The proposal to establish a special dispensary arose from discussions in the Margaret Street Hospital for Consumption in 1909 and on 22 November 1910 the St. Marylebone Dispensary for the Prevention of Consumption opened at 15 Allsop Place N.W. The report of the Committee concluded with a statement which indicated that Dr Sutherland’s views on the hereditary/environment nature/nurture seed/soil of tuberculosis had shifted towards the latter:

“The Committee would draw attention to the results recorded in the concluding section of Dr. Sutherland’s very valuable report. Some of this is novel and therefore particularly worthy of attention. The diagram showing the immense preponderance of tuberculous cases amongst the contacts in houses where there is an open or infectious consumptive, over those where the patient is non-infectious, is of especial significance.”

It was this view that put him at odds with the hereditarian mandate of eugenics.

Dr Halliday Sutherland wrote much of the rest of the report and its pages contain his data and analysis. Part IV (page 49) concerns the Regent’s Park Bandstand School. On page 30, the report reflects Sutherland’s view as to the cause of Tuberculosis:

“Tuberculosis is a social question, merging into the darker field of poverty. Where there is overcrowding, underfeeding, and want, with their concomitants of apathy and indifference to the essential principles of hygiene, there the disease finds its easiest victims and plays most havoc. Its greatest stronghold is in the one-roomed and the two-roomed house of what one might call the casual working man, the man of varying occupations, often unemployed, frequently assisted by Churches, charities, and the rates, raising a family of five or six children on an average wage of 15/- to 25/- per week and always withing forty-eight hours of the frontier of destitution. Should one of the thousands living within this circle become tuberculous, he cannot afford to pay for such medical attention and skill as he should receive.”

In July 1912, Sir James Barr gave the President’s address at the 80th Conference of the British Medical Association. In “What are we? What are we doing here? Whence do we come and whither do we go?”, he urged doctors to consider the “racial” consequences of their work.

“Some of the greatest advances in modern times have been with regard to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and as prevention is generally looked upon as more important than cure the part played by medical officers of health must become more prominent. The improvements which they have effected in sanitation and in the segregation of disease have been of great advantage to individuals, but it is very doubtful whether their efforts have been equally beneficial to the race. We are kept constantly informed of the number of lives which they have saved, or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, of the number of deaths which they have prevented, but thev wisely never attempt to trot out the individuals whose lives they are supposed to have saved. Their work is purely environmental, and the only lives which they save are those of susceptible individuals whose resisting power is low and who have not been infected. Once a person has been infected his recovery depends on his own innate powers and on medical treatment. They have largely succeeded in abolishing cholera, typhus, and typhoid fever by getting rid of the sources of infection and thus limiting the incidence of those diseases; but they have in no way added to the immunity of the race or lessened the susceptibilitv of the individual. With measles, scarlet fever, and whooping-cough and influenza there has been less success, but from the general experience of those diseases by our race, it seems that Nature has gradually established a use-acquirement, and consequently the virulence and fatality of these diseases is becoming much less. Notwithstanding all sanitary improvements, the incidence of diphtheria has actually increased, but by antitoxic treatment the fatality has been greatly lessened. If we could onlv abolish the tuberele bacillus in these islands we would get-rid of tuberculous disease, but we should at the same time raise up a race peculiarly susceptible to this infection — a race of hothouse plants which would not flourish in any other environment. We would thus increase at an even greater rate than we are doing at present, nervous instability, the numbers of insane and feeble-minded. Nature, on the other hand, weeds out those who have not got the innate power of recovery from disease, and by means of the tubercle bacillus and other pathogenic organisms she frequently does this before the reproductive age, so that a cheek is put on the multiplication of idiots and the feeble-minded. Nature’s methods are thus of advantage to the race rather than to the individual.”

The significance of the speech is that it reveals the influence of the eugenic agenda on the medical profession and, in particular, to tuberculosis.

