BIRTH, MARRIAGE and EUGENICS

From Cradle to Grave Term 2, Lecture 2

LECTURE THEMESOverall theme – attempts to control reproduction

and reproduction of right sort of people

Related Themes- population, race, medical science, VD, national

efficiency, class, degeneration, urbanization, morality, marriage, the family and so on…

Seminar- The ‘Problem Family’ – eugenics through the

C20th

Definition of Eugenics• Eugenics = ‘good’ and ‘born’, ‘science of heredity’ • Term coined 1883 by Francis Galton• Built on ideas of Darwin’s natural selection, survival

of fittest (Origin of Species, 1859)• Refers to the belief and practices of improving the

quality of the population. • ‘If the prudent avoid marriage, whilst the reckless

marry, the inferior members tend to supplant the better members of society’ (Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871).

• Also a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of the reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics) and the reduced reproduction of people with less desired traits (negative eugenics)

Eugenics

• Has biological and ‘scientific roots’ – but also impacts on society, economies, politics and culture

• ‘More than anything else, eugenics was a biological way of thinking about social, economic, political and cultural change… it gave scientific credibility… to… prejudices, anxieties, and fears that… were prevalent primarily… among the middle and upper classes.’Richard Soloway, Demography and Degeneration (1990) [see reading list]

Historians have explained the acceleration of population growth in one of two ways:

1. It was a consequence of the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions and an improved standard of life (the Malthusian view, importance of resources)

- Rising birth rate- Changes in marriage patterns – people marry earlier

if economic conditions good- Reduced death rate

2. It was the result of various public health measures independent of these Revolutions (McKeown)

- Control of disease (e.g. smallpox vaccination)- Better nutrition

c.1860s-1930s Britain’s birth rate declines

• 1870/2 – 34.1 per 1000• 1910/12 – 24.5 per 1000• 1930/2 – 15.8 per 1000

• Coincides with concerns about national efficiency

Reasons for the declining birth rate:

• Parents have fewer children as more survive infancy – IMR falls in early C20th

• Easier access to contraception

• Greater willingness to use contraception

• Children perceived to ‘cost’ more so parents have fewer (economic usefulness also declines with introduction of state education, child worker to scholar idea)

For females of all ages these pills are invaluable, as a few doses of them carry off all

humors, and bring about all that is required. No female

should be without them. There is no medicine to be found to

equal Beecham’s Pills for removing any obstruction or irregularity of the system. If

taken according to the directions given with each box, they will soon restore females of all ages to sound and robust

health.

A nineteenth century advertisement for Beecham’s Pills.

Birth control • C19th – contraception ‘improper’, might encourage

promiscuity• Rudimentary mechanical techniques

condoms/sheaths/French letters, diaphragms, douches, pessaries

• lC19th growing commercial sector in medical appliances• Birth control campaigners: Charles Bradlaugh; Annie

Besant• Bradlaugh republished Charles Knowlton’s The Fruits of

Philosophy (1862) and together with Besant tried for publishing obscene material.

• Malthusian League 1877, set up to promote birth control - published The Malthusian 1879-1921

JOSEPH A. BANKS, PROSPERITY AND PARENTHOOD (LONDON: ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN PAUL, 1954),

p. 202

• Economic depression of the 1870s and 1880s undermined middle-class confidence in the future and encouraged the use of birth control to maintain living standards

• During the period 1870-1914 childrearing for most working-class families was increasingly subject to an array of perceived rising ‘costs’

• It was realised that smaller families enjoyed a better standard of living than their larger counterparts

• Middle and working classes had rising aspirations

Marie Stopes (1880 - 1958) was a campaigner for women's rights and a pioneer in the field of family planning, and a Eugenicist

• 1918 - Married Love and Wise Parenthood

• 1921- Mothers’ Clinic for Birth Control – free contraceptive advice for married women

• 1930 National Birth Control Council (later Family Planning Association)

• 1930 -16 clinics- 21,000 clients1939 - 65 clinics

Stopes was an (rampant?) eugenicist!

Birth control clinic in caravan, c.1920

Eugenics

• Has biological and ‘scientific roots’ – but also impacts on society, economies, politics and culture

• ‘More than anything else, eugenics was a biological way of thinking about social, economic, political and cultural change… it gave scientific credibility… to… prejudices, anxieties, and fears that… were prevalent primarily… among the middle and upper classes.’Richard Soloway, Demography and Degeneration (1990) [see reading list]

Rise of Eugenics• By 1900 appeal of eugenics increased• Tapped into middle- and upper-class

anxieties e.g.– Concern about decline of Empire and economic

decline of Britain– Labour unrest, socialism, women’s suffrage

movement– Fall in birth rate – Poverty – shown in Booth and Rowntree surveys– Physical deterioration – Boer War illuminated

unfitness of nation– Crime, alcoholism, promiscuity, VD– Poor and ‘undesirable’ surviving due to state

intervention and public health reform – ‘residuum’ growing

Eugenic Fears and Ambitions• Called for ‘rational’ selection through

‘race building’ (education and financial incentives) and ‘race cleansing’ (also education, and marriage, restriction, segregation, sterilisation and birth control).

• Inverse correlation between fertility and social class – restricted breeding of middle class (including women ‘shirking’ their ‘racial’ duty) and relatively prolific breeding of poor with ‘feeble’ and ‘tainted’ constitutions.

