Dean Shalhoup

Who’s been around long enough to have used the word “smut” in a conversation?

Quick quiz: Those who have were discussing: A, a particle of soot; B, a destructive, parasitic plant disease; C, a black, or dirty mark or smudge; D, obscene language or printed matter; E, all of the above; F, none of the above.

Yep, “E,” as in excellent choice.

But if you went with “D,” you might just be one of those folks who can remember when “smut,” a naughty-sounding word even before you get to its several definitions, was all but a household word, albeit an unsavory one, back when Nashua babies were booming and our high school football teams were mowing down opponents all over New England.

It was by chance – isn’t it always? – that I came across the word “smut,” and the more pages I turned and the more hits I got on the database “newspaper archives” the more curious I got as to why this term kept showing up in our predecessor in name the Nashua Telegraph.

In late December 1955, then-Nashua police chief Joseph Regan posed for a Telegraph photo with comic books seized from the home of a Manchester man convicted of killing a child. Such "controversial" comic books, and other "obscene" reading materials called "smut," became the targets of a statewide law enforcement campaign to ban them from the public.

As it turns out, the “obscene materials” definition of “smut” was causing quite a stir here in Nashua, so much so that elected officials and folks of some level of prominence decided it was necessary to organize “a statewide campaign to clean up newsstands” and dispose of this so-called smut in the nearest trash cans.

When it was learned that an 18-year-old convicted ax-murderer of a young girl in Manchester had in his possession certain “reading matter” – aka, “smut” – it took no time at all for worried folks to jump on the “Campaign to Curb Indecent Literature” bandwagon.

The “first, real impetus” to get moving on the campaign came out of the New Hampshire Department of Catholic War Veterans April 1953 convention, hosted here in Nashua.

Then-Nashua police chief Joseph Regan, a cop’s cop who led NPD for years then had a second career with the state police, appeared in a page one Telegraph photo around that time, holding a couple of the comic books seized from the Manchester ax-murderer’s home.

One is titled – this might sound familiar to baby boomers – “Tales from the Crypt,” and the other appears to be “Eerie.”

A November 1953 Telegraph announces an initiative aimed at banning the sale, and presumably, the possession, of comic books and magazines whose contents were deemed indecent or inappropriate by members of a committee formed to make such decisions. The campaign, headed by then-Nashua police chief Joseph Regan, was part of a larger movement in the early- to mid-1950s.

Regan told the Telegraph reporter he was also trying to procure comic books taken from a Portsmouth home where “a brother stabbed his sister … one of the books reportedly depicts a similar stabbing,” the Telegraph wrote.

Prominent Nashua magazine dealer Fred Trow told the Telegraph he plans to “cooperate fully” with the Regan-led campaign to rid newsstands of the allegedly objectionable material.

Referred to variously as “smut books,” “salacious literature,” “newsstand smut” and such, the materials’ controversy caught the eye of then-Attorney General Louis Wyman, who said that during his travels around the state, he’d seen some “hot-looking publications” in stores.”

But he also “cautioned that a move to do away with them is ‘getting very close to one of our basic freedoms.'” Good for Attorney Wyman.

And kudos also go out to at least one of our Telegraph colleagues of yesteryear, the one who wrote a thoughtful editorial in December 1953 titled simply, “Our Position.”

Referring to Regan’s move to convene a committee of three local folks to help “determine what should or should not be sold on newsstands,” the writer said that “while no direct mention has been made concerning the duties of such a committee, it seems obvious that it will serve as a board of censorship to sit in judgment on the type of reading material that shall me made available to our citizens.”

The writer noted that the Telegraph, “ever since the possibility of establishing such curbs on the reading habits of our citizens was first voiced,” has “steadfastly pointed to the dangers of such a step.”

While the Telegraph “realizes that smut and obscenity flourish in some of the paper-covered books and slick magazines that can be found in our local stores,” and that the Telegraph “doesn’t condone such trash … we believe that a greater danger lies in the curbs which are being set up to stifle the American principles of free speech and the free press.”

Should a group of people “can assume the authority to dictate our reading habits, it may well be the first step to complete control of the great liberties we prize so highly, and which we have, up until now, so jealously guarded.”

Again, kudos to the Telegraph editorialist for putting it all in perspective.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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