Henry Twitchin and the Expansion of the Eugenics Society Between the Wars

An intriguing feature of the eugenics movement was the support given to it by wealthy patrons.¹ This raises questions of how much influence money can buy, and the extent to which the opinions of ordinary people can be modified by the wealthy. In Britain, the Eugenics Education Society was “baled out” by donations from wealthy supporters in the early 1920s.² The Society and its successor, the Eugenics Society, received its largest donations from Henry Twitchin, his bequest particularly financing the Society’s expanded operations in the 1930s.

This paper is a case study which will shed light on Twitchin’s support and influence. The first section summarises the main points. The second considers in more detail the extent of Twitchin’s contributions and to what purposes his money was applied. The third section fleshes out Twitchin’s background and motives, and his influence over the then President of the Eugenics Education Society, Leonard Darwin. A final section adds comments in relation to the wider eugenics movement.

Soloway attaches importance to the Twitchin bequest. It “transformed the Eugenics Society into a moderately wealthy and potentially influential organisation.”³ Hall observes that the Society had influence beyond its small size, particularly after the Twitchin bequest.⁴ For Kevles, it is scientific progress that accounts for the Society’s reformation in the 1930’s, and Twitchin’s bequest is worth only a passing mention.⁵ For Searle, the “surprising resurgence in the fortunes of the British eugenics movement in the 1930s” is due to economic, fertility, dietary, scientific and religious factors; he does not consider the state of the Society’s finances.⁶

Although the Society was in receipt of occasional substantial donations in the years before 1924 (contributing at maximum about 30% of total income), the Twitchin donations of £1,000 per annum commencing 1924 were by far the most important single source of finance, being about double that of the next largest source, viz. other members’ total subscriptions. This increased income was spent on enlarging the ‘office’ function, which may be considered part of the eugenics propaganda effort; on boosting the Eugenics Review, which contained both propaganda and research reports for a popular readership; and on specific propaganda projects such as providing paid lecturers to public meetings, financing a film and educational literature. In the 1920’s there was also some small expenditure on research, but in those years the Society was in receipt of other donations earmarked for research, so it is hard to argue that Twitchin’s money had any significant effect on research effort.

After Twitchin’s death, the Society received (between 1931 and 1933) his legacy which in 1930 was valued for probate at £40,000 after prior claims and bequests. This (as with other legacies) was taken into the Society’s books as capital. The additional income derived from this capital amounted to around £3,000 per annum for the balance of the period under discussion, completely transforming the Society’s finances, being in the region of three-quarters of total income.

Twitchin’s eugenic ideas resulted from, and were reinforced by, his experience of sheep-breeding. He believed in state intervention to prevent “the breeding of the unfit.” He wanted compulsory sterilization of “inferior types,” and accepted only reluctantly that voluntary sterilisation and birth control were all that could be achieved under prevailing “conditions of law and sentiment.”⁷ He wanted Leonard Darwin to use his funds to encourage birth control among “the poor,” although he feared that only the best would bother to learn. Darwin strove to cultivate Twitchin, corresponding with him at length, sending him special reports to show how his funds had been spent wisely, and publishing material which veered, as far as he felt able, towards compulsory sterilization. After Twitchin’s death, Darwin for several years remained faithful to Twitchin’s cause, holding out against insistent demands that funds be applied more towards research, and trying to ensure that propaganda and birth control remained the spending priorities.

Twitchin and Darwin came from an ‘old school’ of mainline eugenics, which believed that social problems such as pauperism, criminality and feeble-mindedness could be ‘bred out.’ A critic might characterise their beliefs as resting on unbridled class prejudice and mistaken, simplistic theories of heritability. The mainline lost ground to the ‘reform eugenics’ which followed from the leadership of Dr C. P. Blacker, a consultant psychiatrist at Guy’s and Maudsley hospitals, who was appointed General Secretary of the Society in 1932. In 1927, Darwin relinquished his Presidency, though he continued to exert influence for many years. These changes paved the way for Twitchin’s funds eventually to be applied more towards reform eugenics, with emphasis on investigation of population policies and family planning. This reformation tends to support Kevles’s judgement (above), since the direction of the change was somewhat at odds with Twitchin’s original intentions, and was influenced by realisation of the difficulties of making assertions about inherited traits in a human social context.

