NOBLE IN HEREDITY: PERCEIVED SOCIAL AND

RACIAL THREATS TO THE ENGLISH RACE

A study of the British Inter-War Eugenics Movement Word Count: 25,000 including footnotes

Richard Ellis 12012735

Abstract This study investigates the complex motivations of the main stream British eugenics movement. Through use of contemporary sources and other academic studies it aims to trace the roots of the idea of social hygiene being dominant in the movement. As well as this it re-examines to what extent the movement manifested traits that could be considered as both social hygiene and racial hygiene by applying appropriate historical theory to contemporary sources. Further to this, the study investigates the membership of the Eugenics Society through a collective biographical study, to discover its class composition, and to see if the assumptions of previous scholarship are correct.

Acknowledgements

I would like to make known the debts of gratitude I owe the various people stemming from my undertaking of this project.

Firstly, I would like to thank my friends and family for their support during my continued studies. My ongoing historic babbling has been received with good humour which has been greatly appreciated as always. I would also like to thank my fellow Masters students. Your insight, camaraderie and social distractions have been invaluable. Further thanks are owed to the History Faculty, whose willingness to provide extra seminars was deeply appreciated.

To my good friend Barry, you have my endless thanks for your hospitality, good humour and ability to keep me on track, even if I do have to keep you sweet by being your beer mule. The same level of thanks goes to my good friend Tim, who kindly offered his floor when I needed to visit London. You made what would have been an almost bankrupting visit to the capital a whole lot more bearable, thank you.

Special thanks go out to the staff of the Wellcome Library, those at King’s College London Archives as well as the library staff of the Royal College of Surgeons. Their willingness to accommodate me and allow me access to their archival holdings have been fundamental to my work and are appreciated beyond measure. Similar thanks go out to the History faculty whose support has been greatly appreciated by all of us students. To my Academic Supervisor, Martin, your guidance and insight have proven as invaluable as always, thank you. My friend Rob is also deserving of special thanks as well. His support has been above and beyond as has his concern for my general wellbeing over the past year. I have yet to go crazy thanks to him. I would also like to extend special thanks to Dr Bradley Hart of California State University. Thank you for sharing some of your research with me and for meeting with me to discuss my work. Your help saved me a lot of archival legwork.

Finally, I would like to thank the estate of Neil Edmunds, whose Memorial Fund allowed me to undertake this research. If it were not for the scholarship I was granted, continuing my research would have been impossible. Their kindness has allowed me to further develop myself along with sating my historic curiosity.

Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 1

Previous Scholarship ................................................................................................................................................. 2

Inter-war Britain: A morbid age? ............................................................................................................................... 8

The Aims of the Present Study ................................................................................................................................ 11

Chapter One: Deficiency, Inefficiency and Value ........................................................................................................ 14

The historiographical roots ..................................................................................................................................... 14

Deficiency ................................................................................................................................................................ 17

Inefficiency and Value ............................................................................................................................................. 22

Chapter Two: Race and Value ...................................................................................................................................... 31

Interpretations of Race ........................................................................................................................................... 31

Examples of Racial Theory in a Eugenic Context ..................................................................................................... 41

Race, Value and Non-Value ..................................................................................................................................... 44

Chapter Three: Prosopographical Study ...................................................................................................................... 49

General Members Sample: Method ........................................................................................................................ 49

Analysis .................................................................................................................................................................... 50

Expanded General Members Sample ...................................................................................................................... 52

Doctors Sample ....................................................................................................................................................... 56

Points of Interest ..................................................................................................................................................... 57

Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................................. 60

Appendix One: Prosopographic Data of General Members Sample ........................................................................... 66

Appendix Two: Prosopographic Data of Members Who Were Doctors ...................................................................... 85

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................. 89

Primary Sources - Unpublished Documents ............................................................................................................ 90

Wellcome Library, London ...................................................................................................................................... 90

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives and King’s College London Archives, London ......................................... 92

Royal College of Surgeons ....................................................................................................................................... 92

Published Works ...................................................................................................................................................... 93

Journal Articles and Essays ...................................................................................................................................... 94

State Papers ............................................................................................................................................................ 95

Secondary Sources - Books ...................................................................................................................................... 96

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ................................................................................................................ 97

Who Was Who? ..................................................................................................................................................... 100

Articles ................................................................................................................................................................... 106

1

Introduction

Eugenics: a word and concept inextricably linked with the radical excesses of the Nazi movement during the first half

of the twentieth century. A word which to a great extent has fallen out of vogue, but whose concepts continue to

live with us to this very day. Defined as the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair

the racial quality of future generations,1 from its conception it would go onto develop a large following, attracting

supporters with diverse political, social and academic backgrounds. At its height it had special interest groups and

scientific research institutes across the globe. It was a highly active socio-scientific research community, that actively

exchanged information, research and opinion through both correspondence and specialist conferences. It

progressed alongside science, developing its thought process from Mendelian inheritance to incorporate discoveries

of genetic science. However, in the wake of the collapse of the Nazi movement and its excesses, it would become

seen as an archaic field, with nothing to offer modern science but radical, inhumane solutions to biological and social

problems.

Eugenics is divided into two fields, those of positive and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics entailed taking

measures to ensure and increase the reproduction of those deemed most valuable to a race. These measures could

take the form of tax rebates, commendations for raising a certain number of children, or in some cases penalties,

such as the ‘Bachelor Tax’ in fascist Italy. Of course, what was deemed valuable would vary depending upon which

state or movement was pushing for eugenic reform. Negative eugenics sought to curtail the reproduction of those

deemed non-valuable or to an extent, unfit. Examples of such negative eugenic measures are detention or

segregation, voluntary sterilisation and in the most radical cases, forced sterilisation and euthanasia. These two

parallel tracks of eugenic thought have been the cornerstone of eugenics since its conception, and have emerged in

various ways in nations across the globe. The nation under scrutiny in this study however is Great Britain, in particular

before World War One and during the inter-war period.

1 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P.7

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This study looks primarily at the period between 1900 and 1939. The beginning of this period sees the eugenics

movement in Britain having started to establish a foothold to some extent, with the founding of a society that

produced its own journal and the spread of eugenic ideas amongst intellectuals. Furthermore, during the period

examined, the movement had some notable legislative successes and inspired great debate among the public and

academics, collecting an eclectic membership made up of private citizens and notable persons. Alongside this, the

currents of thought during the period in question are highly important to the popularity of eugenic ideals at the

time. Concepts of degeneration and the supposed pessimism of the age heavily contributed to the appeal of

eugenics, as did scientific concepts which are now regarded as scientific racism. These topics will be discussed further

on. Before delving into the contemporary world of the eugenicists, we must examine the present state of scholarship

on the subject.

Previous Scholarship

Those who have studied eugenics have noticed two modes of eugenic thought, those of social hygiene and racial

hygiene. Although utilising different methods, these ideologies seek the same goal, what can be argued as the

betterment of the race. As such they are arguably opposing sides of the same coin. The most prominent arguments

for social hygiene come from Greta Jones and Pauline Mazumdar.

Greta Jones, in Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain2 focusses primarily on the advances in public health

reform and the movements that took steps to improve the social environment. Arguing that the movement emerged

from ‘a marriage between the hereditarian ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the public

health reform movement of the nineteenth century,’3 Jones states that the movement also contained a strong

eugenic component as well. 4 The movement also attributed social problems to hereditary defect, in particular

asocial behaviour and tendencies, such as alcoholism and vagrancy, along with the mental health issues of the

2 Jones, G. Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain. Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1986. 3Ibid, 1. 4 Ibid, 7.

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feebleminded. 5 Furthermore, she points out that the middle class viewed the lower classes as a threat to

‘evolutionary progress.’6 Porter makes a similar case. Within an article in Victorian Studies, it is argued that the

residuum, the lower ten percent of the working class, was the true target of public health measures. Any suggested

measures were supposedly designed to separate the diseased and destitute from the labouring poor, to prevent the

spread of physical infections and what contemporaries perceived as the contagion of idleness.7 Porter also draws

attention to the fact that the eugenic enterprise in Britain sought to ensure the future health of a strong imperial

race, through plans for sterilisation and detention of undesirable elements which would ultimately result in the

elimination of the hereditarily unfit.8

Mazumdar takes up this argument with more conviction. The key thesis underpinning Eugenics, Human Genetics and

Human Failings,9 is that the British eugenics movement, helmed to a great extent by the Eugenics Education Society,

was an extremely class focused movement. Composed of primarily middle and upper class members, she argues

that the British eugenics movement was the culmination of a middle class meliorism combined with Darwinism,

utilising theories of Mendelian heredity and Malthusian population theory.10 She also argues that the movement

was primarily class-centric, focusing on dealing with the problematic and dangerous ‘residuum.’ In all her study

proves an essential work, especially due to the fact it is one of the few histories of the Eugenics Education Society

itself, including its methods of research. These methods included pedigree charts and family histories, in order to

substantiate their claims. The issue of the ‘residuum’ was not a new one by any means and has been shown to be

pre-existing but under different names. In general, no matter what moniker they went by, they were defined as

being a group distinct from the working class; ‘in effect a rootless mass divorced from the means of production –

definable only in terms of social inefficiency and hence not a class in a neo-Marxist sense.’11

5 Ibid, 11. 6 Ibid, 102. 7 Porter, D. “Enemies of the Race’: Biologism, Environmentalism and Public Health in Edwardian England,” in Victorian Studies vol. 34, no. 2 (1991): 159-178. P. 159-160 8 Ibid, 162. 9 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. 10 Ibid, 2. 11 Welshman, J. Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. References to the 2013 edition. P. 3.

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These works have focused on the theme of class prejudice in eugenic thinking in Edwardian and inter-war Britain,

which to an extent is a continuation of the argument put forward by Donald MacKenzie who claimed that eugenics

in Britain was pursued by the professional middle class, and was a class rather than a ‘racist’ phenomenon.12 He

argued that unlike its German and United States equivalents, the British movement was not to be understood in

terms of its preoccupation with Jews, Blacks or immigrants. It could easily be said that MacKenzie was the source of

the traditional view, that British eugenics was more hung up on issues of social class rather than race, that social

hygiene was the dominant trend of thought. The study of G.R. Searle also contributes to this academic stream of

thought. His study, Eugenics and Politics in Britain looks at the early stage of the movement in Britain, in particular

between 1900 to 1914.13 Within it he cautions against pressing the argument of racialist eugenics too far in the

British case, putting the root of the issue down to contemporary scientific theory.

Nancy Stepan in her work The Idea of Race in Science, made note of the important link that existed between race

and British eugenics.14 The book itself provides an excellent study of concepts of race, how they developed and how

they were applied in science from the turn of the nineteenth century up to 1960. Stepan lays out the application of

racial science during the period as this:

By the middle of the nineteenth century, a very complex edifice of thought about human races had

been developed in science that was sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, racist. That is to

say, the language, concepts, methods and authority of science were used to support the belief that

certain human groups were intrinsically inferior to others, as measured by some socially defined

criterion, such as intelligence or ‘civilised behaviour.’15

What interests us in Stepan’s study is the chapter pertaining to the concepts of eugenics and race. Firstly, she notes

that eugenics was a science and social programme of racial improvement through selective breeding of the human

species.16 This assertion will prove fundamental in what is to follow, especially in chapter two, which focusses

12 MacKenzie, D. “Eugenics in Britain.” Social Studies of Science 6. No 3/4. (1975): 499-532. P. 501. 13 Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. 14 Stepan, N. The Idea of Race in Science: 1800-1960. London: Macmillan, 1982. 15 Ibid, ix 16 Ibid, 111.

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specifically on how concepts of race were expressed in British eugenics, along with the thinking that helped support

it. Further to this it also allows all social eugenic reform to be considered as being in the interest of racial betterment.

Secondly, we have a direct affirmation of the importance of the existence of racial issues in British eugenics:

It was not hard to assume that, just as the different social classes of Britain had acquired distinctive

mental and physical makeups as well as social values, so had races. We should not be surprised to find,

as a consequence, that the issue of race was a real and persistent feature of the British eugenics

movement.17

Stepan does acknowledge that class was the chief preoccupation of British eugenics, but she does not downplay or

dismiss the racial element either.18 Interestingly this work appears in Kevles’ essay on sources at the end of his study

In the name of Eugenics, stating that it offers insight into the relatively low degree of racism in British eugenics.19 It

is conspicuously absent elsewhere in other studies however, not appearing in any other lists of references. Although

Kevles himself does mention racial prejudice in his transnational study of eugenics in the United States and Britain,20

he too subscribes to the mainline argument of class being imperative in the British case, basing these claims on the

work of Galton himself and his ideas of civic worth.21 Alongside Galton’s ideas Kevles claims that the English ‘fretted

a good deal more about the threat to the national fibre arising from the differential birth-rate and the consequent

weakening of their imperial competitive abilities in relation to France and Germany.’ Further to this Kevles provides

a clear and concise analysis of how social Darwinism was reflected in the eugenic programme of both countries:

Social Darwinism, with its evocation of natural selection to explain diverse social phenomenon, had

brought about a flow of proto-eugenic writings that foreshadowed the salient concerns of the post-

1900 movement, particularly the notion of “artificial selection” – state or philanthropic intervention

in the battle for social survival – was replacing natural selection in human evolution.22

17 Ibid, 126. 18 Ibid, 125. 19 Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London: HUP, 1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 388. 20 Ibid, 74. 21 Ibid, 9. 22 Ibid, 70.

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Greta Jones has also written on the topic of social Darwinism. In her work Social Darwinism and English Thought,23

she discussed the impact the ideas of social Darwinism had upon the eugenics movement. She notes how the

language of natural selection, with its highly partial and contentious social judgements of relative worth, was applied

to various groups within the population. She also argues that the eugenicists exhibited a conviction that a higher

birth rate among the lower classes was a threat to evolutionary progress, due to their implied inferiority.24 Although

Jones demonstrates the importance of class in British eugenic thinking, she does not rule out race. She argues that

social and racial inequality was connected. The ideas of social and racial hierarchy, she goes on to argue, were

merged firstly on the assumption that ‘inferior races’ were always destined to occupy lowly social positions, and

secondly by the belief that the domestic class system was also a racial one too.25 However more recent scholarship

has started to show otherwise. A resurgence of academic interest in the history of British eugenics has resulted in a

new wave of revisionist historiography, aiming to reinterpret the conclusions drawn in the past.

Bradley Hart has contributed to this re-emergent interest in the subject. His Doctoral Thesis examines the interplay

between the British, American and German eugenic movements. Starting with the formation of a close working

relationship interrupted by hostilities between 1914-1918, he traces the exchange of ideas between the groups and

the eventual decay of relations due to the extremes of Nazi eugenic policies in the late 1930’s. Importantly, Hart

draws attention to the treatment of the concept of ‘race’ in the existing historiography. Arguing that the term is

‘implicitly or explicitly disregarded’ by historians when found in primary sources, he claims this was down to

historians being of the belief that 19th and 20th century writers were referring to the ‘nation’ or other non-

normatively classified human groups.26 This is an interesting point that will be discussed further in a later chapter.

His work also examines the reasons why the eugenic movement in Britain failed to secure any notable legislation

23 Jones, G. Social Darwinism and English Thought. Brighton: Harvester Press Ltd, 1980. 24 Ibid, 101. 25 Ibid, 144, 148. 26 Hart, Bradley W, “British, German and American Eugenicists in Transnational Context c.1900-1939.” PhD thesis, Churchill College, Cambridge University, 2011. P.30.

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other than the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, showing the limitations of the British movement despite the successes

of its contemporaries.

Mental deficiency, as will be seen later, was one of the greatest concerns of the British eugenics movement. Its

efforts to secure the Mental Deficiency Act serves as definitive evidence of this fact. The Mental Deficiency Act of

1913 was passed on the 1st of April, 1914.27 Proposed in 1912, it was supported by numerous borough and county

councils, educational bodies and boards of guardians, undergoing several amendments before being passed. It faced

opposition from the political left however, who viewed it as a class based legislation. The law gave central authorities

compulsory powers to detain and segregate certain members of the ‘feebleminded,’ along with ‘defectives’ such as

paupers, drunkards and women receiving poor relief at the time of giving birth to or whilst carrying an illegitimate

child. 28 It was broad in scope, allowing a large number of those that the residuum was composed of to fall under its

loosely defined categories. This legislation can easily be seen as one of the core reasons why historians and

contemporaries viewed the British Eugenics movement as being primarily motivated by social hygiene.

Dan Stone, in his work Breeding Superman, demonstrates the influence that the ideas of Nietzsche had over the

British intelligentsia. Surveying the work of inter-war intellectuals, Stone highlights how interpretations of race

emerge in the chosen works and how British society prior to World War I was demonstrating traits of proto-fascism.29

These observations, Stone hopes, will reclaim the focus of the history of eugenics from being directed primarily on

the Nazi endeavours, whereas in reality it was a reformist idea that was in fact wide spread with a highly

differentiated impact depending on the success of its regional variations.30 Importantly, Stone highlights that:

‘Race’ was not simply a synonym for ‘nation’ in Edwardian Britain, unless one accepts that the word

‘nation’ itself carried implicit racist assumptions. Even if not yet having acquired the biologistic hue

27 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 24. 28 Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London: HUP, 1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 99 29 Stone, D. Breeding Superman. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002. P. 38-40, 2. 30 Ibid, 7.

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that Nazi eugenics would later take on, eugenics in Britain was, on both the left and right a basically

racist enterprise.31

Marius Turda also picks at the thread that the history of eugenics needs to be reclaimed from the almost exclusively

Nazi consideration in historiography. Turda makes clear the links between modernism and eugenics, noting that the

movement became part of a larger biopolitical agenda that included social and racial hygiene, family planning, as

well as research into social and ethnic minorities.32 He subscribes to the idea that eugenics was intimately linked

with national regeneration, offering the chance of what he cites Roger Griffin as having described as ‘palingenesis’.33

Further to this Turda makes clear the difference between social and racial hygiene. The former focussed on the

protection of existing hereditary qualities, the latter however was future oriented and was to be a driving force

towards building a new racial community.34 This is an interesting interpretation of the two strands of eugenic

thinking, which could prove fruitful when applied to the British context. Another historian however, argues that

‘race’ could refer to nations, groups within the nation, public health, sex or the condition of the whole human

species. He even goes as far as to suggest that due to this, it was not scientific racism, counter to what Stepan argued,

but rather a series of overlapping and parallel ‘race’ discourses.35 As can be seen, the previously held assumptions

have begun to be challenged, yet an understanding of the pre-existing body of work alone is not enough to create a

solid foundation on which this study can build upon. We must also establish the context of the period that the study

focuses on.

Inter-war Britain: A morbid age?

The early twentieth century can easily be described as a troubled period for Britain. Gone was the golden age of

Queen Victoria; an era of progress had ground to a halt, imperial rivalries were running high and arguably pessimism

31 Ibid, 101-102 32 Turda, M. Modernism and Eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. P. 1-2. 33 Ibid, 6 34 Ibid, 32. 35 Thomson, M. “Savage civilsation’: Race, Culture and mind in Britain, 1898-1939,” Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960, ed. by Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris, 235-258. London: Routledge, 1999. 235-236.

