A longer history S ir: Angela Huth says in her review
of Roger Manvell's book The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh (6 March) that the sixpenny pamphlet for which they Were tried in 1877 was the first cheap contraception publication and that 'until this time the precious facts were confined to
medical" books only the rich could afford'.
This statement is not only quite false, but it Obscures one of the main points of the case, which was that Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy had been sold in cheap editions Or nearly half a century before the chance Prosecution of a Bristol bookseller brought Bradlaugh and Besant on to the scene. In fact cheap and even free contraception 13anlphlets and leaflets had been continuously distributed by a succession of freethinkers ever since the campaigns of Francis Place, John Stuart Mill, and Richard Carlile in the 1820s.
What was new in 1877 was neither the nature nor the price of the publication but the fame and character of the publishers. Jean Raison 698 Holloway Road, London N19
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