The Social Context of Eugenic Thought

Birth Control News, April 1937, p. 137

By 1930 eugenics was established as a respectable and influential component of contemporary social and political thinking. It had amongst its supporters many of the most highly esteemed academics, scientists and public figures. Membership of the Eugenics Society reached the highest figure ever attained in 1932 whilst its "practical arm", as the birth control clinic movement was perceived, was expanding and increasingly successful, both in clinic provision and as a pressure group (1). In 1931 the Ministry of Health clarified, and slightly expanded the provisions of circular 153/MCW and already, according to Beveridge, there had been a perceptible narrowing of differential fertility.

The mass unemployment of the "slump" could be seen as a vindication of both eugenic and neo-Malthusian doctrines whilst also sustaining the imperial social Darwinists’ case for emigration to the colonies.

G. R. Searle notes (2) that when, in the middle of the Depression, during October and November 1931, the BBC broadcast a series of talks on the theme "What I would do with the World", "no fewer than three speakers went out of their way to emphasise the importance which they attached to eugenics. One of them, L. S. Amery, a former Conservative Minister, commended the creed as a corrective to the whole trend of British social and fiscal policy which, he claimed, had been based in recent years on a short-sighted sentimentalism that had not only tended to discourage thrift and self-reliance but also to encourage the multiplication of the improvident and the incompetent." (3)

Although the population of England and Wales had increased in the post-First World War decade by a modest 0.5 per cent per year, the birth rate had fallen from 20 per thousand of the population in 1923 to 15 per thousand in 1933. In order to explain this apparent anomaly and to assess its social consequences a number of writers began to construct projections based on the falling birth rate which "showed" a catastrophic decline in the country’s population during the next half century. Enid Charles and Grace Leybourne, both writing in 1934 (4) were merely two out of a very large number of authors whose dire prognostications were taken up by the popular press and in a wide-ranging public discussion which in turn served to stimulate further the more gloomy "scientific" pronouncements. One of the original instigators of the debate was, indeed, encouraged to sharpen up her message. Enid Charles, Lancelot Hogben’s wife and a lecturer in his department at LSE, had originally entitled her book The Twilight of Parenthood; when it was re-published in 1936 it bore the title The Menace of Under-Population.

It was a debate which fed on itself and which reached out to embrace every aspect of political and social concern. The many alarmist articles generated by Grace Leybourne’s population forecast for 1976 prompted Dr. E. C. Snow to point out that a declining population might not materialise as a "decision to admit immigrants more freely" could well be taken "long before that time" with the result that the population would be "some millions in excess" of Leybourne’s estimate of 28.6 millions (5).

Such a decision had virtually been taken as the United Kingdom was already importing population. So at least declared a paper commissioned for all the local authorities of Northern England whose representatives gathered in January 1935 to discuss the decay of the authorities they controlled. The triple effects of the fall in the birth rate, the increased numbers of people over the age of 65 and the migration to the south prompted all those authorities in the regional groups of Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to publish two papers on "Expected Population Changes" for discussion at their conference in Sheffield on 23 and 24 February 1935.

Migration southwards was seen by the Director of Newcastle Council for Social Service as being "on a scale that cannot be disregarded in our estimates of local population in any large areas of England and Wales". And as the migrants "pretty certainly included a high proportion of men and women of breeding ages there would be a further and rapid cumulative effect" on both the areas from which they came and those to which they went. He feared the rapid deterioration of housing and the social services and "other dangers of decaying areas" for, as he put it, "local pride nearly always refuses to admit decay." (6)

And when, in the same month - January 1935 - the Swedish Government appointed its own Commission on Population this further helped to project "the population problem to the forefront of British politics" (7). Reporting this, The Economist reminded its readers that on 28 April the previous year it had prophesied that "when the present depression is finally liquidated, the spectre of a falling population may become the major preoccupation of the politician’s mind" (8). Talking on the air the following month, Sir William Beveridge went so far as to state "the possibility of preventing the ultimate disappearance of their peoples" depended "upon the kind of world they [the politicians] can make for people to live in" (9). Commenting on this talk and referring to Beveridge’s "New Deal for Britain", The Economist pointed out, somewhat cryptically, that there were excellent grounds "for fearing or hoping" that a fall in the population of Britain and many other industrial countries might soon begin (10).

