Boston Watch and Ward Society
The Boston Watch and Ward Society, established in 1873 in the wake of the Civil War, was formed by religious leaders to protect immigrants and rural populations from urban vices. Initially known as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, it gathered support from prominent figures including clergymen and college presidents. The society aimed to combat obscenity and moral decay, implementing legal measures against vulgar publications and ensuring the sale of such materials was restricted. It gained notoriety for its campaigns against magazines like the Police Gazette and was influential in passing legislation prohibiting pornography in Massachusetts.
Throughout the 1920s, the society faced increasing challenges as new publishing houses emerged, producing works deemed objectionable. The phrase "banned in Boston" became synonymous with its efforts to censor literature. However, the organization's power waned following internal leadership changes and public backlash, culminating in the eventual relaxation of obscenity laws in the late 1920s and its dissolution in 1931. The Boston Watch and Ward Society serves as a historical example of the intersection between morality, censorship, and literature in early 20th-century America, reflecting broader societal debates about freedom of expression versus community standards.
Boston Watch and Ward Society
Founded: 1873
Type of organization: New England-based procensorship body
Significance: This organization became infamous for strict censorship and helped to inspire the phrase “banned in Boston”
After the Civil War Boston religious leaders wanted to watch out for immigrants and rural farmers coming to the city and ward them away from urban vices. Influenced by the Comstock Act of 1873 and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Episcopal priest Frederick B. Allen gathered reformers at Boston’s Park Street Church in late 1873 to establish the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was soon renamed the New England Watch and Ward Society, or locally, the Boston Watch and Ward Society. More clerical than its New York predecessor, the society was widely supported by Puritan Bostonians. Its officers included Trinity Church rector Phillips Brooks, Unitarian divine Edward Everett Hale, and the presidents of six New England colleges, including Dartmouth and Yale. Henry Chase conducted routine business. The influential Boston newspaper the Transcript endorsed the group.
Early Watch and Ward campaigns used legal pressure and subtle coercion techniques to combat vulgar magazines such as the Police Gazette, to rid railroad stations of vagrants, and to ban the sale of obscene materials at newsstands. In 1880 the Massachusetts legislature passed a society-sponsored bill prohibiting the sale of pornography. After this law proved effective, it was extended in 1886 to include crime and police report publications and to prohibit publicly displaying obscene items. In 1892 these changes were used to convict Boston and Lowell booksellers of exposing youths to questionable materials.
In 1915 the society joined forces with Boston’s Old Corner Bookstore to establish the Boston Booksellers Committee. Novels that the Committee judged obscene were removed from stores, and newspapers and magazines were kept from advertising or reviewing such books. During the 1920’s new publishing houses competing with established firms printed more objectionable manuscripts. The committee repeatedly barred such works from sale, and “banned in Boston” became a common phrase.
The society weakened when Chase became its leader after Allen’s death in 1925. In September of that year H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury published “Keeping the Puritans Pure,” an essay attacking Chase, the Watch and Ward, and the Boston Booksellers Committee. When Boston banned the April, 1926, issue of American Mercury containing Herbert Asbury’s “Hatrack,” Mencken went to Boston with his lawyer, Arthur Garfield Hays, and publicly sold Chase a copy. National attention from Mencken’s arrest harassed the society.
In April, 1927, booksellers protested the banning of Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. Later that month, publisher Horace Liveright’s representatives intentionally sold Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy to society members. The following month Upton Sinclair visited Boston when his novel Oil! was banned. That summer, local newspapers and academics abandoned Chase. By December businessmen suffered financial losses because people traveled elsewhere to buy books. The 1927-1928 legislative session proposed looser censorship laws, but disagreements over definitions of “obscenity” prevented action.
On April 16, 1929, seven hundred people, including Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger and lawyers Hays and Clarence Darrow, rallied at “The Ford Hall Frolic” to support the liberal Massachusetts Library Club Bill, which was defeated. When the Watch and Ward prosecuted Dunster House Bookshop later that year for selling Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the Herald declared the society obsolete. In March, 1930, passage of the Weeks Bill relaxed Boston’s obscenity laws. The Watch and Ward dissolved after its last president, Raymond Calkins, resigned in 1931.