By the 1960s, Britain was home to a booming trade in mechanical contraceptives, a trade which would have been unrecognizable one hundred years earlier. What had been a small underground network of individual sellers of ‘French Letters’ during the early half of the nineteenth century became a profitable industry, which offered consumers a range of contraceptives from chemists’ shops, vending machines, birth control clinics, and via mail order. Yet, while there has been much debate about the role of contraceptives in demographic transitions and changes in sexual and familial relationships, the significance of industry during this period in attempting to appeal to householders has been largely tangential to discussions; historians are yet to assess in any detail how the British contraceptive industry developed prior to the introduction of the pill. This paper sketches an outline of the changing ways in which companies, vendors and distributors attempted to appeal to British householders with contraceptives of increasingly variety between 1860 and 1960. Acknowledging the significance of both supply and demand, it provides a broad survey of some of the hitherto unexplored but prolific British producers, distributors, and advertisers of contraceptives in this period, but also highlights what their strategies might reveal about consumer responses. Limited evidence has long prevented historians from accurately tracing trends in contraceptive consumption and from identifying consumers. Yet, this paper argues that uncovering transformations in contraceptive supply and distribution can be an important first step in indicating sites of consumption and in demonstrating increasing acceptance of contraceptives as products among British householders.