Eugenics is a theory that was very popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and it still has some adherents today. It was allied to the theory of Social Darwinism whose supporters argued that by socially ‘engineering? or manipulating the human species it would be possible to improve social conditions. Eugenicists took this further, arguing that those who were ‘degenerative? or ‘defective? in some way should not be allowed to breed or interbreed as their offspring would inevitably degrade the quality of what they argued was ‘the race?. Unless breeding was limited, they argued, the human gene pool would be weakened through uncontrolled breeding, leading to the swamping of the higher types in society.
Poverty, ignorance, mental defectiveness as well as lack of moral values were seen as evidence that British society needed to purify its genetic stock. Great emphasis was placed on parenthood and procreation.
The influence of the eugenics movement in the UK was strong and had a particularly pernicious effect on the care of children with learning disabilities. Ideas based on notions of racial purity led to demands for compulsory sterilisation of young people with learning disabilities and the application of a condemnatory morality that saw unmarried mothers locked away in mental handicap institutions like Lennox Castle Hospital. It also saw young boys and young men being locked up for minor misdemeanours (Borsay, 2005).
These ideas sustained segregation as a form of provision of care: segregation from society and segregation of the sexes within institutions.
(From Smith, 2005)The quotations below are from people and debates in the early 1900s about ‘mental deficiency? as learning disability was then described. They are examples of attitudes that influenced policies at that time.
(Churchill, a proponent of forcible sterilisation, in a private letter to Prime Minister Asquith at the time of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1904, quoted in Ponting, 1992, p. 23)The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded classes, coupled with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a race danger. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.
(Mary Dendy, proponent of segregation, writing in 1910, quoted in Jackson, 1996, p. 166)(It is) not the very severe cases which are the most dangerous: it is the mild cases, which are capable of being well veneered, so as to look, for a time at any rate, almost normal, against which there is most need to protect society.
(Virginia Woolf, in Bell, 1977)On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. The first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look twice at, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; & then one realised that every one in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed. - Diary, Saturday, 9th January, 1915.
(Report of the Wood Committee on Mental Deficiency, 1929, quoted in Ryan and Thomas, 1987, p. 108.)Let us assume that we could segregate as a separate community all the families in the country containing mental defectives of the primary amentia[*] type. We should find that we had collected among them a most interesting social group. It would include everyone who has extensive practical experience of social service would readily admit, a much larger proportion of insane persons, epileptics, paupers, criminals (especially recidivists), unemployables, habitual slum dwellers, prostitutes, inebriates and other social inefficients than would a group of families not containing mental defectives. The overwhelming majority of the families thus collected will belong to a section of the community which we propose to term the ‘social problem? or ‘subnormal group?...If we are to prevent the racial disaster of mental deficiency we must deal only with the mentally defective persons but with the whole subnormal group from which the majority of them come...The relative fertility of this (subnormal) group is greater than that of normal persons.
*While dementia means being ‘out of one?s mind? amentia was used as another word for ‘mental deficiency? or a lack of mind.
Listed below are online resources that offer information about eugenics today. You can either visit them or read the extracts in the PDF provided in the link below.
View documentFuture Generations, www.eugenics.net/ (Accessed 10 April 2008)
‘Virginia apologises for eugenics policy?, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1965811.stm (Accessed 10 April 2008)
‘Call for re-think on eugenics?, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1952449.stm (Accessed 10 April 2008)
‘Why this mother should be allowed to have her disabled daughter sterilised?, Meg Henderson, Daily Mail, www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486493&in_page_id=1770 (Accessed 10 April 2008)
‘Revolutionary foetus sex test raises eugenics fears?, James Langton, Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/10/wfoetus10.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/10/ixworld.html (Accessed 10 April 2008)
‘Of course a deaf couple want a deaf child?, Dominic Lawson, The Independent, www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-of-course-a-deaf-couple-want-a-deaf-child-794001.html (Accessed 10 April 2008)
Bell, A.O. (ed.) (1977) The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 1, 1915?1919, London, The Hogarth Press, p.13.
Borsay, A. (2005) Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Jackson, M. (1996) ‘Institutional provision for the feeble-minded in Edwardian England: Sandlebridge and the scientific morality of permanent care? in Digby, A. and Wright, D. (eds) From Idiocy to Mental Deficicency, London, Routledge.
Ponting, C. (1992) ‘Churchill?s plan for racial purity?, Guardian, 20 June 1992.
Ritchie, A.L. (1936) The Book of Lennox Castle, Glasgow, City and Counties Publishing Co. Ltd; also available online at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sjay.macl/BookOfLennoxCastle/ (Accessed 10 April 2008).
Ryan, J. and Thomas, F. (1987) The Politics of Mental Handicap, London, Free Association Books.
Smith, R. (2005) ‘Human rights, anti-discrimination and disability in Britain?, School for Policy Studies Working Paper Series, Paper number 9, University of Bristol, School for Policy Studies; also available online at www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/information/working_papers.shtml (Accessed 10 April 2008).
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