Dennett Echo

Last week's reverberations of the Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett obscenity trial (TIME, May 6):

Mrs. Dennett, fined $300 for mailing her "obscene" pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life, appealed the conviction. She said that she would go to jail rather than pay.

C. E. Dunbar, Washington postoffice inspector, volunteered that he had tricked Mrs. Dennett into sending her pamphlet to a "Mrs. Carl A. Miles" (himself), at Grottoes, Va. An official of the Daughters of the American Revolution, he said, had urged him to attack her.

Publicity from the trial and conviction brought Mrs. Dennett 100-lot orders for her pamphlet. She despatched them by express, over which the Post Office Department has no censorial jurisdiction.

Protagonists of unrestricted sex education gave Mrs. Dennett a mass meeting in Manhattan. Dr. Edward Loughborough Keyes, president of the American Social Hygiene Association, presided. Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson of the New York Academy of Medicine, energetic in maternal health work, resolved that some permanent agency be formed to study and act on sex education, sex literature. The mass meeting approved unanimously, except for Canon William Sheafe Chase of Christ Church, Brooklyn. He, who had abetted the conviction of Mrs. Dennett, sat in the gallery silent, watchful, preparing to continue his denunciation in debate and lecture.