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had set in. The Boer War had caused concern, with both the British forces’ lack of success and the poor physical

quality of volunteers. Social commentators questioned whether Britain was suffering from degeneracy, the slow,

gnawing affliction that some believed to be the root cause of the fall of empires. Further to this, the horrors of World

War I would shake the nation, revealing cracks in its social structure, taking a toll upon its population and further

reinforcing this air of pessimism.

Richard Overy takes up this subject in his book The Morbid Age.36 Dealing with various subjects, from pacifism to the

possibility of imperial decline similar to those suffered by ancient civilisations, Overy highlights the malaise that set

in over the nation during the period. William Inge, Dean of St. Pauls from 1911 to 1934, is always presented as an

example of such a way of thinking. His diaries contain a treasure trove of conversations and personal reflections on

the period in question, making evident the fears that certain circles felt. Discussing World War I, the ‘Gloomy Dean’

wrote:

Aldous Huxley says very truly that war destroys more than individual lives. It shakes the very fabric of

custom, of law, of mutual confidence, of decency and humanity. Periods of advance, which means

advance in charity, have alternated with periods of regression. The eighteenth century and most of

the nineteenth was a period of real progress; now we are manifestly on the downgrade. The progress

of humanitarianism has been more than checked.37

In 1917 Dean Inge laments the war itself writing ‘so ends another year of protracted nightmare. Whatever is the end

of the war, Europe is ruined for my lifetime and longer. Nearly one fifth of the upper and middle class of military age

– the public school and university men, from whom the officers are chosen, are dead, and there is no rift in the

clouds anywhere. Our people, slow and reluctant to enter the war, are now mad with rage and hatred, and will

sacrifice anything rather than make terms with the enemy. It is indeed a terrible time.’38 He is not alone in expressing

these fears. Making note of a conversation he had with a Professor Burnett of the University of St. Andrews, Inge

36 Overy, R. The Morbid Age: Britain and the crisis of civilization, 1919 - 1939. London: Penguin, 2010. 37 Inge, W.R. ‘July 28-30’ Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P. 30. 38 Ibid, ‘December 31.’ P. 43.

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writes that Burnett claimed that his work of the last five years had been ‘thrown away’ as all his pupils had been

killed.39

A prosopographic study into differential casualty rates has indeed revealed the truth of these claims. Bradley Hart

and Richard Carr, through thorough investigation, have shown that there was indeed a correlation between high

academic performance at public schools and risk of death in the war. They conclude that to a meaningful extent,

those identified as ‘the strong, brave and beautiful’ really had fallen to a significant degree between 1914-1918.40

Fears of the dysgenic effects of war have been proven true, especially if you believed those who attended public

school were the best of the British youth like eugenicists did. This issue of dysgenics in turn raises up another issue

that aroused concern during the period, degeneracy.

Racial and social degeneracy was recognised as a significant threat during the period in question. For some it was

made more concerning due the increasing threats of foreign competition, colonial war and inter-imperialist war

during the period.41 The differential casualty rate of the war wiping out the best of the nation’s youth was pre-dated

by a differential birth rate, which threatened the middle and upper classes with being overwhelmed by what were

perceived as degenerate working class labourers. The poor quality of working class recruits during the Boer War also

set social commentators on the track of lamenting the decline of English strength and vigour. Even in the 1930’s this

concern was still alive and well, as can be seen in the anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith’s opening statements for a

debate held at a congress of the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations in 1930. Keith questioned:

What effect is modern civilization producing upon the manhood and womanhood of our countries? ...

Is the generation which is now growing up in your homelands and mine under modern conditions as

fit in body and in mind as the generation which in due time they will replace? Or is the evidence definite

and certain that deterioration has set in and that the populations we represent have in them a larger

element of undesirables that was the case a century ago? … We have to discover and formulate

39 Ibid, ‘October 14.’ P. 40. 40 Carr, R. & Hart, Bradley W. “Old Etonians, Great War Demographics and the Interpretations of British Eugenics, c. 1914-1939.” First World War Studies 3, no. 2 (2012) 217 – 239. P. 234. 41 MacKenzie, D. “Eugenics in Britain.” Social Studies of Science 6. No 3/4. (1975): 499-532. P. 515

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measures which will alter the present rules under which we live so that process of deterioration will

be arrested and that our descendants will at least be our equals.42

One historian however has suggested that ‘the supposed poor physical state of Army volunteers for the Boer War,

particularly those from the cities, encouraged and enabled the articulation of concerns about the degeneracy of the

‘race’ and its urban content. However, the ‘evidence’ of ill health reflected less on empirical reality than a class

investment in representing the proletariat as a degenerate group.’43 Yet the working class and residuum were not

alone in raising upper class concerns. Along with the high fertility of the working classes, there was also the high

fertility of the supposedly feeble-minded to contend with as well. This fear to a great extent can be seen now as the

politicisation of fertility, with the upper classes attempting to maintain their privilege and power in the face of an

ever growing working class, and is made evident in the passing of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.44

Yet for some a solution to a large number of these issues made itself apparent, and that solution was eugenics.

Eugenics with its dual strands of positive and negative measures offered an appealing alternative to rising costs of

poor relief with solutions to other social ills as well. Through negative measures, it would be possible to limit the

birth rate of those deemed undesirable. At the same time positive measures could help encourage the more fit

members of society to raise their fertility rate through incentives, more often than not tax breaks or family

allowances.

The Aims of the Present Study

With this in mind, we can now readily discuss what the aims of the present study are. Primarily, it aims to contribute

to the new wave of revisionist historiography on the subject of British eugenics. This shall be made possible through

42 Keith, A. Urgency of Eugenic Reform. 1st Sept, 1930. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/10/12 (1) P. 1-2. 43 Bonnet, A “From White to Western: “Racial Decline” and the idea of the West in Britain, 1890-1930” Journal of Historical Sociology vol 16, no.3 (2003): 320-348. P. 328. 44 Basu, A.M. “The ‘Politicization’ of Fertility to Achieve Non-Demographic Objectives,” Population Studies vol. 51, no.1 (1997): 5-18. P. 5. Basu suggests that using population research to support certain issues with interventions that won’t have an immediate impact on demographic rates can be seen as the politicisation of fertility.

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a rigorous re-examination of the classic line of argument, that class was the driving force in the British movement.

This re-assessment will question to what extent the movement was class-centric with its early focus on differential

fertility, and whether its concern over the ‘submerged tenth’, yet another term for the residuum or rather the social

problem group as they would come to be known, in particular a specific sub group known as the feeble minded, was

an attempt to pass a racial concern as a social one instead. This will be the subject of the first chapter, along with an

attempt to identify where the belief that the movement was class-centric originated from in the historiography.

Further to this, the reasoning behind the fears of degeneration will be further explored in greater depth, and used

to help explain how they affected the eugenics movement.

Chapter two addresses the issue of race in British eugenics. It examines the broad, varying definitions of race that

persisted throughout the period. Combining secondary studies with the contemporary writings on race, it aims to

reveal what intellectual streams contributed to eugenic rhetoric. With the establishment of these theories and the

existence of what is argued to be scientific racism, it then goes on to analyse how these theories were used to back

eugenic theory along with how they found expression in eugenic literature. Immigration and empire both figure in

this discussion, due in part to the believed degenerative effects of miscegenation.

The connection between these two chapters is established through the work of Detlev Peukert. Peukert’s theory of

value and non-value plays a crucial role in establishing how social class and race determined the desirability of a

specific group of people in a eugenic context.45 As such a portion of each chapter will be dedicated to examining

how this theory can be applied to both the issues of class and race in British eugenics.

Chapter three will provide an analysis of a prosopographical study taken of the members of the Eugenics Society

between 1936-1937. The aims of this study are to examine the class composition of the society, and to see from

which fields the professional members were drawn from, in particular the members who held doctorates. The

reasoning for this, despite the numerous claims of a primarily middle class membership, no studies are ever shown,

45 Peukert, D. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” Re-evaluating the Third Reich, ed. by T. Childers and J. Caplan, 234 – 249. New York, 1993.

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the results are merely given. This chapter is hoped to fill this gap in the historiography. What follows is a multi-

disciplinary study. Using the methodologies of intellectual history, it looks at the varying theories of race and class

that existed at the time, and how they were presented by contemporaries to reflect their world view. Further to this

it is also a work of social history to a degree, due to the way it examines the interaction between a particular middle

class interest group and the lower classes it aimed to legislate against along with examining the concept of a

residuum. In all, this study’s aim is to weave together diverse and varying threads of historical enquiry, which until

now have primarily existed independently, to produce a more coherent historical analysis of how race and class

figured in the British eugenics movement in the early twentieth century.

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Chapter One: Deficiency, Inefficiency and Value

This chapter will cover the long standing argument that British eugenics was in fact a socially prejudiced movement.

As noted in the introductory chapter, this view has been the core theory in the historiography of British eugenics for

at least the last half century, a long continuing line of argument dating back to the beginnings of scholarship on the

subject at hand. The key question with regard to these assertions is whether they still hold up to academic scrutiny.

In light of the newly emerging historiography and the now more widely available archival materials, these claims are

ready to be reassessed. Examples of readily available materials include the Wellcome Library’s holdings of the

Eugenics Society’s papers, once closely guarded with heavily restricted access, but now digitised and freely available

to all. Alongside this, it must also be considered that new archival material has become available for consultation in

the years since the original wave of historiography was published, including private papers of various members, such

as George Pitt-Rivers. The foundations of much of the academic output on the subject dates back almost half a

century. Its age means that the works can be subjected to claims of being outdated, due to the material and concepts

used being now surpassed by other, more recent works. With these factors in mind, we must delve once again into

the subject of social prejudice within British eugenics, this time armed with a broader understanding of the

movement and equipped with a wider variety of source material, along with the newly emergent revisionist

historiography.

The historiographical roots

Some important questions with regards to the historiographical trend that leans more towards the ‘social prejudice’

line of argument must be asked. Most importantly it must be asked, at which point in the history of the subject did

this theory emerge? What allowed it to maintain its prominence, and more importantly, why was it perpetuated?

The origin of this line of argument can be seen as coming from inside the Eugenics Society itself, well, from one of

its members at least. The member in question here is none other than C. P. Blacker himself.

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Carlos Paton Blacker, psychiatrist, veteran of both World Wars and more importantly to this study, general secretary

of the Eugenics Society from 1931 to 1952, was part of the new guard in British eugenics.46 Blacker was one of the

key members of the society pushing for a more palatable form of eugenics, known as reform eugenics, leading to

outrage amongst it more ‘conservative’ and racially motivated members.47 Reform eugenics was aimed to deal more

with social problems rather than the racial issues that concerned earlier members of the organisation, primarily the

Social Problem Group and the problems they entailed. The Social Problem Group was composed of the lower levels

of the industrial working class, essentially another term for the Residuum. Through this new programme, he sought

alliances with similar likeminded pressure and research groups to help further the cause of eugenics, alongside

funding research into the eugenic applications of birth control. He was also one of the few responsible for turning

the Society’s eye onto the issue of the so called Social Problem Group. In a chapter of his book, published practically

upon his retirement from his post as the general secretary of the Eugenics Society, Blacker discusses the output of

the post-Galton generation of eugenicists:

Considerations of social class, were, however, prominent in the writings of several leading eugenicists

in the two decades after Galton’s death. Social class was sometimes put forward as a criterion of

eugenic value; and terms were sometimes used such as “lower classes”, “riff-raff”, “dregs”, which

seemed to imply a contempt for certain sections of the poor. Such language gave offence to many

social reformers.48

Here Blacker draws specific attention to this generation of eugenicists’ work regarding social class in a eugenic

context. Considering his later priority as general secretary was dealing with the so called Social Problem Group and

limiting its reproduction, it would appear as though he was amongst the eugenicists looking at social class as a

criterion of eugenic value as evident in his attempts to push through voluntary sterilisation and to allow the working

classes to access birth control. Yet it can also be argued that Blacker was to some extent an egalitarian, hoping to

spread the privileges of birth control to the lower classes.

46 Richard A. Soloway, ‘Blacker, Carlos Paton (1895–1975)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47726, accessed 28 Jan 2016. 47 Pitt-Rivers, G.H.L.F. Letter to R. Ruggles Gates, 6th January, 1933. KCL. K/PP65/7/8: Pitt-Rivers reply to a letter from Gates implies a shared dislike of Blacker, his policies and his aims for the society. 48 Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1952. 139.

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In correspondence to Darwin, Blacker claims that eugenics suffers from three disadvantages or rather unfavourable

connotations. He wrote ‘in the first place, it is regarded by Socialists as a system of thinly disguised class prejudice;

secondly it is regarded in many circles as a joke….Thirdly the word ‘eugenics’ epitomises in the minds of Roman

Catholics an alluring though fundamentally false and pernicious doctrine. Personally, I believe that the word can

gradually be cleared of these unfavourable connotations….’49 It would appear Blacker was trying to shed the skin of

class prejudice that eugenics had acquired under the previous leadership. Returning again to the roots of the idea,

that social class rather than racial motivations were at the core of the post-World War One eugenic movement,

Blacker attempts to distance the concept of British eugenics from that of Nazi racial hygiene. Over several pages,

Blacker quotes from Mein Kampf. Citing select passages and considering the underlying influence of the Nietzschean

concept of the ‘Superman’, concepts of Darwinian survival and Hitler’s belief in Aryan supremacy, in the final extract

Blacker cites, Hitler explicitly outlines what would become Nazi racial policies:

In this matter, the State must assert itself as the trustee of a millennial future, in the face of which the

egoistic desires of the individual count for nothing and will have to give way before the ruling of the

State. In order to fulfil this duty in a practical manner, the State will have to avail itself of modern

medical discoveries. It must proclaim as unfit for procreation all those who are afflicted with some

visible hereditary disease or the carriers of it; and practical measures must be adopted to have such

people rendered sterile.50

Blacker’s overall critique of Hitler’s espoused views is fairly plain and simple; he merely states, in somewhat laconic

fashion, ‘There is little of Galton in these passages.’51 Blacker happened to be slightly more familiar than most with

regards to Nazi eugenic policies. Despite the drifting apart of the two nations movements ideologically in the later

inter-war period, Blacker was asked to assist a committee in adjudicating documents regarding eugenics seized

during the Second World War.52 The documents varied in content, with some possibly being ‘regarded as broadly

49 Blacker, C.P. Letter to Leonard Darwin from C.P. Blacker, 24th March, 1937. Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/B.1/6: Box 9 50 Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. 141-144. 51 Ibid.144 52 Blacker, C.P. Wartime Eugenic Measures in Germany, 10th August, 1947. Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/H.1/7-17: Box 23.

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falling within the meaning of eugenics (or rather of the Nazi version of eugenics called race hygiene…)’.53 However,

in all, Blacker’s judgement was that none of the experiments had any bearing on eugenics ‘as the subject was

understood in [Britain].’54 Interestingly, what can be seen here is that Blacker is distancing the British movement

from that of its German counterpart. This is something which would later be substantiated in the historiography,

starting as already mentioned with Blacker’s own text on the subject. As such we can see here the beginnings of

what would become the dominant line of argument for roughly the next fifty years.

Deficiency

A pamphlet produced in the early 1930’s at the height of the Eugenic Sterilization Campaign in England espouses the

aims of the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization.55 The committee was made up of various members of the

Eugenics Society and tasked with creating public support to change the laws regarding sterilization. The pamphlet in

question outlines the reasoning as to why the law regarding sterilization ought to be changed:

The child affected with primary amentia (an inborn defect) grows up defective because its constitution

does not permit it to grow up normal. And directly or indirectly the liability to defectiveness is handed

on to future generations…these circumstances alone point to the necessity for preventing mental

defectives from having children. But there are two further facts which make the present situation

especially urgent. The first is that high grade mental defectives and the classes which produce them

are incapable of regulating the births of their children…56

So-called high grade mental defectives, in some cases referred to as the ‘feeble minded’, were those who suffered

from conditions that were not overly debilitating, meaning they were not always subjected to segregation due to

their mental health. The same pamphlet cites statistics with regards to the so called ‘feeble minded’ in an attempt

to create perspective between that group and the so called low grade mental defectives; it states that “feeble

53 Ibid, 2. 54 Ibid, 19. 55 Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D. [1930-32] Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10. 56 Ibid, 3.

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minded, high grade defectives…who comprise some 75 per cent. of the total of defectives, tend to spring from a

group roughly estimated as composing a tenth of the total population of the country. This group consists of people

who, though not necessarily themselves defectives, are sub-normal and mentally retarded.” 57 Here we see a

reference to the lowest level of society, which has gone by many names. This ten percent of the populace was, at

the time, referred to as the Social Problem Group. However previously it had gone by the name ‘residuum’ or

‘submerged tenth’. It was essentially a moniker for what was the industrial underclass. Various assertions were made

as to why they existed in the state they did. Some claimed it was moral defect that produced them, whereas others

saw it as a result of their environmental conditions.58 Charles Booth was a pivotal contributor to the concept of the

residuum with his work, Life and Labour of the People of London.59 Over the decades following Booth’s work, the

resulting attempts to deal with the social, economic and political issues arising from the existence of an industrial

underclass varied from social ameliorative measures to demands for draconian labour colonies. Most were attempts

to combat inefficiency, as is shown by the strategy suggested by Helen Bosanquet, an influential member of the

Charity Organisation Society, who suggested that they ‘approach the problem by striking at its roots in the minds of

the people themselves; to stimulate their energies, to insist upon their responsibilities, to train their faculties. In

short, to make them efficient.’60 Here we see a suggested policy to take the inefficient, and make them efficient; to

take members of society with little or no value, due to the fact they take more than they produce from society, in

the form of rates and public assistance, and to give them value.

Bosanquet’s suggestion of labour colonies was not only suggested as a measure for the residuum however, a book

published in 1931 reflects similar views, but with direct reference to the issue of the mental defective. The Mental

Defective: A problem in social inefficiency was written by two doctors,61 who both worked at Stokes Park Colony in

the Bristol area. Due to their professional occupations, the authors had direct experience dealing with those suffering

57 Ibid, 5. 58 Welshman, J. Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. References to the 2013 edition. P. 17 59 Ibid, 27. 60 Ibid, 33. 61 Berry, R.J.A and Gordon, R.G. The Mental Defective: A problem in social inefficiency. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1931.

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from supposed mental defect. Their book provides useful insight into the suggested treatment of those held there.

Opening with a description of what mental deficiency is caused by, an arrest of brain growth, they state that ‘the

individual is unable to react to his environment in the manner regarded as normal by the average member of

society.’62 Already in the opening passages, they have implied those who suffer from mental defect as abnormal.

However, they believe that the mentally deficient are not beyond reach when it comes to some form of education.

