"I say that this is a dirty, filthy book, and the test of it is
that no human being would allow that book on his table, no decently
educated English husband would allow even his wife to have it...."
Such was the uncompromising pronouncement of Sir Hardinge Gifford,
Her Majesty's Solicitor General, who in 1877 prosecuted Charles
Bradlaugh and Annie Besant for publishing Dr. Charles Knowlton's
Fruits of Philosophy.
Knowlton's work was the first American medical handbook on
contraception. It had become an incredibly popular book among
Britons who believed the neo-Malthusian dictum that the only
solution to poverty in Britain was a limit on the growth of its
population. They saw effective birth control measures as a way to
make such a limit practicable. In 1877, its publisher was hauled
into court and pleaded guilty to printing obscene material.
Bradlaugh and Besant tested the right of official harassment by
bringing out an edition of the Fruits of Philosophy that bore an
introduction explaining their motives. The pair was arrested and
charged with violating the Obscene Publications Act of 1857.
Their arrest, trial, conviction, and eventual acquittal
constitute a landmark in the history of the world birth control
movement. The enormous publicity accorded the principals and their
cause brought the subject of family planning into the homes of
nearly every Briton who read the newspapers' sensational coverage.
What followed thereafter is telling: a dramatic, steady decline in
the English birthrate. By their simple act of publishing Knowlton's
short book, Bradlaugh and Besant helped establish England's
pioneering role in the dissemination, democratization, and
implementation of birth controlinformation.
This volume contains the writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie
Besant on reproductive physiology and birth control and an account
of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial. Included also are two of Besant's
own pamphlets on birth control, and a comprehensive introductory
essay that establishes a context for understanding
neo-Malthusianism and the advocacy of birth control in
nineteenth-century England. One of a small handful of books that
helped stimulate a women's movement in the West, it will interest
sociologists and gender studies specialists as well as the general
reader interested in the history of birth control.
General
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