Noble in Heredity

NOBLE IN HEREDITY:
PERCEIVED SOCIAL AND
RACIAL THREATS TO THE
ENGLISH RACE
A study of the British Inter-War Eugenics Movement
Word Count: 25,000 including footnotes
Richard Ellis
12012735
Abstract
This study investigates the complex motivations of the main stream British eugenics movement.
Through use of contemporary sources and other academic studies it aims to trace the roots of the
idea of social hygiene being dominant in the movement. As well as this it re-examines to what
extent the movement manifested traits that could be considered as both social hygiene and racial
hygiene by applying appropriate historical theory to contemporary sources. Further to this, the
study investigates the membership of the Eugenics Society through a collective biographical study,
to discover its class composition, and to see if the assumptions of previous scholarship are correct.

Acknowledgements
I would like to make known the debts of gratitude I owe the various people stemming from my undertaking of this
project.
Firstly, I would like to thank my friends and family for their support during my continued studies. My ongoing historic
babbling has been received with good humour which has been greatly appreciated as always. I would also like to
thank my fellow Masters students. Your insight, camaraderie and social distractions have been invaluable. Further
thanks are owed to the History Faculty, whose willingness to provide extra seminars was deeply appreciated.
To my good friend Barry, you have my endless thanks for your hospitality, good humour and ability to keep me on
track, even if I do have to keep you sweet by being your beer mule. The same level of thanks goes to my good friend
Tim, who kindly offered his floor when I needed to visit London. You made what would have been an almost
bankrupting visit to the capital a whole lot more bearable, thank you.
Special thanks go out to the staff of the Wellcome Library, those at King’s College London Archives as well as the
library staff of the Royal College of Surgeons. Their willingness to accommodate me and allow me access to their
archival holdings have been fundamental to my work and are appreciated beyond measure. Similar thanks go out to
the History faculty whose support has been greatly appreciated by all of us students. To my Academic Supervisor,
Martin, your guidance and insight have proven as invaluable as always, thank you. My friend Rob is also deserving
of special thanks as well. His support has been above and beyond as has his concern for my general wellbeing over
the past year. I have yet to go crazy thanks to him. I would also like to extend special thanks to Dr Bradley Hart of
California State University. Thank you for sharing some of your research with me and for meeting with me to discuss
my work. Your help saved me a lot of archival legwork.
Finally, I would like to thank the estate of Neil Edmunds, whose Memorial Fund allowed me to undertake this
research. If it were not for the scholarship I was granted, continuing my research would have been impossible. Their
kindness has allowed me to further develop myself along with sating my historic curiosity.

Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................................................................1
Previous Scholarship .................................................................................................................................................2
Inter-war Britain: A morbid age?...............................................................................................................................8
The Aims of the Present Study................................................................................................................................11
Chapter One: Deficiency, Inefficiency and Value ........................................................................................................14
The historiographical roots .....................................................................................................................................14
Deficiency................................................................................................................................................................17
Inefficiency and Value.............................................................................................................................................22
Chapter Two: Race and Value......................................................................................................................................31
Interpretations of Race ...........................................................................................................................................31
Examples of Racial Theory in a Eugenic Context.....................................................................................................41
Race, Value and Non-Value.....................................................................................................................................44
Chapter Three: Prosopographical Study......................................................................................................................49
General Members Sample: Method........................................................................................................................49
Analysis....................................................................................................................................................................50
Expanded General Members Sample......................................................................................................................52
Doctors Sample .......................................................................................................................................................56
Points of Interest.....................................................................................................................................................57
Conclusions..................................................................................................................................................................60
Appendix One: Prosopographic Data of General Members Sample ...........................................................................66
Appendix Two: Prosopographic Data of Members Who Were Doctors......................................................................85
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................................89
Primary Sources - Unpublished Documents............................................................................................................90
Wellcome Library, London ......................................................................................................................................90
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives and King’s College London Archives, London.........................................92
Royal College of Surgeons.......................................................................................................................................92
Published Works......................................................................................................................................................93
Journal Articles and Essays......................................................................................................................................94
State Papers ............................................................................................................................................................95
Secondary Sources - Books......................................................................................................................................96
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography................................................................................................................97
Who Was Who?.....................................................................................................................................................100
Articles...................................................................................................................................................................106

1
Introduction
Eugenics: a word and concept inextricably linked with the radical excesses of the Nazi movement during the first half
of the twentieth century. A word which to a great extent has fallen out of vogue, but whose concepts continue to
live with us to this very day. Defined as the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair
the racial quality of future generations,1
from its conception it would go onto develop a large following, attracting
supporters with diverse political, social and academic backgrounds. At its height it had special interest groups and
scientific research institutes across the globe. It was a highly active socio-scientific research community, that actively
exchanged information, research and opinion through both correspondence and specialist conferences. It
progressed alongside science, developing its thought process from Mendelian inheritance to incorporate discoveries
of genetic science. However, in the wake of the collapse of the Nazi movement and its excesses, it would become
seen as an archaic field, with nothing to offer modern science but radical, inhumane solutions to biological and social
problems.
Eugenics is divided into two fields, those of positive and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics entailed taking
measures to ensure and increase the reproduction of those deemed most valuable to a race. These measures could
take the form of tax rebates, commendations for raising a certain number of children, or in some cases penalties,
such as the ‘Bachelor Tax’ in fascist Italy. Of course, what was deemed valuable would vary depending upon which
state or movement was pushing for eugenic reform. Negative eugenics sought to curtail the reproduction of those
deemed non-valuable or to an extent, unfit. Examples of such negative eugenic measures are detention or
segregation, voluntary sterilisation and in the most radical cases, forced sterilisation and euthanasia. These two
parallel tracks of eugenic thought have been the cornerstone of eugenics since its conception, and have emerged in
various ways in nations across the globe. The nation under scrutiny in this study however is Great Britain, in particular
before World War One and during the inter-war period.
1
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P.7