We cannot know with certainty what would have happened had Twitchin’s finance never been forthcoming. Would Darwin still have given the same prominence to propaganda, birth control and sterilization, and held out so strongly against research? This is unknown; but Darwin’s actual behaviour was consistent with having been influenced by Twitchin’s money. He appears to have paid more than lip-service (of which there was plenty) to Twitchin’s aims and he “pussy-footed” arguments against compulsory sterilization. Arguably, the movement towards ‘reform eugenics’ was independent of finance and occurred for the reasons Searle (above) elucidates: but the influence of the Eugenics Society would have been far smaller without Twitchin’s finance. The importance of his backing to the Society’s expansion between the wars should not be underestimated.

Figure 1 charts Eugenics Society membership from inception to 1939 (for simplicity, the term Eugenics Society will mean The Eugenics Education Society and its successor The Eugenics Society in the rest of this paper). After early growth, membership decayed after the 1914-18 War, reaching a low point around 1921. It seems that membership picked up at or after the time of Twitchin’s first donation (1924) and continued to expand to a peak around 1932. Twitchin’s donations supported increased propaganda and a better office function, so the increased membership might be attributed to his funds. This is implied in a letter from the Secretary, Mrs Hodson, to Darwin in 1925, commissioned by Darwin as a report for Twitchin on the effect of his donations.⁸ However, the tailing-off of membership after 1932 coincides with the period of highest Society income, proving that there is no infallible link between financial health and state of membership. Other factors must account for the later reversal,⁹ so it must be allowed that other factors may account for the earlier increase.

Figure 2 illustrates some of the Society’s sources of income in years of interest. 1923 is the year before Twitchin’s first donation of £1,000. The years 1924-1929 were stable and prosperous for the Society mainly as a result of his continued donations, and the years illustrated are representative. Twitchin died in March, 1930, so this year had no donation from him, and no benefit from his estate, which actually accrued to the Society in the years 1931-33. The estate was taken into the Society’s books as capital, and led to increased income from investments and property (the latter mainly rents from premises acquired at 69, Eccleston Square, London). 1930, then, may be taken as a benchmark of the Society’s finances without the ‘Twitchin effect.’ It is hard to be precise about this effect, partly because donations and bequests may have been obscured in the Society’s accounts, perhaps to preserve anonymity, and partly because changes in presentation of the accounts make accurate year-on-year comparisons difficult. Figure 2 may give a slightly exaggerated impression, because of donations and bequests from other sources, but is broadly fair.

During the Twitchin donation years, as well as being applied to enhancing the office function, which was the Society’s chief agent for propaganda, the increased income was used to pay the editor of the Eugenics Review (at first part-time, later full-time at an annual salary of £100) and for specific propaganda projects such as paying for lecturers at public meetings, and production of films and educational literature. For example, in 1924 £282 was spent on lectures; in 1925 £205 on producing a film; in 1926 £160 on literature. Although the intentions of Twitchin’s will were known to the Society, the date of his death was, of course, not known; nor could the Society be certain of his donation until received. Probably in consequence, the donation years are characterised by ad-hoc decisions for projects. In 1930, the year of Twitchin’s death, the Society spent £256 on the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilisation (CLES). After Twitchin’s bequest, income, as well as being larger, was more certain, and the post-bequest years show longer-term planning and continuity of projects, especially in the form of grants to third parties. Table 1 summarises these projects to 1938 (neglecting small items).

The income from Twitchin’s bequest continued indefinitely, and his finance played its part in the Society’s activities after World War II as well as before. The projects in Table 1 are only the most immediate effect of the new funds. Some of these projects are briefly described below, in order to illustrate the main ways in which the bequest was applied before the war.

Annals of Eugenics was the quarterly journal founded by Pearson and run by Fisher at the Galton Laboratory. It is described by Soloway as containing “much of the most important pioneering work in mathematical population genetics … before and after the war.”¹¹ The Eugenics Society contribution met about half the costs.

