9) Soho Typescripts – Homegrown Filth 1954-74
One key Soho name that has already cropped up a few times is that of Ron ‘The Dustman’ Davey, and it is finally time to meet him in person. Davey (1913 – ???) was “an engagingly sociable giant of man… well able to look after himself” (very few successful pornographers seem to have been weedy seven-stone introverts) who was simultaneously a dustman for Hammersmith Council and a popular member of the Surrey Downs Sun Club in Farley Green, a nudist club first set up in 1941. John Hawkesford, spotting a commercial opportunity, suggested Ron might like to take a few photographs of willing female Sun Club members to sell in his bookshops, and this soon progressed to ‘doubles’ and then women wrestling – “very popular at the time” as Davey later cheerfully recalled. The obvious next step was producing actual books.
We need to pause briefly here to consider the technology involved. As printing obscene literature was still completely illegal in England very few aspiring pornographers had access to professional presses, but luckily a cheap practical alternative had been invented in the late 1800s. David Gestetner first patented his ‘Cyclograph’ machine in London in 1879, and in 1906 opened a huge works in Tottenham Hale to manufacture these. The Cyclograph was a stencil-method duplicator that used a thin sheet of wax-coated kite paper, which could be written or drawn on with a ‘Cyclostyle’ stylus, cutting a thin line through the wax seal.
The finished stencil was then placed onto a screen wrapped around a pair of revolving drums, ink being spread evenly across the surface via a pair of cloth-covered rollers. This was forced through the breaks in the stencil and transferred onto a fresh sheet of paper fed in and pressed firmly against the lower drum – each complete rotation of the screen fed and printed one sheet. Once typewriters were invented it was a simple matter to remove their ribbon and type straight onto a stencil, the direct impact of the metal keys cutting into the wax as before. The only real drawback was that the resulting stencils wore out quite quickly and could only cope with short runs of between 200-300 sheets before breaking down. The centres of ‘closed’ letters (‘O’ and ‘D’ etc) would drop out, and then the entire stencil would begin to disintegrate or tear. Once that happened, the only option was to create a completely new one from scratch.
From about 1953 The Dustman began creating his own books on a row of three Gestetners lined up in his front room, and would patiently roneo, collate and staple the results himself. These were incredibly popular – “I’d bring 200 up to London on a Friday and by Monday the phone would be going asking for more” – and became known in the trade as MDs (short for Millionaire Dustmans). By 1956 Davey was supplying about half a dozen Soho shops, and a couple of years later agreed an exclusive supply-deal with John Mason in the latter’s office on Green’s Court. Ben Holloway recalled taking a consignment of MDs to America in about 1960 and doing a roaring trade.
Davey did not write his own material however – this aspect was handed over to a small group of indigenous Soho hacks typically recruited in the local pubs and more than happy to churn out some variation of the basic themes for a few quid drinks’ money (one indication of their relative status is the fact that the later stencil-typists were paid at exactly the same rate). Some nevertheless took a certain pride in their work, with one veteran proudly boasting he had “managed to make one fuck last 42 pages“. Every Christmas, Davey would produce ‘Playtime’ which consisted of eight stories and a few pictures, the latter in a sequence vaguely dramatising the action. He sold these to Mason for £3 – £4 each and Carpet then flogged them to the punters for £25. Money for old rope. By the time he retired in the early 1970s Davey had raised three separate families, owned a small estate in Hampshire and was sending his youngest son to public school (where he hopefully entertained classmates with his own spirited rendition of My Old Man’s a Dustman – and a Nudist Pornographer). The Dustman himself tended to work when he pleased, and like Mason spontaneously disappeared on long Spanish holidays whenever he got bored. He was obliged to testify in the 1977 Dirty Squad trials, but (unlike everyone else) refused to give evidence against Bill Moody, insisting he was a good friend whom he was proud to know (though he did casually concede that “Bill could be a bit greedy sometimes” which appears to be the understatement of the century).
