For safe sex it’s back to Boswell—and the Romans

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 17

For safe sex it’s back to Boswell—and the Romans

“The advice to everyone is clear — stick to one partner. If you cannot, make sure a condom is used.” That is the opinion of Britain’s Social Services Minister, Norman Fowler. The British Government is also considering lifting a long-standing ban on advertising of condoms on television. This move has been prompted by the growing fears and increasing deaths caused by A.I.D.S. COLIN SMITH of the London “Observer” recalls the history of condoms.

A.I.D.S. promises to do for condoms what lung cancer did for cigarettes with filters, and there is talk of universal blood tests and the end of the permissive society. Yet safe sex, like safe streets, seems to be one of those things that go in cycles. James Boswell’s “London Journal” shows us that an eighteenthcentury Englishman would hot only understand our present plight but would use one of the same methods to combat it • “March 25, 1763 — I went to St James’ Park, and like Sir John Brute, picked up a whore. For the first time I did engage in armour which I found but a dull satisfaction.” • “May 9, 1763 — At the bottom of the Haymarket I picked up a strong, jolly young damsel, and taking her under the arm I conducted her to Westminster Bridge, and then in armour complete did I engage her upon this noble edifice.” “May 17, 1763 — I picked up a fresh, agreeable girl called Alice Gibbs. We went down a lane to a snug place, and I took out my armour, but she begged that I might not put it on as the sport was much pleasanter without it, and as she was quite safe I was rash enough to trust her and had a very agreeable congress.” Alas, as he records later in his

“Journal," the diarist’s trust in Alice or some other armourless coupling was misplaced, and he was shortly down with a venereal complaint, the details of which • he mercifully spares us. Boswell did not, of course, have A.I.D.S. to worry about But Dr Johnson’s biographer, whose exclusively heterosexual carousel would sometimes make a San Francisco bath house look like slow motion, was rightly terrified of catching syphilis which remained more or less incurable until the introduction of antibiotics during the Second World War. The armour the 23-year-old Boswell donned for his amorous joustings in the 1760 s was almost certainly made of animal gut. By the mid-eighteenth century, such condoms were quite commonly used by the young bloods pleasuring themselves among the diseased poor. By then, the notion that a man might cover his penis to protect himself and his women from sexually transmitted diseases had been around for about 2000 years. The Romans used sheaths cut from animal bladders. The Chinese found a clever way of putting oiled silk paper to the same use, while the Japanese thought leather more befitting for a Samurai. Cave paintings have been discovered which appear to show a

man in the act of coitus with some sort of covering on his organ, and there has been speculation that the first condom may have been a leaf. It seems that the earliest description of the sheath is to be found in the writing of the Italian anatomist, Gabrielle Fallopius (of the tubes). It was made out of linen and tailored to the shape of the glans. Nobody knows where the word condom comes from. One suggestion is that it was named after a physician of Charles II who introduced the merry monarch to safe sex. Another is that it was derived from the French town of Condom, which is near Toulouse. What is certain is that by the year of Boswell’s death, in 1795, a certain Mrs Phillips was ready to start the first widescale commercial production of gut condoms from premises in the Strand. Casanova called them calottes d’assurances, and, in a burst of franglais, the “redingote anglaise." For the discerning few, animal gut condoms can still be bought. They are made in the United States from the bellies of baby lambs and cost about $3 each. For much of the above history I am indebted to Dr Ray RussellFell, the senior information scientist at LRC-Products and his

management colleague, Mr Reginald Ross-Turner. LRC stands for the London Rubber Company, which makes rubber gloves but is chiefly famous for its production of the contraceptive sheaths that three generations of British males have known variously as Durex, rubbers, Johnnies, and French Letters. . !jt? The French riposte is to call them capotes anglaises which originally referred to a device which enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1920 s and looked a bit like a dunce’s cap. It was in fact worn by the ladies. The capote has long since gone the way of the mandarins’ oiled silk paper, but the name has stuck.

