Bennie Wilson's Anti-Society is a life model slide sequence illustrating a temperance story by Timothy Shay Arthur, first published in "The Children's Hour" Dec. 1867 (Sternick 2017)(Arthur 1867). Life model slides typically consisted of photographs of people and props against painted backgrounds. They often had moral subjects, including temperance, anti-smoking and religious stories, as well as illustrating songs. They anticipated devices later adopted for movies, including flashbacks, closeups, dissolves, split screens and special effects.

Life model slides were extremely popular in the late 19th century. They were mainly produced in Great Britain between the 1870s and World War 1. The triangular mark in the unprojected corner of each slide in this example is that of York & Son, after Bamforth & Co., the second largest producer of life model slides in Britain (Crangle and Hecht 2001, 172). Life model slides were also produced in the United States, to a lesser extent.