No. 63
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
May 01, 2012

Comstockery.

Anthony Comstock was on a personal mission to protect America from vice.
May 1, 2012
...
...

Daniel Van Fossen and his wife hosted a dinner party for their extended family on January 8, 1885, at their home in East Liverpool, Ohio. Fourteen people were in attendance, including members of the Van Fossen, McBane, and Collins families. Coffee and Tea were served after the meal, and almost immediately, the coffee drinkers complained of a burning, bitter sensation in their throats. Soon, they
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 8/30/2025
 Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where it's up, up, and away!Try to sell a house that features art stolen by the Nazis, and watch the fun begin!A brief history of pomegranates.Some remote viewers took a gander at 31/Atlas, and I can't say they came up with cheery stuff.A serial poisoner in Ohio.The princess who chose painting over palaces.The horrors of 19th century merchant service.The (
More...
Strange Company - 9/5/2025
Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
More...
Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
 Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where it's up, up, and away!Try to sell a house that features art stolen by the Nazis, and watch the fun begin!A brief history of pomegranates.Some remote viewers took a gander at 31/Atlas, and I can't say they came up with cheery stuff.A serial poisoner in Ohio.The princess who chose painting over palaces.The horrors of 19th century merchant service.The (
More...
Strange Company - 9/5/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 22 - Original copy 1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, 1883-84, St. Louis, San Francisco, Soapy arrested: Pages #22-23      This post is on page 22 and 23 of the "STAR" notebook. I am combining these two pages as they only account for a total of seven lines. They are not appearing to be a continuation of
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/27/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 22 - Original copy 1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, 1883-84, St. Louis, San Francisco, Soapy arrested: Pages #22-23      This post is on page 22 and 23 of the "STAR" notebook. I am combining these two pages as they only account for a total of seven lines. They are not appearing to be a continuation of
More...
Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 8/27/2025
Daniel Van Fossen and his wife hosted a dinner party for their extended family on January 8, 1885, at their home in East Liverpool, Ohio. Fourteen people were in attendance, including members of the Van Fossen, McBane, and Collins families. Coffee and Tea were served after the meal, and almost immediately, the coffee drinkers complained of a burning, bitter sensation in their throats. Soon, they
More...
Murder By Gaslight - 8/30/2025
The East Midtown blocks in the shadow of Grand Central Terminal hold some fascinating relics of old New York City. Case in point is the phone number on this street-facing sign for an elevator emergency alarm at 7 East 43rd Street. “Call ST 6-4300” it reads. “ST” is another long-obsolete phone exchange, dating back to […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/1/2025
The East Midtown blocks in the shadow of Grand Central Terminal hold some fascinating relics of old New York City. Case in point is the phone number on this street-facing sign for an elevator emergency alarm at 7 East 43rd Street. “Call ST 6-4300” it reads. “ST” is another long-obsolete phone exchange, dating back to […]
More...
Ephemeral New York - 9/1/2025
Saloons and Houses of Ill-Fame. | Melancholy Boat Accident.

Comstockery.

Anthony Comstock, founder of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, was on a personal mission to protect America’s youth from any art or literature which he deemed objectionable. His name became so tightly bound to the war on smut that one of Comstock’s famous targets, George Bernard Shaw, named this peculiarly American censorship crusade, “Comstockery.”

comstock Anthony Comstock

Comstock first became interested in dirty books in1868 after a friend of his contracted a venereal disease from a visit to a brothel.  Comstock believed that his friend’s moral downfall had begun with the purchase of an obscene book. He paid a visit to the bookseller, purchased and obscene book himself, then reported the transaction to the police and had the seller arrested.

NYSSV NYSSV

Comstock repeated this operation in bookstores throughout New York City and in 1872 he got the attention of the Young Men’s Christian Association, whose Committee for the Suppression of Vice was perusing an anti-smut campaign of its own. The committee funded Comstock’s crusade and eventually became an independent organization, New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, with Comstock as its head. The NYSSV became a quasi-official law enforcement organization and under its aegis, Comstock arrested at least three thousand people for obscenity.

The campaign was begun to protect American youth from the corrupting influence of lower-class pornography, but Comstock soon realized that some literary classics also contained corrupting influences. He expanded his campaign against smut to include authors such as Ovid, Boccaccio, and Walt Whitman. When it became clear that not all of Comstock’s financial backers would agree to the banning of classics, Comstock explained that it was not the works, per se, that were objectionable, but how they were presented to the public, saying:

“These works, heretofore carefully concealed from public view, and kept by booksellers only to meet what some consider the legitimate demand of the student, or gentlemen’s library, are now advertised and sold by certain parties as “rich, rare, and racy” books, “amorous adventures,” “spicy descriptions,” “love intrigues on the sly,” etc.”

Nude-Art

Comstock had a similar approach to the visual arts: he did not object to elite society viewing nude paintings in the context of a museum, but when a gallery began selling photographic reproductions of nude paintings to the masses, he shut them down.

In 1873 Comstock and his organization sponsored a set of federal laws—commonly known as the “Comstock Laws”—which made it a federal crime to send “obscene, nude or lascivious” material through the U. S. Mail. This included information about birth control and abortion. Anthony Comstock was appointed a special agent of the Post Office to enforce the laws.

While publications like The National Police Gazette still routinely ran advertisements for racy pictures, abortifacients, and rubber goods (condoms), Comstock claimed to have seized 130,000 pounds of books, 194,000 “bad” pictures, 5,500 indecent playing cards, and 3,150 pills and powders used by abortionists, in the first year alone.

Comstock2

Expanding the campaign to include birth control and abortion set him against a whole new class of notorious opponents. Pretending to be seeking birth control information for his wife, Comstock entrapped Madame Restell, New York’s most infamous abortionist. While out on bail she committed suicide by cutting her throat. He brought legal proceedings against George Bernard Shaw and got the city of New York to ban Margaret Sanger’s work on family planning. When free love advocate, Victoria Woodhull, published a story charging Reverend Henry Ward Beecher with adultery, Comstock had her arrested. Woodhull, who at the time was the presidential candidate for the short-lived Equal Rights Party, had to spend Election Day in jail.

Comstock fought his last battle in San Francisco while attending the International Purity Congress. He initiated prosecution against a San Francisco department store for dressing nude mannequins in the store window in public view. He lost the case and never recovered from the ridicule that it generated.

Though Anthony Comstock died in 1915, his laws lived on. The Comstock Laws were not fully repealed until the 1990s.

 

  


Sources:

 

  • Beisel, Nicola Kay. Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and family reproduction in Victorian America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
  • Miller, Neil. Banned in Boston: the Watch and Ward Society's crusade against books, burlesque, and the social evil. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.
  • Sante, Luc. Low life: lures and snares of old New York. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991.