I was very pleased to read a positive review of Exterminating Poverty in The Ampleforth Journal.

How population growth and poverty interrelate remains hotly contested. This absorbing study of a landmark 1923 libel case between contraception enthusiast Marie Stopes and Dr Halliday Sutherland vividly depicts a culture in turmoil – channelled through the ordered passion of a lawsuit.

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In Exterminating Poverty, the defendant’s grandsons, Mark and Neil Sutherland, vividly revive clashing popular, legal and medical positions on birth control, skilfully highlighting widespread assumptions that contraception was an obvious social benefit. In Stopes’ words this would: ‘furnish security from conception to [the] racially diseased, already overburdened with children, or in any specific way unfitted for parenthood.’ Dissenters were readily cast as unenlightened reactionaries.

While the story propagated by Dr Stopes and her followers cast Dr Sutherland as the “unenlightened reactionary” in 1923, the fact is that anyone who believes that story today is the unenlightened one.

The issues that arose in 1923 are still current today. If ever the distinction between a social good and a social evil was clearly delineated (and I would argue not), the line has become increasingly indistinct with the rapid adaptation of new technologies. Accordingly, the book is for all those who are interested in the history of these matters, regardless of where they stand on those issues in the debate.

You can read the review by clicking here (it’s on page 59) and buy a copy of Exterminating Poverty here.

Mark Sutherland,
Curator, hallidaysutherland.com

markhsutherland

Mark H Sutherland is a facilitator and executive coach who lives in Sydney.

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