Though Dr. Snow had perceived "no inherent reason why a country should not be as prosperous with a stationary population as with an expanding one", his remedy for boosting the market by the general adoption of a shorter (he proposed a 40 hour) working week might then have seemed utopian. More immediately practicable was the idea of taking advantage of the falling school rolls to raise the school leaving age and provide every child with a secondary education. This proposal was backed by MPs of all parties, industrialists, clergy, local authority administrators and teachers who, realising that in thirteen years’ time there would be only 2 children where twenty years previously there had been 3, formed a "School Age Council" (11). Chaired by the author of Mr. Standfast, John Buchan and supported by both archbishops, this body was to find added justification for its proposals in a recent research finding by Lancelot Hogben’s social biology team that the educational system was failing to make the best use of good material already available to it (12). Thanks to the falling birth rate something could now be done.

Thus far a number of predictions based on little more than straight-line projections of a short-term trend had provoked a demand for more immigration, a shorter working week and universal secondary education. And it was clear that there was much more to come. Fearing perhaps that the factual foundations were inadequate to the weight of the edifice of public debate now evident, the Council of the Royal Statistical Society stressed, in a letter to the Registrar General, "the high sociological importance" if more and better data were to be provided "of taking a quinquennial census in 1936". Though reinforced in this request ten days later by Sir Josiah Stamp’s letter in The Times (27 October 1934), the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health replied on 13 February 1935 that there were insufficient grounds to justify the expense. Nor was a proposed deputation to the Minister successful because he fell ill. So a memorandum was forwarded to the Ministry on 30 April 1935 advocating regular quinquennial enumerations but this, too, was skilfully diverted (13).

Unfortunately not all members of the teaching profession were prepared to support universal secondary education. Two science masters actually expressed enthusiasm, in their professional journal, for the Sterilisation of the Unfit as advocated in the Brock Report (14). And, despite the public opposition of Herbert Morrison and the LCC and of George Gibson of the TUC, a number of women’s sections within the Labour Party and the Co-operative guilds were now, in 1935, vigorously promoting a draft Sterilisation Bill. This had been framed by a Joint Committee, called into existence by the Central Association for Mental Welfare whose Pauline conversion by the Brock Committee enabled it to override Hugh Molson’s defeat in the House of Commons on 28 February of the preceding year and the Minister’s confession, four months later (20 June) that the "time was not yet ripe" for action.

In an endeavour to assist the ripening process the Joint Committee rescheduled its work to climax with the General Election aiming to conduct an intensive campaign in at least half the total number of constituencies, to circularise all members of Parliament and prospective candidates by the summer and thereafter devote itself "entirely to the election". Its draft bill was endorsed by the County Councils Association, the Association of Municipal Corporations and the Mental Hospitals Association. It was further supported by a Voluntary Sterilisation League which now took shape under Lord Horder whilst the indefatigable Mrs. C.B.S. Hodson, a former General Secretary of the Eugenics Society, formed a Eugenic Alliance for such bodies as the Co-operative Guilds and those interested in "spreading a knowledge of heredity as applied to human beings", discouraging parenthood amongst the defective and encouraging it amongst the well-endowed.

The Eugenics Society itself was especially active in this campaign, dispatching its lecturers throughout the home counties. The efforts of the assiduous Miss Pocock, Mrs. Tamplin and Mrs. Grant-Duff at meetings of Women’s Institutes and Co-operative Guilds, as well as at the Ideal Home Exhibition, were significantly supplemented by Dr. Maule’s lectures to Labour Party branches and sections in Brixton, Camberwell, Paddington, Lambeth, Greenwich, North Islington and many other locations (15).