2
This study looks primarily at the period between 1900 and 1939. The beginning of this period sees the eugenics
movement in Britain having started to establish a foothold to some extent, with the founding of a society that
produced its own journal and the spread of eugenic ideas amongst intellectuals. Furthermore, during the period
examined, the movement had some notable legislative successes and inspired great debate among the public and
academics, collecting an eclectic membership made up of private citizens and notable persons. Alongside this, the
currents of thought during the period in question are highly important to the popularity of eugenic ideals at the
time. Concepts of degeneration and the supposed pessimism of the age heavily contributed to the appeal of
eugenics, as did scientific concepts which are now regarded as scientific racism. These topics will be discussed further
on. Before delving into the contemporary world of the eugenicists, we must examine the present state of scholarship
on the subject.
Previous Scholarship
Those who have studied eugenics have noticed two modes of eugenic thought, those of social hygiene and racial
hygiene. Although utilising different methods, these ideologies seek the same goal, what can be argued as the
betterment of the race. As such they are arguably opposing sides of the same coin. The most prominent arguments
for social hygiene come from Greta Jones and Pauline Mazumdar.
Greta Jones, in Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain2
focusses primarily on the advances in public health
reform and the movements that took steps to improve the social environment. Arguing that the movement emerged
from ‘a marriage between the hereditarian ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the public
health reform movement of the nineteenth century,’3
Jones states that the movement also contained a strong
eugenic component as well.4
The movement also attributed social problems to hereditary defect, in particular
asocial behaviour and tendencies, such as alcoholism and vagrancy, along with the mental health issues of the
2
Jones, G. Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain. Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1986.
3
Ibid, 1.
4
Ibid, 7.

3
feebleminded. 5
Furthermore, she points out that the middle class viewed the lower classes as a threat to
‘evolutionary progress.’6
Porter makes a similar case. Within an article in Victorian Studies, it is argued that the
residuum, the lower ten percent of the working class, was the true target of public health measures. Any suggested
measures were supposedly designed to separate the diseased and destitute from the labouring poor, to prevent the
spread of physical infections and what contemporaries perceived as the contagion of idleness.7
Porter also draws
attention to the fact that the eugenic enterprise in Britain sought to ensure the future health of a strong imperial
race, through plans for sterilisation and detention of undesirable elements which would ultimately result in the
elimination of the hereditarily unfit.8
Mazumdar takes up this argument with more conviction. The key thesis underpinning Eugenics, Human Genetics and
Human Failings,9
is that the British eugenics movement, helmed to a great extent by the Eugenics Education Society,
was an extremely class focused movement. Composed of primarily middle and upper class members, she argues
that the British eugenics movement was the culmination of a middle class meliorism combined with Darwinism,
utilising theories of Mendelian heredity and Malthusian population theory.10
She also argues that the movement
was primarily class-centric, focusing on dealing with the problematic and dangerous ‘residuum.’ In all her study
proves an essential work, especially due to the fact it is one of the few histories of the Eugenics Education Society
itself, including its methods of research. These methods included pedigree charts and family histories, in order to
substantiate their claims. The issue of the ‘residuum’ was not a new one by any means and has been shown to be
pre-existing but under different names. In general, no matter what moniker they went by, they were defined as
being a group distinct from the working class; ‘in effect a rootless mass divorced from the means of production –
definable only in terms of social inefficiency and hence not a class in a neo-Marxist sense.’11
5
Ibid, 11.
6
Ibid, 102.
7
Porter, D. “Enemies of the Race’: Biologism, Environmentalism and Public Health in Edwardian England,” in
Victorian Studies vol. 34, no. 2 (1991): 159-178. P. 159-160
8
Ibid, 162.
9
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992.
10
Ibid, 2.
11
Welshman, J. Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. References to the 2013
edition. P. 3.

4
These works have focused on the theme of class prejudice in eugenic thinking in Edwardian and inter-war Britain,
which to an extent is a continuation of the argument put forward by Donald MacKenzie who claimed that eugenics
in Britain was pursued by the professional middle class, and was a class rather than a ‘racist’ phenomenon.12
He
argued that unlike its German and United States equivalents, the British movement was not to be understood in
terms of its preoccupation with Jews, Blacks or immigrants. It could easily be said that MacKenzie was the source of
the traditional view, that British eugenics was more hung up on issues of social class rather than race, that social
hygiene was the dominant trend of thought. The study of G.R. Searle also contributes to this academic stream of
thought. His study, Eugenics and Politics in Britain looks at the early stage of the movement in Britain, in particular
between 1900 to 1914.13
Within it he cautions against pressing the argument of racialist eugenics too far in the
British case, putting the root of the issue down to contemporary scientific theory.
Nancy Stepan in her work The Idea of Race in Science, made note of the important link that existed between race
and British eugenics.14
The book itself provides an excellent study of concepts of race, how they developed and how
they were applied in science from the turn of the nineteenth century up to 1960. Stepan lays out the application of
racial science during the period as this:
By the middle of the nineteenth century, a very complex edifice of thought about human races had
been developed in science that was sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, racist. That is to
say, the language, concepts, methods and authority of science were used to support the belief that
certain human groups were intrinsically inferior to others, as measured by some socially defined
criterion, such as intelligence or ‘civilised behaviour.’15
What interests us in Stepan’s study is the chapter pertaining to the concepts of eugenics and race. Firstly, she notes
that eugenics was a science and social programme of racial improvement through selective breeding of the human
species.16
This assertion will prove fundamental in what is to follow, especially in chapter two, which focusses
12
MacKenzie, D. “Eugenics in Britain.” Social Studies of Science 6. No 3/4. (1975): 499-532. P. 501.
13
Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976.
14
Stepan, N. The Idea of Race in Science: 1800-1960. London: Macmillan, 1982.
15
Ibid, ix
16
Ibid, 111.