The authors believed that each patient should be treated as an individual, with a programme developed to suit their

specific talents and limitations.63 As such they hoped that those of the higher grades would benefit from treatment,

which would not return them to ‘normality’ but provide them with ‘a happy useful life in a suitable environment;’64

note the use of the word ‘useful’ here. It seems that the authors hoped that the suitably educated deficient could

be trained to be productive, giving them value. Further on, they paint a picture of the ideal defective colony and

conclude that:

‘Mental defect cannot be cured. It must be endured, and it is our desire and ambition that that

endurance should be as pleasant and profitable as possible, both for the individual and the community,

and should cost the nation as little as possible, so that more may be available for those citizens who

are really of use to themselves and their fellows.’65

The above quote reads almost like a check list with regards to value, deficiency and inefficiency. It suggests that the

deficient can be made profitable, that the deficient can be made efficient, and finally it suggests that under this

proposed colony system the deficient would cease to be a burden, with the resources being supposedly wasted on

them becoming available for others.

Other commentators upon the issue of the feeble-minded offered up differing solutions other than colonies. William

Inge, Dean of St. Pauls, in an essay published in 1922 discussed the nature of heredity on Mendelian lines, following

the outlining of these ideas he goes on to elaborate on mental deficiency. He writes ‘…some interesting laws have

62 Ibid, 2. 63 Ibid, 11. Berry and Gordon wrote “Practically all defective children, except gross imbeciles, are educable to a certain extent, but to get the best out of the child, it has to be studied as an individual, and the most important problem is to find out what the child can do, and thereafter to concentrate on its education on those particular lines.’ 64 Ibid, 21. 65 Ibid, 190.

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been discovered, and in one instance, that of mental defect or feeble-mindedness, the results are of very ominous

import indeed. It cannot be bred out of a family in which it has established itself, but it could be eliminated by

bringing the infected stock to an end.’66 What can also be described as ominous is the assertion that the traits could

be ‘eliminated by bringing the infected stock to an end.’ Unfortunately, he doesn’t go on to elaborate what measures

he would suggest, either sterilisation, birth control or eugenically endorsed execution. Yet, the words used to

describe the perceived problem of the feeble-minded faintly echo the words of Hitler in Mein Kampf, cited by Blacker

in his attempt to dissociate the British movement from its German counterpart. “[The state] must proclaim as unfit

for procreation all those who are afflicted with some visible hereditary disease or the carriers of it; and practical

measures must be adopted to have such people rendered sterile.”67 This similarity lends credibility to Stone’s claims

that parts of English society were exhibiting proto-fascist traits, especially in the context of eugenics.68 Dean Inge

was a long standing member of the Eugenics Society, being a friend of Galton’s and a long serving member on the

Society’s Council. Yet in time he resigned due to the fact the society, in his words ‘were becoming too environmental,

interested, in Galton’s phrase, in nurture rather than nature; and when they appointed Sir William Beveridge to give

the Galton Lecture, I resigned my membership. To subsidise the teeming birth-rate of the slums is not the way to

improve the quality of the population.’69

The long standing issue of the cost of what was seen as charitable and philanthropic interference with natures laws

was always a concern, especially when discussed in conjunction with the inefficient. Take for example Schiller who

argued that ‘they are, in short, social parasites of a peculiarly pernicious kind. For they multiply without stint. Their

families average seven or more, and are rapidly supplanting those of the superior classes, which average less than

two. At the same time the growth of taxation required for the support of the growing multitudes of the feeble-

minded is impelling the wealth-producing classes to further restriction of their families. Thus the strong and efficients

66 Inge, W.R. “Eugenics” Outspoken Essays: Second Series, ed. by W.R. Inge, 254-275. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1922. P. 258. 67 Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. P. 144. 68 Stone, D. Breeding Superman. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002. P. 3. 69 Inge, W.R. Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P. 14.

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are being extirpated, in order that the feeble minded and incompetent can be preserved.’70 The issue of taxation

arises elsewhere, with many commentators lamenting the negative impact it was having on the race. Dean Inge

wrote that ‘we have seen that the destruction of the upper and professional classes by taxation directed expressly

against them has already begun, and this victimisation is certain to become more and more acute, till the classes are

practically extinguished.’71 In his second volume of published essays he returned to the subject stating that ‘Our

policy of encouraging nature’s failures and misfits to multiply, while the better stocks are progressively penalised for

their support, is producing the results which might have been predicted.’72 It becomes highly apparent that this was

an issue close to the Dean’s heart as he also argued the case in the The Romanes Lecture, which he delivered at

Oxford in 1920, where he stated:

No selection in favour of superior types is now going on; on the contrary, civilisation tends now, as

always to an Ausrottung der Besten – a weeding out of the best; and the new practice of subsidising

the unsuccessful by taxes extorted from the industrious is cacogenics erected into principle. The best

hope of stopping this progressive degeneration is the science of eugenics. But the science is still too

tentative to be made the basis of legislation, and we are not yet agreed what we should breed for.73

It is clear that for some taxation was tied to the to the differential birth-rate, both as a leading factor and as a result.

The issue of ‘value’ is not merely limited to the social problem of the mentally deficient though. When this kind of

thinking is merged with eugenic policy it becomes an issue of ‘value’ and ‘non-value’ in a racial sense, and this is

exactly what happened with regards to the Social Problem Group and the mentally deficient that were believed to

have populated it.

70 Schiller, F.C.S. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable & Co, 1932. P. 22-23 71 Inge, W.R. “The Future of the English Race” Outspoken Essays, ed. by W.R Inge, 82-105. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1919. P. 98 72 Inge, W.R. “Eugenics” Outspoken Essays: Second Series, ed. by W.R. Inge, 254-275. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1922. P. 257. 73 Inge, W.R. “The Romanes Lecture, 1920” Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P. 201.

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Inefficiency and Value

In Hereditary Genius which was first published in 1869, Galton proposes a hierarchy divided according to eugenic

principles, he wrote: ‘We may divide newly-married couples in three classes, with respect to the probable civic worth

of their offspring. There would be a small class of ‘desirables’, a large class of ‘passables’ of whom nothing more will

be said here, and a small class of ‘undesirables’. It would clearly be advantageous to the country if social and moral

support as well as timely material help were extended to the desirables, and not monopolized as it is now apt to be

by the undesirables.’74 It can be inferred that Galton refers to the same group of people that Tregdgold does, due to

the claims of the monopolizing of support, we can also infer a hierarchy of value. We can see that this belief was

widespread amongst members of the Eugenics Society and easily found a ready audience in the pages of the Eugenics

Review. The worrying trend of familial limitation by the desirables and the fecundity of the undesirables was a

constant concern the British eugenicists tried to address, but it is important to understand why this differential

fertility occurred.

The concept of value and non-value as it is being applied in this piece, stems from the work of Detlev Peukert.75

Although the article in which the theory appears deals with the radical policies of the Nazi state, parts of it can be

applied with regards to British eugenics. Referring to the Nazi racial programme Peukert writes ‘in steadily widening

areas of social policy, health policy, educational policy and demographic policy, a ruling paradigm and guide to action

became established whereby people were divided into those possessing ‘value’ and those lacking ‘value’. ‘Value’

was to be selected and promoted, and ‘non value’ was to be segregated and eradicated.’76 He continues further on,

‘the common racist factor in the disciplines and profession of the human and social sciences is the differential

assessment and treatment of people according to their ‘value’, where the criteria of ‘value’ are derived from a

normative and affirmative model of the volkskörper as a collective entity, and biological substratum of ‘value’ is

attributed to the genetic endowment of the individual.’ 77 Although in Britain no legislation or extreme state

74 Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. 107-108. 75 Peukert, D. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” Re-evaluating the Third Reich, ed. by T. Childers and J. Caplan, 234 – 249. New York, 1993. 76 Ibid, 235. 77 Ibid, 237.

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measures were enforced, discussion of eugenic issues still occurred along similar lines. A prime example of the

application of these ideas is readily available when we turn to the concept of the differential birth-rate, a contentious

issue in the years leading up to the First World War and for some time after it. From various sources we can see

references to the lower classes as the inefficient when comparatively viewed with those higher up the social ladder.

Take for instance the contribution of Dr Killick Millard, Medical Officer for Health for Leicester to a discussion on

birth control held in 1920, Millard argues:

[Major Leonard Darwin] points out that there is good reason to fear that efficiency and infertility are

becoming correlated, and in so far as this comparative infertility is due to birth control (and nearly all

those who have studied the question believe that this is the principle cause) we must pronounce birth

control, as at present practised, to be distinctly dysgenic in its operation. For it is quite clear that the

less efficient sections of the community are multiplying faster than the more efficient.78

Here we see a direct comparison between the upper and lower classes, whose differential fertility was being

discussed, with the terms efficient and inefficient (‘less efficient’ in this case) being attached to those classes

respectively. Furthermore, he argues that the differential birth rate is dysgenic, implying the ‘less efficient’ members

of society have lesser value.

The case is stated elsewhere even earlier, Brabrook writes, ‘the circumstance that these people (the habitual

unemployed) frequently have wives, and still more frequently have children, points to the possibility that an

hereditary caste of morally and physically deteriorated person - potentially a burden upon the community as

paupers, but certainly valueless to the community as workers - is being created.’79 Once again we see, in this case

the habitual unemployed (one of the attributes assigned to the residuum it must be pointed out), being referred to

as having no value as they fail to contribute to society. A pamphlet produced by the Eugenics Society argues a similar

line and suggests what measures should be taken in this instance with regards to mental defectives, it reads ‘if high

grade defectives, together with the bulk of other undesirables, tend to be born from the social problem group, it is

78 Eugenics Society. “Birth Control: A Discussion,” Eugenics Review 12, no.4 (1921): 291-298. P. 293 79 Brabrook, E. “Eugenics and Pauperism,” Eugenics Review 1, no.4 (1910): 229-241. P. 233

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manifestly in the communities’ eugenic and economic interests that the fertility of this group be somehow limited.’80

A.F Tredgold expressed a similar view when he wrote, ‘[The Feeble-minded] are essentially persons on the down-

grade and they not only contribute nothing to a nations advance, since they divert, for their own support, no little

of the resource and energy of the country.’81 F.C.S. Schiller wrote on the topic of the feeble-minded also, arguing:

the sterilization of the fit, the spoiling of the cream, is not, however, the only deleterious process

permitted to go on in modern society. It is deadly to the prospect of progress and to the possibilities

of intelligent guidance in human affairs, but it is not in itself incompatible with a stationary civilization

in which the men of average stupidity might contrive to muddle along indefinitely without disaster.

There is however, in addition, operative in modern society a deteriorating agency which is directly

conducive to a rapid irremediable decline. It, too, is incidental to the differential birth rate, and in the

magnitude of volume of its effects it greatly surpasses the sterilization of the fit. We may call it the

proliferation of the feeble minded at the bottom of the social scale.82

The increase in the supposedly worrying differential fertility can be explained by the second stage of the

demographic transition that Britain experienced during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Richard

Soloway explains the second stage of the demographic shift as this:

In contrast to the first stage of transition, which was characterised by high fertility and mortality and

slow population growth, the second stage was marked by a substantial decline in infant mortality while

fertility remained relatively high. People, however, began to recognize they could conceive fewer

children to achieve a certain family size; beyond that number the costs of rearing and educating an

excessively large brood became an increasingly heavy burden. Consequently, the pressures for high

80 Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Eugenic Sterilization, Second Edition,” S.D. [1932] SA/EUG/D.50:Box 34 p.7 81 Tredgold, A.F. “II: The Feeble-minded – A Social Danger,” Eugenics Review 1, no.2 (1909): 97-104. P 100. 82 Schiller, F.C.S. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable & Co, 1932. P. 20

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fertility gradually weakened in the course of the nineteenth century, and the motivation and desire

for limitation strengthened.83

This theory is reinforced by the results of the 1911 census, which showed that the upper classes were seeing a faster

decline in fertility than the manual labouring classes. This was in part due to the embourgoisement of the middle

class, who were developing a pre-occupation with individual well-being and fulfilment, which in turn resulted in

family limitation to maintain a certain lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed.84 At the time however, social

Darwinist thought combined with the fear of sterility in the upper classes helped convince some contemporaries of

the degeneration of the British people. As Soloway notes:

To the pessimistically inclined, in particular, the enumeration of deterioration or degeneracy as

reflected in military recruitment, declining fertility, small physical stature, increased criminality or

insanity, unemployment, the rising costs of poor relief and countless other real or imagined indicators

only confirmed their worst expectations about modern society and the future of the once dominant

British race.85

Soloway even obliges to show just why these stages of the transition are of relevance to British eugenics, explaining

its relevance as this, ‘to contemporaries, a reading of the demographic map of society often led to the discovery that

the poorest and the least educated, healthy, intelligent and skilled portion of the population were continuing to

reproduce themselves in large numbers, while more and more people in the wealthiest, best-educated, and highly

skilled classes were rapidly reducing the size of their families.’86 This conclusion is exemplified in a lecture given by

William Inge, Dean of St. Pauls and long-time member of the Eugenics Society. When delivering the Galton Lecture

of 1919, Inge claimed, ‘we are at present breeding a large parasitic class subsisting on the taxes and hampering the

83 Soloway, R.A. Demography and Degeneration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. References to the 1995 edition. P. xix 84 Haines, M.R. “Social Class Differentials during Fertility Decline: England and Wales Revisited,” Population Studies vol. 43, no. 2 (1989): 305-323. P. 306-307 85 Soloway, R. “Counting the Degenerates: The Statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian England,” Journal of Contemporary History vol. 17, no. 1 (1982): 137-164. P. 160. 86 Ibid, xxi

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Government. The comparative fertility of the lowest class as compared with the better stocks has greatly increased,

and is still increasing. The competent working class families, as well as the rich, are far less fertile that the waste

products of our civilisation.’ 87 The aforementioned claims of Leonard Darwin, who claimed that efficiency and

infertility were becoming correlated, and that the comparative infertility was due to birth control directly supports

Soloway’s observations, as do the references regarding the reproduction of the inefficient cited above. From this it

is clear that the second stage of transition was in effect in Britain at the time, and some of those who lived through

the demographic change were keen to limit what they believed were its damaging effects. Now you may ask, where

does this digression into the fear of the residuum and the attached concepts of value and non-value in terms of

efficiency and inefficiency lead us? It leads us back to the issue of eugenic sterilization and the Social Problem Group.

As already seen the fertility of the Social Problem Group was much higher than that of other areas of society. The

fertility of the Social Problem Group was recognised by some eugenicists as one of the damaging results of what we

now understand to be the second stage of demographic transition. This particular social group was merely one target

of the voluntary sterilisation campaign however. The other was the poorer members of society, primarily the

working class, who were not ‘defective’ but supposedly merely lacked moral restraint.88

This is where classic historiographical accounts come into play. Most works argue that British eugenics was

motivated by issues arising from social class. Searle notes that eugenicists were working to increase the birth-rates

of the efficient middle classes, while reducing those of the socially dependent.89 Mazumdar notes class was crucial

to the Society’s problematic.90 Soloway summed up the British eugenicists concerns with class thusly:

British eugenics as a product of late Victorian and Edwardian middle class society remained fixed on

the subject of class no matter how much its adherents talked imprecisely about race. Class in Britain

was, in other words, as much a way of thinking and perceiving as it was a definable socioeconomic

87 Inge, W.R. “The Future of the English Race” Outspoken Essays, ed. by W.R Inge, 82-105. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1919. P. 99 88 Ibid. P. 20. An example of this is in the Poor Law Report of 1909 as cited by Mazumdar, which states the most important causes of pauperism as old age, families dependent on casual labour, criminal offences, venereal disease and intemperance. The last two being linked to lack of moral fibre. 89 Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 46 90 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 1

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category. People consciously and unconsciously attached to it projective qualitative concepts of social

and moral value, fitness and unfitness, or worthiness and unworthiness.91

A study of this concept of unworthiness being attached to class has been undertaken by John Welshman.

Welshman’s research deals entirely with the concept of an underclass and the various measures taken to investigate

and deal with it.92 But as already stated, the voluntary sterilisation measures were proposed as a solution to those

suffering from some form of ‘defect,’ and as such attributed as being of ‘non-value,’ hence landing them as part of

the Social Problem Group. Therefore, it should be argued that in this regard, the measures were in fact racial hygiene

not social hygiene as suggested in previous scholarship or arguably a blending of the two concepts, with the Social

Problem Group being seen as a racially degenerate underclass. The measures were designed to increase the

efficiency of the population and remove the supposedly defective of the ability to reproduce. By offering voluntary

sterilization to the working class however, they were hoping to reduce the future numbers of the socially dependent

through family limitation, similar to what the other classes were doing. For example, correspondence between

Havelock Ellis, a prominent sexologist, and Blacker highlights this reason, Ellis points out the distinction between the

two groups that voluntary sterilization would affect stating: ‘to deal with the defectives under control is a definite

and separate question and probably requires an enabling Act. The objection raised against such a [Voluntary

Sterilisation] Bill…would be that it is class legislation, and it is not likely to appeal to the Labour Party. It is necessary

to make clear that the object of the Bill is not to inflict a deprivation on the poor, but to confer a blessing already

enjoyed by the rich.’93 What they were hoping to achieve with their work on voluntary sterilization, was the ability

for the working class and the poor to have access to sterilisation as a family limitation measure. As such this aspect

of the measure was in fact social hygiene, for it aimed to limit the number of parents who would turn to the state

for welfare due to the increasing and unsupportable size of their families. The origins of the campaign do deserve

explanation however.

91 Soloway, R.A. Demography and Degeneration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. References to the 1995 edition. P. 62 92 Welshman, J. Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. References to the 2013 edition. 93 Letter to Blacker from Havelock Ellis, 2nd January, 1931. Welcome Library, PP/CPB/B.5/1 Box:10 p.4

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The Campaign for Voluntary Sterilisation started in 1929 and hoped to secure legislation enabling people to undergo

surgery resulting in sterilisation.94 Highly active throughout the 1930’s, it was strengthened by the findings of both

the Brock Report and Colchester Survey which advocated sterilisation as a preventive measure with regards to mental

deficiency. The Eugenics Society formed a committee to lead the campaign, but later dissolved it to assist the

formation of the Joint Committee on Sterilisation, containing members of varying medical bodies as well as the

Eugenics Society. By producing propaganda such as pamphlets,95 holding meetings around the country, along with

relying on the support of publicly influential members of the Society, the campaign hoped to get a draft Bill based

on the recommendations of the Brock Report passed in Parliament. The prime target of the Bill would have been the

mentally defective. As expressed in a pamphlet produced by the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilisation, they

believed that defectives’ and undesirables’ fertility should be limited to guard the community’s eugenic and

economic interest.96 By allowing people to volunteer, or by enabling Doctors to recommend people for surgery it

was believed that the stigma of sterilisation would be lessened. Despite securing votes of support from official

bodies, such as the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, staunch opposition from the political Left and the

Catholic Church halted the progress of the campaign and no legislation materialised.97

The former historiographical trends, notably the assertion that British eugenics was predominantly concerned with

class seems somewhat myopic after considering that which has been laid out above. The campaign for voluntary

sterilization was an attempt to secure measures of both racial and social hygiene. It seems that the fact the measures

were aimed to help the poor and to limit the growth of the social problem group, who were primarily the lowest

group on the social ladder, has caused academics to take the campaign at face value. The fact that the measures

were hoped to affect distinct socioeconomic groups does bring class into the equation, yet it does not limit it merely

to that motive. On the surface, it appears a class measure, but when you scratch past that surface and consider the

94 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 204. 95 “What is Human Sterilization,” Pamphlet, 1934. PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10, being a prime example. 96 Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D. [1930-32] PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10. P.5 97 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 210, 211.

