A typed letter signed by Ettie Rout to Lord Northcliffe 1922

ROUT, Ettie A. (Mrs F. A. Hornibrook). – Typed signed letter to Lord Northcliffe regarding her book Safe Marriage.
 
28 Queensborough Terrace, Hyde Park, W.2., 12 May 1922.
 
Single leaf, 205 × 130 mm, typed on one side, signed in ink at the foot “Ettie A. Rout (Mrs F. A. Hornibrook)”; old horizontal fold, edges chipped with a few short tears, some spotting, and light handling creases, but legible and complete.    
 
A scarce letter from the New Zealand health reformer and campaigner Ettie Rout (1877–1936), addressed to Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922), founder of the Daily Mail and owner of The Times. Rout writes to promote her controversial work Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity (Heinemann, 1922), a pioneering manual of sexual health and contraception. She asks Northcliffe for “a few lines for publication with other Representative Opinions” and urges him to “use your great power to make the book widely known – for the benefit of the British Nations”.
 
Rout was a prominent public health advocate during and after the First World War, famous for her campaigns to reduce venereal disease among soldiers. Her work in distributing prophylactic kits to New Zealand troops was ground-breaking but also scandalous; in 1922 the book she refers to here was banned from sale in Britain under the Obscene Publications Act. Correspondence from her is scarce, and this letter directly links her to the promotional efforts surrounding her most important and suppressed works.