The Stopes v. Sutherland Libel Case (1923–1924)

The Stopes v. Sutherland case was a pivotal moment in 20th-century British history. The case is still cited as precedent in contemporary legal disputes. It arose when Dr. Halliday Sutherland attacked Marie Stopes’ work as “Exposing the Poor to Experiment”. Stopes sued Sutherland (and co-defendant, publisher Harding and More) for libel. The case opened in the High Court on 21 February 1923.

Sutherland and Harding and More won in the High Court. Stopes appealed. The Court of Appeal ruled in her favour (two to one) and she was awarded damages of £100. Sutherland appealed to the House of Lords, then Britain’s most senior court. The Law Lords reversed the decision of the Court of Appeal (four to one) and ruled in Sutherland’s favour, with costs.

Background: Eugenics in the 1920s

Eugenics

Eugenics was founded by Sir Francis Galton, who coined the word based on the Greek for “good” and “breeding”. He defined it as a scientific discipline for the “study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” In 1907, Sybil Gotto founded the Eugenics Education Society. Its membership included “leading townspeople… distinguished scientists and social scientists, prominent lawyers, clerics, physicians, schoolmasters, intellectuals and… several knights of the realm”. Marie Stopes joined the Society in 1912.

The “differential birth rate”

Eugenicists worried about a problem they called the “differential birth rate”. This meant that, while the birth rate in Britain overall was falling, the fall was more pronounced among the well-to-do than among the lower classes. Mainstream eugenicists believed that heredity was significantly more important than environment in the make-up of a person. In their view, Britain was doomed, because the poorest quarter of the population (in eugenic terms, the “unfit”) would produce one-half of the next generation. Eugenicists spoke of “race degeneration” and even “race suicide”.

Tuberculosis and eugenics

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Consumption (tuberculosis of the lungs) killed 50,000 people in Britain each year. A further 20,000 were killed by other forms of the disease, 250,000 were disabled and 500,000 became infected. When the breadwinner was struck, whole families became destitute.

There was debate as to whether Consumption was caused by a person’s heredity or by infection. Dr John Haycraft delivered three Milroy Lectures to the Royal College of Physicians in 1894, published in The Lancet and in book form. According to Haycraft, “a certain type of individual is readily attacked by this microbe”. The tubercle bacillus could not “gain access to, or multiply in, the tissues of a healthy and vigorous man or woman”. The “certain type of individual” was “one who comes of a family liable to fall a prey to this microbe… Sufferers… are prone to other diseases, such as pulmonary and bronchial attacks, so that… they are to be looked upon as unsuited not only for the battle of life, but especially for parentage and for the multiplication of the conditions from which they themselves suffer.” He concluded: “If we stamp out the Infectious Diseases we perpetuate Poor Types. It is a hard saying, but none the less a true one, that the bacillus tuberculosis is a friend of the race, for it attacks no healthy man or woman, but only the feeble.”

Haycraft’s view of Consumption was shared by Sir James Barr, president of the British Medical Association in 1912 and by Karl Pearson, professor of the Galton Chair of Eugenics at London University.

Dr Sutherland was in the forefront of the fight against Consumption. In 1910 he became Medical Officer at the St Marylebone Dispensary for the Prevention of Consumption and he set up an “Open-Air” school for tuberculous children in a bandstand in Regent’s Park. He edited and contributed to The Control and Eradication of Tuberculosis, a book of essays by 32 international experts. In 1911 Sutherland produced Britain’s first public health cinema film, The Story of John M’Neil.

In around 1910, Sutherland announced that while heredity did play a part in Consumption, environment and infection played a more significant role. He set out his views and evidence in an article in the British Medical Journal in 1912. The debate over whether Consumption was caused by inheritance or infection was not merely of academic interest. Dr Sutherland argued that Consumption could be prevented and, if caught early enough, cured. Eugenicists disagreed: doctors like Sutherland were wasting their time and taxpayers money. Consumption would be eliminated by breeding out Consumptive-types from the race.

