American comics in Austerity Britain

© Apologies to the cover designer of the superb Austerity Britain by David Kynaston

Being a fan of American comics in Portsmouth, UK in the 1950s must have been a lonely existence. Having been born in 1959 and grown up through the sixties and seventies, there was never a time in my childhood where a DC or Marvel book was not available within a mile of so of where I lived.

But that period prior to 1959 was a dark time. In fact, comics were just one of many non-essential items specifically banned from importation from the US since 1939 as a way of preserving the value of the pound and reducing funds going out of the country. During the war, Britain was increasingly dependent on the US as its main supplier of goods, and reducing that dependency in favour of home-grown product was the prime aim.

In addition to the financial considerations, there was major concern that printed matter entering the UK during the war could be used as a way of providing coded messages to fifth-columnists hiding among the general population. And so towns with ports receiving approved goods from America were a focus for additional scrutiny. An article in the 20th Nov 1957 edition of the Liverpool Echo detailed how during WWII the Aintree branch office of Gov Dept M.C.5. made a point of intercepting all American Comics coming in to the UK on American ships - whether as ballast or crew entertainment - and then painstakingly examining each physical copy in case there were coded messages hidden in the pages as pencil notations.

And so the only American comic material that legally found its way into the UK until the middle of 1959 when the law was changed, were British reprints using the plates of older American comics.

As Britain entered the 1950s, still in the grip of rationing, a review of both the national press and my local Portsmouth Evening News shows a very slowly emerging interest in American comics, but not in any positive form.

The only Portsmouth local to challenge Government policy was then thirty-year old Donald Gilbert T Cowd (1920-1985) who wrote to the editor of the Portsmouth Evening News on 12th April 1950:

© Portsmouth Evening News. 12th April 1950

There were no other reader responses to his letter, and so I suspect that Donald Cowd was a lone voice in the Hampshire wilderness.

Throughout the next decade I searched in vain for any further mentions of American comics in the Portsmouth Evening News. There were only TWO classified ads:

The first appeared on 4th June 1951:

WANTED. American Comics and Film Books.  161 Arundel Street

161 Arundel Street was the location of a second-hand shop run by a woman called Lily Darke. The shop was at the Commercial Rd end of Arundel Street.  The majority of her classified Wants ads over the years concerned the acquisition of Gents, Ladies and Children’s clothing, which was her prime source of income from the shop. This was her first and only classified looking for American comics. Lily was not above accepting other goods. Later in the decade, on 11 October 1956 Lily was offered a Colt Revolver and an automatic pistol for sale by a local Southsea man - saw they said “United States Property” and bought them, taking them immediately to the police.

The other classified ad appeared two months later on Tuesday 21 August 1951 

“Wanted. American Comics, Fantastic and Amazing Magazines, Books on Conjuring. Write or Call.  (Edward William) BEAL (Bookseller) 235 Lake Rd, Portsmouth”

235 Lake Road was a double-fronted shop in Lake Rd, listed in years past as a prime business position opposite Timpson Rd - now long demolished in the 1970s redevelopment of Buckland.

(At this time, I noted that an Edward William Beal “Magician” also had an address in Southampton - I have no idea if they are the same man.)

This was the only classified ad Beal published regarding American comics - and no-one else published any American comic ads at all for the rest of the decade in Portsmouth. 

Beal moved on to other retail opportunities; on 8 Feb 1952, Edward William Beal, bookseller along with other newsagent defendants (which included John Wesley August of 67 Charlotte St who went on to be a prime DC comic haunt of ours in the 1970s), had about 3,000 books in their stock ordered destroyed by Portsmouth Magistrates as they were likely to “deprave and corrupt”

Their lawyers had the case accepted that there was no suggestion that the newsagents in question were aware they might be selling obscene materials; were shocked and had co-operated fully with the police and magistrates to identify and agree destruction of selected items.

From the Portsmouth Evening News:

DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS ORDERED 

More than 160 titles were included in list of obscene books and publications which Portsmouth Magistrates yesterday ordered to be destroyed. It is likely that the number if copies to be burned will total 3,000.  Last October the Magistrates - Miss E. H. Kelly and Major W. H. Powell— adjourned the case "sine die" so that they could read each controversial document and make the decision. Seven defendants appeared at that hearing to show cause why 145 books and 29 magazines seized by the police should not be destroyed. They were Arthur John Smith, newsagent and bookseller. of 18, Queen Street Portsea: Edward William Beal, bookseller, of 235, Lake Road. Landport; Sidney Churchill, newsagent and bookseller, of 412, Commercial Road Landport: John Wesley August, newsagent and bookseller, of 67 Charlotte Street, Landport, William Henry Bryant, news agent and bookseller, of 73, Charlotte Street. Landport: Rosa Salome, bookseller, of 45 Queen Street, Portsea: and May Godding, of 2 and 3 Bradford Junction. Southsea. 