So, who exactly were the Dustman’s writers? At the moment we just don’t know, as the books’ credited authors (where they’re credited at all) tend to be pseudonymous jokes: Roger MacQuim, Nick Urzdown, Ken Gervase (ie look at her arse), Irma Mueller, Ivor Lashley etc etc. Urzdown (who seems to be from Liverpool) now writes an online-blog, Memories of a Strict Uncle, which in April 2010 offered a lively account of how things worked: “What usually happened was that a merchant would buy two or three stories of about 5,000 words each from the writers. An artist was paid to produce, on a stencil, the name that was given to the work and a drawing that was vaguely related to it. The connection between the drawing and the content really depended on how much a merchant wanted to pay. I have known some who had a stack of drawings on stencils which were picked out at random, and then a title written at the top once the merchant had enough stories to justify stenciling them up…
…The only problem was that it was in the merchant’s interests to cut out as much of the manuscript as possible, because payment was by the thousand words. If the merchant could cut out the descriptive passages that we writers added to pad out the manuscripts, then he could save himself some money. There was nothing funnier than the sight of some wheezy, chain-smoking semi-literate, pencil in hand trying to edit down a manuscript. Others were more laid back, such as the character who told me – in all seriousness – ‘If I haven’t got a hard-on by the end of the first page I’m not buying it!'”
Supposed publishers’ names (again where credited) were similarly whimsical: Collectors Press, Bernadet Press, Pernod Press, Adam and Eve Press, Vernac Press, Ludex Pubs, Rendezvous Press and Bonhomme Press. Occasionally these aped their Parisian counterparts – the Companion Press or Ocean’s Press – and sometimes ripped off the latter’s actual content (in a random fragmentary fashion). Regularly cited places of publication included Paris, Hamburg and Mexico City which certainly sound more glamorous than Hammersmith Flyover, though it’s hard to believe anyone really took them seriously. Again, a certain sardonic sense of humour is clearly in operation
The basic division was between illustrated and non-illustrated books, with the former naturally fetching more. Illustrations could be either crude stencil-drawings or hardcore photos, the latter routinely shot in Soho bedsits and featuring models who were presumably recruited from the area’s sex workers – these can often be dated fairly accurately via the girls’ hairstyles / make-up and/or background furnishings (interested researchers are advised to consult the two chief sources of online images, the UK rambooks and US alta-glamour websites). The resulting photos (‘smudges’ in the trade) were then simply stapled or glued into the books themselves. In terms of drawn illustrations, many are attributed to Mike Freeman (b. Michael Muldoon 1938) who attended St Martins College on Charing Cross Road and first sold a portfolio of erotic drawings to a nearby Soho bookshop c.1962. Others are possibly by the Slade-trained Tom Poulton (1897-1963), though available examples tend not to match his distinctive soft-pencil style. Many of the later covers are simple photo-prints of slick US fetish-cartoons by the likes of Bill Ward / Gene Bilbrew.etc – their anonymous UK counterparts are in contrast often stunningly amateurish, though the latter’s obsessive focus on hooded dungeon-torturers does give a few a remarkably sinister edge.
Covers also often feature simple hand-annotated codes indicating content: STR (straight), LES (lesbian), FLA (flagellation), FD (female-domination), B/W (black/white) and so on. (‘Straight’ in this context is not vs gay, it simply means straight sex lacking any S&M component, so could ironically include lesbian themes). In terms of how they were sold, the books were almost always kept in the previously-mentioned back rooms. access to which was cautiously restricted to known regulars. One anonymous informant in 1958 described a typical set-up: “The Lisle Bookshop of Lisle Street has an outer and inner part. The outer part displays more or less legal stuff. At the end of the shop away from the street there is a counter, a door and a partition (left to right as you face it). The Olympia Press obscenities are kept in a wooden box on the floor under the counter. Just above them are kept the French nude books. Behind the partition on the right of the door are boxes of roneoed obscene books [ie Typescripts] and a box of obscene photos done up in cellophane”. When retailers bothered arranging the books in separate sections the division was generally just between Straight and Sadism – one shop apparently featured a white cupboard and black cupboard respectively.
