Authors: Edwin Black
Sterilization was now more imperative than ever. By early 1929, the society mounted a fresh campaign to pass a national sterilization act. In mid-February of 1929, they sent a petition to Minister of Health Neville Chamberlain, a future prime minister. “Segregation as a remedy is failing,” the resolution advised, “principally owing to the increasing number of deficients and the enormous costs.”
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Within sixty days, a preliminary sterilization bill was drafted and circulated. It proposed coercive sterilization for those certified as feebleminded or about to be released from an institution; it also mandated broad marriage prohibitions, gave the state the power to unmarry couples, and criminalized the concealment of sterilization from a spouse. A postscripted suggestion declared, “If ever we have a proper system of registration, each person would have a card (or some equivalent), and on this card [eugenic] events, such as cancellation of marriage should be entered.” Sir Frederick Willis had assembled the draft law almost two years earlier and passed it along to the society with one condition. “Should you care to use this draft, I should prefer that it should not be known that I have had anything to do with it; it does not necessarily represent my view.”
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Eugenic stalwarts began propagandizing in earnest. Lord Riddell created a position paper for the Medico-Legal Society, a copy of which was duly forwarded to Chamberlain. Citing the many billions devoted to caring for the unfit, Riddell cautioned, “Unless we are careful, we shall be eaten out of house and home by lunatics and mental deficients.” Riddell then quoted Harvard eugenicist Edward East. “Professor East says ‘We are getting a larger and larger quantity of human dregs at the bottom of our national vats.’” Assuring that vasectomy did not reduce sex drive, Riddell asserted, “This is confirmed by replies sent to questionnaires put to 75 normal, intelligent, mostly professional American men who had undergone voluntary sterilization…. The dangers for men are negligible, and for women, in light of the Californian experience, not very serious. “
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Indeed, Riddell emphasized that the proposed British law was efficacious because, “In California, where the law is similar to that now advocated, the results have been highly satisfactory.”
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A Committee for Legalising Sterilization was formed in about 1930, and it began proffering intellectual position papers and suggestions for a draft law fused with layers of standard eugenic dogma. The phrase “voluntary sterilization” was employed to make it more palatable to the British public. The bill also provided so-called “safeguards” that would allow court-appointed guardians to make the decision for the individual-which technically constituted a voluntary decision. One report from the Committee for Legalising Sterilization repeatedly pointed to the 8,515 compulsory sterilizations performed throughout America, and especially California, as precedents. The CLS explained that California had performed 5,820 surgeries up until January 1, 192 8, and had increased that number to 6,255 by January 1, 1929. These procedures were largely recorded as “voluntary.” The committee’s report explained, “In the California institutions, the defectives have been made to feel that by asking for sterilization, they are behaving in a laudable and socially useful manner. “
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Eugenicists also capitalized on legitimate economic fears arising from years of crippling domestic strikes and the worldwide depression. Lord Riddell had challenged both the Medico-Legal Society and the Ministry of Health with visceral economic rhetoric. He calculated that the annual cost of caring for a growing population of the unfit could skyrocket to well above £16 million. “One is appalled by the prospect of multiplying these vast colonies of the lost, and … the injustice … of erecting splendid new buildings to house lunatics and mental defectives, when thousands of sound citizens are unable to secure decent dwellings at a moderate rent.” He hammered, “As it is, the abnormal citizen receives far more care and attention than the normal one…. Consider an alternative solution-namely sterilization. “
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In 1930 the society launched another attempt to create a consensus of sorts among welfare organizations, the medical establishment and the British populace. A sudden endowment helped enormously. The society’s financial problems disappeared when a wealthy Australian sheep rancher who periodically visited England (but spent most of his time at his villa in Nice, France) endowed the society. His name was Henry Twitchen. A bizarre and diseased man whom society elders called a “queer being,” Twitchen had become enamored with eugenics in the early twenties and had promised to bequeath his fortune to the society. He died in 1929. Although his fortune had shrunk by that time, the £70,000 he donated changed everything for the organization now known as the Eugenics Society. One society official happily remembered that the money suddenly made the organization “rich.”