The Mothers’ Clinic and the C.B.C.

On 17 March 1921, Dr Marie Stopes and her husband, Humphrey Roe, opened the Mothers’ Clinic at 61 Marlborough Road in Holloway, London. The clinic offered advice on and fitted cervical caps free-of-charge or at cost.

The Mothers’ Clinic did not introduce contraceptives to Britain. People who wanted them (generally speaking middle and upper-class women or prostitutes) knew where to get them (mail-order catalogues and rubber shops). As historian John Peel pointed out there was “with the exception of the oral contraceptive… not a single birth control method in existence to-day which was not already available, and available in greater variety, in 1890.” What the clinic did do was to provide access to information about conception as well as contraceptive devices to poor and working-class women.

Stopes established the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress to support the Clinic. Its aims were set out in the Tenets of the CBC. Tenet 16 summarised the aims of the CBC:

In short, we are profoundly and fundamentally a pro-baby organisation, in favour of producing the largest possible of healthy, happy children without detriment to the mother, and with the minimum wastage of infants by premature deaths. In this connection our motto has been “Babies in the right place,” and it is just as much the aim of Constructive Birth Control to secure conception to those married people who are healthy, childless, and desire children, as it is to furnish security from conception to those who are racially diseased, already overburdened with children, or in any specific way unfitted for parenthood.

Note that “racially diseased” included the victims of Consumption, their parents and their children.

While contraceptives were given to the poor women who wanted them, Stopes began to campaign for the compulsory sterelization of the poor women who did not.

• In Radiant Motherhood (Chapter 20) Stopes urged parliament to pass laws for the compulsory sterelization of those she considered inferior.
• Stopes sent a copy of Radiant Motherhood to Frances Stevenson, private secretary (and later wife) of Prime Minister Lloyd George. Stopes’ biographer June Rose wrote that Stopes “drew attention to the chapter on eugenics in which she commented on the tens of thousands of ‘stunted, warped and inferior infants, who would invariably drain the resources of those with a sense of responsibility’”. She urged Stevenson to get Mr George to read it because it would “help him in real fact more than a dozen Ministries will ever do.”
• Stopes wrote to parliamentary candidates in the 1922 general election asking them to sign a printed template that declared: “I agree that the present position of breeding chiefly from the C3 population and burdening and discouraging the A1 is nationally deplorable, and if I am elected to Parliament I will press the Ministry of Health to give such scientific information through the Ante-natal Clinics, Welfare Centres and other institutions in its control as will curtail the C3 and increase the A1.”
• The brand-names of the cervical caps dispensed at the Mothers’ Clinic – “Racial” and “Prorace” – reveal the eugenic agenda of the clinic.

Stopes had held these views at least since 1918 when she spoke to the National Birth-Rate Commission:

“May I suggest a very simple solution in regard to the hopelessly bad cases, bad through inherent disease, or drunkenness or character? A perfectly simple way would be sterilisation of the parent.”

Dr Sutherland’s opposition to Malthusianism and eugenics.

Dr Sutherland opposed Malthusianism because he felt that it blamed the poor for their poverty. In Birth Control (1922) he specified what he saw as the reasons for “organised poverty” in Britain:

