Scapa Society

The Scapa Society (Society for Checking^[1] (or Controlling^[2]) the Abuses in Public Advertising) was an organization founded in Britain in 1893 to protest against the burgeoning advertising business. It was founded by Richardson Evans, and has been called "the first organised reaction against advertising"^[3][4][5]

Scapa Society

Society for Checking the Abuses in Public Advertising
Formation	1893
Founder	Richardson Evans

Its early members included William Morris, Rudyard Kipling, William Holman Hunt, Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Everett Millais.^[2] Morris's last public speech before his death, in 1896, was at a meeting of the society. He spoke of the general lack of concern for environmental issues: "We have to remember that the enormous majority of the people of the country do not care one straw about natural beauty".^[1]

The society published a journal A Beautiful World from 1893 until at least 1922.^[6] Its work helped bring about the Advertisements Regulation Act 1907, which controlled structures over 12 feet (3.7 m) tall in areas of natural beauty.^[1]

By 1933 it had changed its name to The SCAPA Society for the Prevention of Disfigurement in Town and Country, and produced a report on the disposal of domestic refuse in the countryside, in conjunction with the Women's Institutes.^[5] It later became the Advisory Council for the Control of Outdoor Advertising.^[7]

References

1. Rollins, William H. (1997). "Aesthetic perception and environmental reform in modern Europe". A greener vision of home : cultural politics and environmental reform in the German Heimatschutz movement, 1904-1918. University of Michigan Press. pp. 64–67. ISBN 9780472108091.
2. Fletcher, Winston (2010). "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Advertising : a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191614279.
3. Nevett, Terry (1981). "The Scapa society: The first organised reaction against advertising". Media, Culture & Society. 3 (2): 179–187. doi:10.1177/016344378100300207. S2CID 143994207.
4. Vang, Pamela, 1953- (2014). Good guys : a cultural semiotic study of the print advertising of the oil industry (1900-2000). Linköpings universitet. Institutionen för kultur- och kommunikation. Linköping: Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University. pp. 87, 91–92. ISBN 978-91-7519-318-2. OCLC 941607357.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
5. Licence, Tom (2016). What the Victorians Threw Away. Oxbow Books. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-78297-878-7. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
6. "Catalogue record for: A beautiful world : the journal of the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising". Library Hub Discover. Jisc. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
7. "Folder entitled Scapa - Society for the Prevention of Disfigurement in Town and Country (now called Advisory Council for the Control of Outdoor Advertising)". The National Archivess. Retrieved 25 February 2020.