Brettena Smyth secretly sold contraceptives from her North Melbourne chemist

When birth control was considered a sin, Brettena Smyth secretly sold Melbourne women contraceptives wrapped in brown paper.

Former Premier Joan Kirner unveiling a monument to Brettena Smyth.

As a woman who advocated effective birth control and voluntary motherhood, Brettena Smyth’s views were decades ahead of her time.

In an era when many were arguing for “purity and restraint within marriage” to limit family size, Brettena taught women about their bodies and secretly sold them contraceptives wrapped in brown paper.

Brettena is the subject of a new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters with historian Margaret Anderson, director of the Old Treasury Building, home to a recent exhibition called “Wayward Women?”

After her husband died of tuberculosis in 1873, Brettena turned his North Melbourne greengrocery into a drapery and druggist business to support her three surviving children.

Brettena was known as a woman of “advanced ideas”, a “free thinker” and women’s suffrage campaigner, and a member of the Australasian Secular Association.

“These days, of course, we take birth control absolutely for granted as our right … but in the 19th century in England and Australia, it was extremely controversial,” Ms Anderson says.

“In fact, the (Australasian) Secular Association risked being prosecuted for obscenity, even for talking about artificial birth control, let alone for demonstrating ways in which it could be done.”

Historian Margaret Anderson.

An advertisement for one of Brettena Smyth's lectures.

From her North Melbourne druggist shop, Brettena sold contraceptive devices, including condoms and pessaries.

“In that, she really was taking a chance,” Ms Anderson says.

“As far as one can tell, at this stage she didn’t advertise them, so they were pretty much sold behind the counter, the archetypal wrapped in brown paper that you had to ask for behind the scenes.”

But most controversially, Brettena liked to spruik a particular pessary that was “the only device which can be used without the knowledge of the husband”.

“Obviously, what she’s trying to say to women is, ‘You can control your own maternity if you use this device,’” Ms Anderson says.

“She was able to advertise them a little more openly after 1888 when there was a legal decision in NSW that overturned a former prosecution of birth control literature as obscene.”

Brettena Smyth seeking a pardon for a young woman who drowned her baby. Picture: National Library of Australia

That paved the way for Brettena to start advertising and selling advice literature as well as her “artificial preventives” – contraceptive devices.

At a time that talking about sex was considered indelicate, Brettena set about addressing women’s lack of knowledge of their own bodies, especially their sexual organs.

Brettena produced a book, The Diseases of Women, and a range of pamphlets, on topics such as “The Limitation of Offspring”.

She held lectures throughout the 1890s, mostly for women, with titles including “Love, courtship and marriage”, “Why are women sick?” and “An illustrative chat to women on things they ought to know”.

“She was way ahead of her time in the way she believed that women should be able to control their bodies,” Ms Anderson says.

To learn more, listen to the interview about Brettena Smyth with Margaret Anderson in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.