Announcing exterminatingpoverty.com

I set up a website for the book Exterminating Poverty.

Why did you set up exterminatingpovertybook.com?

The site you are now reading was set up in 2014 to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Halliday Sutherland. It has been has been a useful vehicle on which to store and publish my historical research into his life, publish family photographs and introduce his writing to a new generation of readers. Much of the material published here helped me to write Exterminating Poverty (in conjunction with Neil Sutherland).

Until now, the articles relating to the book and Dr. Sutherland’s writing sat side-by-side on this site. In recent months, I noticed that the articles relating to the book jarred with the flow of articles written by Dr. Sutherland, and decided that it would be better to separate the streams on different websites.

Upcoming centenaries in 2021.

Over the next few years, we will see the centenaries of the events of the book. The biggest centenary this year is the anniversary of the opening of the Mothers’ Clinic in Holloway on 17th March 1921 by Dr. Marie Stopes and her second husband, Mr. Humphrey Roe. Previous anniversaries have been noisily trumpeted, so this centenary year is likely to be louder than ever before. The interruptions to Dr. Sutherland’s articles were likely to become more frequent, so it was time to set up another website.

Exterminatingpoverty.com focuses on the events that led to the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial of 1923.

hallidaysutherland.com will continue to publish articles that celebrate the life and work of Dr. Sutherland. Those that relate to the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial of 1923 will be published at exterminatingpovertybook.com. When there is an overlap, articles will be published on both sites.

Please spread the true story!

A review of Exterminating Poverty written yesterday said this:

Dr. Sutherland sought to expose the overtly eugenic aims of Marie Stopes’ clinic “exposing the poor to experiment” in his words. She sued him for libel and he was arraigned in the High Court in 1923. Over two years later the case progressed to the House of Lords (Britain’s highest court then). Sutherland won this legal dispute, but the facts are not in the general forum of public opinion, although it’s notable that Stopes’ full name has been removed from the title of Marie Stopes International. Nevertheless, events this year with the gene splicing Nobel Prize as well as the highlighting of the eugenic opinions expressed by two prime ministerial aides should focus the mind on the issues raised by Sutherland and the case he fought.

Emphasis added. From a review of “Exterminating Poverty” by Julie on amazon.co.uk viewed 5th January 2021.

In short, the issues raised in the legal battle between Marie Stopes and Halliday Sutherland continue to this day, “but the facts are not in the general forum of public opinion”. It’s easy for the disciples of Dr. Stopes to get interviews and to repeat the widely-accepted but false version of the story that ignores the historical facts.

This website has never had a marketing plan or budget. What it does have are two grandsons who are determined to counter the lies told about their grandfather and others who stood up against eugenics 100-years ago, that persist to this day.

Please help to get the story into the public forum!

History is not what happened, it’s what people think happened. Narratives shape the present and, given the issues we face today, it is vital that the true facts are fed into the forum of public opinion. Please help us do this!

Please tell your friends and acquaintances about the fight against eugenics 100-years ago. Share these articles with them and read Exterminating Poverty (even if you cannot afford the book, you can read the first seven chapters free of charge in the preview).

Mark Sutherland
Curator, hallidaysutherland.com and exterinatingpovertybook.com
Author (with Neil Sutherland) of Exterminating Poverty: The true story of the eugenic plan to get rid of the poor and the Scottish doctor who fought against it.