fine. After serving seventeen weeks, he was released on a technicality, retried without a jury on a slightly different charge, and sentenced to one year. After eight months, he was again released on a technicality.
45
The renowned British playwright George Bernard Shaw lamented Harman's plight in a front-page interview in The New York Times: ". . . A journal has just been confiscated and its editor imprisoned in America for urging that a married woman should be protected from domestic molestation when childbearing. Had that man filled his paper with aphrodisiac pictures and aphrodisiac stories of duly engaged couples, he would be a prosperous, respected citizen. " [14]
Harman continued to be persecuted through the Comstock laws, even though few people believed his periodical contained anything obscene. On one occasion, for example, the postal authorities objected to the sentence, "it is natural and reasonable that a prospective mother should be exempt from the sexual relation during gestation." Ironically, this sentence had been excerpted from a book by a noted doctor, E. B. Foote-a book that was allowed to circulate freely in the mails.
Harman's last imprisonment for obscenity was in 1906, when he was seventy-five years old.
Moses was sentenced to a year at hard labor in Joliet. When breaking rocks for eight-and-a-half hours a day in the bitter winter cold threatened his health, his friends pressured the authorities and managed to get him transferred.
At about this time, Shaw was asked why he did not visit America. He answered bluntly: The reason I do not go to America is that I am afraid of being arrested by Mr. Anthony Comstock and imprisoned like Mr. Moses Harman.... If the brigands can, without any remonstrance from public opinion, seize a man of Mr. Harman's advanced age, and imprison him for a year under conditions which amount to an indirect attempt to kill him, simply because he shares the opinion expressed in my Man and Superman that `marriage is the most licentious of human institutions,' what chance should I have of escaping? No thank you; no trips to America for me. [15]
The last issue of Lucifer- brought out by Moses's daughter Lillian-was a tribute to her father, who died in 1908. But the eulogy I have always preferred was published in 1891, by a woman who subscribed to Lucifer. She called the periodical "the cry of women in pain": It is the mouthpiece, almost the only mouthpiece in the world, of every poor, suffering, defrauded, subjugated woman. Many know they suffer, and cry out in their misery, though not in the most grammatical of sentences.... A simple woman ... may know nothing of her biology, psychology, or of the evolution of the human race, but she knows when she is forced into a relation disagreeable or painful to her. Let her express her pain; the scientists may afterwards tell why she suffers, and what are the remedies, -if they can. [16]
Censorship silenced women in pain. It silenced The Word and Lucifer, the Light Bearer. Today, it seeks to silence women with aberrant sexual preferences, such as bondage or exhibitionism.
The result of social purity was sexual ignorance.
The Word and Lucifer were far from the only casualties of the anti-obscenity craze. The following is an abridged list, which gives no more than a sense of the extent of persecution: · Ann Lohman, who performed abortions and dispensed birth control information, was so hounded by Comstock that she committed suicide. He bragged that she was the fifteenth person he had driven to such an end.
· Frederick Hollick, a physician, tried to popularize the rhythm method, but was discouraged from doing so by the Comstock laws.
· Edward Bliss Foote, author of Radical Remedy in Social Science (1886), and his son, Edward Bond Foote, published home medical books. The father was arrested in 1874 for 46
mailing a pamphlet that contained contraceptive information. Because of public opinion, Foote was let off with a stiff fine.
·
45
The renowned British playwright George Bernard Shaw lamented Harman's plight in a front-page interview in The New York Times: ". . . A journal has just been confiscated and its editor imprisoned in America for urging that a married woman should be protected from domestic molestation when childbearing. Had that man filled his paper with aphrodisiac pictures and aphrodisiac stories of duly engaged couples, he would be a prosperous, respected citizen. " [14]
Harman continued to be persecuted through the Comstock laws, even though few people believed his periodical contained anything obscene. On one occasion, for example, the postal authorities objected to the sentence, "it is natural and reasonable that a prospective mother should be exempt from the sexual relation during gestation." Ironically, this sentence had been excerpted from a book by a noted doctor, E. B. Foote-a book that was allowed to circulate freely in the mails.
Harman's last imprisonment for obscenity was in 1906, when he was seventy-five years old.
Moses was sentenced to a year at hard labor in Joliet. When breaking rocks for eight-and-a-half hours a day in the bitter winter cold threatened his health, his friends pressured the authorities and managed to get him transferred.
At about this time, Shaw was asked why he did not visit America. He answered bluntly: The reason I do not go to America is that I am afraid of being arrested by Mr. Anthony Comstock and imprisoned like Mr. Moses Harman.... If the brigands can, without any remonstrance from public opinion, seize a man of Mr. Harman's advanced age, and imprison him for a year under conditions which amount to an indirect attempt to kill him, simply because he shares the opinion expressed in my Man and Superman that `marriage is the most licentious of human institutions,' what chance should I have of escaping? No thank you; no trips to America for me. [15]
The last issue of Lucifer- brought out by Moses's daughter Lillian-was a tribute to her father, who died in 1908. But the eulogy I have always preferred was published in 1891, by a woman who subscribed to Lucifer. She called the periodical "the cry of women in pain": It is the mouthpiece, almost the only mouthpiece in the world, of every poor, suffering, defrauded, subjugated woman. Many know they suffer, and cry out in their misery, though not in the most grammatical of sentences.... A simple woman ... may know nothing of her biology, psychology, or of the evolution of the human race, but she knows when she is forced into a relation disagreeable or painful to her. Let her express her pain; the scientists may afterwards tell why she suffers, and what are the remedies, -if they can. [16]
Censorship silenced women in pain. It silenced The Word and Lucifer, the Light Bearer. Today, it seeks to silence women with aberrant sexual preferences, such as bondage or exhibitionism.
The result of social purity was sexual ignorance.
The Word and Lucifer were far from the only casualties of the anti-obscenity craze. The following is an abridged list, which gives no more than a sense of the extent of persecution: · Ann Lohman, who performed abortions and dispensed birth control information, was so hounded by Comstock that she committed suicide. He bragged that she was the fifteenth person he had driven to such an end.
· Frederick Hollick, a physician, tried to popularize the rhythm method, but was discouraged from doing so by the Comstock laws.
· Edward Bliss Foote, author of Radical Remedy in Social Science (1886), and his son, Edward Bond Foote, published home medical books. The father was arrested in 1874 for 46
mailing a pamphlet that contained contraceptive information. Because of public opinion, Foote was let off with a stiff fine.
·
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