Brock Report

Last updated

The Brock Report or Report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation (1934) was a British Parliamentary report advocating for the sterilisation of disabled people.

Contents

Context

In late 19th and early 20th century Britain, supporters of eugenic ideas sought to promote breeding by those they considered "fit" and control the reproduction of those they considered to be "unfit". In the United Kingdom, prominent people from different political parties and backgrounds in arts and science supported eugenic ideas and aimed to have them made into law. [1] The Eugenics Society saw voluntary sterilisation as a key issue and campaigned hard for it to be introduced into law. [2] [3] Desmond King and Randall Hansen have noted that the effort to promote eugenicist ideas was driven by a privileged minority rather than electoral support. [4] [5]

Disabled people were often targetted as "unfit". The "Idiots Act" of 1886 and the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 defined categories of mental disability and controlled the treatment of mentally disabled people. The Act of 1913 and a prior 1912 Private Members' Bill called the "Feeble-Minded Control Bill" rejected sterilisation but included segregation, though Paragraph (e) of a draft of the Bill specifcially proposed to confine those "in whose case it is considered desirable in the interests of the community that they should be deprived of the opportunity of procreating children". [6]

In 1924, the Wood Committee was created to investigate the number of "mental defectives". The committee included eugenicists. It reported in 1929 that deficiency was increasing and defined categories of people. [4]

In 1931, Archibald Church, a Labour MP, introduced a Sterilisation Bill to the House of Commons. [7] Carlos Blacker campaigned to support the Bill but it was defeated with 167 votes against and 89 in favour. Those against the bill said it was anti-working class. [4]

Committee and evidence

The committee was chaired by L.G. Brock, who was Chair of the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency. [8] Its members included Wilfred Trotter, A.F. Tredgold, Ronald A. Fisher, Ruth Darwin, Ralph Henry Crowley, E.O. Lewis, E.W. Adams and Bertrand Dawson. [9] [8] [10] F. Chanter was secretary. [11] Crowley, Tredgold and Lewis had been involved in the earlier Wood Committee. [4]

Brock was by his own admission biased in favour of eugenics from the outset and was given power to select the committee, thus shaping its views. [4]

The committee heard evidence from 60 witnesses and held 36 meetings to consider this and evidence from reports and statistics. [9] [4] [12] Of the 60 witnesses interviewed by the committee, only 3 were opposed in principle to the idea of sterilising people who were mentally disabled. [7]

A London County Council survey into inheritance of "defect" was an influential piece of evidence considered by the committee. [13]

Report

The Report concluded that 'allowing and even encouraging mentally defective and mentally disordered patients' to be serilised was a desirable approach, and that the scope of sterilisation should also be extended to people with physical disabilities. [7] [14] Its conclusions were described as the "unanimous" view of the committee. [7] [8]

The report was vague about who would be considered for sterilisation or how consent would be obtained. [4] It neglected to account for evidence that environment shaped mental health. [1] [4]

Responses and impact

The Eugenics Society praised the Report and the Minister for Health, Sir Hilton Young, sought support for a motion on sterilisation. Municipal Corporations, the Mental Hospitals' Association, and County Councils' Association created a draft Bill that had support from professional organisations. [4] Herbert Ritchie Spencer, Charles Oliver Hawthorne and Philip Hamill opposed the Report, though the other 82 Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians who voted on it, including Walter Langdon-Brown, supported mass sterilisation as proposed. [10]

But the Report did not win over doubters [7] and Young refused to push the issue forward, concerned that there was a lack of voter support. [4] The public, the British Medical Association, and the Catholic Church were in opposition, and a Royal Commission was not created. [4]

Countries including Germany, Denmark, Canada and the United States, introduced sterilisation but the UK did not. [4] The Nazi eugenic practices praised by the Report but then widely condemned during and after World War II made it impossible for the proposals to get support. [4] [15]

