The Story of John M’Neil (1911). Introduction More than a decade before the 1923 Stopes v Sutherland trial, Dr Halliday Sutherland produced one of the most remarkable — and little-known — innovations in British medicine: the country’s first public health cinema education film, The Story of John M’Neil (1911). Made while Sutherland was Medical Officer…
Dr Halliday Sutherland’s religious journey Dr Sutherland’s religious journey was outlined in Exterminating Poverty: Born in 1882, he had been “brought up a Scots Presbyterian” but was by 1904 “in theory an agnostic and in practice an atheist”. On the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Church of Scotland: “In August 1914 there…
Introduction In the early 1920s, Marie Stopes distributed contraceptive devices under two striking brand names: “Prorace” and “Racial.” To many modern readers, these labels appear jarring—yet in Stopes’s time, they were meant to be reassuring, signalling scientific respectability and alignment with the fashionable goal of “improving the race.” These brand names were not incidental nor…
Introduction In early 20th-century Britain, two powerful forces shaped public health policy: the fight against tuberculosis, and the rise of the eugenics movement. These forces eventually collided—scientifically, politically, and ethically. The dispute was not merely theoretical. It defined how society understood disease, poverty, heredity, and the responsibilities of the state. This collision played a central…