The considerable expenditure on the Joint Committee for Voluntary Sterilization (JCVS) can be understood in the context of the Society’s campaign to make sterilisation legal (there was concern that a surgeon performing even voluntary sterilisation might be guilty of “unlawful wounding”). Macnicol argues that during the ’20s and ’30s eugenists had a hidden agenda. First, they would commit to studies which would prove that the “social problem group” had a hereditary basis. Next, they would persuade Parliament to legalise voluntary sterilisation of mental defectives, subject to reassuring stipulations as to permissions and so on. Then, when the public had become accustomed to the principle of sterilisation, the Society would seek to introduce compulsory sterilization for all in the “social problem group.” The CLES (above) was charged with drawing up a sterilization bill.¹²

In 1934, after two years deliberation, the Brock committee advised the UK government that there was no established case for compulsory sterilisations. Macnicol reports that it “supported the view that inheritance played an important part in the causation of mental defect.” It recommended, with numerous safeguards, legalisation of voluntary sterilisation “for three categories of persons – mental defectives or the mentally disordered, persons suffering from a transmissible physical disability (such as hereditary blindness) or persons likely to transmit mental disorder or defect.” The JCVS was formed by the Eugenics Society and mental health bodies as a pressure group to promote these recommendations. Prior to the October 1935 general election, for example, the JCVS “lobbied 544 Parliamentary candidates, of which 259 gave replies; of these 202 expressed sympathy towards the measure.”¹³

This sterilisation movement paralleled the similar movement in Germany, but with a very different result. Voluntary sterilisation was denounced in Parliament as anti-working class.¹⁴ The British voluntary sterilisation movement “failed utterly and was dead as a legislative issue by 1939.”¹⁵

The Positive Eugenics Committee investigated the relationship between family allowances and birth rate, and whether this “may succeed in raising the fertility of biologically well-endowed persons.”¹⁶ Carr-Saunders in his influential Galton Lecture of 1935 defined positive eugenics as “… an attempt … to raise the fertility of those who are not definitely subnormal until they at least replace themselves.” The Positive Eugenics Committee was succeeded by the Population Investigation Committee, which focussed on reasons for the declining birth rate that was a cause of national concern. It was granted £1,155 by the Carnegie Corporation in 1936 and, though initially dominated by Eugenics Society members, it evolved into “a respected, permanent institute helping to formulate population policy.”¹⁷ The Population Policies Committee also had a positive eugenics agenda, seeking to raise “the fertility of healthy stocks in different occupational groups.”¹⁸ It was formed in 1938 to try to exert eugenic influence on Government proposals for national economic recovery.

Support given to the National Birth Control Association (NBCA) and the Society for Provision of Birth Control Clinics (SPBCC) was a continuation of the Eugenics Society’s involvement with birth control, which had earlier (1927) led to the establishment of the Birth Control Investigation Committee. Leonard Darwin was concerned about the dysgenic effects of birth control, but eugenists were also interested in contraceptive methods which could be understood by “the stupidest and therefore the most undesirable members of society.”¹⁹ In 1930, the Government reversed its previous position by permitting birth control advice to be given at welfare centres when there were medical grounds for doing so; in subsequent years it enlarged the permissible reasons for giving advice. The door was thus opened towards promotion of birth control, which was undertaken by the NBCA (later Family Planning Association) and SPBCC. The Society gave grants to both bodies and supported research (by Baker and Zuckerman) into the simple contraceptive. Baker was looking for a cheap and effective spermicide; Zuckerman was investigating the menstrual cycle and the lifespan of sperm and ovum.²⁰

The Darwin Research Fellowships were awarded by a selection committee chaired by Fisher. R B Cattell was given the grant “with a view to determining the average size of family at each level of intelligence.”²¹ He published his results in Eugenics Review, concluding that national intelligence was declining as a result of differential birth-rates.²² In his much-criticised book, published 1937, “he estimated that as a consequence of the differential birth-rate, IQ was falling by 1 percent a decade and would in 300 years leave half the population mentally defective.”²³ J C Trevor’s grant was for a survey of literature on the biological effects of race-crossing.²⁴ The grant to R M W Travers was for an investigation of psychometric differences determining occupational selection and occupational success.²⁵ Two other grants were awarded before the war that did not result in publication.²⁶