“The truth is that in countries such as England, Belgium, and Bengal, usually cited by Malthusians as illustrating the misery that results from overpopulation, there is no evidence whatsoever to show that the population is pressing on the soil.
“On the contrary, we find ample physical resources sufficient to support the entire population, and we also find evidence of human injustice, incapacity, and corruption sufficient to account for the poverty and misery that exist in these countries. This was especially so in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, so far from high birth rates being the cause of poverty, we shall find that poverty is one of the causes of a high birth-rate.”
“(b) Severance of the Inhabitants from the Soil.
“It was not a high birth-rate that established organised poverty in England. In the sixteenth century the greater part of the land including common land belonging to the poor, was seized by the rich. They began by robbing the Catholic Church, and they ended by robbing the people. Once machinery was introduced in the eighteenth century, the total wealth of England was enormously increased; but the vast majority of the people had little share in this increase of wealth that accrued from machinery, because only a small portion of the people possessed capital. More children came, but they came to conditions of poverty and of child labour in the mills. In countries where more natural and stable social conditions exist, and where there are many small owners of land, large families, so far from being a cause of poverty are of the greatest assistance to their parents and to themselves. There are means by which poverty could be reduced, but artificial birth control would only increase the total poverty of the State, and therefore of the individual.
“From early down to Tudor times, the majority of the inhabitants of England lived on smallholdings. For example, in the fifteenth century there were twenty-one small holdings on a particular area measuring 160 acres. During the sixteenth century the number of holdings on this area had fallen to six, and in the seventeenth century the 160 acres became one farm. Occasionally an effort was made to check this process and by a statute of Elizabeth penalties were enacted against building any cottages “without laying four acres of land thereto.” On the other hand, acres upon acres were given to the larger landowners by a series of Acts for the enclosure of common land, whereby many labourers were deprived of their land. From the reign of George I to that of George III nearly four thousand enclosure bills were passed. These wrongs have not been righted.”

Dr Sutherland’s opposition to eugenics (on medical and scientific grounds) was evident in 1912. Given that biographers of Stopes make much of Dr Sutherland’s Roman Catholicism, it should be pointed out that Dr Sutherland was at this time nominally a Presbyterian, an agnostic by belief and an atheist in practice.

In 1917 (two years before he became a Roman Catholic), he spoke out against eugenicists on moral grounds in a speech Consumption: Its Cause and Cure.

In Birth Control (1922), Dr Sutherland wrote that the eugenic agenda would lead to a “servile state” (in other words, a slave state in which the poor had no role other than as workers).

The policy of birth control opens the way to an extension of the Servile State, because women as well as men could be placed under conditions of economic slavery. Hitherto, the rule has been that during child-bearing age a woman must be supported by her husband, and the general feeling of the community has been opposed to any conditions likely to force married women on to the industrial market. In her own home a woman works hard, but she is working for the benefit of her family and not directly for the benefit of a stranger. If, instead of bearing children, women practice birth control, and if children are to be denied to the poor as a privilege of the rich, then it would be very easy to exploit the women of the poorer classes. If women have no young children why should they be exempt of the economic pressure that is applied to men? And indeed, where birth control is practiced women tend more and more to supplant men, especially in ill-paid grades of work. One of the birth controllers has suggested that young couples, who otherwise could not afford to marry, should marry but have no children, and thus continue to work at their respective employments during the day. As the girl would have little time for cooking and other domestic duties, this immoralist is practically subverting the very idea of a home! The English poor have already lost even the meaning of the word ‘property,’ and if the birth controllers had their way the meaning of the word ‘home’ would soon follow. The aim of birth control is generally masked by falsehood, but the urging of this policy on the poor points unmistakenly to the Servile State.”

Legal aspects of the case

Stopes v Sutherland was a civil, not a criminal, matter. Civil cases are those in which persons apply to the Court to intervene and rule on matters. Specifically, Dr Stopes brought a case under the Law of Tort (“tort” is French for “wrong”) for the Tort of Defamation (explained below).

Stopes’ Statement of Claim set out the “tort” (or legal wrongs) of which Sutherland was accused. It stated that Sutherland had defamed her on page 100 and 101 of his book Birth Control (1922):

(b) Exposing the Poor to Experiment. Secondly, the ordinary decent instincts of the poor are against these practices and indeed they have used them less than any other class. But owing to their poverty, lack of learning and helplessness, the poor are the natural victims of those who seek to make experiments on their fellows. In the midst of a London slum, a woman who is a doctor of German philosophy (Munich), has opened a birth control clinic where working women are instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as ‘The most harmful method of which I have had experience.’ … It is truly amazing that this monstrous campaign of birth control should be tolerated by the Home Secretary. Charles Bradlaugh was condemned to jail for a less serious crime. [Source: Statement of Claim dated 15 June 1922. Wellcome Library. Stopes Special Collection PP/MCS/H/4a:Box72]

The person initiating an action is known as the Plaintiff and the person they are acting against is known as the Defendant. Collectively, they are known as the “parties” to a dispute.