5
specifically on how concepts of race were expressed in British eugenics, along with the thinking that helped support
it. Further to this it also allows all social eugenic reform to be considered as being in the interest of racial betterment.
Secondly, we have a direct affirmation of the importance of the existence of racial issues in British eugenics:
It was not hard to assume that, just as the different social classes of Britain had acquired distinctive
mental and physical makeups as well as social values, so had races. We should not be surprised to find,
as a consequence, that the issue of race was a real and persistent feature of the British eugenics
movement.17
Stepan does acknowledge that class was the chief preoccupation of British eugenics, but she does not downplay or
dismiss the racial element either.18
Interestingly this work appears in Kevles’ essay on sources at the end of his study
In the name of Eugenics, stating that it offers insight into the relatively low degree of racism in British eugenics.19
It
is conspicuously absent elsewhere in other studies however, not appearing in any other lists of references. Although
Kevles himself does mention racial prejudice in his transnational study of eugenics in the United States and Britain,20
he too subscribes to the mainline argument of class being imperative in the British case, basing these claims on the
work of Galton himself and his ideas of civic worth.21
Alongside Galton’s ideas Kevles claims that the English ‘fretted
a good deal more about the threat to the national fibre arising from the differential birth-rate and the consequent
weakening of their imperial competitive abilities in relation to France and Germany.’ Further to this Kevles provides
a clear and concise analysis of how social Darwinism was reflected in the eugenic programme of both countries:
Social Darwinism, with its evocation of natural selection to explain diverse social phenomenon, had
brought about a flow of proto-eugenic writings that foreshadowed the salient concerns of the post-
1900 movement, particularly the notion of “artificial selection” – state or philanthropic intervention
in the battle for social survival – was replacing natural selection in human evolution.22
17
Ibid, 126.
18
Ibid, 125.
19
Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London: HUP,
1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 388.
20
Ibid, 74.
21
Ibid, 9.
22
Ibid, 70.

6
Greta Jones has also written on the topic of social Darwinism. In her work Social Darwinism and English Thought,23
she discussed the impact the ideas of social Darwinism had upon the eugenics movement. She notes how the
language of natural selection, with its highly partial and contentious social judgements of relative worth, was applied
to various groups within the population. She also argues that the eugenicists exhibited a conviction that a higher
birth rate among the lower classes was a threat to evolutionary progress, due to their implied inferiority.24
Although
Jones demonstrates the importance of class in British eugenic thinking, she does not rule out race. She argues that
social and racial inequality was connected. The ideas of social and racial hierarchy, she goes on to argue, were
merged firstly on the assumption that ‘inferior races’ were always destined to occupy lowly social positions, and
secondly by the belief that the domestic class system was also a racial one too.25
However more recent scholarship
has started to show otherwise. A resurgence of academic interest in the history of British eugenics has resulted in a
new wave of revisionist historiography, aiming to reinterpret the conclusions drawn in the past.
Bradley Hart has contributed to this re-emergent interest in the subject. His Doctoral Thesis examines the interplay
between the British, American and German eugenic movements. Starting with the formation of a close working
relationship interrupted by hostilities between 1914-1918, he traces the exchange of ideas between the groups and
the eventual decay of relations due to the extremes of Nazi eugenic policies in the late 1930’s. Importantly, Hart
draws attention to the treatment of the concept of ‘race’ in the existing historiography. Arguing that the term is
‘implicitly or explicitly disregarded’ by historians when found in primary sources, he claims this was down to
historians being of the belief that 19th
and 20th
century writers were referring to the ‘nation’ or other non-
normatively classified human groups.26
This is an interesting point that will be discussed further in a later chapter.
His work also examines the reasons why the eugenic movement in Britain failed to secure any notable legislation
23
Jones, G. Social Darwinism and English Thought. Brighton: Harvester Press Ltd, 1980.
24
Ibid, 101.
25
Ibid, 144, 148.
26
Hart, Bradley W, “British, German and American Eugenicists in Transnational Context c.1900-1939.” PhD thesis,
Churchill College, Cambridge University, 2011. P.30.

