François Lafitte (1913-2002)

The Institute notes with sadness the recent death of François Lafitte, a life-long Fellow, a member of Council from 1963 to 1967 and a contributor to the Eugenics Review.

François Lafitte was the adopted son of Havelock Ellis. He was educated in France; at St Olave’s Grammar School in Southwark and at Worcester College Oxford after which he became Secretary of the Population Policy Committee set up jointly by the Eugenics Society and Political and Economic Planning (PEP) in which capacity he produced a number of important papers in the late thirties. He later became Director of PEP (subsequently the Social Policy Institute) and from 1942 to 1958 was a leader writer on social issues for The Times, in which capacity he was adjudged by one historian to have been influential in the shaping of post-war social policy (Newsletter 24.3).

From 1959 to 1980 he was Professor of Social Policy and Administration in the University of Birmingham and founder chairman of the Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Committee which was independent of the London counselling group.

Lafitte was highly critical of the Family Planning Association and especially of its failure to reach couples in the lower socio-economic groups. In 1964 he produced, with Elizabeth Draper, a research report Family Planning in the Sixties. Its many constructive recommendations were overtaken by the 1967 Family Planning Act.

John Peel