It Happened Today in New York City

On September 21, 1915, moral crusader Anthony Comstock died at age 71. Genuinely moral people rejoiced. Comstock had founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice as a means to attack and undercut any person or organization he considered immoral. His primary targets were contraception, pornography, and anything potentially seen as “lewd or lascivious”. Comstock had attempted to smear Victoria Woodhull for misuse of the U.S. Postal Service and boasted about how he had driven Ida Craddock and other women to suicide. He also clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. George Bernard Shaw would later write “Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States.”

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• Posted in: Almanac