George Bedborough

From Philosopedia

Bedborough, George (19th Century)

Bedborough, a secularist, was the first editor of The Adult, The Journal of Sex (1897).

One of its contributors, Lucy Stewart, argued with consistency that freethinkers ought to support free love on the utilitarian grounds that it would maximize happiness, since with birth control there would be no need to worry about producing unwanted children.

In 1898, when he was arrested for selling Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion, a Free Press Defence Committee formed, members of which included Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen, George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter, Hyndman, Edward Bliss Foote, Frank Podmore, W. M. Thompson, Edward Truelove, W. H. Holyoake, J. M. Robertson, and Herbert Burrows.

However, at his trial Bedborough capitulated and pleaded guilty. The Adult, which had been taken over by Henry Seymour, came to an end upon Bedborough’s pleading guilty.

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