Extract from the Daily Mail
A new exhibition displaying 1,300 titillating postcards, seized by police between 1951 to 1961, is being held by the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent. The  display features cards that were seized by police in Margate, Kent.

It includes work by Donald McGill, a prolific postcard artist who in 1954 was found guilty of violating obscenity laws and made to pay a £50 fine plus £25 costs.

Most prosecutions of the day were  carried out under the Obscene Publications Act 1857. Following a complaint, police would obtain a search warrant, raid the shop and seize offending stock.

After being presented to magistrates,  the owners would be summoned to court and if the courts were persuaded that  the postcards were obscene, they would  be destroyed. To protect themselves,  censorship committees were set up by  shopkeepers in some resorts, including  Hastings, Brighton and Blackpool, to ban the worst cards.

The Tory campaign lasted for about a decade but fizzled out in the early 1960s when public attitudes to sex became more liberal and open. Nick Hiley, curator of the British Cartoon Archive, said: ‘What is interesting is that at the time the authorities thought they were a door opening into hell and a slippery slope to degradation. ‘But when you look at the postcards  today, they look so innocent and people get nostalgic about them. They have quickly been redefined as art and something to celebrate and preserve.

‘Not only are many of the cards still amusing, but they represent a landmark in social and legal history.’

He added: ‘They are a vivid illustration of how our notion of obscenity has changed over time.’

The cards are among 35,000 cartoons digitised and made available free online by the British Cartoon Archive following a £150,000 grant.

The newly-digitised cartoons include work by famous cartoonists such as Mac, in the Daily Mail.

The exhibition of banned postcards, entitled ‘I wish I could see my little Willy’, will be displayed at the university’s Canterbury campus until November 13.