Miss Kelly (presiding) told defendants yesterday “We have given most careful consideration the complaints in his case, and have been through the books and publications with very great care”. Reading a short list of titles which included Sultry Love, White Slaves of London, Auction of Souls, Ecstacy ,and La Vie Parisienne, Miss Kelly said these books were not of an obscene character and would be returned their owners.

"We are, however, satisfied that the remainder of the books brought before us are of an obscene character, and that they have been kept for the purpose of sale and gain, and order that they be destroyed. The test of obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” 

Over the next three years the British press increasingly published reports of the damage that American Horror Comics were doing to the youth of America, and a determination that American Comics should be banned in the UK (oblivious that they had been banned for 16 years already). But the subtlety of all American comics in Britain being British-published was lost on the national press.

In 1953, a newspaper report that “hundreds of comics are leaking into Warrington each week” from the American Air Base at BurtonWood caused some public consternation;  a Friday 19 November 1954 report in the Lancaster Guardian was more level-headed, but concluded that more censorship was needed:

Lancaster Guardian - Friday 19 November 1954

LANCASTER booksellers and newsagents are not selling the “horror” comics which have caused nation-wide criticism, a survey “Guardian” reporters this week reveals. Until two or three months ago small quantities did find their way to the city but a tour of Lancaster bookstalls and newsagents’ shops this week did not bring to light any comics of this kind. A "Guardian’’ reporter did, however, discover a few comics which, If hardly horror comics, contained a fair ration of violence. In one the villain was a particularly repulsive midget. In another there was a story in which girl was twice struck to the ground and in which two men were stabbed. magistrate, and headmistress of Skerton Junior School, commented, "As far I can see Lancaster is a place where there are few, If any, of these publications." 

 Mr. J. H. Morgan, a Lancaster newspaper wholesaler, told the Guardian that In the past some distributors had sent horror comics to Lancaster, but that there had been none since an issue of a “Frankenstein series two or three months ago. (Mr. Bruce Parkinson. a newsagent, of Meeting House Lane, said that this series "could be guaranteed to give a nightmare to anyone who read It.") Mr. Morgan said that there had been big demand from a section of the public for the horror comics that were distributed and that there had been a similar demand this summer in the seaside towns. 

Mr. Morgan pointed out. however, that the three British firms which had been principally concerned with reproducing American comics of a horrifying kind had ceased to publish these comics a month ago. He did not think that there would be any more. There was no fear at all at the moment horror comics being published in Britain. Though the three chief firms had stopped, some other firm might start reproducing the comics in a year or two's time. But to this with financial success the firm would need to arrange for wide distribution and this would be extremely difficult…… Mr. Morgan stressed that the horror comics should not be confused with the ordinary Western comics which, he said, were quite harmless. The Western comics also were printed from plates imported from America Dr. W. George, chairman of Lancaster City Magistrates, said he had not seen any of the horror comics, but from what he had heard about them he was convinced it could not be good for the youth of the country to have such publications put in front of them.  Mr. R. T. Alcock, a city magistrate, commented, while I have seen some of these American comics, the majority, consider, are lust silly, but there are certainly some which can be really harmful, particularly to not very intelligent children. " I would agree to them being strongly censored If not suppressed.” Miss E. Ochiltree, another magistrate agreed.

The publication of Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent made the national press in 1955….and then suddenly it all went quiet. Public concern moved on to other things. The Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner - Saturday 19 November 1955 - was the only paper in the British Isles to make mention of the Comics Code Authority creation and its role going forward in approving American Comic content.   All UK public outrage about American Horror Comics had died by that point.

Obviously this blog post has been a rather cursory examination of the impact of American comics on the UK public consciousness in the 1950s, but I think it goes some way to explaining the lingering association in British minds of the 1960s of American comics with sleazy magazines, shady businesses and unsuitable content. First the needs of the Economy and National Security excluded US comics from our shores, followed up by the local judiciary as the arbiters of public taste and decency.

Things change so fast in retrospect. First Alan Class secured reprint rights in 1958, and then DC comics arrived on our shores in 1959 with Marvel soon after. The sixties then exploded for the UK comic collector as Odham's press first brought material to the masses on a weekly basis, supplanted by British Marvel as the seventies came around.