We advertised the sale of the pamphlet in the National Reformer of
March 25th (published March 22nd) in the following words:
FRUITS OF PHILOSOPHY. By CHARLES KNOWLTON, M.D. PRICE SIXPENCE.
This Pamphlet will be republished on Saturday, March 24th, in extenso, with some additional Medical Notes by a London Doctor of Medicine. It will be on sale at 28, Stonecutter Street, E.G., after 4 p.m. until close of shop. No one need apply before this time, as none will be on sale. Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant will be in attendance from that hour, and will sell personally the first hundred copies.
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
In addition to this we ourselves delivered copies on March 23rd to Mr. Martin, the Chief Clerk of the magistrates at Guildhall, to the officer in charge at the City Police Office in Old Jewry, and to the Solicitor for the City of London. With each pamphlet we handed in a notice that we should attend personally to sell the book on March 24th, at Stonecutter Street, from 4 to 5 p.m. These precautions were taken in order to force the authorities to prosecute us, and not any of our subordinates, if they prosecuted at all. The account of the first sale will interest many:
"On Saturday we went down to Stonecutter Street, accompanied by the Misses Bradlaugh and Mr. and Mrs. Touzeau Parris; we arrived at No. 28 at three minutes to four, and found a crowd awaiting us. We promptly filled the window with copies of the pamphlet, as a kind of general notice of the sale within, and then opened the door. The shop was filled immediately, and in twenty minutes over 500 copies were sold. No one sold save Mr. Bradlaugh and myself, but Miss Bradlaugh sorted dozens with a skill that seemed to stamp her as intended by nature for the business, while her sister supplied change with a rapidity worthy of a bank clerk. Several detectives favored us with a visit, and one amused us by coming in and buying two copies from Mr. Bradlaugh, and then retiring gracefully; after an interval of perhaps a quarter of an hour he reappeared, and purchased one from me. Two policemen outside made themselves useful; one patrolled the street calmly, and the other very kindly aided Norrish, Mr. Eamsey's co-worker, in his efforts to keep the stream flowing quietly, without too much pressure. Mr. Bradlaugh's voice was heard warningly from time to time, bidding customers not to crowd, and everything went well and smoothly, save that I occasionally got into fearful muddles in the intricacies of 'trade price'; I disgusted one customer, who muttered roughly 'Ritchie', and who, when I gave him two copies, and put his shilling in the till, growled: 'I shan't take them'. I was fairly puzzled, till Mr. Bradlaugh enlightened me as to the difficulty, 'Ritchie' to me being unknown; it appeared that 'Ritchie', muttered by the buyer, meant that the copies were wanted by a bookseller of that name, and his messenger was irate at being charged full price. Friends from various parts appeared to give a kindly word; a number of the members of the Dialectical Society came in, and many were the congratulations and promises of aid in case of need. Several who came in offered to come forward as bail, and their names were taken by Mr. Parris. The buyer that most raised my curiosity was one of Mr. Watts' sons, who came in and bought seven copies, putting down only trade-price on the counter; no one is supplied at trade-price unless he buys to sell again, and we have all been wondering why Mr. Watts should intend to sell the Knowlton pamphlet, after he has proclaimed it to be obscene and indecent. At six o'clock the shutters were put up, and we gave up our amateur shop-keeping; our general time for closing on Saturday is 2 p.m., but we kept the shop open on Saturday for the special purpose of selling the Knowlton pamphlet. We sold about 800 copies, besides sending out a large number of country parcels, so that if the police now amuse themselves in seizing the work, they will entirely have failed in stopping its circulation. The pamphlet, during the present week, will have been sold over England and Scotland, and the only effect of the foolish police interference will be to have sold a large edition. We must add one word of thanks to them for the kindly aid given us by their gratuitous advertisement."
[I may note here, in passing, that we printed our edition verbatim from that issued by James Watson, not knowing that various editions were in circulation. It was thereupon stated by Mr. Watts that we had not reprinted the pamphlet for which he was prosecuted, so we at once issued another edition, printed from his own version.]
The help that flowed in to us from all sides was startling both in quantity and quality; a Defence Committee was quickly formed, consisting of the following persons:
"C.R. Drysdale, M.D., Miss Vickery, H.R.S. Dalton, B.A., W.J. Birch,
M.A., J. Swaagman, Mrs. Swaagman, P.A.V. Le Lubez, Mdme. Le Lubez, Miss
Bradlaugh, Miss H. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Parris, T. Allsop, E. Truelove, Mark
E. Marsden, F.A. Ford, Mrs. Fenwick Miller, G.N. Strawbridge, W.W.
Wright, Mrs. Rennick, Mrs. Lowe, W. Bell, Thomas Slater, G. F. Forster,
J. Scott, G. Priestley, J.W. White, J. Hart, H. Brooksbank, Mrs.
Brooksbank, G. Middleton, J. Child, Ben. W. Elmy, Elizabeth Wolstenholme
Elmy, Touzeau Parris (Hon. Sec.), Captain R.H. Dyas, Thomas Roy
(President of the Scottish Secular Union), R.A. Cooper, Robert Forder,
William Wayham, Mrs. Elizabeth Wayham, Professor Emile Acollas (ancien
Professeur de Droit Français à l'Université de Berne), W. Reynolds, C.
Herbert, J.F. Haines, H. Rogers (President of the Trunk and Portmanteau
Makers' Trade Society), Yves Guyot (Redacteur en chef du Radical et du
Bien Public), W.J. Ramsey, J. Wilks, Mrs. Wilks, J.E. Symes, E. Martin,
W.E. Adams, Mrs. Adams, John Bryson (President of the Northumberland
Miners' Mutual Confident Association), Ralph Young, J. Grout, Mrs. Grout,
General Cluseret, A. Talandier (Member of the Chamber of Deputies), J.
Baxter Langley, LL.D., M.R.C.S., F.L.S."
Mrs. Fenwick Miller's letter of adhesion is worthy republication; it puts so tersely the real position: