Introduction
The Stopes v Sutherland libel trial (1923–24) was one of Britain’s most significant public debates about population control and eugenics. Yet today accounts of the trial are often simplified into a “Catholics against contraceptives” schema and Stopes’ eugenic agenda is downplayed (or even omitted!). This post explains what the trial was really about and why it continues to be important in our era.
A Eugenics Debate, Not a Moral One
Modern summaries often frame the case as a clash between:
- a feminist promoting contraceptives to grant reproductive choice to poor women, and
- religious opponents, in particular Roman Catholics.
This framing is historically inaccurate. The dispute centered on whether Stopes’ Mothers’ Clinic constituted the introduction of eugenic breeding in Britain, and whether Sutherland’s criticisms were true and legitimate comments on a public matter.
Professor Louise McIlroy, a key witness supporting Sutherland’s case, favoured the use of contraceptives and Sutherland’s main criticism of Stopes’ work was that, if children were “to be denied the poor as a privilege of the rich”, Britain would become a servile state (in other words, a place in which the poor had no societal role other than as workers).
Those who praise Stopes for giving women “reproductive choice” turn a blind eye to her advocating and campaigning for laws to compulsorily sterilize those she considered to be inferior.
So while some present Stopes v Sutherland as a fight between a feminist progressive and backward-looking religious patriarchs, we should let the facts get in the way of a good story. Historical accuracy is paramount.
What Led to the Trial
In 1922, Sutherland published Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine Against the Neo-Malthusians, in which he accused Stopes of:
“… exposing the poor to experiment.”
Stopes received an advance copy of the book but did not sue immediately.
Stopes’ husband Humphrey Roe said that they glanced at Sutherland’s book and found it to be “so badly written and so unconvincing an argument that [it] was not worth the trouble of reading. We looked at the index to see if either of our names were mentioned in connection with the Clinic and not finding them there threw the book down and it was not until some time later that we discovered the libellous passages which form the basis of this action.” The veracity of Roe’s statement should be tempered though by the fact that Birth Control did not include an index.
The correspondence between Stopes and her solicitor reveal rather than being reluctantly being drawn into litigation, Stopes was seeking to sue various people on both sides of the birth control debate. Stopes’ solicitor advised her against taking legal action. That said though, as a doctor and a Roman Catholic, Sutherland represented two communities that were (respectively) indifferent to and strongly opposed to her work.
At issue was whether Sutherland had a factual basis for his claim (the defence of truth or “justification”) and had expressed opinions that were fair comment on a public matter (the defence of “fair comment”).
Stopes asserted that Sutherland’s words were used in the sense of her performing surgical experiments on poor people. Sutherland countered that his meaning was in the sense of a social experiment, the results of which would not be known for many years hence. What the words actually meant was a matter for the jury.
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The Legal Journey
High Court (1923):
A jury and a judge found in favour of Sutherland.
Court of Appeal (1923):
Stopes won a 2–1 decision reversing the verdict of the High Court and the award of £100 in damages.
House of Lords (1924):
Sutherland appealed and won decisively (4–1). The judgment affirmed his right to criticise the eugenic nature of Stopes’ work.
Why the Case Matters Today
1. It exposes the eugenic framework behind Stopes’s early work
The trial records, the Tenets of the CBC, and Stopes’ own writings place her advocacy for birth control in its proper context within the eugenics movement. The case presents the issues and the debates, the arguments for and against, within the context of that era without being framed in the anachronistic modern narrative.
2. It reveals that the promulgation of contraceptives on the masses was not merely about reproductive choice, but about the improvement of British “racial stocks.”
In the 19-teens and 1920s, eugenics was a respectable science. In the current era, it is a pseudo-science which is vilified on the grounds of public health ethics, class politics, and coercive ideology. Modern summaries (and biographies of the proponents of eugenics) often omit eugenics or, as in the case of Stopes herself, make the ideology adjacent but otherwise unconnected to her birth control work. They are insepearble and the true story of the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial reveal a rich interesting history rather than the Manichaean story presented in a number of Stopes’ biographies.
3. It reveals how historical narratives shift over time
Following the implementation of the T4 program in 1930s Germany, the implications of eugenic became “on the nose”. Both the American and British eugenics societies adopted policies of “crypto-eugenics” (i.e. secret eugenics) to conceal the purpose of their work.
Crypto-eugenics was a policy that was consistently followed thereafter.
In Stopes era, talking about the racial degeneration and campaigning for “undesirables” be sterelized was acceptable in eugenic and Malthusian circles, though they did tone their message down in public. Biographers in the second half of the Twentieth Century were confronted by her clear statements of her intent. They obfuscated Stopes’ eugenic agenda and framed it to the then fashionable “sexual revolution” and “reproductive choice” which were narratives that were more acceptable to those times.
4. It has contemporary implications
Eugenics is alive and well today, albeit using vastly different language to 100 years ago and solving different problems. Biotechnologists have means at their disposal that their counterparts a century ago only dreamt about. In contemporary society, it is easy to believe that the horrors of the past would not recur. Yet eugenicists 100 years ago viewed themselves as the proponents of a science that would solve an urgent social problem that had been caused by removing man from nature. They did not regard themselves as “evil” (as perhaps later generations reading their pronouncements might have it). The geneticists of today and the eugenicists of 100 years ago are studying the same problem, albeit with different approaches and through separate filters and frameworks. The study of the eugenic issues revealed in the Stopes v Sutherland legal dispute help practitioners discern when medical and scientific matters stray into the political and social spheres.
Conclusion
The Stopes v Sutherland trial is a key episode in Britain’s medical and social history. Revisiting it helps restore the full historical context and ensures the debate is understood on its original terms.
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