Birth and breeding : the politics of reproduction in modern Britain an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, October 1993 / Ken Arnold, Lesley Hall, Julia Sheppard.

  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
Date:
1993
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Birth and breeding : the politics of reproduction in modern Britain an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, October 1993 / Ken Arnold, Lesley Hall, Julia Sheppard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    engage in activity outside the home in an impeccably womanly sphere: a con- siderable attraction. Only instruction and advice were offered, not treatment, and many poor women could not afford medical treatment for either their children or themselves; when National Insurance was introduced in 1911 its provisions excluded most married women, though a 30/- (£1.50) maternity benefit was payable at childbirth (to the husband until 1913). Nothing was done about inadequate nutrition, or living conditions which made following advice on domestic hygiene almost impossible. Several legislative enactments during the first decade of the twentieth century introduced child welfare pro- visions (e.g. school meals), but the home and the mother were the target of educational strategies rather than tangible benefits. These policies assumed the population crisis was due to preventable wastage responsive to public health measures, but a strong school of thought believed that questions of quality were just as important, if not more so. In extreme versions of this view, infant mortality allegedly weeded out undesir- able weaklings, so attempts at its eradication would have debilitated the national 'stock'. Less desirable groups in society were feared to be producing too many children (in spite of the ravages of infant mortality), while the 'bet- ter' classes limited their families due to the expenses of maintaining an appropriate lifestyle. The Eugenics Education Society was founded in 1907 to influence public opinion as to the national importance of eugenics, and to spread knowledge about the laws of heredity (these were, at the time, rather less well known than this implies, with the work of Mendel only just being rediscovered). Eugenic ideas were widely pervasive, but the Society itself was never large, although it attracted a number of influential thinkers, and the munificence of supporters placed it on a sound financial basis. In its early years the Society was very hesitant about discussing birth control, which might seem to have practical relevance to any eugenic programme. Contraception was not regarded as suitable for general discussion, being associ- ated with sexual immorality, sleazy purveyors of 'rubber-goods', and irreligious and socially subversive neo-Malthusians. Medical writings tended to detail the pathological effects brought about by its practice. The supposition that the most desirable elements of the population (prudent, intelligent, educated) were practising 'limitation', with deleterious effects on the nation, increased antipathy to the subject; changes in taxation were felt to be an appropriate approach to this problem.