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NOTES

In 1877 Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh were prosecuted on a charge of obscenity for their re-publication of a pamphlet on birth control called: The Fruits of Philosophy. A century or so later attitudes had, of course, change but not significantly so. It was, for instance, as recently as 1960 that Penguin Books were prosecuted for their intended publication of Lady Chatterly’s Lover - in an unexpurgated cheap edition at a proposed price of 3s-6d. An action that produced, from counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Griffith-Jones, that now well thumbed remark:

‘Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters - because girls can read as well as boys - reading this book? Is it a book you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?’

[Rolph (Ed.), 1961, p. ]

To which incident Richard Boston refers to as 'when Griffith-Jones scored his classic own goal'. [Boston, 1990, Guardian, June 28, p. 22.]

Albeit a book that the BBC subsequent felt able to broadcast an adaptation for in fifteen parts in its series: 'A Book at Bedtime' starting on January 1 1990.

Annie Besant (1847-1933) was born in London, and privately educated. She dedicated herself in large measure to theosophy but was also interested in socialism and the free-thought movements, and wrote pamphlets defending them. In her later life she became a nationalist leader in India. [From Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia.]

Charles Bradlaugh (1833-91) was an English freethinker and reformer who lectured under name of "Iconoclast." He edited the National Reformer (1860); prosecuted (1877) with Mrs. Annie Besant for republishing birth-control pamphlet Fruits of Philosophy. Associated with Mrs. Besant' s work (1874-85). He was elected to Parkliament in 1880 but was refused admission because he wished to asserted his right to affirm instead of swearing on the Bible. He was re-elected but each year there after he was excluded by the House. He was finally admitted to Parliament in 1886. He championed bill permitting members to affirm, which became law (1888). [Webster's Biographical Dictionary.]

Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1880-1958) was an English paleobotanist who subsequently became a birth-control advocate, and an extremely influential writer on sex education. In 1921 she founded the Mother's Clinic for Constructive Birth Control along with her second husband' Humphrey V. Roe. She was also an advocate of eugenics. Her publications include: Married Love (1918), Wise Parenthood (1918), Contraception: its Theory, History and Practice (1923), Sex and the Young (1926), Enduring Passion (1928), and Sex and Religion (1929).

Margaret Louise Sanger (1879-1966) was the American founder of birth control movement. She was a trained nurse by profession and went onto to found a magazine on birth control: The Woman Rebel (1914). For this she was indicted in 1915 for sending birth control information through the post. She also founded in Brooklyn in 1916 America's first birth control clinic and organized the first American Birth Control Conference in New York in 1921. Publications include What Every Mother Should Know (1917), My Fight for Birth Control (1931), and Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938). [From Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia.]

In America access to birth-control devices and information was regulated from 1873, and for the next sixty years, by the Comstock Law. Regulations which applied even to physicians. Legislation for the unmarried was not eased until some time later. For instance, in the state of Massachusetts birth control for the unmarried was not legalised until 1972.

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