Knowlton trial (1877)
브래들로·베전트 재판 (1877)
The 1877 obscenity prosecution of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant for republishing The Fruits of Philosophy, the American physician Charles Knowlton’s guide to contraception. Convicted and sentenced to fines and six months’ imprisonment, they won on appeal because the indictment had not set out the allegedly obscene words. The trial sent sales of the book soaring and gave rise to the Malthusian League, which campaigned for birth control.
In depth
The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People was a pamphlet written in the early 1830s by the Massachusetts country doctor Charles Knowlton. It summarised the physiology of conception and explained a contraceptive method of washing out the vagina with chemical solutions after intercourse; Knowlton was fined and served three months’ hard labour in the United States over it. In Britain its earlier publisher, Charles Watts, had already been convicted of obscenity for it.
The freethinkers Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant set up the Freethought Publishing Company at the beginning of 1877 and republished The Fruits of Philosophy, arguing that working-class families could never be happy until they could decide how many children they wanted; the Church vigorously opposed it. They were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to heavy fines and six months’ imprisonment; Charles Darwin declined to testify, pleading ill-health and writing to Bradlaugh that he opposed birth control. The Court of Appeal overturned the conviction because the indictment had not set out the precise words alleged to be obscene.
The Knowlton trial showed that the public was interested in contraception, and sales of the book surged while it lasted. In July 1877, during the trial, the Malthusian League was founded to campaign for the abolition of penalties for promoting birth control and for education in contraception, with Besant as its secretary.