Considering the many thousands of these things that must have been (literally) cranked out over the years, relatively few appear to have survived. A 1963 raid on a Brighton bookshop netted a couple of dozen, and Eric Dingwall of the British Library had the foresight to request these from the Sussex police and place them in the BL’s so-called ‘Private Case’ collection. He had less luck two years later when a similar large bequest from the collector Beecher Moore (a friend of Tom Poulton’s) was turned down by Robert Wilson, Keeper of Printed Books: “We are, after all, a library, not an institute of sexual research”. A disappointed Dingwall instead negotiated their transfer to the Kinsey Institute in the US via the latter’s librarian Elizabeth Egan. As historian Patrick Kearney later put it: “It is probable that in another two hundred years [Soho Typescripts] will be seen as useful historical, sociological or psychological documents…. The typescripts are no masterpieces of literature, nor are they, strictly speaking, printed books. But they are a product peculiar to a particular era of the English erotica market and it would surely have been preferable to have preserved them for posterity somewhere closer to their place of origin than Indiana, where they are now”.
When did the typescripts cease being produced? No one seems quite sure, though the early 1970s (around the time of the Dustman’s retirement) appears a likely date, giving a production life-span of roughly twenty years or so. The handful of copies currently offered for sale online command astonishingly high prices, so perhaps the best way of conveying their overall flavour is to describe (in quite unnecessary detail) the sole example in the present writer’s collection, the exotically-titled ‘India, Land of Lust’.
India, Land of Lust measures 6½” x 8″ in landscape format, and comprises 68 pages stapled between pink card-covers. The front cover features a crude stencil-drawing of a reclining Sultan surrounded by concubines which is also reproduced on the title-page – the stencil has begun to wear out, and much of the detail (including the subtitle) is heavily faded. No author or publication details are provided (not even joke ones), with the text simply beginning on page 2. It is impossible to date accurately, though seems likely to be mid-to-late 1950s. Binding is a length of thick brown parcel-tape forming a makeshift spine, held together by six heavy-duty staples (three in the front and three in the back). The pages are printed on one side only and hand-numbered deep in the gutter (ie for the benefit of the collator not the reader), while the paper-stock changes abruptly from white to pale-blue on p.53.
The story is narrated by Mr Cole, a recently-qualified English teacher who has travelled out to India to take up an undefined educational post in the palace-household of a rich Sultan. The narrative begins with his arrival, and to give an idea of the literary style deployed we can quote the first page in its entirety:
“The Pathan carried my luggage as if it were weightless, and after a short ride in a pony-trap I arrived at a beautiful white building surrounded by spacious grounds perfectly laid out. As we approached, the huge iron gates swung open, then closed behind us with a loud clang. There was not a soul in sight as we drove up the broad drive to the house itself, and as I stepped down the double front doors opened, and another turbanned Pathan servant invited me to enter. Without a word he led me into a large room and left me alone. Although obviously an office of some kind, the huge room had a variety of furniture that would have been in place in any kind of room. The silk-covered divan, for instance, could easily have served as a comfortable double-bed. The furnishing, drapes, and in fact everything was luxurious and lavish, and I soon realised that I was actually in the Palace itself. A Pathan servant came in and placed a tray of refreshments for me, then departed, and as I sipped a delicious lemon squash, I found myself quite affected by the strange atmosphere of the place. In no way unpleasant, it was rather of a period many decades past, when Sultans ruled supreme over their followers with absolute power. Perhaps it was the novels that I had read about India that created this impression. Eventually the door opened again, and I turned to see the most beautiful woman, the most incredible woman, I had ever seen, come into the room…..”