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deeper implications, it is equally a racial measure, especially in terms of those who constitute the social problem

group, primarily those suffering from mental defect. If we turn to the work of Foucault, we can substantiate this

claim. In his discussion of power and biopolitics, Foucault demonstrates the State’s attempts to bring the biological

under control, in the case of this study the biological component is the Feeble Minded. He asserts that biopolitics

deals with the population as a political problem that is both scientific and political, a problem that is biological and

one to be dealt with by the State.98 Yet in the English case, the State exercised this power in a limited context, despite

the eugenic movements efforts to extend this power. However, as Foucault points out biopower can dictate a

person’s death, which need not be limited to the literal expression of the term, but can also include political death,

described as ‘expulsion, rejection and so on,’99 in this case segregation and detention. Yet this is not the most crucial

point arising from the work in question. His definition of racism is of great interest; he writes:

It is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control: the

break between what must live and what must die. The appearance within the biological continuum of

the human race of races, the distinction among races, the hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races

are described as good and others, in contrast, are described as inferior: all this is a way of fragmenting

the field of the biological that power controls. It is a way of separating out the groups that exists within

a population.100

So according to this line of thought, could we not see the mentally deficient and the Social Problem Group as a

separate distinct group, a race if you will?

To sterilise those who were seen as defective, and in the eyes of eugenicists suffering from hereditary conditions,

was a eugenic safeguard to prevent the continued propagation of those deemed as having ‘non-value’ due to their

inborn inherited deficiencies. For example, in one pamphlet produced by the Committee for Legalising Eugenic

Sterilization, it is stated that they differ from other organisations who merely hope to aid defectives, due to the fact

98 Foucault, M. “17th March 1976” Society Must Be Defended, eds. M Bertani and A. Fontana, 239-264. London: Penguin, 2003. Translated by David Macey. P. 239-240, 245. 99 Ibid, 256. 100 Ibid, 254-255.

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that they are ‘interested in the defective chiefly from the point of view of the prevention of his propagation.’ They

follow this up with the claim that they are ‘concerned with racial rather than individual problems.’101 Although the

definition of race was loosely defined and multifaceted, its use in propaganda and in contemporary literature means

it cannot be entirely disregarded as a subject, despite the efforts of contemporaries and later scholars on the subject.

With these concepts in mind, we must move on to deal with more explicit concerns for the race and its hygiene.

101 “Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D. [1930] Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D.50: Box 34 P. 4

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Chapter Two: Race and Value

As seen in the preceding chapter, although theories of social hygiene provide a solid foundation for analysis, it cannot

merely stop there. Race played an imperative part in the British eugenics movement, despite some of its members

attempts to dissociate itself from the German strand of eugenics. In recent decades a new revisionist wave has begun

to emerge, in its wake challenging the formerly held assumptions of eugenics in Britain. These newer studies have

focused on Britain’s movement itself and how it fits into the intellectual history of the period, as well as dealing with

the relationships between Britain’s movement and its foreign counterpart institutions, mainly those found in

Germany. Although these studies have proven to be extremely valuable additions to the resurgence of academic

interest around the subject, some areas still have yet to be elaborated upon. Take for instance one of the subjects

explored in this chapter, that of the interpretations of the concept of race in the period in question. Although

historians have commentated on the issue, no one has yet fully explored it within the context of the British eugenic

movement. As such it will be the first issue explored in this chapter. Before we delve further in to the issue however,

it must be considered that the conceptions of race happened to fluctuate throughout the period in question; they

changed with public opinion, scientific advances and, even upon the personal beliefs of the author of a specific work.

Despite these varying interpretations however, eugenics was a movement concerned with ‘racial improvement’ and

eugenicists often employed the language of race.102

Interpretations of Race

H.G. Wells, in a series of essays which appeared serialized at the turn of the nineteenth century, but later published

as a collection in 1906, discussed amongst other topics the field known as Anthropology. His description was not

particularly flattering and painted a rather lavish, negative picture of the then emerging field. To be exact he

described it in these terms:

Anthropology has been compared to a great region, marked out indeed as within sphere of influence

of science, but unsettled and for the most part, unsubdued. Like all such hinterland sciences, it is a

102 Stepan, N. The Idea of Race in Science: 1800-1960. London: Macmillan, 1982. P. 124.

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happy hunting-ground for adventurers. Just as in the early days of British Somaliland, rascals would

descend from nowhere in particular upon unfortunate villages, levy taxes and administer atrocity in

the name of the Empire, and even I am told, outface for a time the modest herald of the government,

so in the department of anthropology the public mind suffers from the imposition of theories and

assertions claiming to be “scientific”, which have no more relation to that organized system of criticism

which is science, than a brigand at large on a mountain has to the machinery of law and police, by

which he finally will be hanged.103

Disparaging, to say the least. Wells goes on further, mocking the field and its belief that criminals can be identified

through physical attributes, stating that those who propound such views are in ‘need of urgent polemical

suppression.’104 Searle picks up on this tendency to study anthropometry, stating that eugenicists were from the

start attracted to this field, that there existed a category of persons termed ‘hereditary’ criminals based upon

Lambroso’s work.105 Political historian Paul B. Rich draws further attention to the link between anthropology and

eugenics, making a point of the fact that Francis Galton was president of the Anthropological Institute between 1885

and 1889. Interestingly it was within this period that British anthropologists reached a consensus over the cephalic

index, in 1886 in particular.106 It is interesting to see Wells attack contemporary anthropology as a field with no real

scientific basis. Yet the field, in spite of its detractors, would prove vital to the eugenics movement, especially with

regards to the concepts of racial difference.

Some notable anthropologists were attracted to the eugenicists’ cause, Sir Arthur Keith and George Pitt-Rivers

among them, both of whom were members of the Eugenics Society. Their esteemed names lent some credibility to

the eugenicists’ program. As already mentioned above, theories of race were in flux and the importance given to

them varied upon the commentator. This was a time before the UNESCO statement on race supposedly outlined the

official scientific standing on race. In 1952 they made their position unquestionably clear:

103 Wells, H.G. Mankind in the Making. London: Chapman and Hall, 1906. P. 52 104 Ibid, 52-53. 105 Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 31. 106 Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition. P. 18.

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National, religious, geographical, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial

groups; and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated connexion with racial traits.

Americans are not a race, nor are Frenchmen, nor Germans; nor ipso facto is any other national group.

Muslims and Jews are no more races than are Roman Catholics and Protestants; nor are people who

live in Iceland or Britain or India, or who speak English or any other language, or who are culturally

Turkish or Chinese and the like, thereby describable as races. The use of the term ‘race’ in speaking of

such groups may be a serious error, but it is one which is habitually committed.107

In a post-war world in which the results of extreme, imprecise theories of racial difference were there to behold, it

would seem the clarification was needed. But prior to the war, the term race was often applied to those groups the

UNESCO statement disqualified. Kevles supports this view writing that in the era in question, racial differences were

identified with variations not only in skin colour but in ethnic identity and was a feature prominent in both British

and American eugenics.108 A most notable example is found in the book Some Racial Characteristics of the People of

England. The author describes the various types of Englishman, writing that they ‘are a very mixed multitude. They

show distinct racial differences; and the effect of these on the social and political life of the country, owing amongst

other courses, to the extension of the franchise, demands our careful consideration.’109 Here Higgens links racial

issues with social ones, in this case the extended franchise, and then goes on to list various racial types as described

by Rowland Dixon, of Harvard University, before analysing the characters of Englishmen on a county by county basis.

For Higgens, even county divisions create a distinct anthropometric category. Interestingly Higgens puts eugenics at

the core of the interest in racial characteristics claiming ‘the study of Eugenics seems to have exploded the theory

of human and racial equality.’110 Sir Arthur Keith offered up a similar line of argument, questioning:

107 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Statement on the nature of race and race differences. 25th August, 1952. KCL. K/PP65/4/43. P.1 108 Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London: HUP, 1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 74. 109 Higgens, T.W.E. Some Racial Characteristics of the People of England. London: Robert Scott, 1928. P.8 110 Ibid, 6.

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What is the relation of nation to race? Huxley said there was none. He regarded a nation as an artificial

production, and this is the view which is still held and taught by most anthropologists…Where Huxley

went wrong was in believing that Europeans belonging to separate racial stocks and guided by

different traditions were planted together in the same land, they became, if I may coin a term,

deracialized and remained permanently so. They were no longer races but merely mongrel breeds. It

never occurred to him that there still remained deeply implanted in their natures those “instincts”

which are concerned in race building.111

Sir Arthur Keith wrote further on Huxley’s theories. The principle matter on which Keith disagreed within Huxley’s

work was the idea that nationality held no place when discussing races, that race should be based rather on a

zoological system founded upon the shared common physical traits of peoples. Huxley argued that ‘a nation…was a

congeries of people held together by territory, speech, politics and traditions, and could not, on scientific grounds,

claim the status of a race.’112 This claim seems strikingly similar to the UNESCO declaration that Huxley’s son, Julian

Huxley, would eventually help draft. Yet Keith did not accept this idea. He countered it with the theory that races

were developed from segregation and from isolation; divisions made along the lines of tribes, nations, castes and

classes.113 In the Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1928 he stated that ‘no matter how potent may be the physiological

machinery which is at work within a group of people, it cannot work its full effect unless there is also in operation

some system of segregation which causes the members of a group to cling to each other, and which also at the same

time serves to isolate its members from all surrounding or competing groups.’114 In the past this isolation was

imposed by geographical concerns, mountains, rivers and oceans. However, in time it became caused by what Keith

dubbed ‘Racial Spirit.’ This core theory underpinned a great deal of Keith’s work and was often used interchangeably

with the term ‘National Spirit.’ Keith argued that this idea was instilled in each race and was an evolutionary factor

111 Keith, A. Ethnos or the Problem of Race. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co Lt, 1931. P. 26-27. 112 Keith, A. The Evolution of the Human Races – Huxley Memorial Lecture. 1928. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/10/5. P. 4 113 Keith, A. Racial Spirit as a Formative Force in History. 1935. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/7/2 P. 12. 114 Keith, A. The Evolution of the Human Races – Huxley Memorial Lecture. 1928. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/10/5. P 21.

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of the first importance. He suggested that isolation had been one of the most important factors in the production of

human races, but had not always been produced by geographical concerns such as the ones already stated, but

rather by certain modes of working, which became inborn and ingrained within the human mind.115 Whilst lecturing

upon the racial difficulties found across the British Empire, Keith wrote:

We cannot survey the more signal manifestations of racial instinct which flash out where diverse races

come in contact without being convinced that a sense of race – a racial spirit – is not an assumed vanity

which can easily be repressed by an effort of will; but is a feeling from some intuition or impulse which

goes deep into the grain of our mentality.116

It seems for Keith, racial prejudice was an inborn reaction, something developed as an evolutionary safeguard by

nature to prevent miscegenation.117 We can see this come to the fore when he reviewed a book titled The Nature

of Race Prejudice; Keith disagreed with the author who speculates, in Keith’s words, ‘that the clash which attends

the contact of races is the result of acquired prejudices – prejudices which are grafted on children by parents,

teachers and politicians and that the sooner such behavioural manifestations as patriotism, national spirit and race

consciousness – especially that superior form entertained by Nordic anthropologists – are swept away, the better it

will be for the peace of the world and the future welfare of mankind.’118 For Keith racial prejudice was innate, not

learned. It was a fact of nature, not a result of nurture. He even put the inter-war national self-determination

movement as being based upon the theory of ‘Racial/National Spirit.’ He saw it as an attempt by nature to develop

new pure races, arguing that the small nation movement was ‘due to a recrudescence of the old machinery of racial

evolution,’ brought back to life by the experiences of the war; in essence the movement was a resurgence of the

‘Racial Spirit’ of those groups clamouring for self-determination.119

115 Keith, A. Racial Spirit as a Formative Force in History. 1935. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/7/2 P. 12 116 Ibid, 74. 117 Ibid, 74. Keith wrote: ‘Nature, as it were, having laboured through long epochs to build forms of mankind which are diverse in mind and body, is loath to lose the fruits of her toils and has implanted her safeguards in the breasts of men and women, who are, in a sense, her experiments.’ 118 Keith, A. The Nature of Race Prejudice – Book Review. 1929. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/13/10 P. 1-2. 119 Keith, A. The Evolution of the Human Races – Huxley Memorial Lecture. 1928. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/10/5 P. 30.

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George Pitt-Rivers also weighed in on the debate on the subject of race. In Weeds in the Garden of Marriage, he lays

out what he believed people took issue with in the eugenic field. These issues ranged from social policies, religious

objections and contention on racial difference; Arthur Keith highlights this in the preface.120 From the start Pitt-

Rivers pulls no punches, arguing that ‘[as] we are becoming conscious of eugenics we acknowledge our growing

consciousness of a danger. We are progressing in our awareness of racial, physical and mental degeneration.’121

Once again that grave eugenic concern of degeneration rears its head. The primary group that Pitt-Rivers appears

interested in, especially in terms of racial difference are the Jews. He opens a chapter titled ‘Why the Jewish question

is dragged in’ claiming that ‘the Jewish question is not only a problem of culture, it is also a racial problem even more

obscured than the culture problem, which is at least one reason why racial problems are habitually so perversely

ignored or confused even by anthropologists.’ This passage calls in to question P.B. Rich’s assertion that eugenics

was not intrinsically linked to a coherent ideology of racial superiority or inferiority, but instead that the notion of

‘race’ that the eugenicists employed often referred to the notion of a ‘community of culture’, a parallel to the

German notion of Kulturnation, rather than being a deterministic doctrine denoting the inferiority of other races.122

Pitt-Rivers here demonstrates one of the various interpretations of race extant during the period in question, making

a clear distinction between race and culture. Through this statement Pitt-Rivers creates a racial and cultural

distinction with regards to the Jews. He elaborates further stating that Jews have suffered little from ‘external

dilution’ caused by marriage with non-Jews and through intermarrying amongst themselves and not facing ‘internal

dilution’ caused by bringing non-Jewish blood into their groups.123 Following these explanations, Pitt-Rivers presents

his definition of race:

A ’race’ arises through continuous segregation and inbreeding within a group, it is identified in terms

of measurable distinction and a constant degree of relative homogeneity, and it can be said to survive

only in so far as it remains ethnically isolated, that is to say, preserved from internal dilution.124

120 Pitt-Rivers, G. Weeds in the Garden of Marriage. London: Noel Douglas, 1931. P. vii 121 Ibid, 7. 122 Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition. P. 94 123 Pitt-Rivers, G. Weeds in the Garden of Marriage. London: Noel Douglas, 1931. P. 49. 124 Ibid, 50.

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So according to Pitt-River’s thinking, races emerge through a lack of ethnic mixing, allowing a distinct group to

emerge. Interestingly, he also held similar beliefs to Keith in regard to race and nation, claiming that Jews have

created a sense of confusion between both culture and race, alongside race and nationality respectively.125 Bradley

Hart in his biography of Pitt-Rivers notes this quite clearly, stating that Pitt-Rivers argued that eugenics required the

building of racial self-consciousness and the preservation of the purity of the English race in the face of Jewish

attempts to attack the very notion of race.126 It should come as no surprise at this point that Pitt-Rivers was a noted

anti-Semite with, at one point, fascist sympathies. Other scholars also showed a muddied concept of what exactly

race was, and how to define it.

Reginald Ruggles Gates was a geneticist best known for his botanical research especially on species of Oenothera,

more commonly known as evening primrose. His work focused on discovering how many species of the plant actually

existed, along with attempts to discover how their traits were passed on to offspring. Gates eventually shifted focus,

casting his opinions into the fray and moving into the realm of human genetics. Gates has been noted in some works

as a racist, having been quoted as stating that racial crossing between negroes and Eskimos ‘[was] undesirable from

any point of view.’127 He was of the opinion that races of men were not sub-species, but actually individual species

themselves, with each geographical area producing its own racial strain.128 If we look at his published works we can

find of evidence of this. For instance, in an article published in the journal Man, he concludes that ‘from the foregoing

argument it appears to me that we are justified in regarding the Mongoloid, Australoid, Caucasoid and Negroid types

of man as representing separate species, each with various geographical races more or less clearly defined.’129 In a

letter sent to Gates by Charles Singer, Singer questions the views Gates presented in an article published in

Population. Singer picks up on various threads of Gates’ argument and begins to unpick them due to contention. For

starters, he has issue with Gates’ use of the term ‘geographical races’ arguing: ‘to me it seems that the genetic

125 Ibid, 53. 126 Hart, Bradley W. George Pitt-Rivers and the Nazis. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. P. 75 127 Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition. P. 112. 128 Ibid, 115. 129 Gates, R. Ruggles "Genetics and Race," Man vol. 37, (1937): 28 – 32. P.30

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position of man is unique in that, alone among animals, he habitually and constantly solves his economic problems

by purposive migration. This is apparently no new thing and has apparently been the case ever since man has been

man. Thus there cannot be among men ‘geographical races.’130 Singer also raises issue with Gates’ beliefs on the

topic of racial crossing:

The judgement as to how far mingling of one human group with another is beneficial or the reverse is

a matter in which, as it seems to me, we have as yet no scientific knowledge on which to form an

adequate judgement. We can certainly say with reasonable security that with the present social

demands on the individual and in the present state of our social system certain admixtures produce

social dangers. But surely we cannot go much further and, specifically, if it be true that all distinguished

negroes have white admixture that is surely a reason for encouraging white admixture with the negro,

not the reverse as some seem to think. The alternative, which we need not discuss, is to obliterate the

negro.131

He then rounds off the letter asking Gates as a geneticist ‘to do (his) best to see that such terms as species, variety,

race, as applied to man, are used in a proper and scientifically definable way or not used at all. The misuse or the

loose use of these terms give rise to endless and deplorable misunderstanding.’ 132 Interestingly, prior to the

outbreak of World War I, Gates was offered a position as a researcher at the Eugenics Records Office, located at Cold

Spring Harbor in the United States. The position was offered by Charles Davenport himself, one of the leading figures

of eugenic research in the United States. Davenport offered Gates to take up a training course to prepare him for

the role and wrote ‘need we say that we should very much like to have a man of your achievements, connected with

our office?’133 Unfortunately due to the outbreak of war, Gates declined the offer.

These varied concepts of race were nothing new. Discussions on racial difference existed long before the examples

given above. Arthur de Gobineau wrote on the topic, publishing a book in the mid-nineteenth century. The Moral

130 Singer, C. Letter to R. R. Gates, 12th December, 1935. KCL, K/PP65/7/8 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 Davenport, C. Letter to R.R. Gates. December 15, 1914. KCL. K/PP65/7/3.

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and Intellectual Diversity of Races covered several themes.134 Within its pages Gobineau discussed the rise and fall

of civilisations, placing the blame for the fall of empires squarely at the feet of degeneracy. He offers an explanation

as to the cause of degeneracy:

In my opinion, a nation is degenerate, when the blood of its founders no longer flows in its veins, but

has been gradually deteriorated by successive foreign admixtures.135

Miscegenation, as we will see, played an important part in the racial aspect of the British movement. However, we

can see it was not a particularly new idea. But this idea alone is not the only item of interest in Gobineau’s work.

