The Society for the Suppression of Vice, formerly the Proclamation Society Against Vice and Immorality, or simply Proclamation Society, was a 19th-century English society dedicated to promoting public morality. It was established in 1802, based on a proclamation by George III in 1787, and as a successor to the 18th-century Society for the Reformation of Manners, and continued to function until 1885.
The Society was founded by William Wilberforce following a Royal Proclamation by George III in 1787, the Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice, on the urging of Wilberforce, as a remedy for the rising tide of immorality.[1][2] The proclamation commanded the prosecution of those guilty of "excessive drinking, blasphemy, profane swearing and cursing, lewdness, profanation of the Lord's Day, and other dissolute, immoral, or disorderly practices".[3] Greeted largely with public indifference, Wilberforce sought to increase its impact by mobilising public figures to the cause,[4] and by founding the Society for the Suppression of Vice.[4][5] It was also known as the Proclamation Society Against Vice and Immorality.[6]
Other members of the Clapham Sect, of which Wilberforce was one, were also involved in the society.[7][8]
As listed in an address published in 1803, the Society's particular concerns were: "profanation of the Lord's Day and profane swearing; publication of blasphemous, licentious and obscene books and prints; selling by false weights and measures; keeping of disorderly public houses, brothels and gaming houses; procuring; illegal lotteries; cruelty to animals".[9]
M.J.D. Roberts writes that the Jacobin ideas, from the French Revolution, raised fears of atheism, leading some to set up organizations like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, to campaign for tough application of the law against atheists.[10] One who suffered from the attentions of the Society for the Suppression of Vice was the campaigner for free speech, Richard Carlile.[11]
The Society was involved in enforcing the stamp duty on newspapers. The campaign to abolish the stamp duty was led by the radical press. Other more establishment figures like Lord Brougham, the Lord Chancellor, 1834, also argued against it. The stamp duty was reduced to 1d in 1836 and abolished in 1855.[12]
The Society was the means of suppressing "low and vicious periodicals", and of bringing the dealers to punishment, by imprisonment, hard labor and fines. The article reproduced on the Victorian London site records a list of items seized and destroyed. This included "large quantities of infidel and blasphemous publications."[13]
In 1885 the Society was still operational to some extent, as witnessed by its low-key harassment of Sir Richard Burton and his wife upon the publication of Sir Richard's unexpurgated translation of the Arabian Nights.[14] In August of that year, however, the Society was absorbed into the National Vigilance Association.[15][citation needed]
Roberts, M.J.D. (1983). "The Society for the Suppression of Vice and its early critics, 1802–1812". Historical Journal. 26: 159–76. doi:10.1017/s0018246x00019646.
Roberts, M.J.D. (2004). Making English Morals: Voluntary Association And Moral Reform In England, 1787–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0521833892.
Brown, Christopher Leslie (2006). Moral capital: foundations of British abolitionism. North Carolina: Chapel Hill. ISBN978-0807856987.
William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he became an evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.
The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were social reformers from Clapham, now in London spanning the 1780s to the 1840s. They almost all remained in the dominant religion, which was highly "established", interwoven with offices of state, the Church of England. Its successors were in many cases outside of the same church affiliation.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1698.
Samuel Wilberforce, FRS was an English bishop in the Church of England, and the third son of William Wilberforce. Known as "Soapy Sam", Wilberforce was one of the greatest public speakers of his day. He is now best remembered for his opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution at a debate in 1860.
John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell, PC, QC, FRSE was a British Liberal politician, lawyer and man of letters.
Beilby Porteus, successively Bishop of Chester and of London, was a Church of England reformer and a leading abolitionist in England. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the Church's position on slavery.
Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, PC was a Royal Navy officer and politician. As a junior officer he saw action during the Seven Years' War. Middleton was given command of a guardship at the Nore, a Royal Navy anchorage in the Thames Estuary, at the start of the American War of Independence, and was subsequently appointed Comptroller of the Navy. He went on to be First Naval Lord and then First Lord of the Admiralty. Middleton also played a crucial role in the abolition of the slave trade.
Henry Thornton was an English economist, banker, philanthropist and parliamentarian.
Zachary Macaulay was a Scottish statistician, one of the founders of London University and of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, an antislavery activist, and governor of Sierra Leone, the British colony for freed slaves. He worked endlessly to end the slave trade and to Christianize and improve the world.
Anthony Comstock was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV) who was dedicated to upholding Victorian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine.