7
other than the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, showing the limitations of the British movement despite the successes
of its contemporaries.
Mental deficiency, as will be seen later, was one of the greatest concerns of the British eugenics movement. Its
efforts to secure the Mental Deficiency Act serves as definitive evidence of this fact. The Mental Deficiency Act of
1913 was passed on the 1st
of April, 1914.27
Proposed in 1912, it was supported by numerous borough and county
councils, educational bodies and boards of guardians, undergoing several amendments before being passed. It faced
opposition from the political left however, who viewed it as a class based legislation. The law gave central authorities
compulsory powers to detain and segregate certain members of the ‘feebleminded,’ along with ‘defectives’ such as
paupers, drunkards and women receiving poor relief at the time of giving birth to or whilst carrying an illegitimate
child. 28
It was broad in scope, allowing a large number of those that the residuum was composed of to fall under its
loosely defined categories. This legislation can easily be seen as one of the core reasons why historians and
contemporaries viewed the British Eugenics movement as being primarily motivated by social hygiene.
Dan Stone, in his work Breeding Superman, demonstrates the influence that the ideas of Nietzsche had over the
British intelligentsia. Surveying the work of inter-war intellectuals, Stone highlights how interpretations of race
emerge in the chosen works and how British society prior to World War I was demonstrating traits of proto-fascism.29
These observations, Stone hopes, will reclaim the focus of the history of eugenics from being directed primarily on
the Nazi endeavours, whereas in reality it was a reformist idea that was in fact wide spread with a highly
differentiated impact depending on the success of its regional variations.30
Importantly, Stone highlights that:
‘Race’ was not simply a synonym for ‘nation’ in Edwardian Britain, unless one accepts that the word
‘nation’ itself carried implicit racist assumptions. Even if not yet having acquired the biologistic hue
27
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 24.
28
Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London:
HUP, 1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 99
29
Stone, D. Breeding Superman. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002. P. 38-40, 2.
30
Ibid, 7.

8
that Nazi eugenics would later take on, eugenics in Britain was, on both the left and right a basically
racist enterprise.31
Marius Turda also picks at the thread that the history of eugenics needs to be reclaimed from the almost exclusively
Nazi consideration in historiography. Turda makes clear the links between modernism and eugenics, noting that the
movement became part of a larger biopolitical agenda that included social and racial hygiene, family planning, as
well as research into social and ethnic minorities.32
He subscribes to the idea that eugenics was intimately linked
with national regeneration, offering the chance of what he cites Roger Griffin as having described as ‘palingenesis’.33
Further to this Turda makes clear the difference between social and racial hygiene. The former focussed on the
protection of existing hereditary qualities, the latter however was future oriented and was to be a driving force
towards building a new racial community.34
This is an interesting interpretation of the two strands of eugenic
thinking, which could prove fruitful when applied to the British context. Another historian however, argues that
‘race’ could refer to nations, groups within the nation, public health, sex or the condition of the whole human
species. He even goes as far as to suggest that due to this, it was not scientific racism, counter to what Stepan argued,
but rather a series of overlapping and parallel ‘race’ discourses.35
As can be seen, the previously held assumptions
have begun to be challenged, yet an understanding of the pre-existing body of work alone is not enough to create a
solid foundation on which this study can build upon. We must also establish the context of the period that the study
focuses on.
Inter-war Britain: A morbid age?
The early twentieth century can easily be described as a troubled period for Britain. Gone was the golden age of
Queen Victoria; an era of progress had ground to a halt, imperial rivalries were running high and arguably pessimism
31
Ibid, 101-102
32
Turda, M. Modernism and Eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. P. 1-2.
33
Ibid, 6
34
Ibid, 32.
35
Thomson, M. “Savage civilsation’: Race, Culture and mind in Britain, 1898-1939,” Race, Science and Medicine,
1700-1960, ed. by Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris, 235-258. London: Routledge, 1999. 235-236.

9
had set in. The Boer War had caused concern, with both the British forces’ lack of success and the poor physical
quality of volunteers. Social commentators questioned whether Britain was suffering from degeneracy, the slow,
gnawing affliction that some believed to be the root cause of the fall of empires. Further to this, the horrors of World
War I would shake the nation, revealing cracks in its social structure, taking a toll upon its population and further
reinforcing this air of pessimism.
Richard Overy takes up this subject in his book The Morbid Age.36
Dealing with various subjects, from pacifism to the
possibility of imperial decline similar to those suffered by ancient civilisations, Overy highlights the malaise that set
in over the nation during the period. William Inge, Dean of St. Pauls from 1911 to 1934, is always presented as an
example of such a way of thinking. His diaries contain a treasure trove of conversations and personal reflections on
the period in question, making evident the fears that certain circles felt. Discussing World War I, the ‘Gloomy Dean’
wrote:
Aldous Huxley says very truly that war destroys more than individual lives. It shakes the very fabric of
custom, of law, of mutual confidence, of decency and humanity. Periods of advance, which means
advance in charity, have alternated with periods of regression. The eighteenth century and most of
the nineteenth was a period of real progress; now we are manifestly on the downgrade. The progress
of humanitarianism has been more than checked.37
In 1917 Dean Inge laments the war itself writing ‘so ends another year of protracted nightmare. Whatever is the end
of the war, Europe is ruined for my lifetime and longer. Nearly one fifth of the upper and middle class of military age
– the public school and university men, from whom the officers are chosen, are dead, and there is no rift in the
clouds anywhere. Our people, slow and reluctant to enter the war, are now mad with rage and hatred, and will
sacrifice anything rather than make terms with the enemy. It is indeed a terrible time.’38
He is not alone in expressing
these fears. Making note of a conversation he had with a Professor Burnett of the University of St. Andrews, Inge
36
Overy, R. The Morbid Age: Britain and the crisis of civilization, 1919 - 1939. London: Penguin, 2010.
37
Inge, W.R. ‘July 28-30’ Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P. 30.
38
Ibid, ‘December 31.’ P. 43.