• Birth rate also thought to vary in terms of race and ethnicity (Irish and Jews ‘swarming’)

• Idea of ‘ RACE SUICIDE’

ANTHROPOMETRICS

Francis Galton’s ‘lab’ at International Exhibition, 1884

Francis Galton, photo taken on visit to Paris Prefecture of Police, and Alphonse Bertillon

‘CIVILISED’ PEOPLE INTERFERED WITH NATURAL SELECTION. THEY DO NOT LET NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE – [IF] THEY ALLOW THE UNFIT –

DISABLED, DISTURBED, TO REPRODUCE. HOW THEN CAN EVOLUTION TAKE ITS COURSE?’

Soft inheritance – transmission of natural (genetic) and acquired characteristics (culture and habits) (Darwin)

Hard inheritance – transmission of natural attributes only (Galton) – traits and characteristics including intelligence, beauty and susceptibility to illness hereditary (also ideas influential in psychiatry e.g. Henry Maudsley)

• Positive eugenics: ‘consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in favouring them that there progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the old one’. e.g. selected marriage

• Negative eugenics: measures to dissuade the less fit from breeding e.g. sterilisation

Dr Carlos Panton Blacker (1895-1975), leader of the Eugenics Society from 1928: supporter of contraception; interested in

interaction of hard eugenics with environmental factors

Feeble mindedness• Influential in 1913 Mental Deficiency Act (see

Mathew Thomson), which classified ‘idiots’ and ‘feebleminded’ separately from insane

• Act allowed for incarceration of feeble-minded – associated with delinquency, promiscuity and immorality.

• Believed to be hereditary and contributed to social decline, poverty and unemployment

• 1930s interest switched to sterilisation as solution (cheaper) but gained few supporters. Inspired partly by Wood Report 1929 on mental deficiency which found apparent increase in condition (primary and secondary amentia)

• Sterilization Bill defeated 1931

Sterilisation of mentally defective

• ‘If it was said that sterilization was an affront to the dignity of humanity we should listen – and agree. But what dignity have the feeble in mind that legislation can deprive them of it?... An intelligent and healthy dog is more spiritually akin to man, has more natural dignity than one of these. It is the existence of the feebleminded which affronts human dignity.’

Eugenics Review, 1928.

• Such views strongly opposed by emerging science of genetics – attacked poor science of eugenics, urged social reform, described working classes as fitter because more of them!

Note the use of natural and organic metaphors and imagery

Institutions of Eugenics• 1904 Eugenics Record Office (Eugenics

Laboratory) established UCL• Francis Galton (cousin of Charles Darwin)

and Karl Pearson – research into biometrics• 1907 Eugenics Education Society founded

(Eugenics Society 1926) – education and popularisation of eugenics

• Society asked to provide evidence for government Royal Commissions e.g. on the Care and Control of the Feebleminded (1904-8) and on Venereal Diseases (1913-16)

• Membership of Society never large – max 800, but had wider influence

Eugenics Review

Who were Eugenicists?

Who were involved?• Middle-class professionals – doctors, scientists,

lecturers, teachers, clerics and politicians

• Fabians ,such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb (not just a right-wing movement)

• H.G. Wells• George Bernard Shaw• Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain

• Many women members, including feminist doctors e.g. Mary Scharlieb (1845-1930) and Elizabeth Sloan Chesser (1878-1940) – particularly interested in mothercraft

Divisions between Eugenicists• Classic and reform eugencists • See work on reading list by Daniel Kevles and

Richard Soloway

• Classic - heredity dominant and health and welfare measures would encourage proliferation of ‘unfit’

• Reform – wanted to disassociate from class bias and suggest socially valuable qualities might be found in all social groups. Supported environmental improvement. Keen to cooperative with other organisations.

• Dr Caleb Saleeby – strong belief in environment, interested in infant welfare, impact of alcohol. Also populariser of eugenic ideas

EUGENICS BEFORE 2ND WORLD WAR

‘Legislatures as well as demagogues enacted moderate eugenic measures, for the most part, hoping these would lead to favourable changes in the make-up of their populations. More people - not necessarily the - ‘unfit’- practised artificial birth control; more illegal abortions - not necessarily of the ‘unfit’ - probably took place. More mothers - not necessarily the ‘fit’- raised more babies, and more families were probably healthier. More ‘unfit’ people were segregated in institutions to keep them from reproducing, and more were sterilized than ever before - about 5,000 Scandinavians up to 1940.’

(James Moore, ‘The Fortunes of Eugenics’ (2004), p.282)

Strong interest in Britain in some of pro-natalist interventions in Germany and Italy under Fascism, and initially favoured sterilisation of physically and mentally ‘unfit’, but strongly opposed to sterilisation of Jews

Class and Race

• Cf US eugenics, English eugenics more about class than race – but still retained strong interest in race e.g. anthroprometrics (connected to immigration). Interest e.g. in half-caste children and fertility amongst immigrants.

• ‘Positive eugenics’ contributed to improving the lot of poor – e.g. old age pensions, welfare reform, child welfare clinics, FPA (Family Planning Association) – supported by public health doctors

The End of Eugenics?• Contraception excepted, eugenic programmes not

at first glance influential, though trickled down into a good deal of lay literature and broader medical and social welfare thinking

• Eugenics very, very complicated and cut across left and right wing views (soft and hard/positive and negative). Broadly speaking eugenics hostile to environmental view of causes of poverty and social problems, but some eugenicists favoured social reform and tackling poverty. Eugenic view shaped government policy up to WWII, thereafter shift to more welfarist policies

• Decline of eugenics after WWII – yet continued to influence social work (or at least ideas embedded). Idea of ‘problem family’ prevails to today in different forms.