''What the Butler Saw'' is a

mutoscope The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and granted to Herman Casler on November 5, 1895. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only ...

reel and an early example of

erotic Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculp ...

films dating from the early 1900s. It depicted a scene of a woman partially undressing in her bedroom, as if some voyeuristic "

butler A butler is a person who works in a house serving and is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments, with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantries, pantr ...

" were watching her through a

keyhole A lock is a mechanical or electronic fastening device that is released by a physical object (such as a key, keycard, fingerprint, RFID card, security token or coin), by supplying secret information (such as a number or letter permutation or pas ...

. The film was seen by depositing a coin in a freestanding viewing machine, which then freed a hand-crank on the side which was turned by the viewer. Social standards are subject to change, and by the 1950s this and similar films were considered harmless when compared to contemporary erotica. The title of this feature became widely used in Britain as a generic term for devices and films of this type. The phrase had entered British popular culture after the 1886 divorce case of

Lord Colin Campbell Lord Colin Campbell (9 March 1853 – 18 June 1895) was a Scottish Liberal Party (UK), Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons from 1878 to 1885. Biography Campbell was the fifth son of George C ...

and

Gertrude Elizabeth Blood Gertrude Elizabeth, Lady Colin Campbell (''née'' Blood; 3 May 1857 – 1 November 1911) was an Irish-born journalist, author, playwright, and editor. She was married to Lord Colin Campbell, a brother-in-law of Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyl ...

. The trial hinged on whether their butler could have seen Lady Colin ''

in flagrante ''In flagrante delicto'' (Latin for "in blazing offence"), sometimes simply ''in flagrante'' ("in blazing"), is a legal term used to indicate that a criminal has been caught in the act of committing an offence (compare ). The colloquial "caught ...

'' with Captain Shaw of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, through the keyhole of their dining room at 79

Cadogan Place Cadogan Place is a street in Belgravia, London. It is named after Earl Cadogan and runs parallel to the lower half of Sloane Street. It gives its name to the extensive Cadogan Place Gardens, private communal gardens maintained for Cadogan re ...

, London.

References

Film and video technology 1900s pornographic films {{porn-film-stub