10
writes that Burnett claimed that his work of the last five years had been ‘thrown away’ as all his pupils had been
killed.39
A prosopographic study into differential casualty rates has indeed revealed the truth of these claims. Bradley Hart
and Richard Carr, through thorough investigation, have shown that there was indeed a correlation between high
academic performance at public schools and risk of death in the war. They conclude that to a meaningful extent,
those identified as ‘the strong, brave and beautiful’ really had fallen to a significant degree between 1914-1918.40
Fears of the dysgenic effects of war have been proven true, especially if you believed those who attended public
school were the best of the British youth like eugenicists did. This issue of dysgenics in turn raises up another issue
that aroused concern during the period, degeneracy.
Racial and social degeneracy was recognised as a significant threat during the period in question. For some it was
made more concerning due the increasing threats of foreign competition, colonial war and inter-imperialist war
during the period.41
The differential casualty rate of the war wiping out the best of the nation’s youth was pre-dated
by a differential birth rate, which threatened the middle and upper classes with being overwhelmed by what were
perceived as degenerate working class labourers. The poor quality of working class recruits during the Boer War also
set social commentators on the track of lamenting the decline of English strength and vigour. Even in the 1930’s this
concern was still alive and well, as can be seen in the anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith’s opening statements for a
debate held at a congress of the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations in 1930. Keith questioned:
What effect is modern civilization producing upon the manhood and womanhood of our countries? ...
Is the generation which is now growing up in your homelands and mine under modern conditions as
fit in body and in mind as the generation which in due time they will replace? Or is the evidence definite
and certain that deterioration has set in and that the populations we represent have in them a larger
element of undesirables that was the case a century ago? … We have to discover and formulate
39
Ibid, ‘October 14.’ P. 40.
40
Carr, R. & Hart, Bradley W. “Old Etonians, Great War Demographics and the Interpretations of British Eugenics, c.
1914-1939.” First World War Studies 3, no. 2 (2012) 217 – 239. P. 234.
41
MacKenzie, D. “Eugenics in Britain.” Social Studies of Science 6. No 3/4. (1975): 499-532. P. 515

11
measures which will alter the present rules under which we live so that process of deterioration will
be arrested and that our descendants will at least be our equals.42
One historian however has suggested that ‘the supposed poor physical state of Army volunteers for the Boer War,
particularly those from the cities, encouraged and enabled the articulation of concerns about the degeneracy of the
‘race’ and its urban content. However, the ‘evidence’ of ill health reflected less on empirical reality than a class
investment in representing the proletariat as a degenerate group.’43
Yet the working class and residuum were not
alone in raising upper class concerns. Along with the high fertility of the working classes, there was also the high
fertility of the supposedly feeble-minded to contend with as well. This fear to a great extent can be seen now as the
politicisation of fertility, with the upper classes attempting to maintain their privilege and power in the face of an
ever growing working class, and is made evident in the passing of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.44
Yet for some a solution to a large number of these issues made itself apparent, and that solution was eugenics.
Eugenics with its dual strands of positive and negative measures offered an appealing alternative to rising costs of
poor relief with solutions to other social ills as well. Through negative measures, it would be possible to limit the
birth rate of those deemed undesirable. At the same time positive measures could help encourage the more fit
members of society to raise their fertility rate through incentives, more often than not tax breaks or family
allowances.
The Aims of the Present Study
With this in mind, we can now readily discuss what the aims of the present study are. Primarily, it aims to contribute
to the new wave of revisionist historiography on the subject of British eugenics. This shall be made possible through
42
Keith, A. Urgency of Eugenic Reform. 1st
Sept, 1930. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/10/12 (1) P. 1-2.
43
Bonnet, A “From White to Western: “Racial Decline” and the idea of the West in Britain, 1890-1930” Journal of
Historical Sociology vol 16, no.3 (2003): 320-348. P. 328.
44
Basu, A.M. “The ‘Politicization’ of Fertility to Achieve Non-Demographic Objectives,” Population Studies vol. 51,
no.1 (1997): 5-18. P. 5. Basu suggests that using population research to support certain issues with interventions
that won’t have an immediate impact on demographic rates can be seen as the politicisation of fertility.

12
a rigorous re-examination of the classic line of argument, that class was the driving force in the British movement.
This re-assessment will question to what extent the movement was class-centric with its early focus on differential
fertility, and whether its concern over the ‘submerged tenth’, yet another term for the residuum or rather the social
problem group as they would come to be known, in particular a specific sub group known as the feeble minded, was
an attempt to pass a racial concern as a social one instead. This will be the subject of the first chapter, along with an
attempt to identify where the belief that the movement was class-centric originated from in the historiography.
Further to this, the reasoning behind the fears of degeneration will be further explored in greater depth, and used
to help explain how they affected the eugenics movement.
Chapter two addresses the issue of race in British eugenics. It examines the broad, varying definitions of race that
persisted throughout the period. Combining secondary studies with the contemporary writings on race, it aims to
reveal what intellectual streams contributed to eugenic rhetoric. With the establishment of these theories and the
existence of what is argued to be scientific racism, it then goes on to analyse how these theories were used to back
eugenic theory along with how they found expression in eugenic literature. Immigration and empire both figure in
this discussion, due in part to the believed degenerative effects of miscegenation.
The connection between these two chapters is established through the work of Detlev Peukert. Peukert’s theory of
value and non-value plays a crucial role in establishing how social class and race determined the desirability of a
specific group of people in a eugenic context.45
As such a portion of each chapter will be dedicated to examining
how this theory can be applied to both the issues of class and race in British eugenics.
Chapter three will provide an analysis of a prosopographical study taken of the members of the Eugenics Society
between 1936-1937. The aims of this study are to examine the class composition of the society, and to see from
which fields the professional members were drawn from, in particular the members who held doctorates. The
reasoning for this, despite the numerous claims of a primarily middle class membership, no studies are ever shown,
45
Peukert, D. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” Re-evaluating the Third Reich, ed. by T.
Childers and J. Caplan, 234 – 249. New York, 1993.

