Anthony Comstock

He was born in New Canaan, Connecticut.

In 1873 Comstock created the Society for Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material. He lent his name to the term comstockery, meaning "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality". [1]

Comstock's ideas of what might be "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" were quite broad. During his time of greatest power, even some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service.

Comstock aroused intense loathing from early civil liberties groups and intense support from church based groups worried about public morals. His methods were frequently unscrupulous in the cause of doing good (as he saw it). His twin obessions were public distribution of pornography and commercial frauds. He was a savvy political insider in New York City and managed to be appointed a federal postal inspector. With this power he prosecuted with zeal those he suspected of either. His efforts to suppress public information on sex education materials and birth control is now often viewed as misguided. But he also shut down the nation's largest fraud, the Louisiana Lottery, ostensibly meant to found a public university. It was, instead, a pyramid scheme set up by state officials.

His enemies were legion, and in later years his health was affected by a severe blow to the head from an anonymous attacker. He lectured to college audiences and wrote newspaper articles to sustain his causes. Before his death, Comstock attracted the interest of a young law student, J. Edgar Hoover, interested in his causes and methods.