ALLEGED IMMORAL BOOKS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14700, 7 December 1909, Page 5

ALLEGED IMMORAL BOOKS.

AX AUCKLAND PROSECUTION. (From Our Own Cohrespondent.) AUCKLAND, December 6. From trine .to time the police in" som< of. the cities of the Dominion take action to suppress tie.sale of a certain undesirable class of literature, notably certain works ostensibly of a medical character, which they say ai'o freely sold, and very often to persons oil whose minds their effect cannot be 'other than harm fill. Oti Saturday, in the Magistrate's Court, beforo Mr E. C. Cutten, S.M., Joshua Martin Connelly, a bookseller in Quant street, was charged witn having sold a number of these books, and was further called upon to show Muse why a number of them, which were seized should not be destroyed. One of them was especially advertised by a placard placed in the shop window, which set out that it was "An illustrated Marriage Guide," and that defendant had previously tfeej prosecuted fur selling il. The defendant, as Detective Marsack explained, cold the books to two defectives, who went- to him as ordinary customers. . They asked for one of the books. Defendant said it was a " rather warm book," and that he had ' been prosecuted lor selling it. He charged the excessive price of 4s 6d for it (the book is a paper-covered volume and poorly printed). They asked if ho had any more " hot" books, and he produced the otiicrs. He said, " i'ou . mighty think they are ordinary penny dreadfuls, They're not; they're prohibited books, and I'm the only person , in the town who sells them." The chief detective cited passages from the various books complained of in suppprt of the contention that they were obscene and • immoral publications. Ho also quoted the case submitted by him in tho previous prosecution. For the defence Mr iteid referred first to those books which dealt with the treatment of cortein.-dis-eases and the prevention of a certain 1 condition in women. He submitted . in regard to tho former that the chief defective's contention that it constituted . an offensive publication was incorrect. Mr Justice Williams had ruled to the contrary in Cooney v. Conel (1901), • 4 G.L.R. 140. With regard to the latter, he quoted from the lengthy judgments in ex parte Collins (9 N.S.W. L.K. 497) to show that there was nothing obscene in the books. They dealt. with certain anatomical, physiological, and pathological facts in plain language, it wa3 tree, but not in an obscene manner. Willi regard to one of them, it was published in 1683,' was written by. Daniel. Defoe, and was a recognised English classic.. If written to-day it would be obscene, but then if anyone wrote such a book to-day it would be written in the grossest language, whereas this was written in very good English. If it had to.be banned as an obscene ' publication, then many other classics would have to go, such as (/naucer's "Canterbury Tales," Spenser's. "Faerie Quecne," Fielding's "Tom Jones," "Joseph Andrews," "Tristram Shandy," " Humphrey Clinker," Sterne's " Sentimental Jowmoy," and, in fact, all Fielding's and Smollett's works, Butler's "Arabian Nights" and "Gulliver's Travels." He could point to vulgar passages in Hardy's " Tess of the D'Urbervilies," in " The Woman Who Did," and in Victoria Cross's books. His Worship reserved his deoision.