From the back cover:
Britain, 1921: A eugenic society was founded to create a race of well-formed, well-endowed, beautiful men and women. The Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress aimed to increase the offspring of the wise, healthy and well-to-do while reducing the progeny of the poor, weak and unemployed. It lobbied Parliament to pass laws to compulsorily sterelise “undesirables” and set up a clinic to achieve the “reduction of the birth rate at the wrong part and increase of the birth rate at the right end of the social scale.”
The founder, Marie Stopes, was supported by some of the most eminent persons of her time: J.M. Keynes, Lady Constance Lytton, Bertrand Russell, G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, as well as members of the medical and political establishments. Sir James Barr, ex-president of the British Medical Association, congratulated her for inaugurating “… a great movement which I hope will eventually get rid of our C3 population and exterminate poverty. The only way to raise an A1 population is to breed them.”
Halliday Sutherland was a Scottish doctor in the forefront of the fight against tuberculosis, a disease of poverty that killed 70,000 Britons each year. It led him to speak out against eugenics and, later, Dr Stopes when he accused her of “exposing the poor to experiment.” He condemned her work saying that if children were denied to the poor and a privilege of the rich, Britain would become a servile state. Stopes sued him for libel. Their acrimonious legal battle ran fo rover two years and went all the way to the House of Lords.
Exterminating Poverty is the true story of a Scottish doctor’s brave stand against Britain’s eugenic establishment, told for the very first time.
What reviewers have said:
“This absorbing study of a landmark 1923 libel case between contraception enthusiast Marie Stopes and Dr Halliday Sutherland vividly depicts a culture in turmoil – channeled through the ordered passion of a lawsuit… In Exterminating Poverty, the defendant’s grandsons Mark and Neil Sutherland vividly revive popular, legal and medical positions on birth control, skillfully highlighting widespread assumptions that contraception was an obvious social benefit. In Stopes’ words this would: ‘furnish security from conception to [the] racially diseased, already overburdened with children, or in any specific way unfitted for parenthood.’ Dissenters were readily cast as unenlightened reactionaries.” Fr Philip Rozario OSB in the Ampleforth Journal (Volume 125, page 59).
“I won’t spoil the read by revealing how Dr. Sutherland’s trial culminates but I can heartily recommend the book his grandsons have compiled and the work they have done in honouring his memory and his brave and principled stand against the sociopathic elitist philosophy which as it ran its course caused so much harm and suffering. Dr. Sutherland’s own medical conviction combined with his sensitivity to the ethical aspects of eugenics and his courage in standing up for both are salutary and provide timely reminders of what is both necessary and possible in facing down similar challenges to life and liberty today.” Sir Steven Wilkinson, Good & Prosper.
“A horrific exploration of how close the United Kingdom came – with the support of the great and the good (including leading politicians) – to enacting Nazi style policies. The timing of this book, when the world is facing the issue of racism and its various roots, could not be better and should be required reading for every GCSE school student, everyone doing A-Levels, and every student at university as well as their teachers and professors.” Phelim Mcintyre on Amazon.
“The story of how Halliday Sutherland was sued for libel by Marie Stopes in the 1920s for pointing out how she was experimenting on the poor with her methods of birth control is a story that has needed to be told and is now told well. The author is a descendant of the Doctor Sutherland and therefore at risk of being accused of natural family bias. To counteract this he has provided copious excerpts from the trial transcripts. This has the added bonus of helping one feel really present in the courtroom.” Dermot Grenham on Amazon.
“Excellent new book, just become available… it’s one of those ‘must reads'”. St George Educational Trust.
“A wonderfully clear and readable account of the libel trial Marie Stopes vs Dr Halliday Sutherland. Dr Sutherland’s experience treating TB patients had exposed him to the fact that some considered this disease a blessed release for poor and supposedly physically inferior patients. TB was a “friend to the race” opined one doctor. Dr Sutherland sought to expose the overtly eugenic aims of Marie Stopes’ clinic “exposing the poor to experiment” in his words. She sued him for libel and he was arraigned in the High Court in 1923. Over two years later the case progressed to the House of Lords (Britain’s highest court then). Sutherland won this legal dispute, but the facts are not in the general forum of public opinion, although it’s notable that Stopes’ full name has been removed from the title of Marie Stopes International. Nevertheless, events this year with the gene-splicing Nobel Prize as well as the highlighting of the eugenic opinions expressed by two prime ministerial aides should focus the mind on the issues raised by Sutherland and the case he fought.” Julie on Amazon.
“Sutherland’s Exterminating Poverty covers the trial, with transcriptions of cross-examinations and testimonies of both the plaintiff and the defendant and their supporters. The record leaves no room to doubt the determination of Stopes’ supporters, on the evidence of their own words, to bring about an improvement in the quality of human breeding, by compulsion if necessary.” David Daintree in the New Oxford Review.
This book is a must read for anybody interested in learning how in the early part of the last century a group scientists looked to engineer the poor and defenceless part of our society to their detriment. Had doctor Sutherland not taken that community of scientists to task in the House of Lords the world may have turned out a very different way had they had their chance to put their beliefs and desires in place.
“It is humbling to know there citizens like doctor Sutherland who are prepared to risk everything to defend the defenceless, and we should be grateful for all members of our society like him who will stand up for the less fortunate than ourselves.” David on Amazon.
“Highly recommend to anybody who is looking into medical history, British history, Catholic history, or anybody who wants to feed their sceptical streak by indirectly seeing some of the early institutes, players and non-profits who would pave the way for the NGO industrial complex of the modern day which have learned to according to their own words recorded in this book pursue their agendas by ‘less obvious means'”. Nik on Amazon.