Alongside miscegenation, he also wrote extensively upon racial difference. Several chapters are dedicated to the

qualities of various races, and one even contains a hierarchical list of races and their features. He even sheds light

on the sources of feelings regarding racial difference stating, ‘there seems to exist antipathy among the different

races, and even among the subdivisions of the same race, of which none is entirely exempt, but which acts with the

greatest force in the least civilized or least civilizable.’136 From Gobineau’s writings, we can see that the polemics

and theories used by the racially motivated British eugenicists were not without precedent, but a continuation of a

language of racial difference, harking back to the prior century. As an imperial power, it would make sense for the

racially motivated eugenicists to take heed of Gobineau’s theories and warnings. Blacker, more a social hygienist,

picks up on the themes in Gobineau’s work, arguing that along with the Nordic ideal extolled in the work of Houston

Stuart Chamberlain, it lay the foundations of Nazi doctrine. A doctrine, which he reiterates, owed nothing to

Galton.137

Nazi doctrine was also heavily influenced by the concept of the Volk. This formed the basis of what is known as

Völkisch thought, which some historians such as Mark Neocleous, have argued allowed the German nationalists to

134 de Gobineau, A. The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races: with particular reference to their respective influence in the civil and political history of mankind. Philadelphia, PA, USA: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1856. PsycBOOKS, EBSCOhost (accessed June 29, 2016). 135 Ibid, p. 149-150. 136 Ibid, P. 172-173. 137 Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1952. 141.

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take up a struggle not merely to defend the nation, but to defend the nations Völkisch purity.138 Neocleous also

comments upon the loose definition of the Volk stating:

Volk is a notoriously slippery concept, shifting as it does between ‘people’, ‘nation’ and a ‘natural’

racial community of blood and soil. This oscillation masks the fact that nationalism is the real driving

force behind the Nazism, as it with fascism in general.139

It could be said that in the English case, these concepts are reflected in Keith’s ideas of ‘racial/national spirit’ where

people of a specific group developed a racial consciousness from isolation, along with those found in the writings of

various contributors to the Eugenics Review where we can also find evidence of this oscillating definition. This point

becomes especially pertinent when we consider Geoff Eley’s claim that the term Volk carried the connotations of

‘national’ and ‘popular’ the same as ‘folk’ did in other countries.140 As such the ‘folkish’ ideology found in varying

countries could be argued as being a pre-requisite for a eugenic movement being able to develop. Further to this, if

we keep in mind Dan Stone’s suggestion that the British eugenics movement expressed proto-fascist tendencies, it

invites the question as to whether the British movement can be labelled as nationalist.

With this evidence in mind it would seem that eugenics was very much a product of its time. The movement existed

prior to the scientific advances in genetics, and as such was limited by the medical knowledge that its members had

to hand. As Searle notes, ‘with very few exceptions, eugenicists simply assumed, in a very innocent and unself-

conscious way, that the white races were superior to the coloured races…Yet this account of the ‘racialist’ strand in

the British eugenics movement can be pressed too far. There were elements in eugenical thinking which prevented

the elaboration of full-blooded theories of race. For a start, even a rudimentary understanding of genetics would

have been enough to disabuse eugenicists of the popular belief in the existence of ‘pure’ races.’141 The point Searle

makes here is an interesting one, we cannot anachronistically apply our own concepts of racism onto the actions of

those in the past. Yet, due to the widely varied professions of members of the Eugenics Society the point cannot be

138 Neocleous, M. Fascism. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997. P. 25-26 139 Ibid, P. 29. 140 Eley, G. Reshaping the German Right. London: Yale University Press, 1980. P. 184. 141 Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 42-44.

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dismissed. Several members hailed from non-medical backgrounds and contributed their expertise in fields such as

statistical methods to the movement. As a result, for some their understanding of genetics was severely limited.

We can look back and realise that indeed the views espoused were wrong, but to understand their motives we must

approach them with the contemporary mind-set, mainly those outlined above. Scholars on the subject offer up

varying interpretations of what can be deemed as the definition of race in this specific context. We have seen Kevles’

interpretation which included skin colour and ethnic identity, further to this we can add Marius Turda’s which is that

‘“Race” was used to refer to a complex amalgam of biological factors determined by heredity and determining the

close bond between the individual and society at large.’142 Rich offers up the theory that ‘race’ was based upon

anatomical differences.143 Above we can see all these separate interpretations evident in contemporary attitudes

and literature, however we have yet to see how they were to be applied with regards to eugenics.

Examples of Racial Theory in a Eugenic Context

Once again we draw upon a sample of Arthur Keith’s writings:

A nation be it ever so young, is in reality an incipient race. Politicians have been wiser than

anthropologists; variation in the shape of heads has no terror for them they recognize that the

essential potency of race lies not in outward characters, but in the manifestation of these inward

feelings known as ‘national spirit’. Give the inhabitants of any land a national spirit, let that land be

preserved intact over many generations, and a race which answers Huxley’s definition will certainly

appear under the working of the law of evolution. A nation always represents an attempt to become

a race; nation and race are but different degrees of the same evolutionary movement.144

142 Turda, M. “Race, Science, and Eugenics in the Twentieth Century,” The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, ed. By Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine, 62-79. New York: OUP, 2012. P. 64. 143 Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition. P. 13 144 Keith, A. Ethnos or the Problem of Race. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co Ltd, 1931. P. 28.

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As we have already seen, in Keith’s eyes nation and race were two concepts that were inexplicably linked to a great

extent. The Eugenics Review, the Eugenics Society’s self-published journal stands as testament to that. Although not

directly representing the views of the Society, as was made abundantly clear in the front matter of each issue, it was

seen as an open forum where Eugenic issues could be discussed. An article dating from 1911 deals with the idea that

Jews were in fact a separate distinct race. Citing a discussion that occurred at the Racial Congress held in London,

the author notes a variance of opinions in those attending. He states that for some ‘there appeared nothing

inconsistent in this method of dealing with Jewish problems,’ however he also notes ‘a storm of protest (which) was

raised by Professor Waldstein and others, who objected that the Jews were in no sense a race apart, that they were

people of occidental culture, for nearly 2000 years had lived in Europe, and indeed could lay claim to be more

Europeanised both in culture and length of residence than some definitely recognized peoples.’145 Salaman, the

author of the article, does state however that no one at the time had yet given a scientific definition of race.146 Here

we see a perfect example of the fluctuating definition of what race actually was, and its application to a group of

people that UNESCO would later disbar as being classifiable as a race.

Another example of racial theory being applied in a eugenic sense is with regards to the differential birthrate. At the

close of the preceding chapter it was argued that social hygiene measures, predominantly the campaign of voluntary

sterilization, were also a racial measure. As already discussed, these measures were a reactionary response to the

fear of the lower classes out breeding those further up the social scale. Yet it was also a reactionary response to race

deterioration. William Whetham, scientist and eugenicist, in an article submitted to the Review, made the link

between the differential birth-rate and race deterioration. He wrote, ‘when we find that the fall in the birth rate is

not only greater in the upper classes as compared with the lower, but it is greater in the most efficient sections of

each class, the comparative failure of selection to bring about a wholesale segregation of ability in the upper class

ceases to be so consoling. The prediction that the differential birth-rate will lead to average race deterioration, and

to a loss of net efficiency of the nation…(has) behind it the whole of the overwhelming and almost undisputed

145 Salaman, R.N. “Heredity and the Jew,” Eugenics Review 3, no.3 (1911): 187-200. P. 187. 146 Ibid, 188.

43

evidence for the inheritance of physical and mental characters from ancestors to descendants.’147 In the Galton

Lecture of 1932, E.J. Lidbetter also drew similar links. In the publication of his lecture in the Eugenics Review, a

section is titled ‘A Race of Sub-Normal People,’ its content explains his position with regards to the Social Problem

Group as the following; ‘The pedigrees reveal that there is in existence a definite race of sub-normal people, closely

related by marriage or parenthood, not to any extent recruited from the normal population, nor sensibly diminished

by the agencies for social or individual improvement. These families are closely inter-married, they breed together

in successive generations and have undoubtedly a higher birth rate that that of normal people.’148 And it was not

merely the opinions of members that brought concepts or race into the equation.

The Council of the Eugenics Society published an outline of supposed practical policy in an issue of the Review in

1926; within it they argue that ‘the main methods of promoting social progress by improving the inherent quality of

the race consequently are (1) to multiply the offspring of such stocks as are better endowed than the average; (2) to

diminish the size of families of inferior stocks.’149 Essentially they outline the basic concepts of both positive and

negative eugenics policies, but more importantly, they make reference to the population as a race in itself. The

population of England is considered a distinct race, with different classes providing distinct racial value. Herman

Lundborg illustrates this point quite well when writing on the topic of great eugenic concern, degeneracy. His article

provides us with probably the most explicit example of polemic dealing with racial difference, between distinct

peoples and within the English people itself. He argues that ‘different strata of society are of different race-biological

value,’150 and that ‘the very best environment has no power in itself to raise a bad or unfit race of people, as for

example, gipsies or negroes…’151 So not only does Lundborg demonstrate racial worth being linked to social position,

147 Whetham, W.C.D. “Heredity and Destitution,” Eugenics Review 3, no.2 (1911): 131-142. P. 140. 148 Lidbetter, E.J. “The Social Problem Group: As Illustrated by a Series of East London Pedigrees,” Eugenics Review 24, no.1 (1932): 7-12. P. 9 149 Council of the Eugenics Society. “An Outline of a Practical Eugenic Policy,” Eugenics Review 18, no.2 (1926): 95-99. P. 95. 150 Lundborg, Herman. “The Danger of Degeneracy,” Eugenics Review 13, no.4 (1922): 531-539. P. 532. 151 Ibid, 532.

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he also demonstrates the supposed ‘innocent and unself-conscious’ view of the supremacy of white races as

described by Searle.152 Nancy Stepan also draws attention to this issue, when she writes:

It was not hard to assume that, just as the different social classes of Britain had acquired distinctive

mental and physical makeups as well as social values, so had races. We should not be surprised to find,

as a consequence, that the issue of race was a real and persistent feature of the British eugenics

movement.153

With these ideas in mind, we must again return to theories of both ‘value’ and ‘non-value.’

Race, Value and Non-Value

The belief in the supremacy of the white race has further implications. For instance, through the notion of supremacy

it can be inferred that the ‘value’ of the white race was greater than others. Yet as seen above, race at the period in

question was not merely defined by ethnicity, but also by nationality. As such we see an interesting array of evidence

with regards to race and degeneration. This evidence touches upon the concerns of immigration and miscegenation

respectively, amongst other issues.

A book published in the mid 1920’s aptly described the concerns of the age with reference to immigration:

It is the acknowledged right of a nation to defend its existence, its institutions, its economic interests

against wanton aggression from without. It can have no less right to defend them against insidious

attack from within. It is no greater evil for a people to be conquered, enslaved or exterminated by an

external for than be gradually supplanted and dispossessed by a different nationality or race; though

the former process may be rapid and the latter slow, the result is the same.154

The fear of the British ‘race’ being supplanted by immigrants incited some very strong rhetoric from commentators.

An article in the Eugenics Review made a direct polemic attack against immigration arguing that ‘The foreign inflow

152 Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 42-44 153 Stepan, N. The Idea of Race in Science: 1800-1960. London: Macmillan, 1982. P. 126. 154 Oldham, J.M. Christianity and the Race Problem. London: Student Christian Movement, 1924. P. 138.

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which I have mentioned as going on since the time of Oliver Cromwell was at first insignificant, but it has in recent

years assumed increasing proportions…To permit any admixture of this immigrant race with our people, whether by

marriage-monogamous or polygamous-or by interpolations, is to produce a hybrid community of very undesirable

character, to deteriorate the physical and mental equipment of our race, and eventually to end the English race in

England.’155 This extract brings together the fears of both immigration and miscegenation, presenting the latter as a

potential result of the former. The claimed result of deterioration caused by interbreeding between the ‘English

race’ and immigrants suggests that immigrants have racial characteristics of lesser value. We can discern this through

Peukert’s theory that has already been cited in the previous chapter.156 The volkskörper in this instance is the ‘English

race’ and the genetic endowment the supposed racial characteristics that the ‘English race’ embodies, which were

argued by some to be hereditary.

Not all commentators were motivated by racial concerns when it came to opposing the level of immigration at the

time. One book focused more on the social concerns that immigration raised. Referring to the troubled period at the

end of the 1920’s, the author writes ‘the difficulties through which our country has passed, and is passing, are due

not to one cause but to many causes; i.e. post-war settlements, unemployment, slow trade recovery, high taxation

resultant from the war, and aliens - one of the greatest of our problems.’157 The author appears set to present the

immigrants as scape goats, going on to accuse said immigrants of being an ‘undesirable or a criminal in his own

country’ leading to them coming to Britain where he is ‘free to propagate his filthy and immoral species’ along with

inciting socialism and Communism too.158 The author does link a racial poison to the ‘alien immigrant’ though,

meaning it does fall under the umbrella of eugenics. He blames prostitution upon the ‘alien’ claiming that it is more

155 Mudge, G.P. “The Menace to the English Race and to its Traditions of Present-Day Immigration and Emigration,” Eugenics Review 11, no.4 (1920): 202-212. P. 206, 211. Interestingly, Mudge’s article attracted a great deal of opposition and the Eugenics Review found it necessary to publish an Editorial Comment, stating that the Anti-Semitism within the article did not reflect their own views. Editorial Committee. “Editorial comment on Mr. Mudge’s article,” Eugenics Review 12, no.1. (1920): 38-40. 156 Peukert, D. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” Re-evaluating the Third Reich, ed. by T. Childers and J. Caplan, 234 – 249. New York, 1993. P. 237. For sake of convenience I refer to the criteria of value: ‘the criteria of ‘value’ are derived from a normative and affirmative model of the Volkskörper as a collective entity, and a biological substratum of ‘value’ is attributed to the genetic endowment of the individual.’ 157 Lane, A.H. The Alien Menace (Second Edition). London: St Stephens Publishing Company, 1929. P. 7 158 Ibid, 10.

46

or less controlled by him.159 Although this polemic tract does not directly refer to the racial dangers, it is interesting

to see the opposition to immigration from a social perspective, rather than a racial one, even if it is extremely radical.

The Eugenics Society however maintained that they were only concerned with immigrations effect upon the race.160

Despite attempts by private citizens, in particular a Miss E Bloomfield, the Society did not become actively involved

in the social implications of immigration.161

Returning again to racial motivations, miscegenation played a core role in the eugenic problematic. The idea that

Searle has acknowledged, of the supposed higher standing of the white race in the ethnic scale, come in to full force

when addressing miscegenation. Take for example a pamphlet produced in the 1920’s which claimed that a medical

authority which goes unidentified states:

The more a skin takes from the nervous system for pigmentation, the lower is the mental development

of the individual. The Englishman’s white skin confers on him the quality of a commander, but it makes

him incapable of reproducing his kind in a tropical country.162

This example presents the case that skin pigmentation affects the qualities that emerge in a specific race. The same

pamphlet also proposes the argument that hybrids are a source of degeneracy, due in part to the claim that they

make up ‘many of the criminals who figure in the daily records of crime in the daily papers.’163 This pamphlet was

not alone in expressing this type of opinion. Interestingly, one author presents a very insightful take on the race

prejudice that existed at the time. In a book which explores what Christianity can bring to the table in attempts to

harmonise race relations, the author suggests this:

159 Ibid, 43. 160 Memorandum on Alien Immigration, S.D. [1925] Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D/103. ‘The Eugenics Society is not concerned with the political effects of Alien immigration, but only with its effect upon the race.’ 161 Memorandum to Sir Bernard Mallet, November 29, 1931. Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D/103. – in this memo Miss Bloomfield has supplied the Society with a great deal of information relating to the damage immigration has done to the country so far, Bramwell, B.S. Letter to C.P Blacker from B.S. Bramwell, 26th August, 1932. Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D/103. – Bramwell notes that Bloomfield’s proposed resolution on the limitation of naturalization would be undesirable in the long run. 162 “Are you an Englishman?: Then Read This!” Pamphlet, 1925. Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D/103. P.2 163 Ibid, 2.

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…a very fruitful cause of racial bitterness is found in the feelings of superiority on the one hand, and

of inferiority on the other, which are apt to be engendered by the existing political and economic

predominance of western peoples. The white man’s claim to superiority is sometimes blatantly

proclaimed, and more often quietly taken for granted…he has seen hundreds of millions submissively

accept his rule and yield to his greater knowledge and capacity. It is not surprising that he should

regard himself as standing a class apart.164

Although not dealing with the effects of miscegenation, it offers up an interesting contemporary view of the causes

of racial prejudice.

Another source argues that interbreeding can be seen as a mean of improving a race. Using the example of the ‘Cape

Boys’ of South Africa, who were ‘the offspring of South African and West African Negroes and various Asiatics’ with

an intermixture of European blood, the author states that they have often been of great service.165 Citing their value

as cheap labour during time of war and rebellion, the author notes that they stood apart from others due to their

distinctness from the South African native. Yet Gregory goes on to warn of the dangers of miscegenation writing ‘the

intermixtures which have been beneficial to the progress of mankind have been between nearly related nations; the

hybrids between people of very different grades of culture, such as the ‘Cape Boys’, though they have been useful

in subordinate services, are rather a warning than an encouragement to the miscegenation of distinct races.’166 A

few pages later in Gregory’s work we see something interesting occur. He makes a reference to Leonard Darwin

himself, noting him as the President of what was then the Eugenics Education Society. The reference in question is

to a letter Darwin had sent to Dominion Premieres during the Imperial Conference of 1923.167 Darwin argues that

‘interbreeding between widely divergent races may result in the production of types inferior to both parent stocks;

and that this would be the result of miscegenation is at all events a common belief.’ This would not be the only time

164 Oldham, J.M. Christianity and the Race Problem. London: Student Christian Movement, 1924. P. 41. 165 Gregory, J.W. The Menace of Colour: A study of the difficulties due to the association of white and coloured races, with an account of measures proposed for their solution, and special reference to white colonization in the tropics. London: Seeley Service and Co, 1925. P. 226. 166 Ibid, 226. 167 Ibid, 232.

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Darwin would approach significant persons from the Dominions, as he would dispatch more letters later. The society

had already attempted to influence emigration policy after the war. Darwin had sent a letter to the Tennyson

Commission on the topic of the distribution of the white population within the Empire.168 The letter also dealt with

the inequality between the relative number of the sexes of emigrants, asking for the commission to provide

opportunities for women in the Dominions so as ‘to attract the better type of Englishwomen to spheres where they

will obtain adequate scope for their energies.’ This letter was sent on the approval of the Eugenics Society council,

which we can find in the minute books dating back to 1917.169 The issue of miscegenation also appeared in the pages

of the Eugenics Review. Herman Lundborg, in an article previously cited, wrote:

No nation continues unchangeably the same during the course of time, it develops and improves, or

it deteriorates and degenerates. Many factors are working towards this. One among the most

important, which at the present time owing to mass-emigration, trade, commerce, war, etc. makes

itself felt very strongly, is the unchecked mixture of blood between different peoples, which has been

previously mentioned. This cannot take place without disaster in the long run.170

Yet again we see race mixture presented as a disaster. It would appear that the English race, whether defined as

white Anglo Saxon or simply as a national community, was always viewed as superior and any dilution of its blood

would be for the worse.