13
the results are merely given. This chapter is hoped to fill this gap in the historiography. What follows is a multi-
disciplinary study. Using the methodologies of intellectual history, it looks at the varying theories of race and class
that existed at the time, and how they were presented by contemporaries to reflect their world view. Further to this
it is also a work of social history to a degree, due to the way it examines the interaction between a particular middle
class interest group and the lower classes it aimed to legislate against along with examining the concept of a
residuum. In all, this study’s aim is to weave together diverse and varying threads of historical enquiry, which until
now have primarily existed independently, to produce a more coherent historical analysis of how race and class
figured in the British eugenics movement in the early twentieth century.

14
Chapter One: Deficiency, Inefficiency and Value
This chapter will cover the long standing argument that British eugenics was in fact a socially prejudiced movement.
As noted in the introductory chapter, this view has been the core theory in the historiography of British eugenics for
at least the last half century, a long continuing line of argument dating back to the beginnings of scholarship on the
subject at hand. The key question with regard to these assertions is whether they still hold up to academic scrutiny.
In light of the newly emerging historiography and the now more widely available archival materials, these claims are
ready to be reassessed. Examples of readily available materials include the Wellcome Library’s holdings of the
Eugenics Society’s papers, once closely guarded with heavily restricted access, but now digitised and freely available
to all. Alongside this, it must also be considered that new archival material has become available for consultation in
the years since the original wave of historiography was published, including private papers of various members, such
as George Pitt-Rivers. The foundations of much of the academic output on the subject dates back almost half a
century. Its age means that the works can be subjected to claims of being outdated, due to the material and concepts
used being now surpassed by other, more recent works. With these factors in mind, we must delve once again into
the subject of social prejudice within British eugenics, this time armed with a broader understanding of the
movement and equipped with a wider variety of source material, along with the newly emergent revisionist
historiography.
The historiographical roots
Some important questions with regards to the historiographical trend that leans more towards the ‘social prejudice’
line of argument must be asked. Most importantly it must be asked, at which point in the history of the subject did
this theory emerge? What allowed it to maintain its prominence, and more importantly, why was it perpetuated?
The origin of this line of argument can be seen as coming from inside the Eugenics Society itself, well, from one of
its members at least. The member in question here is none other than C. P. Blacker himself.

15
Carlos Paton Blacker, psychiatrist, veteran of both World Wars and more importantly to this study, general secretary
of the Eugenics Society from 1931 to 1952, was part of the new guard in British eugenics.46
Blacker was one of the
key members of the society pushing for a more palatable form of eugenics, known as reform eugenics, leading to
outrage amongst it more ‘conservative’ and racially motivated members.47
Reform eugenics was aimed to deal more
with social problems rather than the racial issues that concerned earlier members of the organisation, primarily the
Social Problem Group and the problems they entailed. The Social Problem Group was composed of the lower levels
of the industrial working class, essentially another term for the Residuum. Through this new programme, he sought
alliances with similar likeminded pressure and research groups to help further the cause of eugenics, alongside
funding research into the eugenic applications of birth control. He was also one of the few responsible for turning
the Society’s eye onto the issue of the so called Social Problem Group. In a chapter of his book, published practically
upon his retirement from his post as the general secretary of the Eugenics Society, Blacker discusses the output of
the post-Galton generation of eugenicists:
Considerations of social class, were, however, prominent in the writings of several leading eugenicists
in the two decades after Galton’s death. Social class was sometimes put forward as a criterion of
eugenic value; and terms were sometimes used such as “lower classes”, “riff-raff”, “dregs”, which
seemed to imply a contempt for certain sections of the poor. Such language gave offence to many
social reformers.48
Here Blacker draws specific attention to this generation of eugenicists’ work regarding social class in a eugenic
context. Considering his later priority as general secretary was dealing with the so called Social Problem Group and
limiting its reproduction, it would appear as though he was amongst the eugenicists looking at social class as a
criterion of eugenic value as evident in his attempts to push through voluntary sterilisation and to allow the working
classes to access birth control. Yet it can also be argued that Blacker was to some extent an egalitarian, hoping to
spread the privileges of birth control to the lower classes.
46
Richard A. Soloway, ‘Blacker, Carlos Paton (1895–1975)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2013, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47726, accessed 28 Jan 2016.
47
Pitt-Rivers, G.H.L.F. Letter to R. Ruggles Gates, 6th
January, 1933. KCL. K/PP65/7/8: Pitt-Rivers reply to a letter from
Gates implies a shared dislike of Blacker, his policies and his aims for the society.
48
Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1952. 139.