Each party acts through a solicitor (who prepares the case) and a barrister (who advocates for their party in Court). While solicitors and barristers act for one of the parties, they are officers of the court and are bound by the rules of conduct.

What is defamation? What is libel?

The law of defamation involves a conflict of rights (the right of the plaintiff to not be defamed against the defendant’s right to speak freely), and the defence of “fair comment” seeks to balance these. As an expert on defamation, W. Blake Odgers, KC put it:
“The plaintiff’s reputation must not be injured [and] the defendant’s freedom of speech must not be restricted.” [Source: Odgers, W. (1897). An Outline of the Law of Libel: Six lectures delivered in the Middle Temple Hall during Michaelmas Term 1896. Macmillan and Co., Limited. Page 36.]

Defamation is the act of harming another person’s reputation without good cause or justification. The act might be a permanent statement (such as a written statement in a book) in which case it is a libel, or impermanent (such as a spoken statement) in which case it is a slander.

Given the defamatory words were printed in Birth Control (1922), the action was for libel. Stopes’ solicitor served writs on Dr Sutherland (as the writer of the words) and on Vincent Waring of Harding & More (as the publisher of the words).

Privileged speech

There are certain circumstances in which a person’s speech is protected by privilege. For example, when speaking in the House of Commons during Parliamentary debates, MPs are protected by privilege.

What legal defences will defeat an action for libel?

The most simple defences are to rebut the claim. For instance, the defendant might show:

• that he or she did not write the statement;
• that the statement was not defamatory;
• that the statement did not damage the plaintiff’s reputation;
• that the statement did not mean (or were incapable of meaning) what the plaintiff asserted they meant.

The cases of Byrne v Deane (1935) and Monson v Tussauds (1894) are useful in revealing some of the issues that may arise in a defamation case.

The defences to an action for libel include “Justification” and “Fair Comment”. Defences can be set up as alternatives rather than on an “all or nothing” basis. This means that if one defence fails, the other can still be used.

Justification. The defamatory statement was true in substance and in fact. It is a complete answer to the action, meaning that once the statement was found to be true that is the end of the matter. The logic behind the defence is that if one person makes a true statement about another, the other should not be able to recover damages (money).

Fair Comment. As W. Blake Odgers KC put it: The defendant has an “undoubted right to criticise and comment on the public acts of a public [wo]man”, but not to “unnecessarily impute dishonourable motives, or maliciously pry into his private concerns”. The defence applies if the statement “… is a fair comment on a matter which is of public interest or is submitted to public criticism”.

The High Court’s decision Stopes v Sutherland 1923

The case was heard before a jury. In consultation with barristers for the parties for both sides, the judge told the jury that they should frame their verdict by answering four questions:

(1) Were the words complained of defamatory of the plaintiff?
(2) Were they true in substance and in fact?
(3) Were they fair comment?
(4) Damages, if any.

Note that in libel cases at the time, questions two and three could be considered as one question – the so-called “rolled up plea”. In Stopes v Sutherland the questions were considered separately.

The jury retired at around four o’clock on the fifth day of the trial. They returned to the court shortly after eight o’clock. The jury’s verdict was:

(1) Were the words complained of defamatory of the plaintiff? Yes.
(2) Were they true in substance and in fact? No.
(3) Were they fair comment? Yes [though see note below].
(4) Damages, if any. £100.

