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Statement by Aleister Crowley Regarding the Book White Stains
[Undated: circa April 1934]
In 1897 I was an undergraduate at Trinity College Cambridge; also a medical student registered at London University, (King's College Hospital.) At the instigation of, and with the assistance of, and under the supervision of, my professors, I prepared a medico-legal document designed to confute the thesis of Professor von Krafft-Ebbing (in his book "Psychopathia Sexualis") that sexual perverts were irresponsible, and should so be held by the law.
I made this book in artistic form because that was the only adequate mode of presentation of my thesis. I caused 100 copies only to be printed in Amsterdam. They were distributed from Zermatt Switzerland in August 1898 by a Professor of Psychiatry to whom I entrusted the edition. Each copy bears the printed monition that the mental pathologists for whom alone its perusal was intended should use all precautions to prevent any copy falling into other hands. In fact no copy appeared until I was informed by a woman named April Day on March 31, 1933, that Edmund O'Connor had a copy in his safe. This copy (No. 9)—presumably stolen—was produced in the High Court in April 1934.
Edward Alexander Crowley
Mr. Justice Bennett said from the bench in Crowley verses Gray that it had never been suggested that I had ever written anything indecent or improper."
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