How British Authorities policed potentially obscene medical and scientific publications.

What is it about?

This article challenges the still widely held belief that early-20th-century England was one of the most sexually repressed countries in the Western world. Late Victorian physicians discussing sexual diseases and dysfunctions were granted immunity from prosecution if their publications were sold through a recognized medical publisher only to Members of the Medical, Legal and Clerical Professions. It was assumed that those same constraints applied to publications concerning the psychology of the sexual life (sexology). In 1908, Rebman Limited, a well-known medical publisher, advertised Maurice Eden Paul’s (1908) translation of Iwan Bloch’s "The Sexual Life of Our Time" but without any restrictions on sale. Although a magistrate ruled the book obscene, the Home Office allowed its republication on condition that its sale was strictly limited. This case reveals how the Authorities tried to police the new science of sexology by limiting its circulation, not by censoring its content. And yet despite these restrictions, "Sexual Life" continued to circulate among lay readers. This invites further research into how “censored” material might have helped to shape early 20th century debates on sexual, social, and political reform.

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Why is it important?

This essay explores the nature of medical censorship in early 20th century Britain and argues, notwithstanding beliefs to the contrary, that questions of sex and sexuality were being openly discussed in the years leading up to the 1914-1918 War. Exploring the possible interconnections between radical book-sellers, socialist doctors, medical psychologists, radical feminists, suffragettes, psychotherapists, and early psychoanalysts, suggests a growing movement for “free discussion of sex questions” thereby undermining the still wide-spread belief that British sexology was due mainly to the spread of psychoanalysis during the 1920s.

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