British Eugenics and Birth Control Before World War Two

Abstract

Eugenics is the science of breeding well, or rather, the science of improving the inborn qualities of the population. This science was founded by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century and continued by his acolytes through the British Eugenics Society. The British eugenics movement, embodied in the aforementioned Society, was primarily a movement of advocacy. Contrary to numerous historical interpretations, the British eugenics movement's raison d'être was the instillation of eugenic values in Britons for the health of all in society. The British eugenics movement was not fundamentally concerned with class, but race. It was also benign in comparison to many continental forms of eugenics. The modus operandi of the movement was the dissemination of propaganda and educational materials (literature, posters, handbooks, heredity charts, etc.) at local birth control clinics with whom the British eugenicists had allied themselves. Thus, birth control clinics became the vehicle by which the British eugenicists would attain their desideratum: pan-racial enhancement. For the British eugenicists, this desideratum would not change regardless of context, be it domestic or colonial. The exact methodology of the British eugenicists was indeed malleable per geographic context, but their goal of racial enhancement for the welfare of posterity was not.