168 Copy of Letter sent to the members of the Tennyson Commission on Emigration, S.D. [1917-1919]. Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D/103. 169 Council of the Eugenics Society, Minutes of Special General Council Meeting, 13th November, 1917. Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/L/1/4 170 Lundborg, Herman. “The Danger of Degeneracy,” Eugenics Review 13, no.4 (1922): 531-539. P. 536.

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Chapter Three: Prosopographical Study

The assumption that British eugenics was a middle-class movement appears a great deal within works upon the

subject, due in part to a study dating back to 1970, conducted by Lyndsay Farrall.171 Farrall concluded that the early

membership were ‘middle class radicals’ with 80% being eminent enough to appear in the Oxford Dictionary of

National Biography. G.R. Searle points out that the professional membership predominantly consisted of those

coming from a background of the biological sciences.172 This chapter has two aims, firstly to investigate whether the

general membership of the Eugenics Society was indeed middle class, and if so to demonstrate in broad terms the

members’ backgrounds. This will be achieved through a prosopographical study of a random sample of members

taken from the membership lists from between 1936 and 1937, kindly provided by Dr. Bradley Hart. This study will

look at their professions and what notable achievements members earned in their lifetime. The second aim is to

investigate the members who were doctors, and what field they happened to practice or hold a doctorate in. This

study will be in response to Searle’s claims that those professional members were drawn from the biological

sciences. This study shall be undertaken as a prosopographical study of all members listed in the 1936 – 1937

membership list who hold a doctorate. From the collation of this data, it is hoped that it will be possible to draw

conclusions that will shed some light on the issues under investigation.

General Members Sample: Method

The original data provided by Dr. Hart consisted of entries for 695 individuals. For the purpose of this study this

number is somewhat excessive, as such it was deemed more reasonable to take a sample from this data consisting

of 100 members. This sample should provide an adequate number for analysis. Due to a limited knowledge of

Microsoft Access, all the work was undertaken in Microsoft Excel due to a better ease of use.

The first step necessary was isolating a sample from the raw dataset of 695 members. After researching the

techniques available for securing a random sample in Excel it was decided upon to employ the formula ‘=RAND().’

171 Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 8 172 Ibid, 9. Footnote 10 in Mazumdar’s work.

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This function would assign a randomly generated value between 0 and 1 to each entry in the dataset. However, this

number would once again be regenerated after each data entry, as such it was necessary to copy the figures

generated by each instance of the function and paste them into a neighbouring column ensure that the figures would

remain constant once assigned. After successfully producing a random number for each entry, they were then sorted

in ascending numerical order by the numbers they had been assigned. The first 100 entries in the sorted list went

on to become the general membership sample. After extracting a sample dataset, it was then necessary to

investigate each person upon the list. This was done by checking both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

and the Index of Who Was Who? After this each entry was tracked down in the relevant volumes of Who Was Who?

and their entries consulted. The datasheet for this sample is available at the back of this study as Appendix One.

Whilst collecting this data, I found other interesting information within the data compiled for the study. This data is

represented in the analysis of the educational backgrounds and club memberships of the members.

Analysis

This first sample was collected without the members needing any specific prerequisites to be entered into the

sample. As such it was to be expected that some of the members would happen to be untraceable through either

the ODNB or Who Was Who? Out of a sample of 100 members, 26 were found to be traceable, and this was only

possible due to them being notable public figures. From this it can be assumed that other members not located in

the sources used were simply private citizens who gained membership to the society. Another issue that arose in

locating information on members is whether they were in fact British. Both sources used only cover British citizens

and as such those who hailed from overseas were untraceable.

Of the 26 that were traceable it is possible to compare the professions they practiced during their lifetime.

PROFESSION NUMBER

ACADEMIC 3

ARCHAEOLOGIST 2

BIOLOGIST 1

51

CIVIL SERVANT 1

CLERGYMAN 2

DOCTOR 11

SOCIAL CAMPAIGNER 1

MILITARY 3

RELATIVE OF NOTABLE PERSON 2

Figure 1: Table showing traceable members sorted by profession

As can be seen from the above table, the medical profession was over-represented in the sample group, making up

eleven percent of the original sample. These doctors practiced in varying fields, one even happened to be the Royal

Physician to several kings, namely Edward VII and VIII along with George V.173 The other doctors also happened to

be of note, with some even holding military rank due to wartime service.174

Those in the sample group who spent their professional career serving in the military, along with other members

who served during wartime, held nothing lower than an officer rank. William Edge happened to be a Captain and a

knight,175 C.P. Blacker also held the rank of Captain,176 Francis Yeats-Brown held the rank of Major,177 as did Leonard

Darwin, long time president of the society.178 Francis Crew held the rank of Brigadier,179 and Humphrey Humphreys

the rank of Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps.180 Percy Lelean also served in the R.A.M.C with the rank of

173 ‘Penn, Lord Dawson of’ in Who Was Who: Vol IV, 1941-1950. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Page references to fourth edition, 1967. P. 298. 174 ‘Lelean, P.S.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 651. 175 ‘Edge, W.’ in Who Was Who: Vol IV, 1941-1950. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Page references to fourth edition, 1967. P. 348. 176 ‘Blacker, C.P.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VII, 1971-1980. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1981. P. 74. 177 ‘Yeats-Brown, F.’ in Who Was Who: Vol IV, 1941-1950. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Page references to fourth edition, 1967. P. 1271-1272. 178 ‘Darwin, L.’ in Who Was Who: Vol IV, 1941-1950. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Page references to fourth edition, 1967. P. 287-288. 179 ‘Crew, F.A.E.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VII, 1971-1980. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1981. P. 183-184. 180 ‘Humphreys, H.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VII, 1971-1980. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1981. P. 391-392.

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Battalion Colonel.181 As can be seen from the above, none of those listed held anything below an officer rank

requiring a commission. From this it can be inferred that they were either given these ranks due to professional

training, in most instances due to being doctors, or due to the fact that they came from the higher social classes. Of

the academics counted, all held university positions. Some contributed to government commissions, 182 whilst

another became an important businessman and attaché to the United Nations after the period in question.183

It is clear that of those sampled, due both to the professions held and their collective biographies, that they were

drawn from the middle and upper class. It can be assumed that due to lack of social mobility very few of these

members would be drawn from the lower classes, however this cannot be conclusively established due to the

untraceability of some of the members due to them not appearing in either the ODNB or Who Was Who?

Expanded General Members Sample

Due to poor data returns from the original sample of 100 members, it was deemed necessary to expand upon the

data set. As such the next 100 members from the randomised list were added to the original sample, expanding the

total to 200 people. In addition to this, the categorisation of professions has been adjusted. The professions for this

sample will state their generic profession, and then the specialised field that they worked on.

A first glance at the information available provides another diverse return of results, but demonstrating a tendency

for members to have come from a medical background. Out of 200 members, 97 were traceable, with data on their

professional background being contained in figure 2 found below. As can be seen, the professions with the highest

contributions are doctors and scholars, implying that the movement was supported primarily in middle class,

educated circles.

181 ‘Lelean, P.S.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 651. 182 ‘Carr-Saunders, A.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VI, 1961-1970. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972. P. 183. 183 ‘Harris, C.R.S.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VII, 1971-1980. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1981. P. 341-342.

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There was a number of clergyman who were members, interestingly among them there is a Catholic, Rev. Francis

Woodlock.184 The reason this is interesting is that more often than not, the eugenics movement drew the ire of the

Catholic Church due to the fact that they were campaigning for family limitation methods.

PROFESSION NUMBER

BUSINESS OWNER 1

CIVIL SERVANT 10

CLERGYMAN 9

DOCTOR 24

ECONOMIST 1

PUBLISHER 2

RED CROSS WORKER 1

RELATIVE OF NOTABLE PERSON 5

SCHOLAR 17

SCIENTIST 8

SOCIAL REFORMER 2

SOLDIER 13

SOLICITOR 1

Figure 2: Table showing traceable members of expanded sample sorted by profession.

Looking more in depth at those members who were doctors will be left to the next section of this chapter, as such

we will skip over the further analysis of the findings relating to doctors and look instead at those who have been

categorised as scholars. In order to be considered a scholar in this instance, they must have primarily held

educational posts or attained the title of professor. Examining the data of those who can be categorised as such,

shows that they came from differing fields, ranging from humanities to the sciences as is demonstrated in figure 3.

184 ‘Woodlock, Rev. F.’ in Who Was Who: Vol III, 1929-1940. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1941. Page references to second edition, 1967. P. 1485.

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ACADEMIC SPECIALISATION NUMBER

ANTHROPOLOGIST 1

ARCHAEOLOGIST 2

BOTANIST 1

EDUCATION 2

ENTOMOLOGIST 1

GENETICIST 1

GEOGRAPHER 1

MATHEMATICIAN 1

PSYCHOLOGIST 1

STATISTICIAN 1

ZOOLOGIST 3

Figure 3: Table showing scholars specialisations.

Mathematicians and statisticians would likely have been attracted to eugenics due to the statistical methods used

to study samples of the population and to work out the inheritance of certain characters as investigated initially by

Galton and his protégé Karl Pearson. Anthropology too seems a natural fit for interest in eugenics due to its focus

on the development of man in all its various aspects, physically, culturally and socially.

Expanding upon the previous samples examination of those who held military rank, if we examine those who were

primarily career military men, we find several high ranking officers in the data set, all with either long serving or

distinguished war-time careers.185 As said before, these high ranks do suggest commissions bought due to their high

social standing, instead of entering amongst the ranks.

185 ‘Makins, Brig. Gen. Sir E.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 725; ‘Bamfield, Maj. Gen. H.J.K.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 59; amongst others.

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RANK NUMBER HOLDING RANK

BRIGADIER GENERAL 2

CAPTAIN 1

COLONEL 2

LIEUTENANT 1

LT. COLONEL 3

MAJOR 2

MAJOR GENERAL 1

UNKNOWN 1

Figure 4: Table showing ranks of those who were primarily soldiers in their careers.

The subject that returned no information as to his rank, though noted for distinguished service, had no information

in Who Was Who? pertaining to the rank he held, but he was serving in a medical capacity.186 It should be noted that

amongst the data set various other members did hold a military rank, usually in a retired capacity or due to the fact

that they only served in war-time rather than making a career out of military service.

The expanded dataset does seem to prove the prior assumptions but also reveals new information. The class

composition of the Society consisted of both middle and upper class members. After looking at just under a third of

the members, the data returned shows that although a large number were simply private citizens, the rest were

people of note coming from professional backgrounds requiring access to money in order to attain such positions.

In a period of limited social mobility, as already noted previously in this chapter, it can be inferred that more than

likely these people were taken from the middle and upper classes. The fact that several held or were to hold titles,

were knighted or were commissioned officers strengthens this assumption.187 Combining these assumptions with

186 ‘Hobson, F.G.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VI, 1961-1970. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972. P. 534. 187 ‘Iveagh, Earl R.E.C.L Guinness of’ in Who Was Who: Vol VI, 1961-1970. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972. P. 585, heir to the Guinness legacy was one such titled member; ‘Marshall, Sir G.A.K.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 737; ‘Fox, Dame E.E.M.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third

56

the fact that medical doctors as well as academics were present amongst the membership, strengthens these

assumptions further. If it were possible to find information about the private members, it would shed light further

upon the general membership of the society, however the ability to investigate these members further is beyond

the scope and resources of the current study.

Doctors Sample

The sample of doctors proves a lot more fruitful than the original sample of the general members. Out of 70 entries

into the dataset, 32 were untraceable, due once again to either not appearing in either Who Was Who? or the ODNB,

or having been a member from overseas. Yet the results that were returned do show a tendency towards two

medical specialisations, in particular physicians and those specialising in psychiatric medicine. Some Ph.D. holders

were included in the sample, as such not all were active in the field of medicine, but were drawn from other

professions as well, as can be seen in figure 5.

FIELD NUMBER

ANTHROPLOGIST 1

ETHNOGRAPHER 1

GENETICIST 1

GYNAECOLOGIST 1

M.O.H. 2

N/A 33

NEUROLOGIST 1

OPTHALMIST 1

edition, 1967. P. 391; ‘Arden-Close, Col. Sir C.F.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 33-34 were all examples of those who were knighted at some point in their lives, before or after the period in question.

57

PATHOLOGIST 1

PHYSICIAN 16

PHYSIOLOGIST 1

PSYCHIATRIST 3

PSYCHOLOGIST 8

SURGEON 2

Figure 5: Table showing specialisations of doctors.

As can be seen there were a small number of Medical Officers of Health. Their interest in the eugenics movement

can be easily explained, due to their interest in public health and some of the measures the Society campaigned for,

potentially those focusing on the mentally deficient back in its early years. These members were also more informed

due to their professional positions, meaning they had access to data allowing them to see social and medical

problems, possibly motivating them to join the Society. The Medical Officers of Health’s interest in the mentally

deficient and social problem group could also explain the number of members who specialised in mental health.

Mental defect, its links with the social problem group and the concerns raised by these two subjects could easily

have caused more doctors specialising in mental health to become members of the society, due to their interest in

limiting its inheritance and to streamline and reduce the cost of treatment of those suffering from mental deficiency.

As for the high numbers of physicians, this too can be explained. It can be assumed that physicians were more likely

to see the poor quality of health of the lower members of society, due to tending to those who were ill, and as such

were more aware of the ‘lower quality of stocks’ amongst the poorer members of society.

Points of Interest

Upon investigation more conclusions become apparent from looking at the data. If we were to look at the

educational backgrounds of the members who were traceable we see more patterns emerging, with 10 members

having attended Eton and 2 having attended Harrow. 9 others are listed as having been subject to private education.

Moving on to look at university level education paints a similar picture. 22 attended Oxford, graduating from Balliol,

58

Christ Church and New College amongst others. 188 16 attended Cambridge, with some graduating from Trinity

College and others from King’s College.189 These findings reflect those of a prosopographic study undertaken by

David Whittington, whose work shows a similar educational trend in members of the Civil Service throughout the

same period. But further to the similarity in educational background between Eugenics Society members, there is

often a commonality with regards to the social clubs where they held membership. 26 members also held

membership at the Athenaeum Club, suggesting that they potentially also spent their leisure time together, sat in

drawing rooms discussing the troubles of the age. The Athenaeum Club was founded as a meeting place for people

with intellectual interests, who had gained distinction in either science, literature or the arts. This explains why so

many members of the Eugenics Society held membership with the club. Others held membership at the Carlton,

Brooke’s, Reform and even the Royal Yacht Squadron of Cowes. The very fact that they belonged to such clubs also

suggest upper class people dominating the Eugenics Society’s membership.

The fact that many members proved to be untraceable can call the idea that they were all middle and upper class

into question however. The fact that they failed to become people of note, meaning they did not appear in the

sources used can suggest that they were of the lower classes. We can discern whether this was the case by looking

at the affordability of membership for the common man. Looking at the price of membership, in the 1930’s it stood

at 10 shillings.190 Affordable to those professionally employed, but what of those who were labourers and industrial

workers? Examining information regarding wages during the period in question reveals the answer to this question.

188 ‘Carter, R.’ in Who Was Who: Vol III, 1929-1940. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1941. Page references to second edition, 1967. P. 228; Cranbrook, ‘Scott, Sir T.C.S. Morrison-’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. Accessed 15th April, 2016. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50708; Pickering, G. ‘Brain, W.R.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. Accessed 15th April, 2016. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32035; 189 ‘Darwin, C.G.’ in Who Was Who: Vol VI, 1961-1970. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972. P. 278; ‘Iveagh, Earl R.E.C.L Guinness of’ in Who Was Who: Vol VI, 1961-1970. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972. P. 585, both were among the graduates of Trinity. ‘Inge, V. Rev. W.R.’ in Who Was Who: Vol V, 1951-1960. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961. Page references to third edition, 1967. P. 568; ‘Keynes, J.M.’ in Who Was Who: Vol IV, 1941-1950. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952. Page references to fourth edition, 1967. P. 637; were among those from Kings. 190 Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Better Unborn” S.D. [1935] Wellcome Library. PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10, P.19. This page provides details on membership cost and where to send cheques.

59

The average wage of an agricultural worker in 1935 stood at £1/12/0 a week.191 We can assume that an industrial

worker would earn slightly more than that however, possibly a mere few shillings more. If we turn to George Orwell’s

report, The Road to Wigan Pier, in which he wrote on the conditions of workers in the industrial north during the

same time, Orwell gives an example of a family of four living off of £1/12/0 a week.192 These two equivalent figures

suggest that even if they were to live frugally, the working class were highly unlikely able to afford membership to

the Society. Yes, they might be able to afford to attend meetings held by the Society, but because of their lack of

disposable income due to their low earnings and their cost of living it seems highly unlikely they would subscribe for

membership.

Increasing membership amongst the lower classes was never the aim of the Society however. The original title of

the Society attests to this. The Eugenics Education Society aimed to convert the lay masses, so to speak. Their aim

was to spread the gospel of eugenics amongst the people of Britain, warning them of the dangers of degeneracy.

This is made evident by the large number of pamphlets they produced as propaganda. Lectures and summer schools

also helped to disseminate their views, and were greatly utilised throughout the period. Boosting membership

numbers was never their goal. Educating the public, in particular the working classes, of the dangers of degeneracy

was always one of their primary objectives alongside trying to secure eugenic legislation through Parliamentary

support.193

191 Wirksworth Parish Records “Relative Value of Sums of Money.” Wirksworth Parish Records. Accessed 17th May, 2016. http://www.wirksworth.org.uk/A04value.htm#1914. This figure is drawn from the final table titled “Average Minimum Wages paid to Ordinary Agricultural Labourers for Basic Hours” 192 Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin, 1937. References to 1986 edition, p.85-86. This figure is an all-inclusive one, encompassing rent, fuel, food and basic necessities. 193 ‘Propaganda and Publicity – Various Organisations’. 1925-1937. Wellcome Library. SAEUG/G/1/1. This file contains documents relating to several meetings, including some held in conjunction with the Independent Labour Party. It demonstrates the scope of audience that they delivered lectures too.

60

Conclusions

The preceding chapters have dealt with the core questions outlined at the outset of this study. We must yet revisit

them, to consolidate the arguments put forward in each one, to clearly establish how they fit into the historiography

of the British eugenics movement. In the first chapter, we looked at how the original historiography developed, along

with how concepts of deficiency played into theories of Social Hygiene. Through investigations of the contributing

works, it has become clear that the idea that British eugenics was focussed on Social Hygiene developed from the

work of Carlos Blacker. In his work Eugenics: Galton and After we find the earliest attempts to dissociate the British

movement from Racial Hygiene. It can be concluded that from here the trend started and would continue for at least

half a century. As also noted in said chapter, mental deficiency along with the social problem group featured amongst

the concerns of the eugenicists. But how can we say conclusively that these made the movement subscribers to

ideas of Social Hygiene?

