Desperate women, mistreated by the 19th century’s medical establishment, risked black-market remedies and the wrath of Anthony Comstock’s mora

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2024-12-29 15:30:14

Desperate women, mistreated by the 19th century’s medical establishment, risked black-market remedies and the wrath of Anthony Comstock’s moralizing thugs.

During the Civil War, he watched with horror as his fellow soldiers drank, caroused, and otherwise debased themselves. Soon after the war he moved to New York City, where he encountered quacks, con artists, sex workers, and moral degenerates of all types.

Perhaps most troubling to Comstock was the sheer volume of young men engaging in debauchery—buying lurid dime novels, smoking tobacco, having rampant premarital sex. He sought refuge in the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), where he railed against the evils of pornography, bank fraud, gambling, infidelity, women’s suffrage, and anything else he decreed a vice.

Five years of fighting for Christian morals with the YMCA established Comstock as a force within the anti-vice movement. In 1873 he created a vigilante organization dedicated to maintaining public decency. That same year he coauthored and convinced Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, including pornography, sex aids, contraceptives, abortifacients, or any advertisement or correspondence referring to them. He was appointed special agent for the postmaster general, and from that position he set the machinery of the U.S. Mail against the malevolent forces he believed were corrupting the nation’s youth.