In his new book, "Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society's Crusade Against Books, Burlesque and the Social Evil," Tufts Lecturer of English Neil Miller delves into the Watch and Ward Society's effort to transform Boston into the most ethical city in the country, beginning in the 1870s and continuing through the mid 1900s.
The anti-vice group, which was funded by some of Boston's wealthiest families and businessmen with no official legal power, was able to seize control of the moral compass of an entire city, Miller explained.
While Miller himself does not hail from his book's subject city, he did begin his career there. Having grown up in Kingston, N.Y., a town about 90 miles north of New York City, he attended Brown University as an undergraduate and then earned a graduate degree in film from New York University. Miller moved to Boston in the mid-1970s and volunteered for a weekly gay newspaper, where he was quickly promoted to news editor and paid a handsome wage of $60 a week, he said. Miller then worked as a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix and, from then on, considered himself a journalist and a writer by profession.
Miller has written five books prior to "Banned in Boston," all of them non-fiction and some of them centering on gay-related themes, which was uncommon and considered taboo at the time of publication, he said. His most recent of the five, "Kartchner Caverns" (2008), tells the tale of two students from the University of Arizona who helped discover and save magnificent and hitherto-unknown caves.
Miller, who knew almost nothing about the history of book banning in Boston before beginning research for his book, was presented with the idea for this latest project by his publishers at Beacon Press after they discovered that their office was located in the old New England Watch and Ward Society headquarters. Ironically enough, the building is now a hub of dissemination of many of the types of literature that the society once sought to ban, he said.
But after spending hours in both public and private libraries across Boston foraging through the New England Watch and Ward Society's records and old newspapers, Miller felt he had enough information to accurately tell the story of Boston's transformation.
The moral crusaders of the New England Watch and Ward Society founded their organization in 1878 and were highly active through the mid-1950s, Miller said. The group focused on banning books deemed inappropriate or crude, closing traditional and burlesque theaters and eliminating gambling and prostitution.
"[The society was] like a vigilante private organization … founded by some of the wealthiest older families in Boston," Miller said.
Books such as Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" (1855) and Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" (1926) were among the thousands of books banned over nearly a century, he said.
Interestingly, Miller pointed out, many authors actually sought to have their books banned in Boston because the controversy created media hype and caused the books to be read everywhere else. Upton Sinclair, who intentionally had one of his books banned in Boston, put it aptly: "I would rather be banned in Boston than read anywhere else, because when you are banned in Boston, you are read everywhere else."
Miller will be reading from "Banned in Boston" at Porter Square Books in Porter Square on Thursday, Oct. 21 and encourages students to take the opportunity to gain an alternative perspective on their current city.
"People in Boston tend to be really interested in their history because it's such a historical place, and this is a part of Boston's history that a lot of people don't know about," Miller said. "[It's a chance to] learn another side of Boston's history that is also relevant to today," he said.