By applying the theory laid out by Marius Turda and previously cited in the introduction to this study, we can state

that Social Hygiene was focussed on the continuation of certain hereditary qualities.194 If we elaborate upon this

theory, we start to see strong evidence supporting its claims. Firstly, we must look at the fact it was seeking to ensure

the continuation of certain qualities. We know that the differential birth rate was something that the eugenicists

feared for various reasons, primarily the comparative infertility of the middle and upper classes. It can easily be said

that the decreasing birth rates of these classes would lead to a discontinuation of what Galton dubbed as ‘civic

worth.’ This supposedly hereditary trait, recurring in eminent families as shown in some of his studies, had to be

preserved. The fact that the trait most often occurred in the middle and upper classes, those who held eminent

positions and supposedly contributed the most value to society through their service and the like, meant they were

to be the ones preserved. The eugenicists’ various attempts to shift the birth-rate back in their favour is evidence of

this. By attempting to legalise voluntary sterilisation, they were hoping to offer the poor a chance at family limitation

alleviating the poverty caused by large, unsupportable working class families. Yet, unknowingly, or perhaps in some

194 Turda, M. Modernism and Eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. P. 32.

61

cases knowingly, they were also hoping to stem the increase in supposed hereditary undesirable traits, such as

laziness, immorality, mental defect and supposed alcoholism in the lower classes, in particular the Social Problem

Group.

Alongside the campaigns to extend measures of fertility control amongst the working classes, there were also

attempts to secure tax rebates, primarily family allowances, for the professional middle classes. The idea of these

family allowances was to enable the professional middles classes to have more children, combatting the differential

birth rate. At the same time, it was hoped to help the middle classes to shoulder the burden of taxation resulting

from a growing social welfare system. The ever increasing size of the working class, along with the social welfare

that some segments of the group were dependent on, meant that it was more and more likely the cost was falling

on the professional middle class through taxation. So not only did the previous point of extending family planning

measures hinder the spread of undesirable social traits, it would also help limit the tax burden of the middle classes.

When combined with attempts to establish a system of family allowances, these two points combine to show efforts

trying to preserve middle class traits, along with the encouragement of middle class fertility contrasted by the

discouragement of lower class fertility and the continued spread of lower class ‘hereditary’ traits. These two issues

also tie greatly into what were arguably the motivations for the measures enacted to combat mental deficiency as

well. From this we can discern that the eugenicists to a great extent attributed much more value to the middle and

upper classes, enabling the use of Peukert’s theory of ‘value’ and ‘non-value.’

The efforts to combat mental deficiency fall under both banners, Social Hygiene and Racial Hygiene. The

enforcement of the measures of segregation and detention prove that firstly they wanted to remove the hereditary

traits from the community, by isolating them in colonies. This measure would ensure the continuing development

of a genetically healthy race. What was being proposed supports Turda’s definition of Racial Hygiene, which was

future oriented in its attempts to build a racial community.195 At the same time, Foucault’s concepts of bio-politics

can also be applied. The segregation of the feeble minded was an attempt to exercise power over not just man-as-

195 Ibid.

62

body, but as man-as-species.196 As such eugenics certainly falls into the realm of the theoretical concept of bio-

politics, which includes in its scope accidents, infirmities and various anomalies affecting the population; in the

context of this study the anomaly were those deemed feeble minded.197 Through detention, which was an explicit

exertion of the state’s power to eliminate a biological threat to the race, the tainted and valueless would no longer

be a threat to the community at large, ensuring healthy future stocks. At the same time, institutionalisation would

enable those without value to develop value. As outlined in Berry and Gordon’s contemporary study of mental

defectives,198 it was possible to give value to the mentally defective through meaningful work, helping them become

self-supporting in a colony environment, whilst also removing them from society at large. So not only would this

protect the future race, at the same time it would also help maintain those with value, as by being self supportive it

would reduce the taxation that assists the mentally defective. As such we see it can be argued to be both a Social

and Racial Hygiene measure.

Drawing upon what has been discussed in the second chapter we see it was not mental deficiency alone that made

evident the racial concerns in the eugenics movement. Scientific racism, based upon the work of various academics

most notably anthropologists, helped contribute to ideas of racial difference which were to be discredited by the

UNESCO statement on race and racial difference.199 Anatomical difference, cultural difference and biased mental

aptitude tests all combined to promote an idea of racial hierarchy, which found support amongst some members of

the Eugenics Society. With the varying and often erroneous definitions of race this meant that any group of peoples

were to have their value judged in racial terms, this included to some extent social classes, which were seen by some

as exhibiting their own racial traits. Britain’s imperial position, as holder of dominions filled with ‘lesser’ peoples only

helped support the idea that the British race was dominant and superior in most circumstances. And it was this

superiority that would be at threat to miscegenation. In discussions of racial mixing, as we have seen, it was often

196 Foucault, M. “17th March 1976” in Society Must Be Defended, eds. M Bertani and A. Fontana, 239-264. London: Penguin, 2003. Translated by David Macey. P. 243. 197 Ibid, 244. 198 Berry, R.J.A and Gordon, R.G. The Mental Defective: A problem in social inefficiency. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1931. 199 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Statement on the nature of race and race differences. 25th August, 1952. KCL. K/PP65/4/43

63

considered a poor idea with the resulting ‘hybrids’ being of lesser value than the original European stock if it were

to be mixed with colonial natives. The fact that eugenicists often pushed for investigations into the results of such

racial mixing reveal their concern over such matters. The inextricable link between nation and race, as exhibited by

Sir Arthur Keith’s with his idea of ‘Racial/National Spirit,’ meant that for those who argued in favour of this idea, a

racial threat was also a national threat. When race and nation are synonymous, racial thinking is also nationalist

thinking, such is the case in Keith’s work. As such we can easily describe the British eugenics movement as exhibiting

nationalist traits to some extent. Their concern over the wellbeing of the race in both the metropole and colonial

holdings shows an interest in maintaining Britain’s position in the world. Their attempts to hinder miscegenation

and to maintain gender balance in the colonial populations were measures to preserve British strength and purity in

its colonial stocks. But another contrasting theory of race must make us take pause and reconsider, namely the idea

of a ‘community of culture.’

With the surge of immigration of varying groups during the period, along with the emigration of valuable English

stock, England’s culture was seen as being under threat. The coming together of peoples of varying backgrounds

meant that the cultural traditions of the English in some areas were threatened by the tide of immigration. Varying

articles appearing in the Eugenics Review especially one in particular written by G.P. Mudge, hold evidence of this.200

In Pitt-Rivers’ words, the community of culture can only continue to exist if ethnically isolated, a theory much similar

to Keith’s own interpretations of racial development. With the intermixing of various ethnicities in immigrant

communities, this isolation ceased to exist opening the English race up to the threat of racial and cultural

miscegenation. All these points that indicate a degeneration of the race, due either to racial mixing or the increasing

birth rate of the lower parts of the working class suggest that once again, the white middle and upper classes were

believed to be of higher racial value than other races and classes. As such it can easily be suggested that the certain

sectors of the eugenics movement held race of importance, whether defined in terms of skin colour or as a national

community. Their attempts to gauge the effects of racial mixing, support of ideas of racial difference, along with

their theories being substantiated by what we now consider scientific racism all point to the conclusion that indeed

200 Mudge, G.P. “The Menace to the English Race and to its Traditions of Present-Day Immigration and Emigration,” Eugenics Review 11, no.4 (1920): 202-212.

64

the British movement was in fact interested in Racial Hygiene with its future orientated attempts to build a strong

racial community. Despite the understated nature of the subject in previous scholarship, it has been shown to be in

fact more important and more prevailing than was previously thought. Race in its varying interpretations did play a

role in the British eugenics movement’s problematic.

With the first two aims of this study dealt with we now move onto the final one, the issue of the membership and

what classes they hailed from. Prior conclusions still hold weight, with a large number of those for which information

could be found having come from the middle class and upper echelons of society. The attendance of private schools

and universities such as Oxford and Cambridge show the members belonging to the elite of society, as does their

membership in varying private social clubs. These members were part of the establishment, coming through the

usual channels to become those who held influence and power in both the Government and in other areas of policy.

The professional fields that they occupied also help substantiate this claim as do the high ranks of those from the

military. Yet there is a development which also shifts the conclusion, that several members were from the

aristocracy. The number of members who were in fact titled, either in the clergy or as lords or earls, demonstrates

that there was a definite upper class connection. It could be assumed that these upper class members would prove

crucial when applying political pressure to further their objectives, similar to the importance of having M.P.s on their

membership roll. Although the aristocrats were in the minority, this is an important fact nonetheless, potentially

bringing into question the claims that the movement was based upon middle class meliorism. What we see is a

coming together of both middle and upper class people to achieve specific demographic objectives; an alliance to

maintain the social position, racial value and economic advantages of said classes, whilst also protecting the strength

and value of the English race from threats both internal, such as mental deficiency, and external such as immigration

and miscegenation. When combined with the fact that membership was unaffordable to the lower income groups

of society, namely the working class, we can conclusively say that those members who were untraceable were not

from the working class but were merely not noteworthy enough to appear in the sources consulted.

Despite its limited success the British eugenics movement exhibited support for both Racial and Social Hygiene,

either in its mainstream movement or in the more radical fringe groups, up until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.

65

The war forced the world to reassess the place of science in a radically altered world, especially the place to be held

by both the concept of race and the field of eugenics. As such in the decades after the conclusion of the war, we can

see what can be described as damage limitation. Blacker tried his best to dissociate the British movement from the

stigma of Racial Hygiene, continuing the measures he started pre-war of putting distance between the Society and

its German counterparts. At the same time, the society continued to focus its efforts on the ‘Social Problem Group’,

once again renamed as ‘Problem Families’ in light of shifting post-war attitudes. Race was re-defined on more clear,

scientific terms so that nothing of the kind could happen again. Eugenics as a popular movement met its demise, yet

bio-political and social hygienic measures continued to appear whether in the form of welfare or social legislation.

Old Eugenics was no more, yet the principles for which it stood, the betterment of the race through agencies under

social control still continues on.

66

Appendix One: Prosopographic Data of General Members Sample

67

Name Postnominals

WWW? ODNB Profession Specialty

University School Club MP

Aikman, Kenneth B.

MA, MD, MRCP No No N/A

Alston, Mrs No No N/A Ammal, Miss E. K. Janaki D.SC No No N/A Ansell, Sidney H. No No N/A Armagh, The Most Rev. The Archbishop of DD 3 Clergyman

Trinity College Dublin

High School Dublin

Bamfield, Maj.-Gen.

HJK, CB, DSO 5 No Soldier Major General

St Mary's Hospital

Kings School, Rochester

Barrow, Mrs. Walter No No N/A Bateman, Mrs. No No N/A Beckett-Overy, H. MD, FRCS No No N/A

Belfield, Miss Eileen No

No - daughter of Sir Henry Conway Belfield?

Relative of Notable

Beveridge, Sir William KCB 6 Yes

Social Reformer

Working class poor

Balliol College, Oxford;

Charterhouse Reform

68

Bill, The Venerable Archdeacon 6 No Clergyman

University College, Oxford

Binny, Cecil MA No No N/A Birmingham, The Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of DD, FRS 4 Clergyman

Christ's College, Cambridge

Cotton College; Oscott College;

Bishop, Miss G.M. MA No No N/A

Blacker, C.P.

MC, MA, MD, FRCP 7 Yes Doctor Psychologist

Balliol College, Oxford. Eton

United Oxford & Cambrdige University; Vincent's (Oxford)

Boland, E.R. FRCP, DPH 7 No Doctor Physician

Guy's, London;

Stonyhurst; Wimbledon College;

Bond, C.J. CMG, FRCS 3 Yes Doctor Surgeon UCL Repton School

Brain, W. Russell DM FRCP No Yes Doctor Physician

New College, Oxford; London Hospital

Birkbeck Coll.

Brown, A.W.W. No No N/A Bullard, Sir Reader KCMG, CIE 7 Yes

Civil Servant Athenaeum

Burt, Prof. Cyril DSC 7 Yes Scholar Pyschologist

Christ's Hospital; Jesus

69

Coll. Oxford;

Butterworth, Miss M.B. No No N/A Campbell, J.D. No No N/A Candler, A.L.

FRCS, MB, BS No No N/A

Carr-Saunders, Prof. A.M. MA 6 Yes Scholar

Statistician/Sociologist

Magdalen College, Oxford Eton

Athenaeum; Alpine;

Carter, Reginald JP 3 No Scholar Education

Balliol College, Oxford

Clifton College

Cattell, R.B.

MA, BSC, PHD No No N/A

Chambers, Sir Theodore KBE, JP 5 No

Civil Servant Economist St Paul's Tonbridge Athenaeum

Church, Major A.G.

DSO, MC, BSC 5 No Soldier Major UCL St James' Yes

Churchill, Dr. Stella

MRCS, LRCP, DPH 5 No Doctor

Maternity/Psychotherapy

Girton College, Cambridge; London School of Medicine for Women

Edgbaston High School

Stood

Clark, Miss L.L. BSC No No N/A Close, Col. Sir Chas. F.

KBE, CB, CMG, FRS 5 Yes Soldier

Geographer/Colonel

Collins, B. Abdy CIE 5 No

Civil Servant Foreign Office

BNC Oxford Malvern;

English-Speaking Union

70

Collins, Dr. Mary MA, PhD No No N/A Cooper, Dr. D.C. No No N/A Copland, Howard No No N/A

Crew, Prof. F.A.E. MD, DSC 7 Yes Scientist Biologist

Univ. Birmingham and Edinburgh

King Edward VI's High School, Birmingham; Athenaeum

Crump, Miss Lettice M. MSC No No N/A Cuckow, F.W. BSC No No N/A Curle, J. Herbert 4 No Scholar Archaeologist

Fettes College

New Edinburgh

Dakin, Prof. W.J. DSC, FLS 4 No Scholar Zoologist

Liverpool; Kiel; Victoria;

Australian (Sydney)

Dalrymple-White, Sir Godfrey BART 5 No Soldier Lt. Colonel

Wellington; Sandhurst; Carlton Yes

Dansie, Dr. A. Marion BS No No N/A Darwin, Major Leonard Sc.D. 4 Yes

Soldier/Scientist Geographer/Major

R.M.A Woolwich Athenaeum Yes

Darwin, Prof. Charles Galton FRS 6 Yes Scientist Physicist

Trinity College, Cambridge

Marlborough College Athenaeum

Davis, Mrs. V.M. No No N/A

71

Dean, G.A. No No N/A

Deeping, G. Warwick

MA, MB, (MD) 4 Yes

Doctor/Author Physician

Trinity College, Cambridge; Middlesex Hospital;

Merchant Taylor's School Lansdowne

Demuth, Miss Constance No No N/A Denman, The Lady DBE 5 Yes

Civil Servant Various Posts Privately Cowdray

Drysdale, C.V.

CB, OBE, DSC 6 Yes Scientist Physicist

Finsbury Tech. College; Central Tech. College, South Kensington; Privately;

Athenaeum; English- Speaking Union;

Dunlop, B. MB No No N/A Durham, The Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of DD 4 Clergyman Oxford Privately Athenaeum East, Jeffrey R. No No N/A

Edge, W. MRCS, LRCP 4 No Soldier Captain

Middle Temple, London;

Bolton Grammar Reform Yes

Elder, Sir W.S. Duke

DSC, PHD, MD, FRSC 7 Yes Doctor Opthalmetry

St Andrews and London Univ.; Athenaeum

72

Elliott, T.R.

CBE, DSO, MD, FRCP, MA, FRS 6 No Doctor Physician

Trinity College, Cambridge;

Durham School Athenaeum

Ellis, H. Havelock FRCP 3 Yes Doctor Sexologist

St. Thomas Hospital

Private Schools

Eve, Mrs. T. No No N/A

Feldman, W.M.

MD, FRCP, FRSE (Edin.) 3 No Doctor Paediatrician

Jews College, London Hospital Privately

Fleure, Prof. H.J. DSC, FRS 6 Yes Scholar Geographer

Univ. College of Wales, Aberystwyth Guernsey

Forder, B.C. No No N/A

Fox, Miss E. CBE 5 Yes

Civil Servant Mental Hygienist

Somerville College, Oxford

High School Morges. Switzerland

Fry, Henry R. No No N/A

Furse, Dame Katherine GBE, RRC 5 Yes

Red Cross worker Home

Allies'; Portsmouth, Service Women's;

Gates, Prof. R. Ruggles DSC, FRS 6 Yes Scientist Geneticist

Mt. Allison University; McGill; Univ. of Chicago Athenaeum

73

Golding, Mark

LRCPI, LRCSI, DPH No No N/A

Govett, F/Lieut. Vincent G. No No N/A Grant-Sturgis, Sir Mark KCB 4 Yes

Civil Servant Under Secretary Eton

Brooks; Beefsteak;

Graseman, Miss Aline No No N/A Grimson, Francis Sylvester CIE No No N/A Guest, Evan R. ARCS No No N/A Guiterman, Mrs. C.E. No No N/A

Gun, W.T.J.

Fr.Hist.S., FSG 4 No Scientist Geneticist

Trinity College, Cambridge; Harrow Bath

Gunn, Ronald Hamilton No No N/A Gunson, Miss J. No No N/A Gwynne-Vaughn, Prof. Dame. Helen

GBE, DSC, FLS 6 Yes Scholar Botanist

King's College, University of London;

Cheltenham Ladies College

Service Women's

Hadden, Dr. H.R.

MB, Ch.B.Ed. No No N/A

Haire, Norman Ch.M. 5 No Doctor

Sexologist/Gynaecologist

Sydney University

Fort Street School

74

and Hospital;

Hall, Sir A. Daniel KCB, FRS 4 Yes Scientist Agricultural

Balliol College, Oxford

Manchester Grammar Athenaeum

Hanson, W.A. No No N/A

Harland, S.C. DSC No Yes Scholar Geneticist

Kings College, London;

Scarborough Secondary

Harley, A.M. KC No No N/A

Harris, A.H. DSC, MB 4 No Publisher

Institution Fauvel, Neuillt-sur-Seine

International College, Hampstead

Constitutional

Harris, C.R.S. 7 No

Scholar/Civil Servant

Humanities/Business Director

Corpus Christi Coll. Oxford;

Clifton College

Havilland, Hugh de No No N/A Hawes, Captain P.F.B. No No N/A Hawke, Mrs. No No N/A Henderson, Mrs. No No N/A Hill, A. Bradford DSC No Yes Scholar Statistician

London University

Chigwell School

Himes, Norman E. PhD No No N/A

75

Hindle, Prof. Edward

MA, SCD, PHD, FRSE No No N/A

Hindley, Godfrey Douglas

MC, MA, MD No No N/A

Hinton, E. Austin BA, FLA No No N/A

Hobson, F.G.

DSO, MB, B.Ch, MRCS, MRCP 6 No Soldier Unknown

Westminster, New College, Oxford.

