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From: lesley@lesleyahall.net [mailto:lesley@lesleyahall.net]
List Editor: Hera Cook <h.cook@BHAM.AC.UK>
Editor's Subject: FW: FW: Georgian Birth Control Shop at The Camden Head, Islington, London
Author's Subject: FW: FW: Georgian Birth Control Shop at The Camden Head, Islington, London
Date Written: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:52:55 +0100
Date Posted: Fri, 25 Oct 2012 15:52:55 -0400

Sent: 25 October 2012 16:05

> There is a pub called The Camden Head, in Camden Walk, Angel,
> Islington, London, that has a board outside stating:
>
> "In Georgian times the upstairs of the Camden Head was the location of
> a "birth control shop for women" that had its own entrance."
>
> It's unclear whether it was also a pub at the time - the same board
> states it "can be dated back to 1806 when a Samuel Grammer was the
Licensee."
>
> Has anyone come across this place before? Can anyone recommend work on
> birth control in Georgian times that discusses shops and distribution?
> Would such places advertise anywhere?


I think that the 'George' in the 'Georgian' there was probably V or even VI! I
have certainly come across early C20th birth control clinics which had
plausible deniability as to why a woman might be going in there, by being over
pie-shops or offering chiropody as well. 'Birth control shop'
is entirely anachronistic usage for the Hanoverian Georges or indeed until
C20th, and I wouldn't have even placed 'rubber goods shop' earlier than
Victoria (for technological reasons). Rubber goods shops did often have
separate entrances. There is a a photography of a 1930s example on p 257 of
Porter and Hall, The Facts of Life.

I suppose it's possible that there was a condom dealer at the address in the
C18th-C19th, but I'm not sure women would have been buying them - or at least,
that the women likely to have been buying them would have been bothered about a
separate entrance. The devices that a woman might use, as recommended by early
Malthusians, seem to have been sponges, and I would have thought that these
could have been made at home.

On birth control in the early C19th, I imagine the classic works by Peter Fryer
(The Birth Controllers) and Angus McLaren (The birth control movement in
nineteenth century England) would have something to offer.

Lesley Hall
lesley@lesleyahall.net
www.lesleyahall.net
lesleyahall.blogspot.co.uk

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