This blog focuses on stories about crimes, criminals and law
enforcement personalities. Today’s story may stretch the limits of these three
categories, although some readers will classify Comstock as a criminal and
others as a law enforcement officer.
Anthony Comstock lived from 1844 to 1915. He is described in
various writings as a moralist, puritan, devout Christian, American prude,
self-appointed regulator of American morality and a bastard. He qualifies as a
subject of this blog because he is reported to have been appointed a special
agent and Postal Inspector for the U.S. Postal Service.
Comstock, after serving as a Union soldier in the Civil War,
began a one man crusade against pornography, which he very broadly defined to
include anatomical drawings of male and female bodies for use in medical
schools, birth control and any other human activity that he determined was
immoral. He lobbied Congress for anti-obscenity laws which were passed in 1873 and
became known as the ‘Comstock Law’. As a result he managed to be appointed as a
special agent to help enforce these laws.
George Bernard Shaw used the term ‘comstockery’ to define
the obscenity law and said, “Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the
expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms
the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place,
a second-rate country-town civilization after all.”
Comstock’s investigative tactics, prosecutions and public
condemnation of those he targeted led one woman, Ida Craddick, to commit
suicide just before she was to report to federal prison for authoring and
distributing sexually explicit sex manuals through the U.S. mail. Comstock
bragged that he was responsible for as many as 15 such suicides in his ‘fight
for the young’.
Not all citizens, however, were put off by his work. A young
J. Edgar Hoover, while a law student, discovered and researched Comstock’s
methods of work. Some believe that Hoover modeled his own moral crusades as the
Director of the F.B.I. on those of Comstock. One writer even says that Hoover
would become Anthony Comstock’s ‘most fearsome’ supporter with his own moral
crusade against “Un-Americanism’ in which he used the same investigative
tactics pioneered by Comstock.
I encourage every reader to comment on this article and tell
me, was Comstock a rogue or was he a law enforcement officer? Please also check
out my other writing at http://www.LarryWatts.net where you can read the first
chapter of ‘Cheating Justice’ my new novel about the Texas justice system.
No comments:
Post a Comment