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| Biography of Holmes, paper of Hanney History Group |
I wrote on 17th January 2023, that that would have a good claim to be ‘Un-Darwin-Day’ as the date when the world’s most populous country had entered numerical decline, overturning – in a symbolic way - one of the pillars of Natural Selection: “Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life”. This may seem strange when the world only reached 8 Billion Day on 15th November 2022. I blogged about that at the time but also that the underlying trend in birth-rate was firmly down, leading to a surprising conclusion.
The reason
for the De-Darwinisation of the human race lies of course in the exercise of
personal choice, and with the availability of effective contraception. As with
any technology, there are always early adopters, usually the rich and
well-informed. The most famous or notorious of these was, of course, Giacomo Casanova
(1725-1798) who enjoyed inflating them as a suggestive party trick. But these
were ‘high end’ early technology and not yet ready for the mass market. Enter Charles Goodyear and Thomas Hancock with their
invention of the vulcanization of rubber (see a short history of the condom) which
led to the first ‘American Tips’ being created in about 1858. ‘Full length’ had
to wait until 1869.
There is
lots to write about this, especially to put into its social context. Observed effects of population pressure had
been commented on well before 1800, most famously by Thomas Malthus. The North
American continent provided a significant safety valve but emigration wasn’t
for everyone, so pressure grew in intellectual circles to allow the matter to
be discussed. A key moment in the Great Britain was the trial of freethinkers Charles
Bradlaugh and Annie Besant (1876) for republishing an American treatise by
Bostonian doctor Knowlton.
While information
was easier to diffuse amongst the upper/middle classes, for the working class
word was very hard to get round, and ‘channels to market’ were highly restricted
by obscenity prosecutions – and certainly no clinics were available for women
to get advice until one was opened by Margaret (Higgins) Sanger in NYC in 1916
(I’m pleased to note that she was born in Corning, N.Y. where I lived for three
years in the nineties). No, word had to get around by post. I’m proud that the
Oxfordshire village where I live was home to a young chap, James Robins Holmes,
who was stirred up by the Bradlaugh/Besant trial, enough to do something about
it by creating what we would call today a ‘Social Enterprise’, (he was a minor
landlord and apparently a very good one at that). In 1891 he published a
booklet ‘True Morality’ promoting the use of what we call family planning for
married couples, and including a price list for ‘hygienic requisites’ (which
could be washed after use for poor couples). This was “the greatest honour of
my life”, which had him prosecuted and fined for ‘obscenity’, and he succeeded in
distributing 150,000 copies the booklet in several editions. ‘Goods’ were supplied
all over the Empire in little packages, sent from Hanney Post Office.
A splendid fellow,
whose 164th birthday it would be today, 17th March.
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| My dog, Polly, paying her respects at J.R. Holmes memorial on his birthday |
Picture credits: Hanney History Group (Sam Green), David Gahan
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