Monday curio: The BBFC's first guideline pamphlet from 1913

Here's a blast from the past: the British Board of Film Classification are celebrating their centenary this year so have released their first ever pamphlet of guidelines, from all the way back in 1913.
I'm not going to lie to you guys: I totally thought that we were still pootling around on mammoths and flinging shit from our windows in 1913 - I had no idea that the exhibition of films was so organised, let alone that the BBFC even existed. Well, I was wrong, as this fascinating document just released by the BBFC proves. They don't even say 'ye'. Who knew!

1913 was a great year for film: Louis Feuillade's Fantômas was wowing audiences, DW Griffiths' The Mothering Heart showed what cinema was really capable of, and Madonna was still 45 years away from being born. Halcyon days indeed.

Obviously things have progressed considerably since the early days of the BBFC (the caveat "No film will be passed that is not clean and wholesome and absolutely above suspicion" doesn't exactly ring true any more) but it's heartening to know that the work of good old President GA Redford and his BBFC gang continues today in much the same vein.

If only we had a time machine to see what he would have thought of The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence. "Ye gads, that's a bit much," he'd probably say. "Tis not as good as Human Centypede the first."