“In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family remain slave throughout their lives, […] when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence? […] How often is the mother’s comfort, health, nay, even her life, thus sacrificed?” [1]
Dr. Charles Knowlton, Fruits of Philosophy, 1832
While best remembered for her role in the 1888 Match Girls Strike Annie Besant led a life full of activism, campaigning for causes ranging from improved conditions for miners to home rule for Ireland and India. Often overlooked though is Besant’s campaign to improve women’s knowledge of contraception.
We may think of contraception for women as a modern issue, something we associate with the advent of the contraceptive pill in 1960, but Victorian women had just as much need to consider these issues. In an age of high levels of poverty and disease and poor healthcare, repeated pregnancies and childbirth could take a huge toll on a woman’s health and a family’s financial security. First published in 1832 in the United States, Dr. Charles Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy [2] contained detailed advice and methods on how to avoid becoming pregnant “showing how desirable it is, both in a political and a social point of view, for mankind to be able to limit at will the number of their offspring”.[3]
Annie Besant had a traditional, middle class upbringing. At 19 she married Frank Besant, a vicar from the parish of Sibsy in Lincolnshire, and they had two children together. However, Annie’s atheism eventually led to the couple separating. Annie moved to London and lived on the small allowance afforded to her by the deed of separation from her husband and earned a small amount of money writing articles in favour of freethought.[4]
In 1875, Charles Bradlaugh, a political activist and president of the National Secular Society, gave Annie a job writing for The National Reformer, which she later went on to co-edit. He also encouraged her in public speaking and as her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry states: “soon she was second only to Bradlaugh in her ability to fill the halls of science up and down the country”.[5] For the next eleven years, Annie and Charles worked closely together, setting up the Freethought Publishing Company in 1877.
Annie decided to republish Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy in Britain with Bradlaugh’s help. They wanted to publish the pamphlet because at the time a worker’s wage could only support a family of four children but the majority of families were much larger. Two months after publishing The Fruits of Philosophy, against the advice of the police, Annie and Charles were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. At their trial, on 18 June 1877, Annie chose to conduct her own defence. In her evidence Annie stressed that contraceptive measures, such as those endorsed in The Fruits of Philosophy, would help to relieve poverty. She was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and a £200 fine. The sentence was quashed on a technicality but the damage had been done to her reputation. By now she was a household name and her estranged husband, Rev. Frank Besant, successfully sued her for custody of their children.
Despite this high personal cost, Annie continued to promote contraception. In 1878 she published her own set of advice, The Law of Population, which sold in the thousands. She also received hundreds of letters from poor people thanking her for the stand she made on their behalf.
By Maggie Jones (Wandsworth U3A) and Claire Kennan.
[1] Charles Knowlton, The Fruits of Philosophy: A Treatise on the Population Question (1877), ed. by Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38185/38185-h/38185-h.htm
[2] Full version available here https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38185/38185-h/38185-h.htm
[3] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38185/38185-h/38185-h.htm [accessed 26/06/17).
[4] Freethought (or “free thought“) is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or other dogma.
[5] Anne Taylor, ‘Besant , Annie (1847–1933)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30735, accessed 26 June 2017]
