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Anthony Comstock (1844 – 1915) was a United States Postal Inspector with ideals of Victorian morality.
His efforts successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of both "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to, birth control. During his time of greatest power, even some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service.
Comstock's ideas of what might be "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" are presented in this book.
His enemies were many, especially the early civil liberties groups but at the same time, he was strongly supported by church-based groups worried about public morals.
As a savvy political insider in New York City, he was made a special agent for the United States Postal Service, with police powers up to and including the right to carry a weapon. With these powers, he aggresively prosecuted suspected individuals of public distribution of pornography via the US mail.
Comstock is also known for his opposition to Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, and those associated with them. The men's journal The Days' Doings had popularized lewd images of the sisters for three years and was instructed by its editor (while Comstock was present) to stop producing images of "lewd character". Comstock also took legal action against the paper for advertising contraceptives. When the sisters published an expose of an adulterous affair between Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, he had the sisters arrested under laws forbidding the use of the postal service to distribute 'obscene material'–specifically citing a mangled Biblical quote Comstock found obscene–though they were later acquitted of the charges.
Less fortunate was Ida Craddock, who committed suicide on the eve of reporting to Federal prison for distributing via the U.S. Mail various sexually explicit marriage manuals she had authored. Her final work was a lengthy public suicide note specifically condemning Comstock.
Comstock claimed he drove fifteen people to suicide in his "fight for the young". As head vice-hunter of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and as he labeled himself, "weeder in God's garden", Comstock arrested D. M. Bennett for publishing his "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ" and later entrapped the editor for mailing a free-love pamphlet. Bennett was prosecuted, subjected to a widely publicized trial, and finally imprisoned in the Albany Penitentiary.
During his career, Comstock clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In her autobiography, Goldman referred to Comstock as the leader of America's "moral eunuchs".
Through his various campaigns, Comstock was responsible for destroying 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures and not to mention, at least 4,000 arrests.
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Contents:
1. Which Shall it Be, Pure Morals or Impure Art?
2. Morality or Obscenity, Which?
3. Art for Art's Sake
4. Nude in Art
5. The Obscene, Lewd and Indecent in Art
6. The Laws
7. Principles of Law Involved
8. Test of Obscenity
9. Such a Photograph Not a Work of Art
10. Intent
11. Expert Testimony
12. Artists Oppose Comstock
13. Our Enemies
14. Synopsis
