Malthus\ Essay on the Principle of Population

improvement of the education of the people, and the decay of superstition will, in time, it may be hoped, accomplish the difficult task of reconciling these important objects.”

This somewhat vague advocacy of birth control was made much more explicit by the trade union leader Francis Place (1771-1854). In 1822 Place published, at considerable risk to himself, a pamphlet entitled To the Married of Both Sexes of the Working People. Place’s pamphlet contains the following passages: “It is a great truth, often told and never denied, that when there are too many working people in any trade or manufacture, they are worse paid than they ought to be paid, and are compelled to work more hours than they ought to work. When the number of working people in any trade or manufacture has for some years been too great, wages are reduced very low, and the working people become little better than slaves.”

“When wages have thus been reduced to a very small sum, working people can no longer maintain their children as all good and respectable people wish to maintain their children, but are compelled to neglect them; - to send them to different employments; - to Mills and Manufactories, at a very early age.

The miseries of these poor children cannot be described, and need not be described to you, who witness them and deplore them every day of your lives.”

“The sickness of yourselves and your children, the privation and pain and premature death of those you love but cannot cherish as you wish, need only be alluded to. You know all these evils too well.”

“And what, you will ask, is the remedy? How are we to avoid these miseries? The answer is short and plain: the means are easy. Do as other people do, to avoid having more children than they wish to have, and can easily maintain.”

Place’s pamphlet then goes on to describe very explicitly the sponge method of contraception. “What is to be done is this. A piece of soft sponge is tied by a bobbin or penny ribbon, and inserted just before intercourse takes place. Many tie a sponge to each end of a ribbon, and they take care not to use the same sponge again until it has been washed. If the sponge be large enough, that is, as large as a green walnut, or a small apple, it will prevent conception.... without diminishing the pleasures of married life...”

In 1832, Dr. Charles Knowlton, a Boston physician, published a book entitled The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married 22