The Soil and the Seed in Tuberculosis appeared in the British Medical Journal on 23 November 1912. In it, Dr Sutherland used language and metaphors that reflected Sir James Barr’s President’s speech given early in the year. In it, he announced that consumption was primarily a disease caused by infection, not heredity. He concluded: “it is not heredity which determines whether the children of consumptives will develop the disease, but the existence of certain immediate factors which are under our control.”

Dr Sutherland gave this address was given in King George’s Hall, Central London Y.M.C.A. on 4 September 1917. In it, he described eugenicists as “race-breeders with the souls of cattle-breeders” and identified them as an obstacle to the cure and eradication of tuberculosis.

The National Birth Rate Commission was not (in spite of its name) a governmental body. It was formed to examine “the extreme and persistent fall of the legitimate birth-rate in the United Kingdom, and the causes and prevention of the illegitimate birth-rate” and related matters. Dr Stopes’ testimony starts on page 242; on page 133 she advocates of the sterelization of “hopelessly bad cases, bad through inherent disease, or drunkeness or character.” Note that tuberculosis was considered to be an “inherent” disease, in other words, caused by the inherent genetic qualities of the person rather than infection in their environment.

The document is also of general interest because it features many of the prominent names of the era – Sidney Webb, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mrs Bramwell Booth – giving their views on this important issue.

The Tenets of the C.B.C. outlined the aims of the Society for Constructive Birth-Control and Racial Progress. Tenet 16 summarised the aims as follows:

Published in 1922, Birth Control contained the defamatory words that led to a writ from Marie Stopes and which were at the heart of the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial (1923-24). This particular copy was used and marked up by Lord Chief Justice Hewart during the High Court trial.

Published in 1922, Birth Control contained the defamatory words that led to a writ from Marie Stopes and which were at the heart of the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial (1923-24). This particular copy was used and marked up by Lord Chief Justice Hewart during the High Court trial.

The House of Lords was the supreme legal authority in Britain in 1924. Following the trial in the High Court (February/March 1923) and the decision of the Court of Appeal (July 1924), the judgement of the House of Lords settled the libel dispute between Dr Marie Stopes and Dr Halliday Sutherland once and for all.

This document is extremely useful in that it summarises the circumstances of the case and the iteration of the legal process in the lower courts. Two links have been provided below on the basis that Uniset provided the complete judgement and vLex provided the judgement, albeit behind a paywall to non-subscribers (as at 31 December 2025).

On 21st July 1931 Major Archibald Church M.P. (Lab) rose to introduce a bill for the sterelization of mental defectives. Church admitted that the measure was “… in advance of public opinion” and that, if it were adopted, it would be “merely a first step… before bringing in a Bill for the compulsory sterilization of the unfit.”

The significance of the speech shows how advanced the eugenic agenda was in Britain in the 1930s.

In September 1968, Faith Schenk and A.S. Parkes co-authored The Activities of the Eugenics Society.

The significance of the document is that it details how the Eugenics Society dealt with the bequest from Marie Stopes (on her death in 1958 she bequeathed her clinics to the Eugenics Society).

