VIRTUAL TALK | Jessica Borge - Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business

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Join Jessica Borge, author of Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business, for a virtual talk and demonstration, where the author will recreate some of the 1960s consumer tests of condoms. Watch her fill an original 1967 Durex Gossamer condom first with air, then with water, from her kitchen. The author will also take you through the history of the London Rubber Company, the original maker of Durex condoms.

Jessica Borge is digital scholarship manager at Archives & Research Collections, King's College London, and a visiting fellow in digital humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From humble beginnings wholesaling at a small tobacconist-hairdresser shop in 1915, the London Rubber Company rapidly became the UK's biggest postwar producer and exporter of disposable rubber condoms. A first-mover and innovator, the company's continuous product development and strong brands (including Durex) allowed it to dominate supply to the retail trade and family planning clinics, leading it to intercede in the burgeoning women's market. LRC's historic intervention in and contribution to female contraceptive practices sits uneasily with existing narratives centred on women's control of reproduction, but the time has come, Borge argues, for the condom to find its way back to the centre of these debates. Protective Practices thereby re-examines a key transitional moment in social and cultural history through the lens of this unusual case study.