Riveted yet? Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the vividly atmospheric / evocative scene-setting provided, because believe me that’s all you’re going to get. For the remaining 66 pages there is no effort to describe scenery, landscape or furnishings WHATSOEVER. I mean, none. The furthest East this author has got is quite plainly Clacton.
The remainder of the book details Mr Cole’s adventures with the Sultan’s personal assistant Madame (a fierce administrator whose speciality is enthusiastically whipping her employees for minor infringements of sexual etiquette), his personally-assigned domestic servant Byia (whose specialties surely don’t have to be described), the Sultan’s favourite pair of concubines Nishta and Vintra, plus a host of unnamed others (including a kidnapped white girl whom the Sultan has had deliberately abducted to clean his fireplaces). Mr Cole himself has been employed, as we later learn, to help educate the Sultan’s forty personal concubines so that they can engage him in intelligent conversation, though why he’s bothering with this when they almost permanently have their mouths full is never properly explained.
The book ends with Mr Cole preparing for bed on the evening of his second day, reflecting philosophically on his astonishing first 24 hours in the Sultan’s household: “So many questions needed answering, and I had no doubt whatsoever that all would become known to me in the future. For the time being I had to feel my way carefully, and the way in which I did this I will relate on another occasion. My prick had discharged its spunk three times since my arrival, more than it usually did in three months, and in spite of this my balls still itched for relief. My manhood was developing in a manner that was wholly exciting, and I looked forward to the future with only pleasant anticipation and eagerness for further experiences to be mine…….. THE END”
India, Land of Lust takes about an hour to read and is really tedious. The writing is deliberately slow, wordy and pedantic, and the author’s UTTER refusal to add any flavour or interest – either of character or setting – quickly makes it a slog. Mr Cole (we never learn his first name or indeed anything about him) is a total passive blank, while Madame – although marginally more memorable – is at best a one-dimensional dominatrix. None of the other participants are more than cardboard cut-outs, and indeed half aren’t even afforded the dignity of a name. The story has no resolution or point, and simply lumbers mechanically from one routine encounter to the next. The only (minor) relief is the occasional unintentional humour of some of the dialogue, plus a peculiar bathroom interlude (in which Byia luxuriously bathes Mr Cole at inordinate length) which hints at some intriguing private fixation of the author. Although the book at first positions itself as a simple wish-fulfilment fantasy (of endless docile female subservience), it doesn’t even have the conviction to sustain this angle for long, and quickly degenerates into a repetitive orgy of flagellation before desperately throwing in a rape (of the kidnapped white girl) to liven things up. While picking apart the ethnological detail of a work like this is fairly pointless, it has to be noted that if the setting is really supposed to be India then Mr Cole’s host would of course be a Maharajah, not a Sultan (the latter being a Middle-Eastern Arab potentate). I daresay many disappointed readers pointed this out at the time.
It seems likely that (as with many other aspects of pornography) simple technological advances eventually rendered Soho Typescripts obsolete. Xerox had perfected commercial b&w photocopiers by the late 1960s, and these were increasingly seen in offices and public libraries etc from the mid-70s onwards. Combined with the sudden post-1967 boom in hardcore US paperbacks, it must have rapidly become quicker and easier to smuggle in and photocopy the latter than laboriously continue to churn out UK originals on ancient Gestetner duplicators. A generation of sozzled Soho hacks suddenly had to find a new source of pocket money.
Having bid Mr Cole a fond farewell, it is now time to turn our attention away from the West End altogether, and consider the revolutionary spread of dedicated dirty bookshops into the (chiefly appalled) provinces over the late 1970s. Just one man was largely responsible for this phenomenon, and it is a measure of his pugnacious drive that – even taking into account recent bumps – the 2021 Sunday Times Rich List names him as the 162nd wealthiest man in Britain with a personal fortune of £1.04bn. Not bad for someone who started from literally nothing, even if his original Soho rivals maliciously dubbed him the Slug. The rollercoaster story of David Sullivan is next.
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