fewer than 1,000 a year to more than 100,000 in the three months preceding the trial and they remained high afterwards. Besant became a contraceptive celebrity and wrote her own book, The Law of Population. Besant had personal reasons to publicize birth control – she had been brought up poor and married young, at 19, to an Anglican clergyman. By 23, she was the mother of two and feeling trapped. She’d had enough of her husband’s preaching and refused to go to communion, so he threw her out of the marital home. Then she joined the anti-Church National Secular Society, met Bradlaugh and they began an affair. Early editions of her book followed Carlile’s example and recommended the sponge; later ones promoted two new methods – the Dutch cap and soluble pessaries. The manufacture of spermicides, condoms and caps grew rapidly.
But even after the Bradlaugh trial, prosecutions continued against contraceptive guides. In 1878, Edward Truelove, a 67-year-old rationalist publisher, got four months’ jail for publishing Robert Dale Owen’s Moral Physiology. And in 1892, a Newcastle phrenologist received a sentence of one month’s hard labour for selling H.H. Allbutt’s 1886 The Wife’s Handbook: how a woman should order herself during pregnancy with hints on other matters of importance, necessary to be known by married women. The work, a big hit in America, contained a four-page review of contraceptive methods, including: ‘coughing (unreliable), coitus interruptus (hurtful to the nervous system in many persons) and condoms (a very certain check)’. Dr Allbutt had been struck off from the British medical register in 1887 – for selling the book at ‘such a low price’, rather than for writing abject nonsense.
Both Bradlaugh and Besant later moved into politics – Bradlaugh was elected Britain’s first freethinker MP in 1880 but steadfastly refused to take the Commons’ Christian oath and so was repeatedly expelled. Besant helped the match-girls at Bryant & May to organize a union to fight against their dreadful working conditions. Subsequently she became a religious mystic, joining Madame Blavatsky’s Eastern-occult based Theosophist movement and moving to India in 1880. There, she met 13-year-old Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she decided was the reincarnation of Buddha, and took him on a two-year tour of England and America to proclaim him to the world as a new messiah. Krishnamurti latersaid it was a case of mistaken identity. Besant also collaborated with Indian independence agitators, became president of the Indian Home Rule League and was interned by the British during the First World War. She died in India in 1933, but her name lives on – one of Bombay’s main thoroughfares is called after her.
----
Honeymoon Bliss
It’s an investment
Eustace Chesser, Love Without Fear (1942)
The groom who is considerate and patient on his wedding night will be repaid a thousand times in years to come.
Control your propensities
John Harvey
The case of Regina v Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant proved a lengthy business. They were charged with publishing material that was ‘likely to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to immoral influences’ and were initially sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. The pair won their appeal against conviction in the High Court, but the greater victory was the PR coup that the pair had managed to pull off: their case threw birth control ‘on to the breakfast tables of the English middle classes’, said one observer.
Sales of The Fruits of Philosophy shot up from fewer than 1,000 a year to more than 100,000 in the three months preceding the trial and they remained high afterwards. Besant became a contraceptive celebrity and wrote her own book, The Law of Population. Besant had personal reasons to publicize birth control – she had been brought up poor and married young, at 19, to an Anglican clergyman. By 23, she was the mother of two and feeling trapped. She’d had enough of her husband’s preaching and refused to go to communion, so he threw her out of the marital home. Then she joined the anti-Church National Secular Society, met Bradlaugh and they began an affair. Early editions of her book followed Carlile’s example and recommended the sponge; later ones promoted two new methods – the Dutch cap and soluble pessaries. The manufacture of spermicides, condoms and caps grew rapidly.
But even after the Bradlaugh trial, prosecutions continued against contraceptive guides. In 1878, Edward Truelove, a 67-year-old rationalist publisher, got four months’ jail for publishing Robert Dale Owen’s Moral Physiology. And in 1892, a Newcastle phrenologist received a sentence of one month’s hard labour for selling H.H. Allbutt’s 1886 The Wife’s Handbook: how a woman should order herself during pregnancy with hints on other matters of importance, necessary to be known by married women. The work, a big hit in America, contained a four-page review of contraceptive methods, including: ‘coughing (unreliable), coitus interruptus (hurtful to the nervous system in many persons) and condoms (a very certain check)’. Dr Allbutt had been struck off from the British medical register in 1887 – for selling the book at ‘such a low price’, rather than for writing abject nonsense.
Both Bradlaugh and Besant later moved into politics – Bradlaugh was elected Britain’s first freethinker MP in 1880 but steadfastly refused to take the Commons’ Christian oath and so was repeatedly expelled. Besant helped the match-girls at Bryant & May to organize a union to fight against their dreadful working conditions. Subsequently she became a religious mystic, joining Madame Blavatsky’s Eastern-occult based Theosophist movement and moving to India in 1880. There, she met 13-year-old Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she decided was the reincarnation of Buddha, and took him on a two-year tour of England and America to proclaim him to the world as a new messiah. Krishnamurti latersaid it was a case of mistaken identity. Besant also collaborated with Indian independence agitators, became president of the Indian Home Rule League and was interned by the British during the First World War. She died in India in 1933, but her name lives on – one of Bombay’s main thoroughfares is called after her.
----
Honeymoon Bliss
It’s an investment
Eustace Chesser, Love Without Fear (1942)
The groom who is considerate and patient on his wedding night will be repaid a thousand times in years to come.
Control your propensities
John Harvey
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