SOURCE: McCalman, Iain. “Grub Street Jacks: Obscene Populism and Pornography.” In Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840, pp. 204-31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

In the following excerpt, McCalman explores the production of pornography, some of it associated with radical politics, centered on Holywell Street in London.

The authorities caught up with George Cannon for the first time in October 1830. Early the following year, after two separate prosecutions, he was sentenced to a total of twelve months' imprisonment in Tothill Fields, not as we might expect for blasphemy or sedition, but on charges of obscene libel. By the end of the 1820s Rev. Erasmus Perkins was editing, translating and publishing books which discoursed on ‘the philosophy of birch discipline’ and sported such pseudonyms as ‘Philosemus’, ‘Mary Wilson’ (a notorious contemporary prostitute) and ‘Abdul Mustapha’. The last was the false imprint he used on Festival of Passions...