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Money meant travel expenses, pamphlet printing, better orchestrated letter-writing campaigns and the other essentials of political crusades.
Lidbetter’s study, for whatever it was worth, was still unpublished. To compensate for their total lack of scientific evidence other than the American offerings, which even then were becoming increasingly discredited, in mid-1930 the society reached out to Germany, where expanding eugenic research was producing prodigious volumes of literature. German eugenicists were only too happy to forward packets of materials, including a five-page explication of the existing German literature on feeblemindedness along with four reprints. One of these essays, “Psychiatric Indications for Sterilization,” was translated by the society and published as a pamphlet. Most of all, the German studies reflected the control groups that the statisticians demanded. One essay explained, “My procedure is to ascertain the number of psychopaths a) in an affected family, b) in families carefully selected … [and] a sample of the average population.”
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Packets of documentation from Germany did not prevent Hodson from expressing her continuing admiration for American eugenics. On June 11, 1930, Hodson wrote to her counterpart at the American Eugenics Society that her recent review of “the wide and far-seeing development of the task in the United States” only reinforced her belief in the primacy of America’s movement. “I used to say, when asked,” Hodson added, “that I thought probably Germany was taking Eugenics most seriously, but I am quite sure that now the American Eugenics Society leads the world.” British efforts, Hodson admitted, “are not covering even one-third of the field of your committees.”
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Hodson’s continuing appreciation for American eugenics was understandable. Throughout the first half of 1930, Hodson had corresponded with Davenport in preparation for a gathering of international eugenic scientists in September. Davenport would serve as president of the conference. In February of 1930, Hodson wrote him for approval of conference dates and discussion topics, and then asked if she could print the program in both French and English for distribution. Hodson hoped that Davenport’s latest views on race mixing would “wake up our Government people…. “ She added, “There is another point of importance for England in this connection-our anthropologists are not working much in unison…. [The conference’s work] might be a focus in getting their activities combined…. “
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In March of 1930 she wrote Davenport asking if any good films could be brought over from the ERO to screen at the conference. “Our English films I should offer only in the last resort as we are not really proud of them.” A few days later, Davenport wrote back answering Hodson’s cascade of questions, approving or rejecting detail after detail. In April, Hodson sent a letter to colleagues explaining, “Dr Davenport hopes that this year, the American interest in standardisation of human measurements may be linked up with the work proceeding in that direction in England…. “
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In May, Davenport mailed Hodson another long list of approvals and declinations of her ideas. Typical was his review of her draft letters, which Davenport had to approve. “I think the draft of Letter #2 is to be preferred to #1. Of course, it is much weaker than
#1
but may serve as a penultimate. Something like your draft
#1
might serve as an ultimate and then we can prepare an ultissimum, if that has no effect.”
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Davenport was accustomed to treating Hodson like a secretary, not a general secretary.
A month later, however, Davenport cancelled his trip altogether, saying he was suddenly in poor health and in need of a long rest. It was after this unexpected cancellation that Hodson finally turned to the Germans for information, in July of 1930, since German eugenicists would now be running the conference in Davenport’s absence.
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That summer Britain first confronted American-style eugenics. Dr. Lionel L. Westrope was the doctor at the High Teams institution located in London’s Gateshead district. He impressed Ministry of Health officials as “an enthusiast on the question of the sterilisation of the unfit and was inclined to mix up the therapeutic and sociological aspects of these cases.” Around June of 1930, supervisors discovered that Westrope was castrating young men. He admitted to having performed two in May of 1930, and a third on an unknown date.
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William George Wilson had been admitted as a diagnosed imbecile to the Gateshead mental ward about a decade earlier. Later, Wilson was described as “thoroughly degenerate … extremely dirty and absolutely indifferent as to his personal appearance.” Wilson also masturbated excessively, so much so “that there was actually hemorrhage from the penis.” His mother reportedly caught the boy masturbating once and asked for help. Westrope castrated Wilson, then twenty-two years old, and reported, “the improvement was wonderful. Not only did the patient cease to masturbate, but, three months after the operation, he began to take some interest in his appearance…. “ But a year later Wilson died, supposedly of pneumonia.
