What the Butler Saw (mutoscope)
What the Butler Saw was a very popular Mutoscope reel, and an early example of softcore pornography. (Mutoscopes were coin-in-the-slot devices by which an individual could view a short motion picture.) What the butler saw, presumably through a keyhole, was a woman partially disrobing. Machines presenting this reel were so ubiquitous that, in England, mutoscopes are known as What-the-butler-saw machines.
The phrase became a byword or idiom for shameful secrets or voyeurism and was used in this sense as the title of other works.
See also
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