Sterilizing the 'unfit' in 1930s Britain
In 1931, the Eugenics Society introduced a bill to Parliament for the sterilization of the 'unfit'. When it was rejected, they used underhand, undemocratic methods to push it through.
Like the shrill “we must act now” alarmists of our own era, British eugenicists of the 1930s thought that drastic measures were required to save Britain from ‘race suicide’. Take, for example, Dr Richard Berry’s letter to the Eugenics Review:
If Professor E. W. MacBride be correct — and there can be none familiar with the facts who would differ from him — that unless the birth rate of the mentally defective be restricted, ‘the British Nation as a virile people, is doomed,’ it appears probable that politicians and people will both have to face all three — Sterilization, Segregation, and the Lethal Chamber.
Richard J.A. Berry MD FRCS FRSE. Letter to the Eugenics Review July 1930.
Such concerns led the Society to publish a draft sterilization bill in 1928 and to establish a Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterelization the following year.
One of the committee members, Major Archibald Church MP, rose in the House of Commons on 21st July 1931, to request:
“That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable mental defectives to undergo sterilizing operations or sterilizing treatment upon their own application, or that of their spouses or parents or guardians; and for purposes connected therewith. I realise, and those associated with me realise, that in making this request we are asking the House to do something which may be regarded as in advance of public opinion. That in itself is a difficulty. We realise that we have to convert a large section of the people of this country to a full appreciation of what we propose to do with those who are in every way a burden to their parents, a misery to themselves and in my opinion a menace to the social life of the community. I should be failing m my duty to the House if I did not state that in my opinion, although perhaps not in the opinion of those associated with me, this Bill is merely a first step in order that the community as a whole should be able to make an experiment on a small scale so that later on we may have the benefit of the results and experience gained in order to come to conclusions before bringing in a Bill for the compulsory steriliation [sic] of the unfit.
Major Archibald Church MP, House of Commons Debate 21 July 1931. Hansard vol 255 cc1249-57.
Dr Hyacinth Morgan (like Church, a member of the Labour party) opposed the bill. He urged the Commons to defeat “… this pagan, anti-democratic, anti-Christian, unethical Bill.” Church’s motion was defeated 167 to 89.
Church’s admissions that the measure was “… in advance of public opinion” and that, if adopted, it would be “merely a first step… before bringing in a Bill for the compulsory sterilization of the unfit” were admirably open. This straightforward approach did not survive this setback.
At this moment “three weighty organisations” began to agitate in favour of sterilization and they sought to influence public opinion. There was “a concerted petition for an official inquiry [which] was submitted to the then Minister of Health.” Subsequently, the Minister established a Departmental Committee on Sterilization in June 1932.
The apparent groundswell of support was deceptive because, according to John Macnicol, the secretary of the Eugenics Society, C.P. Blacker:
“… admitted in private that the lobbying technique of the society was to make it appear as if the demand for an official enquiry emanated from these large bodies, whereas in fact it was the society that was masterminding the campaign.”
Three committee members (Sir Lawrence Brock (Chairman), R.A. Fisher and A.F. Tredgold) were members of the Eugenics Society and a fourth (Miss Ruth Darwin) was the daughter of a member (Horace Darwin).
According to Macnicol:
“Between June 1932 and January 1934 the Brock committee held thirty-six meetings and interviewed sixty witnesses. Dominated by its chairman, who pulled every string to assist the society in its campaign (thus flagrantly violating civil service neutrality), the committee’s report recommended the legalization of voluntary sterilization for three identifiable categories of patient — mental defectives of the mentally disordered, persons suffering from a transmissable physical disability (for example, hereditary blindness), or persons likely to transmit mental disorder or defect.”
Brock also met secretly with Blacker to advise him on how to improve the wording of the Eugenics Society’s draft sterlization bill.
While the Ministry of Health was more sympathetic to the cause, ministers and officials remained sensitive to the mood of the House of Commons and the bill was not reintroduced. The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 led to the eugenic proposals being shelved and, when it ended in 1945, eugenics had a public relations problem. The agenda of the Eugenics Society was suspended.
For a little while, anyway.
Sources/further reading:
The Voluntary Sterilization Campaign in Britain 1918-39 by John Macnicol.
Eugenic Sterelisation: Europe’s Shame by Charles Webster.
The sterilization proposals: A history of their development by C.P. Blacker (Eugenics Review 1931 Jan; 22(4): 239–247).