Friends Association for Abolishing State Regulation of Vice, 1873-1910, and for Promotion of Social Purity, 1910-1926

From the Library of the Religious Society of Friends of Great Britain, London

4 reels 35mm silver microfilm, ISBN 1 897955 29 4

List price: POA

Following the institution of the Contagious Diseases Act (1869), yearly Meeting 1870, sent down a minute to subordinate meetings urging Friends to work for the Act's immediate repeal 9YM proceedings 1870. In 1873 the Friends Association for Abolishing Regulation of Vice was established. (This was also known as The Friends Repeal Association; the Friends Abolitionist Association; and the Friends Association for Abolishing the State Regulation of Vice).

The Association (which was never an official committee of the Yearly Meeting) was renamed in 1910 Friends Association for the Promotion of Social Purity, often called for simplicity the Social Purity Association. Its final published report, covering 1925-26 declared: "The Committee felt that owing to the existence of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (the amalgamation of two of Josephine Butler's old Committees), it was no longer necessary to keep up a second organisation, especially as several Friends including J. Rowntree Gillett and Maurice Gregory, were serving on the Committee of the Association". The Committee's decision was confirmed by a Meeting OF Subscribers in February 1926 (six attended), and the office at 26 Devonshire Chambers, Bishopsgate, London was closed from the end of March 1926.

The records of the Committee consist of its minutes 1873-1926 (9 volumes) and one volume of rough minutes 1924-26 together with the Printed Reports.

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