The 1930’s also saw an increase in publications supported by the Society. These include:

1930 Family Council Law in Europe

1931 Two schedules for recording human pedigrees

1933 Lidbetter, Heredity and the Social Problem Group; Lewis, The Chances of Morbid Inheritance; Blacker (ed), A Social Problem Group

1936 Pre-marital health schedule, and a pamphlet Health Examination Before Marriage

1938 Six heredity charts for use in schools, with descriptive handbook.

Lidbetter’s work was the culmination of his long study of the hereditary basis of the “social problem group,” but rather than providing the convincing proof hoped for by eugenists, it seems only to have sparked controversy.

In the Wellcome Library there is a box of Twitchin memorabilia which includes an unsigned note, written about 1925, by a school friend of Henry’s sister, Mary, giving a personal insight into the family background.²⁷ She says Henry’s father retired relatively young from farming, possibly due to ill-health. “Money came to them – I believe through wise speculation on the part of Mr Twitchin – and then he bought Kennet House [Newbury]… in the 1870’s.” It was “quite a big place … something of a white elephant, for Mr Twitchin seemed to do nothing about it, and the management was left to his wife and the odd job man …” “Dear old Mrs Twitchin was a darling – a clever and most amusing old lady, but something of a ‘dear old nurse’ type.” She used to say some of their ancestors were noble. “Henry’s parents were above the average of their class and period.” The father, provocatively, never went to church of any kind, and was “always irritable.” Henry himself was kind to animals. While he was at Downton Agricultural College (near Salisbury) he met men who were studying with a view to emigration, and this inspired him, together with his “very reasonable fear” [of contracting TB], to do likewise. His parents opposed his desire in every way – he was probably grub-staked by other relatives. His plan to take a dress suit with him to Australia was a bone of contention with his father – “What does a sheep farmer in the wilds want with a dress-suit?”

Twitchin was born on February 21st, 1867 and was educated at Newbury Grammar School. He had two sisters, both consumptive, a condition attributed to their being excessively cooped up in the house with the windows closed. Henry by contrast spent a deal of time out of doors, and rode a bicycle. The elder sister, Mary, died in 1873, aged 17. The following year, Henry’s grandfather, Andrew Twitchin, who also lived at Kennet House, died aged 91.

Henry was “livestock prizeman” at college in 1888. He arrived in Western Australia, complete with dress-suit, in 1890, and made his way to the north-west outback, 800 miles from Perth, where he started sheep-farming. While there, in 1892, he received a telegram advising him that his younger sister, Mabel, had died (aged 22). Wyndham quotes a report of July, 1900 by Mr Olivy, Travelling Inspector of Aborigines, on conditions at the sheep station: “No natives on relief here. One old man, blind, and one woman about 55 nearly blind are kept and fed by Mr Twitchin, who considers it his duty to keep these old people. They have no near relations working for him, neither does he ask for blankets but finds them himself. It is quite refreshing to meet a gentleman with such views. I am sorry there are not more men like him.”²⁸

According to Twitchin’s later letter introducing himself to Leonard Darwin,²⁹ it was around this time that the idea occurred to him “of applying the principle we had long made use of in improving our farm stock to the improvement of the human family. … This is not to be wondered at when it is known that I am descended from a long line of countrymen, some of whom helped to make our domestic animals what they are today.”³⁰ He said the question was forced on him because “I was born of unsound parents and inherited their weaknesses, and consequently have suffered thereby.” This is a somewhat enigmatic claim. Darwin wrote in 1930 that “our benefactor … suffered constantly from periods of depression.”³¹ Perhaps Twitchin linked this depression to his father’s irritability. Probably not too much should be made of this, for Twitchin seems to have had a tendency to put himself down: later, he was to claim that he had inherited his inability to express himself in writing³² – whereas, in fact, his letters were satisfactory by normal standards.

