Watch and Ward Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Watch and Ward Society was a Boston, Massachusetts organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th Century to the middle of the 20th Century.
Founded by John Frank Chase in 1878 as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice (inspired by Anthony Comstock's New York Society for the Suppression of Vice), it held its first annual meeting in the Park Street Church in 1879. In 1891, it was renamed the Watch and Ward Society after an old volunteer police force, adopting the mission to "watch and ward off evildoers."
At the height of the society's power, the Boston Public Library kept books that had been deemed objectionable in a locked room, publishers and booksellers held back publications for fear of the organization's influence with prosecutors and judges, and plays were performed in a bowdlerized "Boston Version". Elsewhere, the phrase, "Banned in Boston," became a target of parody and a marketing slogan.
In 1882, the society played a role in instigating obscenity charges against Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. In 1903 they went to court to prevent booksellers from advertising Bocaccio's The Decameron and Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, but lost the case. In 1907, they successfully backed obscenity charges against Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks.
In 1922, the society had Robert Keable's Simon Called Peter removed from a library, and in 1923, used its influence to suppress distribution of Floyd Dell's Janet March.
In 1926, the society challenged a Herbert Asbury story called "Hatrack," published in H.L. Mencken's American Mercury. In Boston, with police and press in attendance, Mencken sold a copy of the magazine to society founder John Chase himself. Mencken was arrested. In the ensuing trial, the magazine was found not to be obscene, and Mencken was acquitted. Mencken proceeded to successfully sue the Watch and Ward Society for illegal restraint of trade. Chase died later that year, and the society's influence began to decline.
In 1928, the society blacklisted Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point and Voltaire's Candide. In 1929, it went after Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front on the grounds of offensive language. That same year, in a decisive case, it failed to ban Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. In 1934, the society suppressed John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra. In 1935, it banned Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour. In one of its final acts of censorship, in 1950, the society took aim at Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre.
Dwight Spaulding Strong, who became director of the society in 1948, redirected the organization's focus, emphasizing the fight against gambling. In 1950, the organization's name was changed to the New England Citizens Crime Commission.
