“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 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
“This absorbing study of a landmark 1923 libel case between contraception enthusiast Marie Stopes and Dr Halliday Sutherland vividly depicts a culture in turmoil – channelled 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, skilfully 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
“Excellent new book, just become available… it’s one of those ‘must reads'”
St George Educational Trust
“A fascinating account… Once you pick up this book, you won’t be able to put it down! Peppered with witty remarks, and extensive footnotes, to enliven any dullness that might be expected in an early-20th-century English courtroom.”
True Restoration
“Mark Sutherland has written a fascinating but troubling account of scientific prejudice in the early twentieth century, against the poorest and most defenceless in society. And perhaps the most troubling aspect of it is that – most appropriately, considering its origins in evolutionary theory – eugenics was the ‘latest thing’, and thus regarded as the best. A warning from history – and one that still needs to be heeded – of the dangers of addressing people’s problems by eliminating the people, not the problems.”
Ann Farmer
“The story of how Halliday Sutherland was sued for libel by Marie Stopes in the1920s 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