"The day may come" editorialised Maurice Newfield, "when the improvement of the biological qualities of mankind will be regarded as a major political question... we shall do well to face the fact that it is not." He underestimated the intensity of the opposition to those candidates who were suspected of entertaining ideas for interfering with the reproductive process. Some measure of their success was the acknowledgement by Commissioner Lamb of the Salvation Army that "the increase of the dependent part of the population" was alarming but that it was "a sure sign that large numbers of the unfit, at any rate, survive" (16).

In the event the responsibility for furnishing the population debate with more adequate and scientific basic data fell not to the Royal Statistical Society nor to the Registrar General but to the Eugenics Society.

It was heralded by Professor A.M. Carr-Saunders who, in his Galton Lecture on 16 February 1935 addressed the Eugenics Society and its guests on "Eugenics in the Light of Population Trends" (17). He warned against "frightening people out of parenthood by some baseless apprehension that a defect is lurking in their strain" and suggested that "effective voluntary parenthood" was "the most promising effort upon which eugenic effort can be founded". But, he said, there should be no neglect of "the question of numbers" and in this matter the pressing question involved the need to assemble information as to what was really involved in the decline in the birth rate.

The presence of the editors of the News Chronicle (Aylmer Vallance) and of The Spectator (Wilson Harris) as well as the Registrar General (Dr. S. P. Vivian), Commissioner Lamb of the Salvation Army, the Bishop of Southwark (Dr. R. G. Parsons) and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Science Committee (Sir Arnold Wilson) amongst Carr-Saunders’ audience testified to the wider clientele for the Eugenics Society’s new views as well as ensuring favourable support for the organisation which was to embody Carr-Saunders’ proposals. For his address had been a mere prologue to something more practical and substantial and, in the history of population study, of lasting significance. This was the Committee for Positive Eugenics, established on Carr-Saunders’ initiative on 14 May 1935. which was to be the fore-runner of the Population Investigation Committee.

References

(1) Robert E. Dowse and John Peel, "The Politics of Birth Control", Political Studies, XII, (1965) pp 179-197.

(2) G. R. Searle, "Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s", Annals of Science, 36, (1979) p. 159.

(3) Listener, 4, 25 November 1931. p. 18.

(4) Enid Charles, The Twilight of Parenthood: A Biological Study of the Decline of Population Growth, London 1934. Grace Leybourne "An Estimate of the Future Population of Great Britain, Sociological Review, 24, No. 2, April 1934.

(5) EC Snow, "The Limits of Industrial Employment", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 98, 15 January 1934, p. 261.

(6) H. A. Mess, "Expected Population Changes in the Next Generation and Their Effects on Public Service", Public Administration XIII, 1935, p.4.

(7) The Times, 14 January. Ten days later, reporting the School Age Council’s deputation to the Prime Minister, it described their efforts as "forcing an open door".

(8) The Economist, 2 February 1935, pp. 334-5.

(9) The Listener, 6 February 1935, p. 226.

(10) The Economist, ibid

(11) Times Educational Supplement, 23 February, 1935, p.60.

(12) J.A. Gray and Pearl Moshinsky, "Ability and Opportunity in English Education", The Sociological Review, XXVII, No. 2. April 1935; "Ability and Educational Opportunity in Relation to ParentalOccupation", ibid., No. 3, July 1935. FM Spencer, "Better Schools for Fewer Pupils", Times Educational Supplement, 26 January 1935, p. 25; F.H. Spencer (b. 1872), An Inspector’sTestament, The English Universities Press, 1938, p. 317.

(13) For the correspondence see Statistical Journal 98 (1935), pp. 523-530.

(14) H.J.H. Hare and G. Pallister, "Human Heredity" School Science Review. December 1934, p. 252

(15) Eugenics Review, January 1935, p. 252; April 1935, p. 10; July 1935, p. pp. 147; April 1935, pp. 67-68; October 1935, p. 249; October 1935, p. 181.

(16) British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1935.

(17) A.M. Carr-Saunders, 16 February 1935, Eugenics Review, April 1935, p. 11.