Historians Greta Jones and John MacNicol have argued that the Brock Report is evidence that there were limits to connections between 'progressive' thought and eugenics because the Labour Party blocked sterilisation measures they saw as anti-working class. [1] [16] [2] The London County Council, newly under Labour control, voted against the Report, though the Council's own survey was cited as evidence in support of sterilisation. However, Historian Mathew Thompson argued that it is "too simplistic" to explain this as due to a shift to Labour control of the council. He notes that religion of constituents, as much as class issues, may have led to its rejection, and that doctors and women who were Labour members and sought more access to birth control were in favour of the report. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenics</span> Aim to improve perceived human genetic quality

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with heated debate around whether these technologies should be considered eugenics or not.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compulsory sterilization</span> Government policies which force people to undergo surgical sterilization

Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, is a government-mandated program to involuntarily sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's capacity to reproduce, and is usually done through surgical procedures. Several countries implemented sterilization programs in the early 20th century. Although such programs have been made illegal in most countries of the world, instances of forced or coerced sterilizations persist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial Integrity Act of 1924</span> Virginia anti-miscegenation law

In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act. The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as "white" a person "who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian". The act, an outgrowth of eugenicist and scientific racist propaganda, was pushed by Walter Plecker, a white supremacist and eugenicist who held the post of registrar of Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics.

The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States, was a research institute that gathered biological and social information about the American population, serving as a center for eugenics and human heredity research from 1910 to 1939. It was established by the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Station for Experimental Evolution, and subsequently administered by its Department of Genetics.

The Adelphi Genetics Forum is a non-profit learned society based in the United Kingdom. Its aims are "to promote the public understanding of human heredity and to facilitate informed debate about the ethical issues raised by advances in reproductive technology."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Rüdin</span> Swiss-born German geneticist

Ernst Rüdin was a Swiss-born German psychiatrist, geneticist, eugenicist and Nazi, rising to prominence under Emil Kraepelin and assuming the directorship at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich. While he has been credited as a pioneer of psychiatric inheritance studies, he also argued for, designed, justified and funded the mass sterilization and clinical killing of adults and children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. S. Gosney</span> American financier, eugenicist

Ezra Seymour Gosney was an American philanthropist and eugenicist. In 1928 he founded the Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) in Pasadena, California, with the stated aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship," primarily through the advocacy of compulsory sterilization of people who are mentally ill or intellectually disabled.

Eugenics has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States, through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.

In 1928, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act. The Act, drafted to protect the gene pool, allowed for sterilization of mentally disabled people in order to prevent the transmission of traits to offspring deemed undesirable.

Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring or "Sterilisation Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, which allowed the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders – many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene movement: Ernst Rüdin, Arthur Gütt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.

Compulsory sterilization in Canada has a documented history in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. It is still ongoing as in 2017, sixty Indigenous women in Saskatchewan sued the provincial government, claiming they had been forced to accept sterilization before seeing their newborn babies. In June 2021, the Standing Committee on Human Rights in Canada found that compulsory sterilization is ongoing in Canada and its extent has been underestimated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hereditary Health Court</span>

The Hereditary Health Court, also known as the Genetic Health Court, was a court that decided whether people should be forcibly sterilized in Nazi Germany. That method of using courts to make decisions on hereditary health in Nazi Germany was created to implement the Nazi race policy aiming for racial hygiene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenics in the United States</span>

Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archibald Church</span> British school teacher, soldier and politician

Major Archibald George Church was a British school teacher, soldier and Labour Party then National Labour politician. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leyton East from 1923 to 1924, and for Wandsworth Central from 1929 to 1931.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mental Deficiency Act 1913</span> Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom creating provisions for the institutional treatment of people deemed to be "feeble-minded" and "moral defectives". "It proposed an institutional separation so that mental defectives should be taken out of Poor Law institutions and prisons into newly established colonies."

The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Sir Laurence George Brock CB was a British civil servant. He was chairman of the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency from 1928 to 1945.

