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On 17th March 1921 Mr. Humphrey Roe and Dr. Marie Stopes opened the first birth control clinic in Britain at 61 Marlborough Road in Holloway, London. Stopes and Roe paid for the clinic and its operations, including the purchase of the building for £575 in 1920.
The Star newspaper described what it was like inside: “Fresh willow-blue curtains in the windows; on the walls clean white distemper and cool blue paint; a pedestal holds a little plaster model of a meditative baby angel looking as though he had accomplished his flight ‘from the everywhere into here’. And on the old Jacobean table a huge jar of pink-and-white roses with upclimbing branches of tender green. A place to disarm fear, to invite confidence in its callers.”

In its first year, 518 women went to the clinic: 47 for information about conception and 471 for information about contraceptives. The contraceptive was the in-house “Prorace” brand cervical cap.

The picture shows what the clinic looked like when it opened. In 1925, Stopes moved to 108 Whitfield Street, Fitzrovia (now headquarters of MSI Reproductive Choices). She sold the Mothers’ Clinic to Lamberts (E. Lambert & Sons & Watkins, manufacturers of surgical appliances in Dalston) for six times the price she paid in 1920. Lamberts opened the “Birth Control Advisory Bureau” at the site.

On 31st May 1921, Dr. Marie Stopes held a large Meeting on Constructive Birth Control in the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place, London. Stopes managed to fill the auditorium, no mean feat given it occurred during a railway strike. Many eminent people attended and gave speeches, including Stopes herself as a keynote speaker.

According to the late historian Richard A. Soloway: “Many of the speeches at the Queen’s Hall meeting were, with Stopes’ encouragement, stridently eugenic in tone and content. She urged one medical officer to describe what it was like to have ‘to deal with the ruck, wastrels and throw-outs resulting from reckless breeding…’ while others deplored the continued proliferation of the C3 [1] population since the war, and called for a selective birth rate that could alone raise up the A1 population needed to elevate the race” [2]

Sir James Barr, ex-president of the British Medical Association wrote to congratulate her:
“You and your husband have inaugurated 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.”

On 7th July 1921, Professor Louise McIlroy presented a paper on “Some factors in the Control of the Birth Rate” at the Medico-Legal Society, 11 Chandos Street, London. McIlroy was the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) and the first woman professor of gynecology at London University. She also worked at the Royal Free Hospital for Women where saw patients free-of-charge.

The audience included Lord Justice Atkins, Earl Russell, G.B. Shaw, Dr. Halliday Sutherland.

In the discussion that followed the talk McIlroy, talking about contraceptives, said: “… the most harmful method of which I have had experience is the use of the pessary. It does not remain in place. It can pass back natural discharges.” Afterwards, Dr. Sutherland spoke to McIlroy and she confirmed that she was referring to the pessary dispensed at the Mothers’ Clinic. When Sutherland later quoted McIlroy in his 1922 book Birth Control (under the heading “Exposing the Poor to Experiment”), Marie Stopes sued him for libel.

On 13th October 1921, the first public meeting of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress (“C.B.C.”) took place in the Hotel Cecil on 13th October 1921. The aims of the Society were outlined in the The Tenets of the C.B.C.

“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.”—Tenet 16.

“Racial diseases” were those considered to be transmitted primarily by heredity. At the time, tuberculosis were was considered by many doctors to be a “racial disease.”

On 9th November 1921, the Walworth Women’s Medical Centre — Britain’s second birth control clinic — opened at 153a East Street, Walworth London.

The centre was established under the auspices of the Malthusian League and funded by Sir John Sumner (the founder of Typhoo tea). Dr. Norman Haire was appointed honorary Medical Officer for the clinic.

The picture shows a flyer distributed by the Malthusian League a few months before they opened their clinic. The open-air meetings were held to drum-up support for their Medical Centre.