The business of birth control: Contraception and commerce in Britain before the sexual revolution

by Claire L. Jones

Overview

The business of birth control is the first book-length study to examine contraceptives as commodities in Britain before the pill. Drawing on new archives and neglected promotional and commercial material, the book demonstrates how hundreds of companies transformed condoms and rubber and chemical pessaries into consumer goods that became widely available via discreet mail order catalogues, newspapers, birth control clinics, chemists’ shops and vending machines in an era when older and more reserved ways of thinking about sex jostled uncomfortably with modern and more open attitudes. The book outlines the impact of contraceptive commodification on consumers, but also demonstrates how closely the contraceptive industry was intertwined with the medical profession and the birth control movement, who sought authority in birth control knowledge at a time when sexual knowledge and who had access to it was contested.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526182326
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Series:	Manchester University Press
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claire L. Jones is Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

Introduction: contraceptive commercialisation before the Pill
1 The dynamics of production: contraceptive manufacturing
2 Shaping markets: packaging, brands and trademarks
3 The print culture of contraceptives: advertising and the circulation of birth control knowledge
4 ‘As honest as business permits’: medical practitioners, birth control clinics and contraceptive efficacy
5 Over the counter and on the high street: contraceptive retailing in the urban landscape
Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

'[...] a much-needed addition'.
Metascience

'The work of Jones and Drucker reveals key insights into how commerce and technology were both powerful enough forces to overcome the medical and legal restrictions that shaped reproductive health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also maintained and even exacerbated racial and gendered reproductive inequality... absorbing and critiquing these lessons from the past will be a crucial task in the making of this century’s reproductive policies of access and inclusion.'
Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2023

From the Publisher