Hodson, Mrs. C.B.S. FLS No No N/A

Hogarth, R.G. CBE, FRCS 5 No Doctor Surgeon St. Bart's

Felstead School

Nottinghamshire County

Holmes, Miss Marion G. No No N/A

Hope-Jones, W. BA No

Son is Ronald Hope Jones

Relative of Notable

Hopkins, Pryns MA, PHD No No N/A

Horniman, Ivan

MA (Barrister-at-Law) No No N/A

Horsley, Lady No No N/A

How-Martyn, Mrs. Edith MSc No Yes

Socal Reformer Womens Rights

University College, Aberystwyth; University

The Hall, Cheltenham; North London Collegiate

76

of London;

School for Girls;

Hudson, P.S. PhD No No N/A

Humphreys, Humphrey

OBE, MC, KHP, MB 7 No Doctor Dentist

Birmingham Univ; harvard Univ;

Bromsgrove School

Humphreys, John H. JP No No N/A Hutton, W.L. No No N/A

Iliffe, The Lord CBE 5 Yes Publisher Newspapers

Brook's, Carlton, All England Lawn Tennis; Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes; Yes

Inge, The Very Rev. W.R. KCVO 5 Yes Clergyman Philosopher

Kings College, Cambridge; Eton Athenaeum

Iveagh, The Right Hon. The Earl of CB, CMG 6 Yes

Business Owner Guinness

Trinity College, Cambridge Eton

Leander, Carlton; Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes; Yes

Iyer, Dewan Bahadur Dr. L.K. Ananthakrishna BA, MD No No N/A Jackson, Dr. Margaret

BM, B.CH, DPM No No N/A

77

Jackson, Dr. Margaret

CN, MB, BS, MRCS, LRCP No No N/A

James, Mrs. A.G. No No N/A

Jeans, Sir J.H. FRS 4 Yes Scholar

Mathemetician/Scientist

Trinity College, Cambridge

Merchant Taylor's School Athenaeum

Jenkins, H. Campbell No No N/A Jones, Lt-Col A. Gavin DSO No No N/A Kempster, Lt-Col H.W. CMG 4 No Soldier Lt. Colonel

Junior Naval and Military

Keynes, Prof. J. Maynard CB 4 Yes Economist

Kings College, Cambridge; Eton

Athenaeum; United University;

Kinvig, Th. No No N/A

Laurie, Prof. Douglas FZS 5 Yes Scholar Zoologist

University College, Liverpool; Merton College, Oxford.

Birkenhead School Authors'

Lean, George

BSC, MB, Ch.B No No N/A

Leigh-Taylor, H.S. No No N/A Lelean, Col. P.S.

CB, CMG, FRCS 5 No Doctor Surgeon

St. Mary's Hospital

Hart House

Lenox Conyngham, Miss A. 5

No, dau. Of Sir Gerald

Relative of Notable

78

Lenox- Conyngham?

Limerick, The Right Hon. The Earl of DSO 6 No

Civil Servant

New College. Oxford Eton

Livermore, Lt-Col D.L.R. CIE, IA No No N/A Macirone, Dr. Emily Clare MB, BS No No N/A

Major, The Rev. H.D.A. DD, FSA 6 Yes Clergyman

St. Johns Coll. And Univ. College, New Zealand. Exeter College, Oxford;

Makins, Brig.-Gen. Ernest

CB, DSO, MP 5 No Soldier Brigadier General

Christ Church, Oxford

Winchester College

Carlton; Cavalry;

Malcomson, Lt-Col G.E. IMS (rtd.) No No N/A

Mallet, Victor A.L. CMG, BA 6 No

Civil Servant

Balliol College, Oxford

Winchester College Brookes

Marshall, Prof. F.H.A. CBE, FRS 4 No

Doctor/Professor

Reproductive Physiology UCL

St. Marks, Windsor; Privately; Athenaeum;

Marshall, Sir Guy A.K. CMG, FRS 5 Yes Scholar Entomologist

Charterhouse Athenaeum

79

Martin, Miss Anna BA No No N/A Mason, Edward D. BSC, PHD No No N/A Maule, Dr. Caroline BSC, MD No No N/A McGuigan, A.W. No No N/A

Morrison-Scott, T.C.S. BSC No Yes Scholar Zoologist

Christ Church Oxford; Royal College of Science; Eton

Myers, Charles S.

CBE, MD, Sc.D., FRS 4 Yes Doctor Psychologist

Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge; St. Barts.

City of London School

Athenaeum; Alpine;

Natesa Aiyar Rao Bahadur K.V.

BA, BE, M.Inst.E.W. & F.F.Sc No No N/A

Newnham, Henry No No N/A Oliver, J.S. No No N/A Osman, A.A. DSC, FRCP No No N/A Owen, A.E. No No N/A Padfield, Fred A. No No N/A

Penn, The Lord Dawson of

KCVO, KCB, KCMG, MS, PRCP 4 Yes Doctor Physician

University College, London Hospital

Perry, L.G. No No N/A

80

Pilditch, Sir Philip BT, JP 5 No Soldier Lieutenant

Trinity College, Oxford

Winchester College

Pitt-Rivers, Captain G.H.L.F. B.Sc, FRAI 6 Yes Scholar Anthropologist Eton

Athenaeum; Union Interallies (Paris)

Stood

Pocock, Miss H. SRN, MIH No No N/A Pomeroy, S.E. No No N/A

Poulton, E.P.

FRCP, MRCS 3 No Doctor Physician

Balliol College, Oxford; Guy's Hospital Medical School

Dargons School; Rugby Athenaeum

Poulton, Prof. Sir E.B. FRS, LLD 4 Yes Scientist Entomologist

Jesus College, Oxford Athenaeum

Pycraft, W.P.

DSC, FLS, FZS No No N/A

Ramsay, Lt-Col Sir John KCIE, CSI 4 No Soldier Lt. Colonel

Private School, Wimbledon

Rathbone, Miss May

FLS, LMSSA No No N/A

Richardson, Gilbert Hancock No No N/A

Richardson, L.F. D.SC, FRS 5 Yes Scientist Physicist

Durham College of Science, Newcastle; King's College,

Bootham School, York

81

Cambridge;

Rickwood, Mrs. No No N/A Robinson, Mrs. Louis N. No No N/A Roe, Miss L. No No N/A

Rolleston, Sir Humphry

BT, GCVO, KCB, MD, DSC, LLD 4 Yes Doctor

Physician/Royal Commissioner

St John's College, Cambridge

Marlborough Athenaeum

Rose-Innes, Lady CBE No

Wife of Sir James Rose-Innes?

Relative of Notable

Russell-Brown, Colonel C. CB, DSO 3 No Soldier Colonel

R.M.A Woolwich

Wellington College

Sachs, Leonard MD No No N/A

Salaman, Redcliffe N.

MD, B.CH, MRCS, LRCP 5 Yes

Doctor/Scholar Genetics

Trinity Hall, Cambridge; London Hospital; St. Paul's Athenaeum

Salvesen, The Right Hon. Lord KC, LLD 4 No Solicitor

Collegiate University

Collegiate School

Athenaeum; Constitutional, Overseas; University, Edinburgh;

Sandon, Harold MA, PHD No No N/A

Shaw, M.E. MD, FRCP 7 No Doctor Physician New College.

Bradfield Coll.

Savile, Leander

82

Oxford; Guy's Hospital;

Shuster, Edgar D.SC No No N/A Siegel, Dr. Morris No No N/A

Sikes, A.W.

DSC, MD, FRCS, MRCP 4 No Doctor Physician

St. Thomas's & St. Bart's Hospitals; Marburg University Germany Privately

Smith, A.H. 4 No Scholar Archaeologist

Trinity College, Cambridge

Winchester College

Smith, H.T.W. No No N/A Smith, The Very Rev. Canon W.H. No No N/A

Smith, The Very Rev. Sir George Adam

DD, LLD, LITT.D, FBA 4 Yes Clergyman

Royal and New College University Edinburgh; Tabingen and Leipzig Universities

Royal High School, Edinburgh

Athenaeum; Royal Northern, Aberdeen;

Snape, H.C. No No N/A

83

Spensey, J. Calvert No No N/A Sprott, N.A.

MD, M.CH, FRCS No No N/A

Stamp, Sir Josiah

GBE, KCMG, D.SC, LLD, FBA No Yes

Civil Servant Economist Private

Still, John No No N/A Stirling, W. No No N/A Strickland, Mrs. 7 No

Relative of Notable

Styles, E.R. MSC, PHD No No N/A Tan, S.H. No No N/A Tennant, W.A. No No N/A Trevnow, J.C. No No N/A

Valentine, C.W. D.Phil 6 Yes Scholar Education

Univ. Coll. Aberystwyth; London University; Downing College, Camb.;

Nottingham High School; Preston Grammar;

Walker, J.H. Milnes

FRCS, MRCP No No N/A

Warner, R.G., Heegaard No No N/A Watts, Miss M.L. No No N/A Welldon, The Rt. DD 3 Yes Clergyman

Kings College, Eton Athenaeum

84

Rev. Bishop J.E.

Cambridge;

Whitehouse, CDR G.T. No No N/A Willoughby, Brig-Gen The Hon. Charles S.H.D. CB, CMG 4 No Soldier Brigadier General Wilson, Sir Arnold Talbot

KCIE, CSU, CMG, DSO, JP No Yes

Civil Servant Colonial Admin

R.M.C Sandhurst

Clifton College Yes

Woodlock, Rev. Francis 3 No

Clergyman-Catholic

Beaumont College None

Wright, Dr. Helena

MB, BS, MRCS, LRCP No Yes Doctor

Sex therapist and family planner

London School of Medicine for Women

Yeats-Brown, Major Francis DFC 4 Yes Soldier Major

Harrow-on-the-Hill, Sandhurst; Bath

85

Appendix Two: Prosopographic Data of Members Who Were Doctors

86

Name Postnominals Profession/Field WWW? ODNB Aikman, Kenneth B. MA, MD, MRCP N/A No No Armstrong-Jones, Sir Robert MD, CBE, FRCS, FRCP, JP Psychologist 4 Yes Beckett-Overy, H. MD, FRCS N/A No Yes Berman, S. MD, MRCP N/A No Yes Berry, Richard J.A. MD, FRCS, FRSE Psychologist 4 No Blacker, C.P. MC, MA, MD, FRCP Psychologist 7 No Bramwell, Crighton MA, MD, Ch.B., FRCP Physician 7 No Bramwell, Edwin MD, FRCP Neurologist 5 Yes Campbell, Maurice MD, FRCP Physician 7 Yes Carling, Dr. Esther MD (Brux), LSA N/A No No Colyer, Stanley MD, MRCP N/A No No Crew, Prof. F.A.E. MD, DSC Geneticist 7 No Crichton-Browne, Sir James MD, LLD, DSC, FRS Physician 3 No Davidson, J.A. MD, CHB N/A No Yes Davis, Charles Noel MD, BS, DPH N/A No No Dillon, Frederick MD Psychologist 6 Yes Dixon, Montague MD, MRCS, LRCP N/A No Yes Dukes, Cuthbert MD, MSC, DPH Pathologist 7 Yes East, W. Norwood MD, FRCP Psychiatrist 5 No Elder, Sir W.S. Duke DSC, PHD, MD, FRSC Opthalmist 7 No

Elliott, T.R. CBE, DSO, MD, FRCP, MA, FRS Physician 6 No

Ellis, Prof. A.W. MD, FRCP Physician 6 Yes Feldman, W.M. MD, FRCP, FRSE (Edin.) Physician 3 Yes Forman, L. MD, FRCP N/A No Yes Gardiner-Hill, H. MBE, MD N/A No Yes Gillespie, R.D. MD, MRCP Psychologist 4 No Goddard, Chas. E. OBE, TD, MD N/A No No Gordon, H.L. MD N/A No Yes Graves, Prof. W.W. MD, AAAS (F.), FACP N/A No No Grundy, F. MD, DPH N/A No No Haines, J. Finch MD N/A No No

87

Hill, T.W. MD N/A No No Hindley, Godfrey Douglas MC, MA, MD N/A No Yes Holland, Eardley MD, FRCS, FRCP, FRCOG Gynaecologist 6 No Horder, The Lord KCVO, MD, FRCP Physician 5 No Iyer, Dewan Bahadur Dr. L.K. Ananthakrishna BA, MD N/A No No Keith, Sir Arthur MD, CM, FRCS, LLD, FRS Anthropologist 5 No Kellogg, John Harvey MD, LLD, FRCS N/A No No Lawrence, R.D. MD, FRCP Physician 6 No Lewis, Aubrey J. MD, MRCP Psychiatrist 7 Yes Mackintosh, J.M. MD, DPH M.O.H. 6 No Mapother, Prof. Edward MD, FRCS, FRCP Psychiatrist 3 No Maule, Dr. Caroline BSC, MD N/A No No Millard, C. Killick MD, DSC M.O.H. 5 No Minski, Louis MD, MRCP, DPM N/A No No Myers, Charles S. CBE, MD, Sc.D., FRS Psychologist 4 No Norris, D.C. MD, FRCS Surgeon 6 No Parker, William Rushton MA, MD Surgeon 3 No Parkes, A.S. PHD Biologist Yes Piney, A. MD, MRCP Physician 6 No

Rolleston, Sir Humphry BT, GCVO, KCB, MD, DSC, LLD Physician 4 No

Ryle, Prof. J.A. MD, FRCP Physician 4 No Sachs, Leonard MD N/A No No Salaman, Redcliffe N. MD, B.CH, MRCS, LRCP Physician 5 Yes Sanderson, Robert MD N/A No Yes Savill, Dr. Agnes MD, MRCP Physician 6 No Seligman, Prof. C.G. MD, FRCP, FRS Ethnographer 3 No Shaw, M.E. MD, FRCP Physician 7 No Sikes, A.W. DSC, MD, FRCS, MRCP N/A No No Spearman, Prof. C. PhD, FRS Psychologist Yes Sprott, N.A. MD, M.CH, FRCS N/A No No Stanley, E. Gerald MD, MS, FRCS N/A No No Sutton, Harvey OBE, MD, BS, DPH N/A No Yes

88

Swoboda, Frank MD, DSP, CPH N/A No No Telling, W.H. Maxwell MD, BS, FRCP N/A No No Thomson, Prof. Godfrey H. PHD, DSC Psychologist Yes Vernon, H.M. MA, MD Physiologist 5 Yes Walsh, David MD N/A No No White, Douglas MA, MD N/A No No Wilkes, G.A. MD N/A No Yes Williams, Harley MD, DPH N/A No Yes Witts, L.J. MD, FRCP Physician No No Wynn, Prof. William H. MD, MSC, FRCP Physician 5 Yes

89

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90

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91

Draft for a pamphlet titled ‘Eugenics.’ 1935-1936? SA/EUG/D.176: Box AMS/MF/114.

Draft of letter to The Editor of The Times from The Eugenics Society, 1929. SA/EUG/D.206 AMS/MF/115

Ellis, H. Letter to Blacker from Havelock Ellis, 2nd January, 1931. PP/CPB/B.5/1 Box:10

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Letter from Miss Bloomfield, 22nd August 1932. SA/EUG/D/103.

Letter to The Editor of The Times from The Eugenics Society, 22nd May, 1929. SA/EUG/D.206 AMS/MF/115

Letter to The Editor of The Times from The Eugenics Society, 22nd January, 1927. SA/EUG/D.206 AMS/MF/115

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Methods of carrying out the law to prevent the future generation being tainted with hereditary disease, 7th December 1933. Translated from German. SA/EUG/D.209:Box AMS/MF/115

News Clipping from 1937? PP/CPB/B.1/6: Box 9

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Published Works

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Berry, R.J.A and Gordon, R.G. The Mental Defective: A problem in social inefficiency. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1931.

de Gobineau, A. The moral and intellectual diversity of races: with particular reference to their respective influence in the civil and political history of mankind. Philadelphia, PA, USA: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1856. PsycBOOKS, EBSCOhost (accessed June 29, 2016).

Gregory, J.W. The Menace of Colour: A study of the difficulties due to the association of white and coloured races, with an account of measures proposed for their solution, and special reference to white colonization in the tropics. London: Seeley Service and Co, 1925.

Haldane, J.B.S. Science Advances. London: Allen & Unwin, 1947.

Higgens, T.W.E. Some Racial Characteristics of the People of England. London: Robert Scott, 1928

Inge, W.R. Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949.

Just, W.H. Facts for Bristol: an exhaustive collection of statistical and other facts relating to the city, with suggestions for reform on socialist principles. (Fabian Tract no. 18) London: The Fabian Society, 1891.

Keith, A. Ethnos or the Problem of Race. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co Lt, 1931.

Lane, A.H. The Alien Menace (Second Edition). London: St Stephens Publishing Company, 1929

Oldham, J.M. Christianity and the Race Problem. London: Student Christian Movement, 1924.

Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin, 1937. References to 1986 edition.

Pearson, Karl. The Groundwork of Eugenics. London: Dulau, 1912 (Second Edition).

Phillips, W.L. Why are the many poor? (Fabian Tract no. 1) London: The Fabian Society, 1884.

Pitt-Rivers, G. Weeds in the Garden of Marriage. London: Noel Douglas, 1931.

Rentoul, R.R. Race Culture; or, Race Suicide? New York: Walter Scott, 1906.

Ruggles Gates, R. Heredity in Man. London: Constable & Co, 1929.

Schiller, F.C.S. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable & Co, 1932.

Siegel, M. Population, Race and Eugenics. Ontario: M. Siegel, 1939.

Webb, Beatrice. The Abolition of the Poor Law. (Fabian Tract no. 185). London: The Fabian Society. 1918.

94

Webb, Sidney. The Decline in the Birth-Rate. (Fabian Tract no. 131). London: The Fabian Society, 1907.

Webb, Sidney. Twentieth Century Politics: A policy of national efficiency. (Fabian Tract no. 108) London: The Fabian Society, 1901.

Wells, H.G. Mankind in the Making. London: Chapman and Hall, 1906.

Journal Articles and Essays

Blagg, H.M. “Letter to the Editor on Infant Mortality,” Eugenics Review 2, no.1 (1910): 76 – 78

Brabrook, E. “Eugenics and Pauperism,” Eugenics Review 1, no.4 (1910): 229-241

Council of the Eugenics Society. “An Outline of a Practical Eugenic Policy,” Eugenics Review 18, no.2 (1926): 95-99.

Darwin, L. “First Steps Towards Eugenic Reform,” Eugenics Review 4, no.1 (1912): 26-38

Darwin, L. “Observations on Fecundity,” Eugenics Review 14, no.4 (1923): 266-269.

Darwin, L. “Programme of Eugenic Reform,” Eugenics Review 15, no.4 (1924): 595-596.

Darwin, L. “The Cost of Degeneracy. Being part of the annual presidential address,” Eugenics Review 5, no.2 (1913): 93-100.

Darwin, L. “The Eugenics Policy of the Society”, Eugenics Review 18, no.2 (1926): 91-94.

Darwin, L. “The Habitual Criminal,” Eugenics Review 6, no.3 (1914): 204-218.

Ellis, H. “Birth Control and Eugenics,” Eugenics Review 9, no.1 (1917): 32-41.

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