Institutions for Defective Delinquents (IDDs) were created in the United States as a result of the eugenic criminology movement. The practices in these IDDs contain many traces of the eugenics that were first proposed by Sir Francis Galton in the late 1800s. Galton believed that "our understanding of the laws of heredity [could be used] to improve the stock of humankind." Galton eventually expanded on these ideas to suggest that individuals deemed inferior, those in prisons or asylums and those with hereditary diseases, would be discouraged from having children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenic feminism</span> Areas of the womens suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics

Eugenic feminism was a component of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics. Originally coined by the eugenicist Caleb Saleeby, the term has since been applied to summarize views held by some prominent feminists of the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, particularly a group known as The Famous Five, also pushed for eugenic policies, chiefly in Alberta and British Columbia.

Alfred Frank Tredgold FRSE FRCP TD was a 20th-century British neurologist and psychiatrist and expert in Amentia. He also wrote on eugenics from the early 20th century. He was a member of the Eugenics Education Society.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Barad, Maya M. (2016). Developing Eugenic Consciousness: The Campaign for the Voluntary Sterilization of the Mentally Deficient in Interwar Britain (BA in History thesis). Columbia University . Retrieved 14 February 2023.
  2. 1 2 Macnicol, John (1989). "Eugenics and the Campaign for Voluntary Sterilization in Britain Between the Wars". Social History of Medicine. 2 (2): 147–169. doi:10.1093/shm/2.2.147. ISSN   0951-631X.
  3. ↑ Woodhouse, Jayne (June 1982). "Eugenics and the feeble‐minded: the Parliamentary debates of 1912‐14". History of Education. 11 (2): 127–137. doi:10.1080/0046760820110205. ISSN   0046-760X.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 King, Desmond (1999-09-02). "'Cutting Off the Worst' Voluntary Sterilization in Britain in the 1930s". In The Name of Liberalism. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198296290.003.0005. ISBN   978-0-19-829629-4.
  5. ↑ King, Desmond; Hansen, Randall (January 1999). "Experts at Work: State Autonomy, Social Learning and Eugenic Sterilization in 1930s Britain". British Journal of Political Science. 29 (1): 77–107. doi:10.1017/S0007123499000046. ISSN   0007-1234.
  6. ↑ "Mental Deficiency Bill". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) . Commons. 19 July 1912.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 "Eugenics in Britain". English Heritage. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
  8. 1 2 3 "Sterilization Of Defectives: Departmental Committee's Report". The British Medical Journal. 1 (3812): 161–165. 1934. ISSN   0007-1447.
  9. 1 2 Connor, J.T.H. (2019). ""For her own safety and the good of society at large": Eugenics, Sterilization, and Anglo-American Transnationalism in Newfoundland, 1928-1934". Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region. 48 (1).
  10. 1 2 Lancashire, Felix (6 February 2023). "'Evil consequences may well follow': eugenics and the British medical establishment". Royal College of Physicians Museum. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  11. ↑ "Mental Defectives (Committee Of Inquiry)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) . Commons. 9 June 1932.
  12. ↑ Thomson, Mathew (December 1992). "Sterilization, segregation and community care: ideology and solutions to the problem of mental deficiency in inter-war Britain". History of Psychiatry. 3 (12): 473–498. doi:10.1177/0957154X9200301205. ISSN   0957-154X.
  13. 1 2 Thomson, Mathew (November 1993). "Social Policy and the Management of the Problem of Mental Deficiency in Inter-war London". The London Journal. 18 (2): 129–142. doi:10.1179/ldn.1993.18.2.129. ISSN   0305-8034.
  14. ↑ "Report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  15. ↑ Moghaddami, Ann (15 November 2021). "UK Disability History Month: Laws, Relationships and Sex". UK Parliamentary Archives.
  16. ↑ Jones, Greta (September 1982). "Eugenics And Social Policy Between The Wars". The Historical Journal. 25 (3): 717–728. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00011882. ISSN   0018-246X.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.