Barbara Evans: Helena Wright and Freedom to Choose

Around 1979 BE began to interview Helena Rosa Wright, nee Lowenfeld (1887-1982), one of the few remaining survivors of the pioneering generation of medical and other women involved in the campaign for the dissemination of birth control advice and sexual information, with a view to writing her biography. Her biography, Freedom to choose : the life and work of Dr. Helena Wright, pioneer of contraception, was published in 1984 by The Bodley Head, two years after Wright's death in her nineties. This section includes copious research material on Wright, her family (her sister was the distinguished child psychologist Margaret Lowenfeld), her associates, and the birth control movement in Britain and worldwide. A small group of Wright's own papers given to BE for the purpose of preparing this biography were transferred to the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre, Wellcome Institute, in 1986, and have been catalogued as PP/HRW.

1895-1988

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