Note: The verdict was communicated from the jury to the judge by the Foreman of the jury writing the answers on a piece of paper and passing that paper to the judge. The Lord Chief Justice announced the jury’s verdict, he read out the questions and the jury’s answers. Before he read out question three (Were they fair comment?), he paused and handed the paper back to the foreman of the jury. “Would you look at that, Mr Foreman? Two words have been written: which is the final one?” The foreman marked the paper, handed it back, and the Lord Chief Justice continued to read the verdict. What the two words were is not known.

At that point, barristers for the plaintiff and the co-defendants asked the Lord Chief Justice for the Court to decide in their favour. The Lord Chief Justice said that all parties would need to return to court the following day to present their arguments.

Sutherland’s barrister, Mr Ernst Charles K.C., argued that as soon as the answer to question two was “no”, the defence of Justification had succeeded and that was the end of the matter.

Stopes appealed and won two-to-one in the Court of Appeal. Sutherland appealed and won four-to-one in the House of Lords.

Authors who have written about the trial provide their view on the verdict, often revealing a bias towards one side or the other and/or their ignorance of the law and its processes. Indeed, one author commented that the Jury’s verdict was “a confusing verdict on a confusing case” – disingenuous given that it is the author’s job to render clarity to the matter! Author Mark H. Sutherland expressed a balanced view of the outcome in Exterminating Poverty:

The legal process is elegant and robust, imperfect and unpredictable. Overall, nine judges had been involved in the matter. Six of these had ruled in favour of the defendants, and three had ruled in favour of the plaintiff.

Overview of the trial (timeline and interactions)

Timeline

1921, March. Dr Marie Stopes opens The Mothers’ Clinic in Holloway with her husband Mr Humphrey Roe.

1921, August. Dr Stopes founds The Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress (CBC). Stopes described the vice-presidents as “names of world-wide significance” and they included: Sir James Barr (eminent physician and president of the BMA), Sir William Bayliss (distinguished Professor of Physiology at University College London), Dame Clara Butt (concert singer), Edward Carpenter (philosopher and poet), John Maynard Keynes (economist), Sir William Arbuthnot Lane (physician and surgeon), Lady Constance Lytton (suffragette), Aylmer Maude (biographer, friend and translator of Tolstoy), Bertrand Russell (philosopher and mathematician), and H.G. Wells (writer). The Tenets of the CBC set out the society’s aims.

1921, July. Dr Louise McIlroy gives a talk on contraception at the Medico-Legal Society in London attended by Earl Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Dr Armand Routh, Dr Halliday Sutherland and others.

1922, March. Harding & More publish Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine Against the Neo-Malthusians by Dr Halliday Sutherland.

1922, April. Humphrey Roe, as secretary of the CBC, writes to Dr Sutherland challenging him to a debate. Dr Sutherland did not reply to the letter.

1922, May. Dr Sutherland (and co-defendants Harding & More) served with a writ for libel by Dr Stopes (through her solicitor, Braby and Waller).

1922 July. The Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference takes place in Kingsway Hall, London attended by prominent international figures, including John Maynard Keynes, Dr C. Killick-Millard, Margaret Sanger and H.G. Wells.

1923, February. The Stopes v Sutherland libel trial takes place in the High Court, London over six days. During the trial Winnie, Stopes’ sister, dies. The jury gives its verdict and, following legal argument, the judge finds for the defendants. Shortly afterwards, Dr Stopes files an appeal.

1923, July. The Court of Appeal rule 2-1 in Stopes’ favour and she is awarded damages of £100. The co-defendants appeal to the House of Lords.

1924, December. The House of Lords rule 4-1 in favour of Sutherland and Harding and More. The Lords reverse the decision of the Court of Appeal and costs are awarded against Stopes.

Key Legal Arguments (defence vs. accusations)

The jury’s verdict was that while Sutherland’s words were defamatory, they were true “in substance and in fact”. The defence of “Justification” (truth) was successful, and the defendants won the case.

Interactions between the parties

High Court

Dates: 21 February 1923 – 1 March 1923 (the dates on which the Court sat were 21, 22, 23, 27, 28 February and 1 March).

