Genealogy Chat

I've found court cases on internet because there was a involving sales of "objectionable postcards".My great granfather being one of those taken to court . His case was only in a short news report
" timespanner;A plague of indecent postcards "
has a NZ case the same year which I find very amusing + thought provoking
it looks like the prosecuter is objecting to the wording rather than.the pictures themselves
i'd like to look into the subject in a book ....online too much stuff comes up which I may find "objectionable"

Try putting his name and name of the court case in quotation marks in the search engine to see if that will narrow your search.

Good luck with your search :-D

Alisoun, have a look on Amazon, there's some on the subject.

Erotica was very fashionable in certain Victorian & Edwardian circles, some of it was very expensive and a great novelty with some toffs. I've seen some stalls at antiques fairs that specialise in such items. Some tasteful, some fun, some sleazy. Then, as now, what tickles the fancy of one offends another.

what do you consider sleazy ? MC
thanks for that .tooty fruity will do ,when i have a chance + when my laptop has had it's biopsy to see why screen flickering so much .

bought a book "gentleman's relish" by Ronnie Barker
no history lessons but you can identify decades form the clothing . Not seen any objectionable photos yet but some of the drawings have vulgar intending captions.
It willbe a good coffe table conversation book.

Sleazy is a subjective concept Alisoun, I'd define it as crossing the boundary from saucy to exploitative.

i'd like to start a discussion on this should i delete this thread + start another

i'm interested in the ideas of what would have been considered indecent at that time ;a soap advert in 1890 had a naked lady full frontal and her back view from a mirror ;if this was ok as a public poster why were other postcards be considered objectionable . why there would have been a spate of such prosecutions in 1906 ;i wonder if it could have been photos of men .more people would see this thread if could somehow include the art vs porn argument .

Alisoun .................


remember that middle class Victorians were extremely prudish ....... it all apparently stemmed from what Queen Victoria thought was "moral" and "proper"

For example ..............

ladies limbs were not to be seen, especially their lower limbs.

This led to what we might call stupidity ...................... women did not get undressed where anyone could see them .......... including sisters, nurses / nannies, mothers, husbands

This extended to piano legs, table legs, chairs legs should not be seen, and covered with cloths.

The sight of "legs" was feared to arouse the "animal urges" of the male sex.

Women did not get undressed in front of their husbands ........... not even during sex in many cases.


This gradually led to "erotica" and smutty postcards, jokes and books becoming very popular!


Even in the 1950s I can remember seeing "smutty" postcards on sale at places like Blackpool, Scarborough, etc ................... they were usually either inside the store or high up on the postcard racks, so children couldn't see them.

Most of them were not really "smutty" ............ but they did usually feature women with big boobs, legs exposed, and double entendres as captions.

My mother used to call them "rude" ........................ I think we would think nothing of them these days!


I say middle-class .................. because it does seem as though the upper classes were by no means as restrained in their behaviours, and the "lower classes" were too busy trying to keep alive to be bothered about covering up the piano legs (if they even had a piano :-D )

Plus, illegitimate children were often accepted in the lower classes, and often found good homes by the upper classes.

Young upper class girls who got pregnant would be taken on a major holiday (sometimes called the Grand Tour) to Europe, and then the baby would be adopted over there or Mother would return with a new baby. Thus the girl's reputation was not spoiled ............. but she would be married off as quickly as possible after that, to make sure she did not enter into any more "dangerous" illicit liaisons.

.................. it was the middle classes who got all hot under the collar, and denied that such things could happen.

1906 was entering the Edwardian era so maybe more progressive .
have now found a potential great-grandfather of the same name dying in Wales
on his medical record it states that he had syphillis at the age of 34 which would have been around the same time as his prosecution for selling objectionable pastcards ....oh dear .

A second newspaper account from the Evening telegraph 18th nov 1906
classifeid the popstcards as "objectionable travesties of fine art" I wonder if that meant it was PHOTO's of people posing naked in poses similar to classical portraits .

There is also newspaper report from 12th March 1913 from Angus scotland evening telegraph of a man with same surname+ similar age indicted for offenses against a 15 year old girl . I haven't got credits to look at whole article but he is listed as a tailor and as being an Austrian Jew (So hopefully NOT our ancestor).It does look as tho articles at the time felt it important to mention whenever the accused was Jewish .