The George Bedborough case

FROM MY TO-DAY.

BY "Vox."

The George Bedborough case, in which this young man was prosecuted for having sold a copy of Dr. Havelock Ellis's scientific work on "Sexual Inversion," has ended in a fiasco. Bedborough pleaded guilty, and so left the merits of the case untried. What influences, what motives lie hidden be hind the demeaning, cowardly plea, can only be surmised. The public, including some of the most advanced scientists, original thinkers, and intellectually brave and energetic journalists had taken great interest in the prosecution, a defence fund had been subscribed, counsel had been provided, and all the necessary steps had been taken not only to protect young Bedborough but to guard the liberty of the press and maintain the right of untrammeled scientific enquiry and subsequent publication. It was felt from the commencement that the authorities were threatening not Bedborough so much, as the book of the famous Dr. Havelock Ellis. It was recognised, too, that in doing this the conduct of the Home Secretary Ridley had been contemptibly pusillanimous, and meanly under handed. If anyone had offended against public morals it was Dr. Ellis himself, and he, as author, should have have been made responsible. He was willing to take the full responsibility from the first, but Scotland Yard turned aside from him to attack a mercenary weakling, who under the mysterious influence of the prosecuting agent pleads guilty to having "uttered a lewd bawdy, and obscene libel," and to being of a "wicked and depraved disposition, from which his intention was to "corrupt and debauch." The miserable invertebrate who could bring himself to such publicly confessed degradation from his own uninfluenced motives would be justly held in contempt by a colony of toads.

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But no common-sense person can possibly believe that Bedborough arranged his own plea. The law felt itself ridiculous, the prosecution was being stormed with contempt, the stupid hypocrisy of Scotland Yard, with the Home Secretary at the head, was rousing the indignation of lovers of justice and liberty, and under the firing of such high-sounding phrases, as "Majesty of the Law!" "Protection of the Public Morals," "The Law's Strong Arm," etc., it was imperative to beat a retreat, without risking the climax, and to do this, and avoid the crucial test of a regular trial, a scapegoat must be found, and they found it, at what cost we cannot say, in the bookseller Bedborough, the self-admitted bawd !

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Here is the recorder's judgment in the Bedborough case : —"George Bedborough, you have pleaded 'Guilty' to the first, second, and third counts of this indictment and you have acted wisely in so pleading to these counts of it would have been impossible for you to have contended with any possibility whatever of being able to persuade anybody that this book, this lecture, and this magazine were not filthy and obscene works. I am willing to believe that in acting as you did you might at the first outset, perhaps, have been gulled into the belief that somebody might say that this was a scientific work. But it is imposable for anybody with a head on his shoulders to open the book without seeing that it is a pretence and a sham and that it is merely entered into for the purpose of selling this filthy publication, ............... The result of that will be this—that so long as you do not touch this filthy work again with you hands and so long as you lead a respectable life you will hear no more of this. But, if you choose to go back to your evil ways, you will be brought up before me and it will be my duty to send you to prison for a very long term. The sentence of the court upon you is that you are bound over in your own recognizances in the sum of £100 to come up for judgment if called upon. The defendant was then bound over in the usual form in the sum of £101 and released on those recognizances."

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Dr. Ellis has written an interesting letter on the Bedborough prosecution from which his honorable and noble motives in publishing his book may be judged by the public from the following extracts : —

" 'Sexual Inversion,' published at the end of the year 1897, is the first volume of a series of Studies in the 'Psychology of Sex' which I projected over twenty years back, and which I have ever since had before my mind as the serious and vitally important subject to which the best energies of my life should be devoted. The work will extend to five or six volumes, and although this first volume discusses a form of perverted sexuality, the 'Studies' as a whole will deal mainly with the normal sex impulse. It should be needless to point out the magnitude and the importance of the problems arising in such an investigation; in this first volume, moreover, we are brought face to face with a practical question which is constantly demanding attention, both in Society and the Law Courts.

"Before its publication in England 'Sexual Inversion' had been translated into Germany by Dr. Kurella, a physician and criminal anthropologist of distinguished reputation, and published at Leipzig.

"I appealed only to doctors, to psychologists, to those concerned with medico-legal matters, and to the handful of thinkers who are interested in the social bearings of the physical and psychic problems of life. By such my work has been accepted—so far as I know at present, without exception—in the serious spirit in which it was put forward. Every medical journal in half-a-dozen countries which has reviewed the book has without exception judged it favorably, and not one has suggested that I have been guilty of the slightest impropriety. I may indeed say that the medical support I have received has often been rather on moral than on scientific grounds.
"Moreover, I have now decided not to publish the remaining volumes of my 'Studies' in England. "Certainly I regret that my own country should be almost alone in refusing to me the conditions of reasonable intellectual freedom. I regret it the more since I deal with the facts of English life and prefer to address English people. But I must leave to others the task of obtaining the reasonable freedom that I am unable to attain."

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The casual reader of police reports would doubtless come to the conclusion that the work of Dr. Ellis was an outrage on public decency, in view of the plea of Bedborough, and the judgment delivered by the Recorder at the Old Bailey. But against such a conclusion set the opinion of the scientific world. Amongst those who have testified to the value of the work are : —
Dr. Conolly Norman, medical superintendent of the Richmond Asylum Dublin, formerly president of the Medico-Psychological Association.

Dr. G.H. Savage, F.R.C.P., lecturer on mental diseases at Guy's Hospital.
Dr. Urquhart, president of the British Medico-Psychological Association, joint editor of the "Journal of Medical Science."
Dr. Mercier, lecturer on insanity at the Westminster Hospital and at the Medical School for Women.
Dr. Rayner, lecturer on psychological medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital, formerly president of the Medico-Psychological Association, joint editor of the "Journal of Mental Science."
Dr. Goodall, medical superintendent of the Joint Counties Asylum, Carmara then, joint editor of the "Journal of Mental Science."
Dr. Kurella, Breslau, editor of the ''Centralblatt fur Nervenheilkunde.
Dr. Naecke, medical superintendent of the Asylum at Hubertusberg, Leipzig
Dr. Pasquale Penta, professor of criminal anthropology at the University of Naples, editor of the "Revista di Psichiatria Forense."
Dr. C. H Hughes, editor of the "Alienist and Neurologist," president a Faculty of Barnes Medical College.
Dr. Clouston, medical superintendent of the Royal Asylum at Morningside Edinburgh, and lecturer on mental diseases at the University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Fere, physician at Bicetre, Paris Mr. Clark Bell, LL.D., editor of the "Medico-Legal Journal" and secretary of the Medico-Legal Society of New York

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The opinion of any one of these is worth infinitely more, than the opinion of the whole army in the employ of the Scotland Yard.

West Australian Sunday Times 11 December 1898, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32631260