Outcome/judgement: In favour of: Dr Halliday Sutherland and Harding and More (co-defendants)

The Judge: Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England.

Plaintiff: Dr Marie Stopes

Defendant: Dr Halliday Sutherland

Co-defendant: Mr Vincent Waring, Harding & More.

Court Officials:

• Counsel for the plaintiff: Mr Patrick Hastings KC, Sir Hugh Fraser and Mr Metcalfe. Solicitor for the plaintiff: Braby & Waller.
• Counsel for the defendant: Mr Ernst Charles KC, Mr Rabagliati and Mr Harold Murphy. Solicitor for the defendant: Russell & Co
• Counsel for the co-defendant: Serjeant Alexander Sullivan KC, Mr Theobold Mathew.

Jury:

Of the twelve men of the jury, the name of only one is known, Mr Maurice Spencer, who acted a foreman.

Witnesses for the plaintiff (in order of apearance):

• Sir James Barr
• Dr Marie Stopes
• Nurse Maud Hebbes
• Sir William Arbuthnot Lane
• Dr Harold Chapple
• Sir William Bayliss
• Dr Meredith Young
• Dr Jane Hawthorne
• Dr George Jones
• Rt Hon George Roberts MP

Witnesses for the defendants (in order of appearance):

• Professor Louise McIlroy
• Dr Halliday Sutherland
• Dr Arthur Giles
• Dr Frederick McCann
• Dame Mary Scharlieb
• Dr Agnes Savile
• Dr William Falkner
• Sir Maurice Abbott Anderson

Witnesses appearing under subpoena:

• Dr Norman Haire

Court of Appeal

Verdict delivered: 20 July 1923

In favour of: Dr Marie Stopes

Judges:

• Lord Justice Bankes
• Lord Justice Scrutton
• Lord Justice Younger (dissenting)

House of Lords

Verdict delivered: 21 November 1924

in favour of: Dr Halliday Sutherland and Harding & More (co-defendants)

Judges:

• Viscount Cave, Lord Chancellor
• Viscount Finley
• Lord Shaw of Dunfermline
• Lord Wrenbury (dissenting)
• Lord Carson

Primary Source Documents (court transcripts, evidence)

The transcript of the trial is available in book form: The Trial of Marie Stopes edited by Muriel Box. The transcript (in the second half of the book) is an excellent resource, but the editor’s introduction is deeply flawed by polemics and reveals her misunderstanding of the case (for instance, confusing civil and criminal law).

One of the original transcripts of the trial survives in the Wellcome Institute Library (Marie Stopes Special Collection). The benefit of this document is that a researcher can see Stopes’ handwritten notes in the margin. Other boxes contain the legal documents and correspondence relating to the trial.

A chart of the interactions between the parties in Stopes v Sutherland is shown on the “Resources” page.

A scan of Sutherland’s 1922 book birth control is available by clicking here (opens in new tab). This scan is of the copy used by Lord Chief Justice Hewart and marked by him during the High Court trial.

Legacy of the Trial

The way the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial is presented today is at odds with what happened.

Part of the reason is that the term “birth control” has changed. While today it refers primarily to contraceptives, at the time of the trial the meaning was much broader and included all aspects of population control at the societal level. Thus “birth control” might be a euphemism for eugenics, include Malthusianism and Neo-Malthusianism as well as refer to contraception, abortion and abstinence. One should remember too that the Poor House system was still in existence back in the early Twentieth Century and that the segregation male and female inmates, even if they were husband and wife, was a birth control measure.

In a similar way, when a modern discovers that the brands of might not be aware that people who today might be categorised as “white” (such as English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, French, Italian and Spanish) were considered to be separate races with distinct idiosyncrasies.

Accordingly, when the trial is portrayed as a battle over contraceptives, many people will wonder why there was so much controversy over a woman who chose to give contraceptives to poor women.

