Halliday Sutherland

Did Marie Stopes promote birth control solely because she wanted to help poor women?

No. Her Mothers’ Clinic was also a eugenic project. It was "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." "Racial diseases" included Consumption and "unfitted for parenthood" included the risk of unemployment.

Was Dr Sutherland motivated only by his Catholic faith?

No. Sutherland began to oppose eugenics long before he became a Catholic because it conflicted with his medical work on tuberculosis. In Consumption: Its Cause and Cure, he identified eugenicists as the main obstacle to preventing the disease, sevearl years before his conversion. It is likely that Sutherland was attracted to Catholicism because of its longstanding opposition to eugenics.

What was the Stopes v Sutherland libel trial of 1923 all about?

In his 1922 book Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine Against the Neo-Malthusians, Sutherland attacked her clinic as "Exposing the Poor to Experiment". She sued him for libel and he was arraigned in the High Court in February 1923.

Did Marie Stopes win her case against Halliday Sutherland?

No. Dr Sutherland and his co-defendant, publishers Harding & More, won in the High Court. Stopes appealed and the Court of Appeal ruled (2 to 1) in her favour in July 1923, awarding her damages of £100. Sutherland then appealed to the House of Lords, then Britain's highest court, and won conclusively in November 1924 (4 to 1). Costs were awarded to Sutherland.

Why does the case still matter today?

Eugenics is alive and well today, though it is being achieved by stealth and obfuscatory language. The technology available is vastly superior to that available at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. While the language has changed, the agenda has not, and the plain-speaking of the eugenists of the 1920s reveal the dark heart of modern eugenics.

Where can I see the original documents evidence?

The primary documents are available on this site, including The Soil and the Seed in Tuberculosis (1912), Consumption: Its Cause and Cure (1917), and Stopes’ Tenets of the CBC (1921).

Where can I learn more about Stopes v Sutherland 1923?

The full story is told in the book "Exterminating Poverty: The true story of the eugenic plan to get rid of the poor, and the Scottish doctor who fought against it." Drawing on original sources, it explains the 1923 trial between Marie Stopes and Dr Halliday Sutherland and the wider social context. You can access a copy is in the Wellcome Institute Library in London.