Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947) was a famous suffragette and women’s rights leader from Boston. After divorcing her husband in 1912, Ware relocated to New York and raised two sons as a single mother. She was an advocate for women’s causes. She founded the Twilight Sleep Association in 1913 which campaigned for anesthesia use during childbirth, and founded the Voluntary Parenthood League in 1919.
Mary Ware Dennett was had been a high-profile suffragette and advocate for women's rights. A move to New York City in 1913 raised her profile in the city. Her name was in the press frequently through her work for the National Woman Suffrage Association and the Voluntary Parenthood League. In the contentious era before the 19th Amendment was ratified, Dennett frequently engaged and debated her critics via the 'Letters to the Editor' in the New York Times.
The Sex Side of Life is a short pamphlet on human sexuality that Mary Ware Dennett wrote for her sons in 1915.
In 1915 Ware, now living at 81 Singer Street in Astoria, had written a treatise on sexual education for her two adolescent sons, and over the years this volume, called “The Sex Side of Life” was passed around
progressive circles to generally positive reviews. In 1918 it was published in a medical journal and in 1919 it was published as a pamphlet. For years, Ware would distribute copies on demand, and the pamphlet was well-known in social work and medical fields. In 1922 the US Post Office informed Ware her pamphlet was deemed “obscene” under the Comstock Laws, a warning Ware ignored. In 1929 Ware fell for a ruse by postal inspectors. She received a letter from a woman seeking birth control insight and Ware duly shipped her a copy of “The Sex Side of Life.” Thus trapped, she was arrested and charged with obscenity.
Even at the time, her arrest was seen as questionable. Ware was a grandmother by this point, and her pamphlet was over a decade old. After her arrest it was unclear if she would even have to stand trial. She had medical professionals to testify that her writing was technically accurate and medically sound. Social workers testified that she provided a needed service. Nonetheless, Mary Ware Dennett was convicted of obscenity on April 29, 1929 and fined $300.
Ware vowed to go to jail before she paid any fine, and her case was eventually overturned the following year with the state appeals court ruling the pamphlet was not obscene because it was not produced so as to “arouse lust.” In 1930 she published a memoir of the trial entitled “Who’s Obscene?” and later wrote an updated guide for parents called “The Sex Education of Children.” She died in 1947
Mary Ware Dennett was had been a high-profile suffragette and advocate for women’s rights. A move to New York City in 1913 raised her profile in the city. Her name was in the press frequently through her work for the National Woman Suffrage Association and the Voluntary Parenthood League. In the contentious era before the 19th Amendment was ratified, Dennett frequently engaged and debated her critics via the ‘Letters to the Editor’ in the New York Times.
clipping from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle 30 April 1929, page 24
Researching Mary Ware Dennett offers a brief glimpse into the confusion and apathy that surrounded the naming of Queens streets. The new system was officially implemented at least two years prior, but, throughout her trial in 1929, Mrs. Dennett was said to live at 81 Singer Street, Astoria in court documents and news reports. In spite of the official, legal street names having been different for at least two years, the public at large was slow to conform.
Finding a corresponding location for Singer Street proved tricky. Before 1918, Singer Street was called Lawrence Street. And that particular block of Singer Street lay just north of the 1870 boundary of Long Island City's 4th Ward, despite falling within both the 1839 and 1855 boundaries of Astoria Village - meaning it would not be included on most maps of Astoria before the consolidation of New York City. All of these obstacles made locating 81 Singer Street an increasingly hopeless endeavor until discovering NYPL's Direct Me NYC: 1940 project of digitized phone books. Luckily, Mrs. Dennett was still living, in the same location, now called 24-30 29th St., Long Island City.