Some of the biographers of Stopes presented the trial in terms of feminist ideology: the dispute was between an advocate for female “reproductive choice” in the face of strong religious opposition. In line with this theme, Stopes has been presented as a pioneer of “family planning” on a postage stamp and as a champion of female reproductive choice. Yet anyone familiar with her agenda (and read the section “The Mothers’ Clinic and the C.B.C.” above if you are not) make it clear that the planning part of “family planning” was being carried out by Stopes and her fellow-eugenicists. And crediting Stopes with giving women reproductive choice is ironic, given her campaigning for laws for compulsory sterelization which, if passed, would have meant that reproductive “choice” would have been the decision of a state official.

Generally speaking, Dr Sutherland has been poorly researched by the biographers of Stopes. In fairness to them, the material relating to Stopes is voluminous. All that said though, given the space given to the trial in their books, one would have hoped that Sutherland would have been more thoroughly researched. Following Stopes’ lead, many biographers apply the “Roman Catholic doctor” label to Sutherland. The label enables the reader to presume Sutherland’s motives for opposing Stopes, as well as setting him up as a doctrinaire zealot who wanted to impose the teachings of the Catholic Church’s on Protestant Britain.

Whatever the reason, Stopes biographers fail to make any mention of Dr Sutherland’s work as a tuberculosis specialist, nor of the relationship between eugenics and Consumption, nor Sutherland’s opposition to Malthusianism and eugenics (long before he became a Catholic), nor his warning that if children became a privilege of the rich and were forbidden to the poor, Britain would become a servile state.

The result is that the story is a simplistic good woman versus bad-man myth. It is a pity, not least because the actual history is a great deal more interesting.

The biographers of eugenicists are often embarrassed by their subject’s views and they seek to downplay this aspect of their subject’s life. Sometimes the excuse is “everyone was a eugenicist back then”; other times “eugenic views are shocking to us today, but they were quite common back then”. Dr Sutherland’s contradicts the statement that “everyone was a eugenicist back then”. Alongside G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Laetitia Fairfield, Sutherland championed the cause of the poor against the eugenic elites.

Only one book, Exterminating Poverty by Mark H. Sutherland, tells the true story of the trial and of a Scottish doctor’s stand against one of the most evil ideas in history. It was a courageous stance, given the popularity of eugenic thought amongst the chattering classes, the intelligensia and the medical and scientific establishments. Exterminating Poverty contains extensive notes and citations to verify the assertions it makes.

One of the most important aspects of the trial is that it was a battle between the population controllers and their opponents in the battleground of a Court. The statements of witnesses were made under oath, adding to the veracity of their statements and, where untruths were told, emphasise the significance of the lie. Back in the 1920s, eugenicists spoke plainly. While eugenics is alive and well today, the proponents of eugenics dare not speak as plainly as their predecessors and they have adapted their language to make it acceptable to the mores of modern society. While they might disguise their agenda, the Stopes v Sutherland trial continues to reveal the dark heart that permeates this elitist idea that they still seek to impose on society today.

Books about the trial:

• Sutherland, Mark H. (2020). Exterminating Poverty: The true story of the eugenic plan to get rid of the poor, and the Scottish doctor who fought against it.
• Debenham, C. (2018). Marie Stopes’ Sexual Revolution and the Birth Control Movement. Palgrave Pivot.
• Rose, J. (1992). Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution. London: Faber and Faber Limited.
• Hall, R. (1977). Passionate Crusader: The Life of Marie Stopes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Maude, A. (1924). The Authorized Life of Marie C. Stopes. Covent Garden: Williams & Norgate Ltd. Republished in 1933 as Marie Stopes: Her Work and Play. London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, Ltd.

Conclusion

Exterminating Poverty: The true story of the eugenic plan to get rid of the poor, and the Scottish doctor who fought against it is available at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. If you wish to interview the authors, Mark H. Sutherland can be contacted using the contact page at hallidaysutherland.com.