Legitimation League

The association was founded in Leeds, in 1893, by a group of individualist anarchists, who were close to Benjamin Tucker and his magazine Liberty.

Founding members included John Badcock, Joseph Hiam Levy, Greevz Fisher,[1] Wordsworth Donisthorpe, as well as Gladys and Oswald Dawson.

[2] Prominent advocates for the organisation included the poet and socialist Edward Carpenter and the sexologist and social reformer Havelock Ellis.

[4] In the same year, the anarchist and women's rights activist Lillian Harman became President of the League.

[5] It was originally edited by League's secretary George Bedborough, whose wife Louie was treasurer,[6] before his arrest in 1898 for selling a copy of Havelock Ellis' Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol.