In the first article I set out the evidence that demonstrated that the Mothers’ Clinic was a eugenic project that accorded with Marie Stopes’ scientific racism. In Part Two, I listed some of the techniques that obfuscate the evidence and the conclusions to be drawn from it. In this Third (and last) article, I speculate why writers have taken the approach they took.
Mental Furniture
When I began researching what would eventually become Exterminating Poverty, one of the longest processes was adjusting my “mental furniture.” By these I mean the narratives in your mind which are unobtrusive and unnoticeable in the day-to-day. Any new information acquired during the research process (sometimes large and bulky and sometimes drip-fed) is integrated: sometimes it fits and sometimes it doesn’t. As new narratives are formed, conflicts arise and it is at this point that one discovers the size and weight of existing narratives. They are hard to shift, in some cases because it is built-in and it takes time to move, shrink, reshape or throw away.
The point here is that the narratives surrounding Stopes, many of which were founded by Stopes herself, are well established and have been repeated many times over the last 100-years. They are, by that fact, hard to shift. Hopefully, Exterminating Poverty will assist those seeking the truth.
The Onion
I introduced the concept of “the onion” in the last article. The outer layers represent the easily accessible information about Stopes. The inner layers, which represent the obscure and less-accessable research, contains information that is entirely different (and often contradictory) to what is on the surface.
For example, Appendix 4 of Exterminating Poverty deals with the story of how Stopes, some years after the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial, visited Professor Ann Louise McIlroy in disguise. The denouement of the story is that McIlroy fitted Stopes with the cervical cap, the very same device of which she had been so critical during the trial. It’s a great story; it shows the ends to which the fearless Stopes would go to expose her enemies in general, and the hypocrisy of Professor McIlroy in particular. The problem with the story is that the key points on which it relies were fabricated.
The “surface layers” of the onion which assert that McIlroy fitted a cervical cap to Stopes:
- “Marie Stopes: Her Work and Her Play” (1924) by Aylmer Maude. The first edition of this book was published in 1924 as “The Authorized Life of Marie C. Stopes.”
- “Passionate Paradox” (1962) by Keith Briant.
- “Passionate Crusader” (1977) by Ruth Hall.
- “Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution” (1992) by June Rose.
- “Marie Stopes and Birth Control” (1977) by H.V. Stopes-Roe with Ian Scott.
- “Marie Stopes’ Sexual Revolution and the Birth Control Movement” (2018) by Marian Debenham.
The “inner layers” of the onion which assert that McIlroy did not fit a cervical cap to Stopes:
- “The Popularization of Birth Control Technology” (1998) by Peter Neushul, Technology and Culture (pages 265-6).
- “Exterminating Poverty: The true story of the eugenic plan to get rid of the poor and the Scottish doctor who fought against it.” (2020) by Mark H. Sutherland with Neil Sutherland.
One might suppose that Stopes’ own records would settle the matter, at least by providing her side of the story. This is not the case, however, because Stopes’ papers contain (at least) two inconsistent accounts, both written by Stopes herself! Hall and Rose base their accounts on an “autobiographical fragment” dated 13 December 1927 in the Stopes Collection at the British Library, while Neushul bases his on Stopes’ account in Box 52, B.19 in Stopes’ papers in the Wellcome Library. One telling detail is the amount of time that Stopes was kept waiting by McIlroy. One version says three hours and the other (on which Neshul relies) five minutes. If Stopes had been kept waiting for three hours, it begs the question why she would have written a second account stating it was only five minutes?
The point is that the high school or university student is unlikely to uncover Neushul’s research in a (comparatively) obscure source. And even if they did, are they going to contradict five major biographies of Stopes? In my opinion, it is highly unlikely.
Peer-group pressure
A 1992 interview with June Rose in The Independent provided an insight on how one biographer felt about straying from the established consensus.
For those who revere the memory of Marie Stopes, one of this century’s great feminist heroines, what follows will not be comforting. For all that she achieved as Britain’s foremost crusader for birth control and enlightened sex education, Dr. Stopes, who died in 1958 at the age of 78, turns out to have been a bit of a monster. During the Second World War, for example, friends whom she invited to lunch, asked if they could bring along a child they were caring for – a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Dr. Stopes responded: certainly not; it would offend her other guests.
This unsavoury item of correspondence is among several boxes of archives explored by June Rose for a new book on the legendary campaigner. Miss Rose has not included it in the forthcoming volume, Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution, on the grounds that it was ‘too distasteful’. But there are other revelations in the book which will shock those who revere Marie Stopes, just as they shocked Miss Rose, herself a hitherto unreserved admirer of the most forceful sexual revolutionary of the age.
Chatting to Miss Rose and reading an advanced copy of the work that is to be published next month, I found my own long-held admiration for Marie Stopes ebbing away. It is not just that Dr. Stopes had some unpleasant private views and prejudices; it is also that one of the prime motives behind her life’s work turns out to have been something rather more sinister than the liberation of women. What the author reveals about her subject will cause a great deal of controversy, possibly exposing the biographer to ridicule, perhaps even cries of betrayal. ‘I am very apprehensive about the book’s reception,’ she said.
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/notebook-the-monster-and-the-master-race-she-altered-women-s-lives-for-ever-but-a-new-book-reveals-that-marie-stopes-s-motives-were-distinctly-dubious-1541975.html viewed 30 January 2021.
Later in the article it stated that Rose was:
“… somewhat fearful of being known as the woman who brought Marie Stopes crashing from her pedestal.”
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/notebook-the-monster-and-the-master-race-she-altered-women-s-lives-for-ever-but-a-new-book-reveals-that-marie-stopes-s-motives-were-distinctly-dubious-1541975.html viewed 30 January 2021.
One wonders if other biographers felt the same pressure to self-censor and to avoid aspects of Stopes’ life that were unacceptable to her peers. One can only speculate, but it is unlikely that she was the only one.
The confronting nature of biography
The Rose interview illustrates the confronting nature of writing a biography. Generally (though not always) the author begins their work because they admire the subject. When they find deeply unpleasant aspects of the subjects life they experience a cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved.
For instance, at one point of Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution, Rose wrote that “… the Nazi policy of breeding for fitness was uncomfortably close to [Stopes] own.” The word “uncomfortably” is superfluous, after all, Stopes herself was comfortable with her own views. “Uncomfortably” reflects the feelings of Rose and possibly of her readers in confronting the truth of her topic. Rose does not shy away from those aspects of Stopes legacy, albeit at a personal cost of apprehension and fearfulness, and not all of Stopes’ biographers have been as brave.
Conclusion
This article is the third and last in the series entitled The Truth about Marie Stopes’ Scientific Racism. In the first I presented evidence of the Eugenic aims and Scientific Racism Dr. Marie Stopes. In the second, I outline the techniques used by the biographers and hagiographers to obfuscate these aspects of her work, and in this third article, speculate as to the reasons why they do.
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