The London Rubber Company was established over a chemist’s shop in London’s East End in 1916, about 20 years after the advent of vulcanised rubber made the mass production of cheap, hygienic, and reliable condoms possible. In the 19305, liquid latex was substituted for crepe rubber, and during the Second World War millions of these condoms became War Office issue to British servicemen serving overseas. For a long time the official explanation was that they were needed to keep gun barrels dry, and there are reports that some were used for this. It was about this time that Mr Angus Reid, who was then chairman of the company, came up with the trade name Durex — an acronym of durable, reliable, and excellent The post-war years saw two

other developments. The first, in the mid-19505, was the lubricated sheath, and then in the early 1970 s a spermicidal lubricant was introduced which gaveadded protection against pregnancy. By the time this latest development came along, the condom was feeling the competition from the Pill, the 1.U.D., and the popularity of sterilisation. Sales dropped dramatically, and the company stepped up its diversifications into products ranging from spode china to cough mixture. This policy became so successful that they felt able to change their name to London International, and the founding company was made a subsidiary and hidden away behind its initials, part of an embarrassing past and not quite so lucrative future.

The latest figures available indicate the sheath is used by no more than 1.3 million people in Britain (nearly 3 million use the Pill.) “The Pill swept everything before it,” says Mr Ross-Turner, sadly. “A boy expects the girl to be on it. He doesn’t even ask.”

Most British males bom later than 1956 seem to regard the condom with almost the same sort of incredulity their fathers reserved for pith helmets and whalebone corsets. One recent survey produced answers from both sexes such as, “like having a bath with hiking socks on.” The company has obviously been aware of this image and in recent years has been producing condoms in a variety of colours and shapes. There is, for instance, “Black Shadow,” which has a picture of a man in full evening dress tipping his top hat on the front cover of the packet, while on the back it claims it “can bring added sophistication to your love-making.”

There is also a ribbed sheath called the Arouser, whose cover shows a free-fall parachutist and may possibly have been inspired by the famous opinion of the Parachute Regiment that there are two thrills in a man’s life and the second one is parachuting. Some time in the late 19305, the company moved out of the East End to its premises along the Walthamstow stretch of the North Circular Road. Inevitably, local minicab drivers know it as “the Johnny factory.”

There is the smell of the ammonia used, to preserve the latex on its voyage from Malaysia. Various other chemicals are added in the factory and impurities removed by whisking it around in centrifuges at the speed of sound. The staff number about 1000, including the women who work part-time on the conveyor belts in four-hour shifts. The actual production is a relatively simple business of covering glass moulds, each one shaped like a penis wearing a condom, with the chemically treated, liquid latex and then drying it out at a great heat All this is fully automated. Only in the diaphragm department did I see a group of middle-aged women sitting around a table, checking and trimming. On the wall they had pinned a large wedding photograph of the Duke and Duchess of York.

For the condoms, the labourintensive part comes only in the checking. Mr Russell-Fell estimated that a ratio of six to one of the staff were involved in checking. Extraordinary things are done to condoms by young ladies in white coats. They take test batches of 100 out of every 10,000 and inflate them until they burst on machines specially imported for this purpose from Sweden. They cut small pieces off them and stretch them a very long way to prove their elasticity. They fill them with more pints of water than anyone would believe.

We were asked to make sure that employees did not mind having their photograph taken as, in the past, some people had not wished to reveal where they

worked. Nobody objected. I was told that the company prefer what they call “more mature women” to do some aspects of testing. “It’s better if they’ve got a daughter of their own to think of.”

The company has quite a large research and development department, and at present its subsidiary in the Netherlands is testing a thicker sort of condom that might be suitable for homosexuals. A Continental producer is already selling one in Britain aimed at the homosexual market

L.R.C. are fully aware of the part they might play in combatting A.1.D.5., although they point out that they are still not allowed to advertise on radio or television, even if the days have long gone when their products were

not openly displayed in a chemist’s shop. After Christmas, the British Government is to beck up Ms TV campaign about AJ.DJ. by distributing leaflets to 23 million homes throughout Britain. Among other things, these leaflets will be advising people to use condoms.

But at L.R.C. I did not detect any licking of Ups at the prospect of huge profits. On the contrary, at present their shares have J»t taken a small dip — the result of earlier over-optimistic speculating in the city. They point out that after two years of enormous publicity about A.1.D5., in North America their United States subsidiary has only just begun to experience a modest Increase in the sale of condoms. It seems that we take a long time to learn.

First of crepe, then of latex

Product tested

to destruction