Tijuana Bible - Police Seizures

Police Seizures

The scale on which Tijuana bibles were produced can be gauged from the large hauls announced in police seizures. In one November, 1942 raid by FBI agent P.E. Foxworth and his men on a New York City warehouse and a printing plant in the South Bronx, 8 million bibles were reported seized, and small time businessmen Jacob and David Brotman were arrested along with several associates.

According to the FBI four tons of material were ready to ship across the country and 7 tons had gone out recently and were being rounded up at regional distribution centers in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland/Akron, and Indianapolis. Jacob Brotman, identified as one of the main players in the Tijuana bible trade in Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers and Smuthounds, had earlier been arrested in a similar raid on a Lower East Side loft reported in the New York City papers in 1936, which produced a large haul of bibles, "readers", pornographic playing cards, and nude photos, along with printing, cutting and binding equipment.

During the 1939 World's Fair men selling pornographic booklets on the midway at the fair were trailed to a warehouse near the Brooklyn Navy Yard where David Brotman and an associate were arrested and a cache of 350,000 printed items and photos and 50,000 condoms were seized, along with printing plates. Collectors have estimated that in this period typically 50,000 copies would be produced of a single title, and distributed around the country by an underground network of colporteurs.

In New York City police raids on the business, which were carried out at intervals for decades, were usually at the instigation of John S. Sumner and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which during the years of its existence closely monitored the trade in pornography in the city.