It was established in 1802, based on a proclamation by George III in 1787, and as a successor to the 18th-century Society for the Reformation of Manners, and continued to function until 1885.
[7][8] As listed in an address published in 1803, the Society's particular concerns were: "profanation of the Lord's Day and profane swearing; publication of blasphemous, licentious and obscene books and prints; selling by false weights and measures; keeping of disorderly public houses, brothels and gaming houses; procuring; illegal lotteries; cruelty to animals".
Roberts writes that the Jacobin ideas, from the French Revolution, raised fears of atheism, leading some to set up organizations like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, to campaign for tough application of the law against atheists.
The radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's burlesque satire Swellfoot the Tyrant, which lampooned King George and his ministers and included in its title page "Choose Reform or Civil War" was withdrawn in 1820 by its publisher after copies were seized by Wilberforce's men and the publisher was threatened with prosecution.
[15] The Society was the means of suppressing "low and vicious periodicals", and of bringing the dealers to punishment, by imprisonment, hard labor and fines.