Under the Foundation’s management the Memorial Clinic has flourished, and each year since 1961 surplus funds have accumulated ofwhich part have been made available for the general purposes of the Eugenics Society, and part used for research projects. The Foundation initiated the first domiciliary birth control project to be carried out in London and pioneered the advisory centres for young people. It also organized for overseas nurses a training course in modern contraceptive methods which has become a regular part of the Clinic’s facilities; six courses are now held annually. The number of patients attending the Clinic has increased to such an extent that there is now a long waiting list, but it is planned to provide more doctor sessions as soon as possible. The special services available include diagnostic tests, advice on marital difficulties and on termination of pregnancy.
Re-orientation, 1957-1963
Early in 1957, Dr. Blacker, then Honorary Secretary, drew up a memorandum entitled “The Eugenics Society’s Future”, for consideration at a Special Meeting of Council on 1st May 1957. The stated aim of this memorandum was to draw attention to recent losses in Fellowship and Membership, to suggest that the losses were partly attributable to the lack of a positive policy and to make suggestions for the future. The table accompanying the memorandum showed that the number of Fellows and Members of all categories had decreased from high-water mark of 768 in 1932 to 456 in 1956. Dr. Blacker further pointed
out that two recruiting campaigns since 1946 had had only limited success and had produced the interesting generalization that the products of recruiting campaigns do not retain membership for very long. Dr. Blacker went on to discuss three possible policies for the future:
(a) that the Society should pursue eugenic ends by less obvious means, that is by a policy of crypto-eugenics, which was apparently proving successful with the US Eugenics Society;
(b) that the Society should concentrate on the eugenic aspects of current problems and should campaign for the control of immigration, and for a reduction in the total population of Great Britain;
(c) that the Society should change its constitution and adapt itself to a diminishing membership and the possession of substantial resources by becoming a Trust, Council or Foundation, which would be able to do most of what the Society was already doing but more effectively.
Unfortunately, this valuable document received no adequate attention at the Council meeting on 1st May but a spark had been struck, which finally caused flames on 17th making the following suggestions for re-orientation and reforming the Society:
(a) The Society should make use of one of the organizations specializing in public opinion surveys to obtain some concrete information about what the educated public thinks about eugenics, and that until such information is available the Society should curtail its missionary work and, specifically postpone the broadsheet programme.
(b) The Society’s activities in crypto-eugenics should be pursued vigorously, and specifically that the Society should increase its monetary support of the FPA and the IPPF and should make contact with the Society for the Study of Human Biology, which already has a strong and active membership, to find out if any relevant projects are contemplated with which the Eugenics Society could assist.
(c) The Society should seek opportunities to expand this [the research] side of its activities, and specifically that efforts should be made to bring about more contact between the Society and laboratories engaged in relevant research.
(d) The Society should change its name to “The Galton Society”.
(e) The Society should take steps to amend Article 26 by adding to the last line “up to a maximum period of 6 years’ consecutive service as an Honorary Officer”.
This memorandum evoked some hard discussion. Suggestion (a) was accepted; the Gallup organization was called in to make a survey and the broadsheets project discontinued; (b) and (c) were agreed in a general way. The idea of changing the name of the Society to a less evocative one was shelved because of the internal emotional and external legal difficulties it might raise.

Madeleine Simms delivered the Marie Stopes Memorial Lecture in 1975. In The compulsory pregnancy lobby – then and now she stated:

“The League’s other enthusiasm was for fostering marriages ” at the best age for reproduction.” To this end, it advocated giving young people furniture vouchers and other ” marriage gifts ” as Hitler was doing in Germany, with apparent success since the German birth rate was rising. Indeed, the Nazis were held in some esteem by the League, particularly by one of its founders and most active members, Dr Halliday Sutherland, a Catholic convert who had been involved in the libel action against Marie Stopes in 1923. He called attention to the heroic efforts of Hitler and Mussolini to increase the birth rates of the white races, and he commended the Nazi Penal Code of November, 1936 which made ” public ridicule of marriage or of maternity, and all propaganda in favour of birth control and abortion ” into criminal offences. Even after the war he is still to be found advocating the death penalty for contraceptive manufacturers: ” If saboteurs deserve hanging, so also do they ” (Sutherland,1947). He naturally also held Nazi views about women. Education for girls should not fit them for careers, but for breeding, or, as he put it more delicately, for “looking for a home”. Pope Pius XII had stated that a woman’s place was in the home, and that society must find its cure in women.” If anyone doubted the Pope’s wisdom, said Dr Sutherland, “then let him make an anthology of what the greatest men have written in gratitude to their mothers.” Neither the Pope nor Dr Sutherland remark on what the greatest women have written in gratitude to their fathers.

The significance of the speech is that it revealed how polemic distorted the issues arising from the Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial. Simms assertions that Dr Sutherland have been repeated here and have been rebutted here and here.