Dr Halliday Sutherland (1882-1960)

Corrections & Clarifications

There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation about Dr Sutherland, Marie Stopes and the Stopes v Sutherland 1923 libel trial online. Below are the corrections and clarifications that I have suggested over the years.

These articles were written as part of the “HGS-Watch” section of this website between 2014 and 2025. Some are written in the context of an anniversary or even that has now passed so the introductory paragraphs may appear dated. That said, they are still factually correct today.

The curator of this site began to correct and clarify the incorrect information about Dr Sutherland because they had become long-established and were accepted as fact. The aim has been to address substantive issues, not opinion or nuance.

Take for instance, The Trial of Marie Stopes, compiled and edited by Muriel Box. Strictly speaking, the title is wrong: Stopes brought the action so it was Halliday Sutherland who was tried, not Stopes. Then again, bringing an action for libel is known colloquially as “putting yourself on trial”. The introduction to the book begins “What crime did Marie Stopes commit?” Strictly speaking, Stopes was not in court accused of a crime, but then again, in Dr Sutherland’s defamatory words did say that “Bradlaugh was condemned to jail for a less serious crime.” Had these been the only statements, they might have been excused as metaphorical overstatements rather than assertions of fact and have passed without comment. When Box suggests the trial was a criminal matter and that that Stopes was facing jail, that’s when a correction and clarification was required.