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Nonetheless, Westrope was encouraged. In February of 1930, an eight-year-old boy named Henry Lawton was brought to Gateshead for being an “epileptic imbecile, unable to talk” and for suffering what Westrope called “fits.” After admission, Henry was discovered writhing on his stomach, as though in a “sexual connection.” When staffers rolled him over they found his penis to be erect. No determination was made as to whether the writhing was a “fit,” an epileptic seizure or just ordinary prepubescent activity. On May 7, 1930, the boy was castrated.
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Five days later, fifteen-year-old Richard Pegram was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman. The record stated that Pegram “pushed up against her and said that he was ‘horny. ‘“ When asked to explain, Pegram flippantly replied, “Well, I had the ‘horn.’” Police immediately brought the young man to Gateshead. Within days, he too was castrated.
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When the Ministry of Health learned of Westrope’s illegal surgeries, a flurry of anxious memos and reports were exchanged as astonished officials tried to find some way to justify what they themselves knew was criminal castration. Westrope claimed he had parental consent. Officials bluntly rejected this assertion. One wrote, “Consent or no consent, the surgeon is guilty of unlawful wounding … and in the case of [the] death, manslaughter.” As officials passed the reports back and forth, some of them scribbled in the margins that two of the boys had not even been certified as mentally defective. One wrote, “This was NOT a case of certified mental defect.” Another penned in the margin, “Not a certified case.” Hence there was no possibility of arguing therapeutic necessity.
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Westrope himself simply claimed that it had not occurred to him that the procedure might be illegal. But in fact anyone associated with the surgeries might have been held civilly or criminally responsible, including Board of Control officials themselves. The Board of Control had custody over the boys. On August 1, 1930, facing the prospect of criminal prosecution, Board of Control Chairman Sir Lawrence Brock wrote a letter to a Ministry of Health attorney providing all the details and admitting that the boys had been castrated “as the result of sexual misbehavior.” Brock then added, “If sterilization is to be carried out by Medical Officers of Poor Law Institutions it would in any case seem to be preferable to adopt the American method [of vasectomy] and not resort to the extremer course of actual castration.”
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The matter was hushed up as some sort of therapeutic necessity or medical oversight. Westrope was not prosecuted and remained at his post at Gateshead. He was, however, required to submit an immediate letter of apology, and to promise not to do it again. On October 14, Westrope, writing on Gateshead Borough letterhead, penned a short note to Ministry of Health officials: “I now hereby give an undertaking, that I will not perform the operation again, until such time as the operation may be legalized.” Two days later, a supervising doctor came by and asked Westrope to sign the note, which he did. Nine years later, Westrope was still presiding at Gateshead, and even sat as a merit judge in awarding gold medals to ambulance crews who distinguished themselves by promptly delivering patients to the institutions.
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The campaign to legalize sterilization continued in 1930, Westrope’s misconduct notwithstanding. However, despite efforts to convince policy-makers, the British people simply could not stomach the notion. Labor was convinced that the plan was aimed almost exclusively at the poor. Catholics believed that eugenics, breeding and sterilization were all offenses against God and the Church, and indeed in some cases a form of murder.
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With a sense that eugenic marriage restrictions and annulments, as well as sterilization, would soon be enacted in Britain, the Vatican spoke out. On December 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI issued a wide-ranging encyclical on marriage; in it he condemned eugenics and its fraudulent science. “That pernicious practice must be condemned,” he wrote, “which closely touches upon the natural right of man to enter matrimony but affects also in a real way the welfare of the offspring. For there are some who over solicitous for the cause of eugenics … put eugenics before aims of a higher order, and by public authority wish to prevent from marrying all those whom, even though naturally fit for marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would, through hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring. And more, they wish to legislate to deprive these of that natural faculty by medical action [sterilization] despite their unwillingness….
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