Porn in Early Twentieth Century Britain

There are so so many historical porn pictures in this one

Studying historical porn is difficult, because no one archives their goddamn porn. Porn is dismissed as embarrassing, obscene, and of no historical relevance, leaving the hopeful porn historian with an absolutely bizarre sample. People are even less likely to archive pornographers’ diaries, letters, and business records, which would give us a sense of how the industry worked. Our most reliable source is legal cases, which excludes many people (such as anyone who was good at not getting caught). A lot of what we know is guesswork.

So, what can we put together about porn in Britain from 1900 to 1940?

Porn was a small, unprofessional industry. Most porn of the era was postcards, typed stories, and other inexpensive material, sold to personal contacts or friends of friends or as a sideline by shopkeepers who mostly sold other things. Most porn consumers were regular consumers and not one-offs, presumably because it was difficult to connect with porn networks.

While porn was illegal in the period, the British authorities weren’t especially bothered by it. In order to get away with distributing porn, you had to put in one single bit of effort towards discretion. Some mail-order porn companies claimed to be selling references for artists, biologists, and physicians, and required that customers send in an affidavit claiming to be a member of these groups. Others sold nudes of people of color and claimed that they were “anthropological,” people of color presumably running around Africa naked all the time. Still others simply used euphemisms: “action photo” meant that the photo was of sex, while “classical” meant gay porn. Yva Richard, a French company which sold lingerie and clothes for boot and corset fetishists, had an innovative approach. They simply claimed that their bondage-themed photos of people wearing their products were advertisements, not porn, and therefore not illegal.

The British government disapproved of porn being sold to soldiers, because the porn would turn the soldiers on and then they’d have sex with sex workers and get STIs. It disapproved of porn being sold to people of color in the colonies, because it might alert colonized people to the fact that the British fucked, and out of fear that if black men were turned on they would rape white women. Otherwise, it devoted its energy primarily to “borderline” material—infamously The Well of Loneliness, but also dirty jokes and interracial romances in mainstream films. Borderline material might draw an innocent person into depravity. By the time someone was seeking out outright porn, they were already corrupted.

The primary lesson, however, is that nothing is new under the sun.