In 1877 Bradlaugh and Annie Besant reprinted Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy, a birth-control pamphlet, specifically to force a prosecution and test the law. They were tried, convicted, and had the conviction quashed on a technicality on appeal. The publicity did what suppression usually does: sales of the pamphlet went from a few hundred a year into the hundreds of thousands, and the case is generally treated as a turning point in the public discussion of contraception in Britain. Besant lost custody of her daughter as a direct result.
The connection worth noticing is what happened to his co-defendant. Annie Besant, his closest political ally, secularist lecturer, co-editor of the National Reformer, reviewed The Secret Doctrine in 1889, met Helena Blavatsky, converted to Theosophy, and went on to lead the Theosophical Society from 1907 until her death in 1933. She and Bradlaugh parted ways over it.
The atlas keeps organised atheism and modern occultism in separate rooms, and the same woman was a leading figure in both within a decade. That is a useful corrective to any account of the period which treats Victorian unbelief and Victorian esotericism as opposite camps; they drew on the same constituency of people who had left the churches and were looking for what came next.