Continuing his recollection, Twitchin wrote, “Applying the great principle, as I was constantly doing in my work, it was natural perhaps for me to see no difficulty in doing the same at once with men and women. And I was then advocating the immediate introduction of legislation in all civilised countries prohibiting the propagation of the unfit from any cause. But after reading some of the publications by the Society and other works on the subject, I realized that the great majority of the people were not ready for such a revolutionary change, and that the best course to bring about the desired improvement was to do as the Society was doing and educate, if possible, the masses to see the inestimable advantage of adopting the principle and gradually enforcing control.”

He lost many sheep to drought, and in 1903 returned to England to raise finance for sinking artesian wells on his property. This plan succeeded, and on his return he prospered. It was around this time, on 20^th December 1904, that his father died. He recalls to Darwin, “Around 1905, my inherited handicaps developing, and having prospered in my enterprises now, I decided to sell out and return to England, which I succeeded in doing in 1910. But the buyer of my property failing to complete the purchase contract, I was obliged to recover possession in 1911, and since then the War and the consequent disorganisation of industry has prevented again disposing of it.” These must have been stressful times, keeping the farms going with his heart no longer in them. He read – presumably in 1907, or shortly thereafter – of the founding of the Eugenics Education Society and became a member in 1911. He recalls to Darwin, “being the last of my family … I, in 1912, made my Will – after providing for certain legacies – in favour of our Society for the carrying on of the propaganda which I believe to be by far the most urgent and important work possible in human endeavour …” By 1921, two years after the death of his mother, he was grazing over 40,000 head of livestock, and he estimated the value of his sheep stations at £150,000. The full story of Twitchin’s carving out his fortune in the demanding bush of Western Australia, and of his relationships with the aboriginal people who inhabited the area, would no doubt be fascinating – but, alas is not to be told further except possibly by analogy with other farmers who left journals and letters, for there appear to be no other records of Twitchin’s particular experiences.³³

Dr Carlos Paton Blacker (1895-1975) Photograph by kind permission of Dr John Blacker

After lengthy delays, which he attributed in part to “legislation of the Labour Government,”³⁴ Twitchin sold his stations and retired to Nice. He had to pay £28,000 tax on the sale “to support the Australian parasite majority.”³⁵ From Nice, he corresponded regularly with Darwin, sending his donations and receiving reports on their effect. Darwin’s letter of thanks, dated 8^th January 1924, for the first “magnificent donation” told him, “During all the twelve years I have worked for the Society, finance has been a perpetual source of anxiety and an ever present brake on the wheel of our progress. Now we shall be able to pay our staff decent salaries, and what is more important, shall be able to ear mark a considerable sum for lecture expenses. Until now we have had to advance with great caution as regards all propaganda arrangements … Now we ought to be able to proceed as never in the past.”³⁶

In 1926, Twitchin wrote again that since compulsory sterilization was unlikely, and the Government inactive, attention should be focussed on private effort to establish birth control clinics.³⁷ In subsequent letters he repeats his call for compulsion: “…We must not consider the rights of the individuals over-much” … “utter madness of going on breeding when the Ranch is fully stocked” … “I should not … condemn ‘stock-yard’ methods, so-called, so severely.”³⁸

In 1928, Darwin published a short book, What is Eugenics?, aimed at a popular readership. Discussing Eugenic Methods, he writes: “Then, again, another useful practical lesson has often been impressed on the minds of those who have had the management of large stock farms in the Dominions. Experience has made them realise the ‘madness’ of going on breeding more animals when the ranch is already fully stocked … This is a stockyard lesson which may well be remembered when considering at what point our own islands should be held to be over-stocked.”³⁹ “We may well imitate the farmer’s frame of mind” to attend to good breeding as well as good nurture “but not as far as infanticide and compulsory marriage … As to the inferior types, we cannot, as we have seen, reduce the number of their descendents by the simple expedient of murder. All that can be done is to lessen the size of their families.”⁴⁰

