The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV or SSV) was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and district attorneys in bringing offenders to justice. It and its members also pushed for additional laws against perceived immoral conduct. While the NYSSV is better remembered for its opposition to literary works, it also closely monitored the newsstands, commonly found on city sidewalks and in transportation terminals, which sold the popular newspapers and periodicals of the day.
Later that year, The New York Times said that the Society's efforts would be in vain because "widely read newspapers can flaunt criminal advertisements, or prurient or sensuous descriptions and accounts of the proceedings of the divorce courts, and other nastiness, before their readers, not only unpunished, but with the moral support of the oftentimes respectable and religious families that patronize them."[4]The New York Daily Herald complimented the Society for suppressing obscene literature that causes "destruction of the corner stone of our societal system" and has "tainted and poisoned" the minds of children.[5]
After Comstock's death in 1915, he was succeeded by John S. Sumner.[6][7] In 1947, the organization's name was changed to the Society to Maintain Public Decency because the former name no longer described the society's work.[8][9]
After Sumner's retirement in 1950, the organization was dissolved.
Actions pursued
1900: Encouraged authorities to arrest Olga Nethersole and others for "violating public decency" in Clyde Fitch's Broadway play Sapho. All were found innocent at trial.[10]
1920: After the magazine The Little Review serialized a passage of the book Ulysses dealing with the main character masturbating, the NYSSV, who objected to the book's content, took action to attempt to keep the book out of the United States. At a trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene and as a result Ulysses was banned in the United States.
1922: Encouraged the arrest of bookstore employee Raymond D. Halsey for selling the "obscene" novel Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, which depicted adultery and homosexuality. Halsey was acquitted, and successfully sued the Society for false arrest and malicious prosecution. This case established that literary experts could offer testimony in support of a book to guide the judge's opinion.[16]
1922: Unsuccessful lawsuit against the publishing house Thomas Seltzer for publishing Casanova’s Homecoming by Arthur Schnitzler and A Young Girl‘s Diary (with foreword by Sigmund Freud) by Hermine Hug-Hellmuth.
1920s and '30s: Prosecuted a long war against the so-called "girlie pulps," which featured titillating fiction, sometimes accompanied with nude photography.[17]
1932: Falsely arrested a bookseller for displaying a book on nudism in his store's window. John S. Sumner, secretary of the society, was ordered to pay the bookseller $500 in restitution.[22]
1933: Wins conviction resulting in a $200 fine over distribution of the book "The Man In The Monkey Suit" by Frances W. King.[23]
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice is not to be confused with its namesake, the earlier, 19th-century Society for the Suppression of Vice.