16
In correspondence to Darwin, Blacker claims that eugenics suffers from three disadvantages or rather unfavourable
connotations. He wrote ‘in the first place, it is regarded by Socialists as a system of thinly disguised class prejudice;
secondly it is regarded in many circles as a joke….Thirdly the word ‘eugenics’ epitomises in the minds of Roman
Catholics an alluring though fundamentally false and pernicious doctrine. Personally, I believe that the word can
gradually be cleared of these unfavourable connotations….’49
It would appear Blacker was trying to shed the skin of
class prejudice that eugenics had acquired under the previous leadership. Returning again to the roots of the idea,
that social class rather than racial motivations were at the core of the post-World War One eugenic movement,
Blacker attempts to distance the concept of British eugenics from that of Nazi racial hygiene. Over several pages,
Blacker quotes from Mein Kampf. Citing select passages and considering the underlying influence of the Nietzschean
concept of the ‘Superman’, concepts of Darwinian survival and Hitler’s belief in Aryan supremacy, in the final extract
Blacker cites, Hitler explicitly outlines what would become Nazi racial policies:
In this matter, the State must assert itself as the trustee of a millennial future, in the face of which the
egoistic desires of the individual count for nothing and will have to give way before the ruling of the
State. In order to fulfil this duty in a practical manner, the State will have to avail itself of modern
medical discoveries. It must proclaim as unfit for procreation all those who are afflicted with some
visible hereditary disease or the carriers of it; and practical measures must be adopted to have such
people rendered sterile.50
Blacker’s overall critique of Hitler’s espoused views is fairly plain and simple; he merely states, in somewhat laconic
fashion, ‘There is little of Galton in these passages.’51
Blacker happened to be slightly more familiar than most with
regards to Nazi eugenic policies. Despite the drifting apart of the two nations movements ideologically in the later
inter-war period, Blacker was asked to assist a committee in adjudicating documents regarding eugenics seized
during the Second World War.52
The documents varied in content, with some possibly being ‘regarded as broadly
49
Blacker, C.P. Letter to Leonard Darwin from C.P. Blacker, 24th
March, 1937. Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/B.1/6: Box
9
50
Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. 141-144.
51
Ibid.144
52
Blacker, C.P. Wartime Eugenic Measures in Germany, 10th
August, 1947. Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/H.1/7-17: Box
23.

17
falling within the meaning of eugenics (or rather of the Nazi version of eugenics called race hygiene…)’.53
However,
in all, Blacker’s judgement was that none of the experiments had any bearing on eugenics ‘as the subject was
understood in [Britain].’54
Interestingly, what can be seen here is that Blacker is distancing the British movement
from that of its German counterpart. This is something which would later be substantiated in the historiography,
starting as already mentioned with Blacker’s own text on the subject. As such we can see here the beginnings of
what would become the dominant line of argument for roughly the next fifty years.
Deficiency
A pamphlet produced in the early 1930’s at the height of the Eugenic Sterilization Campaign in England espouses the
aims of the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization.55
The committee was made up of various members of the
Eugenics Society and tasked with creating public support to change the laws regarding sterilization. The pamphlet in
question outlines the reasoning as to why the law regarding sterilization ought to be changed:
The child affected with primary amentia (an inborn defect) grows up defective because its constitution
does not permit it to grow up normal. And directly or indirectly the liability to defectiveness is handed
on to future generations…these circumstances alone point to the necessity for preventing mental
defectives from having children. But there are two further facts which make the present situation
especially urgent. The first is that high grade mental defectives and the classes which produce them
are incapable of regulating the births of their children…56
So-called high grade mental defectives, in some cases referred to as the ‘feeble minded’, were those who suffered
from conditions that were not overly debilitating, meaning they were not always subjected to segregation due to
their mental health. The same pamphlet cites statistics with regards to the so called ‘feeble minded’ in an attempt
to create perspective between that group and the so called low grade mental defectives; it states that “feeble
53
Ibid, 2.
54
Ibid, 19.
55
Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D.
[1930-32] Wellcome Library, PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10.
56
Ibid, 3.

18
minded, high grade defectives…who comprise some 75 per cent. of the total of defectives, tend to spring from a
group roughly estimated as composing a tenth of the total population of the country. This group consists of people
who, though not necessarily themselves defectives, are sub-normal and mentally retarded.”57
Here we see a
reference to the lowest level of society, which has gone by many names. This ten percent of the populace was, at
the time, referred to as the Social Problem Group. However previously it had gone by the name ‘residuum’ or
‘submerged tenth’. It was essentially a moniker for what was the industrial underclass. Various assertions were made
as to why they existed in the state they did. Some claimed it was moral defect that produced them, whereas others
saw it as a result of their environmental conditions.58
Charles Booth was a pivotal contributor to the concept of the
residuum with his work, Life and Labour of the People of London.59
Over the decades following Booth’s work, the
resulting attempts to deal with the social, economic and political issues arising from the existence of an industrial
underclass varied from social ameliorative measures to demands for draconian labour colonies. Most were attempts
to combat inefficiency, as is shown by the strategy suggested by Helen Bosanquet, an influential member of the
Charity Organisation Society, who suggested that they ‘approach the problem by striking at its roots in the minds of
the people themselves; to stimulate their energies, to insist upon their responsibilities, to train their faculties. In
short, to make them efficient.’60
Here we see a suggested policy to take the inefficient, and make them efficient; to
take members of society with little or no value, due to the fact they take more than they produce from society, in
the form of rates and public assistance, and to give them value.
Bosanquet’s suggestion of labour colonies was not only suggested as a measure for the residuum however, a book
published in 1931 reflects similar views, but with direct reference to the issue of the mental defective. The Mental
Defective: A problem in social inefficiency was written by two doctors,61
who both worked at Stokes Park Colony in
the Bristol area. Due to their professional occupations, the authors had direct experience dealing with those suffering
57
Ibid, 5.
58
edition. P. 17
59
Ibid, 27.
60
Ibid, 33.
61
Berry, R.J.A and Gordon, R.G. The Mental Defective: A problem in social inefficiency. London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co, 1931.