Discussing Birth Control, Darwin urges, “married women should always be able to get the necessary information, which is not the case at present.”⁴¹ How sensitive an issue this was at the time may be judged from his coy remark, “Details of the methods of birth control will not here be discussed.” Blacker was to observe later that “even in its sixth edition (1905) T H Huxley’s Elementary Physiology (1866) makes no mention whatsoever of the reproductive system.”⁴²

On the issue of sterilization, Darwin writes, “Whether compulsion in this matter should ever be legalized is a question which may perhaps be left to those who come after us to decide. At present certainly the public would not tolerate any such proposal, even if its justice could be fully proved; and no doubt it would be a dangerous innovation unless very carefully safeguarded.” He goes on to advocate voluntary sterilization as a means of birth control. Parents and guardians of the “feeble in mind” should be empowered to allow sterilization. “As to criminals, paupers, and all living uncivilized lives in a civilized country, their sterilization … would … tend to purify the race.” He reports warmly the sterilization programme in California, and adds in the second edition (1938), “In Germany, the operation may be compulsorily performed, thus doubtless causing discontent, but to what extent is unknown; and by 1934 had been ordered in over 56,000 cases, a policy which if pursued must in time cause a material reduction in hereditary defects.”⁴³

Twitchin reacted to the first edition of Darwin’s book by telling him, “I … agree with most of the arguments in it, but still think that in combating a great social evil we should not be over scrupulous as to the means. … I should be glad to subscribe for say 1,000 copies of it to be sent to distributing centres in large towns …”⁴⁴ This plan was carried out.

During this period, Twitchin also went to some pains to trace his own family tree, possibly prompted by a letter sent to him by a Berkshire parishioner in 1896, which pointed out that the coat of arms of a Twitchin buried at Inkpen, Berkshire, included a scollop shell which showed that his ancestors were “descended from a crusader.”⁴⁵ No certain ancestry could be traced earlier than Twitchin’s grandfather and grandmother so the links to earlier Twitchins, although more probable than not, are only speculative.⁴⁶

On the day of his death (following an appendix operation), 19^th March 1930, Twitchin made a codicil to his will leaving his property in France, as well as the other residue of his estate, to the Eugenics Society. The will included bequests of £1,000 to each of his two executors (Darwin and Sir Edward Allen, a retired Public Trustee introduced by Darwin); £1,000 to the RSPCA, London; £1,000 to the RSPCA, Perth, WA; and £10,000 to the daughter of his friend Thos de Pledge of Yanvey Station, WA. The estate was passed for probate at £56,148 gross, £54,382 net.⁴⁷

There followed “fierce disagreements” in the Eugenics Society about how to use the money.⁴⁸ Darwin wrote to Fisher in 1930, “I intend to champion propaganda as against research … It is because we are the only propaganda body, and because I know that was what Twitchin wanted …”⁴⁹ Again in 1933 he tells Fisher, “it [the Eugenics Society] should confine itself to propaganda … I am certain that [Galton’s] aim was research together with advanced instruction” so the Galton Laboratory should fund research.⁵⁰ Bennett comments, “Though Fisher failed in 1930 to win Darwin to the view that Twitchin money should be used to support research, … yet by 1934 … he had gained Society support for funding research scholarships and sharing the cost of the Annals … Society funds went more and more to support work on a chemical contraceptive … in 1938, Fisher said the directors of policy in the Society were strongly entrenched and ‘almost impervious to scientific advice’.”⁵¹

It has been said that “Eugenics Society records show no significant publicity which would have influenced German thinking between 1930 and 1933 [when the first German sterilisation legislation was passed]. It thus seems reasonable to suggest that the Australian contribution from Henry Twitchin probably had no effect on the development of German policies.”⁵² It has been shown here that Twitchin’s influence started in 1922, and that he was a staunch advocate of compulsory sterilisation, yet he failed to carry the day with his opinions; unlike Hitler who in 1924-6 had policies such as “The Volkisch state must see to it that only the healthy beget children …”⁵³ Twitchin, however, can probably be exonerated from any direct influence on Nazi policy, as explained below.