In March 1698, Jeremy Collier published his anti-theatre pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage; in the pamphlet, Collier attacks a number of playwrights: William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D’Urfey. Collier attacks rather recent, rather popular comedies from the London stage; he accuses the playwrights of profanity, blasphemy, indecency, and undermining public morality through the sympathetic depiction of vice.
The Obscene Publications Act 1857, also known as Lord Campbell's Act or Campbell's Act, was a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland dealing with obscenity. For the first time, it made the sale of obscene material a statutory offence, giving the courts power to seize and destroy offending material. The Act superseded a 1787 Royal Proclamation by George III titled Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice. The proclamation commanded the prosecution of those guilty of "excessive drinking, blasphemy, profane swearing and cursing, lewdness, profanation of the Lord's Day, and other dissolute, immoral, or disorderly practices". Prior to this Act, the "exposure for sale" of "obscene books and prints" had been made illegal by the Vagrancy Act 1824. but the publication of obscene material was a common law misdemeanour The effective prosecution of authors and publishers was difficult even in cases where the material was clearly intended as pornography.
William Smith was a leading independent British politician, sitting as Member of Parliament (MP) for more than one constituency. He was an English Dissenter and was instrumental in bringing political rights to that religious minority. He was a friend and close associate of William Wilberforce and a member of the Clapham Sect of social reformers, and was in the forefront of many of their campaigns for social justice, prison reform and philanthropic endeavour, most notably the abolition of slavery. He was the grandfather of pioneer nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale and educationalist Barbara Bodichon, a founder of Girton College, Cambridge.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787.
Charles Grant, was a British politician influential in Indian and domestic affairs who, motivated by his evangelical Christianity, championed the causes of social reform and Christian mission, particularly in India. He served as Chairman of the British East India Company, and as a member of parliament (MP), and was an energetic member of the Clapham Sect. The "Clapham Sect" were a group of social activists who spoke out about the moral imperative to end slavery. Henry Thornton founder of the Clapham sect regarded Grant as his closest friend, after Wilberforce, and Grant planned and paid for a house called 'Glenelg' on Henry's estate in Battersea. It was a twin to, and lay near to the house built on the same estate for Wilberforce after his marriage, the location of which is marked by a plaque at No.111 Broomwood Road, west of that section of Battersea Rise now called Clapham Common West Side. Grant later moved to live in Russell Square.
The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691. Thus its aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular. The Society flourished until the 1730s and was briefly revived during 1757.
King George III's Royal Proclamation For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality exhorted the British public against sexually explicit material. It called for the suppression of all "loose and licentious Prints, Books, and Publications, dispersing Poison to the minds of the Young and Unwary and to Punish the Publishers and Vendors thereof". Groups which promoted it included the Proclamation Society, which became The Society for the Suppression of Vice which was instituted in 1802 to "check the spread of open vice and immorality, and more especially to preserve the minds of the young from contamination by exposure to the corrupting influence of impure and licentious books, prints, and other publications". This had little effect, because they had no power to destroy the material.
Sir James Sanderson, 1st Baronet was a banker, a member of parliament, an alderman and Lord Mayor of London. He also served as president of Bridewell Hospital, and was a member of William Wilberforce's Proclamation Society for the Discouragement of Vice.
The Reformation of Manners was an ideological drive to bring religious discipline to English parishes between the late 1600s and the early 1700s, and later in the 1780s, with William Wilberforce as a major instigator. Following the sixteenth-century religious reformation in parts of England, Calvinism heavily influenced the governance of many parishes. These parishes were governed by a series of local presbyteries, a group of church elders that saw their duty in the regulation of morals in accordance with scriptural principles. Calvinist theology encouraged a dualistic distinction between the 'godly' and the 'reprobate' of the parish: it was thought that the 'better sort' of inhabitant should be responsible for policing and disciplining the behaviour of their 'vulgar' neighbours. In practice, the 'word of God' was brought to bear on communities through pastoral supervision, an enforced focus on scriptural education ), attempts to increase literacy, mandatory repetition of catechisms and the suppression of many popular pastimes, including parish wakes, seasonal festivities, drinking and bear-baiting. This impulse is perhaps best exemplified in Richard Baxter's ministry over Kidderminster in Worcestershire between 1641 and 1660. Baxter, often referred to as 'the saint of the Puritans', had an exalted view of his ministerial office and pastoral duties, striving to bring moral discipline to his parishioners. Baxter's ministry is an extreme example but the Reformation of Manners was also manifested as a wider initiative in the church courts throughout England more generally. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly, saw these courts take a leading role in enforcing the moral principles of the Anglican Church.
William Man Godschall (1720–1802) was an English dairy farmer and Fellow of the Royal Society.
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