Common Law Indecency

Indecency is something less than obscenity, but still features in some common law offences.

R v Quinn & Bloom [1961] 3 All ER 88, CCA

DD were convicted of keeping a disorderly house in the form of a strip club. Affirming their conviction at Quarter Sessions, Ashworth J said a disorderly house could be defined as a place where matters are performed or exhibited of such a character that their performance or exhibition in a place of common resort amounts to an outrage of public decency, or tends to corrupt or deprave, or is otherwise calculated to injure the public interest so as to call for condemnation and punishment. The fact that the spectators were well-behaved and did not themselves take part in any indecency was immaterial.

Knuller v DPP [1972] 2 All ER 898, HL

D published a magazine which included a number of "small ads" inviting male readers to meet other men for purposes of homosexuality. He was charged with conspiring to corrupt public morals and conspiring to outrage public decency. The House of Lords upheld his conviction (Lord Diplock dissenting) on the first count, but (Lord Morris dissenting) quashed that on the second.

Wiggins v Field (1968) 112 SJ 656, DC

At an open-air poetry reading on the seafront, D read a poem by Alan Ginsburg that included the line "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb". Two police officers were in the audience and D was prosecuted for using indecent language, but the Divisional Court affirmed the justices' dismissal of the charge, saying the word complained of was in common use even in courts of law, and D had not used it with any indecent intent.

R v Gibson [1991] 1 All ER 439, Times 12/7/90, CA

An art gallery displayed a modern sculpture consisting of a mannequin's head with two freeze-dried human foetuses of some three months' gestation attached as earrings. The gallery owner and the artist were convicted of outraging public decency, and the convictions were upheld by the Court of Appeal.