The following summary table of eugenic sterilisation legislation may help to put the matter in perspective:

The table shows that German policies were underpinned mainly by USA examples. Germany also had its own eugenics movement which pre-dated the Eugenics Education Society – the Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene was established in 1905 with 32 members. Galton, in 1909, accepted its invitation to be Honorary Vice President. By 1930, the German society had 1,300 members in 16 branches.⁵⁵

To judge from the treatment of aborigines on his station, and from the focus of attention in his letters, Twitchin did not grind a racial axe. His kindness to animals and bequests to the RSPCA indicate that he abhorred cruelty. It is safe to say that he would have been as appalled as anyone at the results of eugenic ideas in Nazi Germany, and would have considered their policies a perversion of his own intentions. Yet the uncomfortable truth should also be observed, that, as with many other eugenists, he contributed to a groundswell of opinion on state intervention in human breeding, and was unknowingly one of the parts whose sum led to unprecedented tragedy.

Twitchin may be characterised as a man of self-made wealth who deeply resented the state requiring him to contribute to the support of persons he considered a blight on society, or spongers. He has been described as “eccentric,”⁵⁶ yet in truth he appears to have been rational and focussed, given his starting beliefs. He wrote to Darwin in June, 1929, “I think we must look for the greatest developments in the newer countries like America, where deep-rooted prejudice is not so strong as it is in our own country; yet it is here [Britain] that eugenic reform is most needed to get rid of the great burden of the unemployed.”⁵⁷ There is unintended irony in this remark, made around the start of the Great Depression, for the queues of unemployed were to grow ever greater until they reached around 25% of the workforce in Britain in 1933. Most of these unemployed were persons who had previously been in work, who had been thrown out of it by economic forces beyond their control. They furnished poignant proof that their condition did not result from their heredity. If this proof had started to exist in June 1929, Twitchin’s anger and mindset might still have blinded him to the evidence.

Although this analysis suggests that Twitchin would not have been in complete accord with the way his bequest was spent, the matter is perhaps not so simple. He was a person with a philosophical frame of mind and some charitable disposition. Had he lived, his own ideas might have developed more in harmony with Blacker’s new school. In support of this possibility, we may cite the case of C F Chance, a wealthy banker who advised the Society on the investment of Twitchin’s funds, and who later became its Treasurer. He was a kindred spirit of Twitchin and Darwin at the time of the former’s death but, as Soloway puts it, “The more he learned, the more confused he became … in 1940, Chance recalled how simple and seductive the idea of hereditary quality and selective breeding once seemed. But the closer one gets to human problems, he continued, the more elusive and complex the issue becomes.”⁵⁸ On the other hand, Leonard Darwin’s attitudes do not appear to have changed in the equivalent period – the opinion he expressed in 1938 (above) is a remarkably bold statement at that time, given 1. the differences of scientific opinion over what proportion of mental illness had a hereditary basis; 2. the doubt over the applicability of a Mendelian model to inherited mental illness; and 3. the slow effect that sterilization (of those expressing a trait) could have if the trait was recessive, and therefore existed latently in the population who could still propagate.

The story told here is consistent with the three-stage plan identified by Macnicol.

If there is any message for the issues of our own time, such as the fierce current debate, and strongly held views, on the ethics of human cloning and embryo research, it lies in the need to identify vested interest, and in the danger of having dogged views, of being blinkered to evidence, and in the espousal of policies whose outcomes cannot be forecast with certainty.

Lesley Hall aptly points out that, with paid staff and a permanent home, the Eugenics Society’s records have been much better preserved than those of comparable societies of similar size.⁵⁹ This is a lasting legacy of Henry Twitchin.

Thanks are given to the Galton Institute for granting permission to inspect the Eugenics Society archives, and to the staff of the Wellcome Library for their assistance. I am especially grateful to Dr Lesley Hall of the Wellcome Library, who kindly read a draft of this paper and made several suggestions which have led to improvement. Any errors remaining are my own.

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Andrew Parkin is retired from a long career in computing during which he was Professor of Systems Analysis at De Montfort University and founder of a software company. For the past 15 years he has studied arts and humanities subjects, mainly at the Open University, to counterbalance his life of business and technology. This paper was prepared as part of the OU course on “Good Breeding – Science and Society in a Darwinian Age”.