Private Case

Private Case
The Private Case collection in 1968
Housed at	British Library
Size (no. of items)	c. 2,500 items
Funded by	British Library Henry Spencer Ashbee Eric Dingwall Charles Reginald Dawes Beecher Moore
Website	Private Case

The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material.

From its foundation in the eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one of six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous. From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the material was restricted, and the catalogue of Private Case publications was not released to the library's general readership.

The contents of the Private Case collection changed over time, shrinking as works were declassified and put into the general collection, and growing when the library received bequests and donations from collectors. Some of these were large: the book collector Henry Spencer Ashbee's 1900 bequest contained 1,379 volumes of erotica; the anthropologist Eric Dingwall—an honorary assistant keeper to the department of printed books—donated several works during his lifetime and at his death; and in 1964 the bibliophile Charles Reginald Dawes bequeathed 246 works of erotic literature.

From 1964—and reflecting the increasing liberalisation of social mores of the time—the library began to liberalise its approach to works in the Private Case, revising the collection and moving items onto the general catalogue for general access, a process that was completed in 1983. There have been no new entries in the Private Case since 1990 and all new erotic or pornographic material is openly accessible and listed in the general catalogue. There is no restriction on access to the Private Case material, except for some items which are in a fragile condition. At its largest, the collection comprised some 4,000 works; as at 2023 about 2,500 volumes are still classified by the library as part of the Private Case.