19
from supposed mental defect. Their book provides useful insight into the suggested treatment of those held there.
Opening with a description of what mental deficiency is caused by, an arrest of brain growth, they state that ‘the
individual is unable to react to his environment in the manner regarded as normal by the average member of
society.’62
Already in the opening passages, they have implied those who suffer from mental defect as abnormal.
However, they believe that the mentally deficient are not beyond reach when it comes to some form of education.
The authors believed that each patient should be treated as an individual, with a programme developed to suit their
specific talents and limitations.63
As such they hoped that those of the higher grades would benefit from treatment,
which would not return them to ‘normality’ but provide them with ‘a happy useful life in a suitable environment;’64
note the use of the word ‘useful’ here. It seems that the authors hoped that the suitably educated deficient could
be trained to be productive, giving them value. Further on, they paint a picture of the ideal defective colony and
conclude that:
‘Mental defect cannot be cured. It must be endured, and it is our desire and ambition that that
endurance should be as pleasant and profitable as possible, both for the individual and the community,
and should cost the nation as little as possible, so that more may be available for those citizens who
are really of use to themselves and their fellows.’65
The above quote reads almost like a check list with regards to value, deficiency and inefficiency. It suggests that the
deficient can be made profitable, that the deficient can be made efficient, and finally it suggests that under this
proposed colony system the deficient would cease to be a burden, with the resources being supposedly wasted on
them becoming available for others.
Other commentators upon the issue of the feeble-minded offered up differing solutions other than colonies. William
Inge, Dean of St. Pauls, in an essay published in 1922 discussed the nature of heredity on Mendelian lines, following
the outlining of these ideas he goes on to elaborate on mental deficiency. He writes ‘…some interesting laws have
62
Ibid, 2.
63
Ibid, 11. Berry and Gordon wrote “Practically all defective children, except gross imbeciles, are educable to a
certain extent, but to get the best out of the child, it has to be studied as an individual, and the most important
problem is to find out what the child can do, and thereafter to concentrate on its education on those particular lines.’
64
Ibid, 21.
65
Ibid, 190.

20
been discovered, and in one instance, that of mental defect or feeble-mindedness, the results are of very ominous
import indeed. It cannot be bred out of a family in which it has established itself, but it could be eliminated by
bringing the infected stock to an end.’66
What can also be described as ominous is the assertion that the traits could
be ‘eliminated by bringing the infected stock to an end.’ Unfortunately, he doesn’t go on to elaborate what measures
he would suggest, either sterilisation, birth control or eugenically endorsed execution. Yet, the words used to
describe the perceived problem of the feeble-minded faintly echo the words of Hitler in Mein Kampf, cited by Blacker
in his attempt to dissociate the British movement from its German counterpart. “[The state] must proclaim as unfit
for procreation all those who are afflicted with some visible hereditary disease or the carriers of it; and practical
measures must be adopted to have such people rendered sterile.”67
This similarity lends credibility to Stone’s claims
that parts of English society were exhibiting proto-fascist traits, especially in the context of eugenics.68
Dean Inge
was a long standing member of the Eugenics Society, being a friend of Galton’s and a long serving member on the
Society’s Council. Yet in time he resigned due to the fact the society, in his words ‘were becoming too environmental,
interested, in Galton’s phrase, in nurture rather than nature; and when they appointed Sir William Beveridge to give
the Galton Lecture, I resigned my membership. To subsidise the teeming birth-rate of the slums is not the way to
improve the quality of the population.’69
The long standing issue of the cost of what was seen as charitable and philanthropic interference with natures laws
was always a concern, especially when discussed in conjunction with the inefficient. Take for example Schiller who
argued that ‘they are, in short, social parasites of a peculiarly pernicious kind. For they multiply without stint. Their
families average seven or more, and are rapidly supplanting those of the superior classes, which average less than
two. At the same time the growth of taxation required for the support of the growing multitudes of the feeble-
minded is impelling the wealth-producing classes to further restriction of their families. Thus the strong and efficients
66
Inge, W.R. “Eugenics” Outspoken Essays: Second Series, ed. by W.R. Inge, 254-275. London: Longmans, Green and
Co, 1922. P. 258.
67
Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. P. 144.
68
Stone, D. Breeding Superman. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002. P. 3.
69
Inge, W.R. Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P. 14.

21
are being extirpated, in order that the feeble minded and incompetent can be preserved.’70
The issue of taxation
arises elsewhere, with many commentators lamenting the negative impact it was having on the race. Dean Inge
wrote that ‘we have seen that the destruction of the upper and professional classes by taxation directed expressly
against them has already begun, and this victimisation is certain to become more and more acute, till the classes are
practically extinguished.’71
In his second volume of published essays he returned to the subject stating that ‘Our
policy of encouraging nature’s failures and misfits to multiply, while the better stocks are progressively penalised for
their support, is producing the results which might have been predicted.’72
It becomes highly apparent that this was
an issue close to the Dean’s heart as he also argued the case in the The Romanes Lecture, which he delivered at
Oxford in 1920, where he stated:
No selection in favour of superior types is now going on; on the contrary, civilisation tends now, as
always to an Ausrottung der Besten – a weeding out of the best; and the new practice of subsidising
the unsuccessful by taxes extorted from the industrious is cacogenics erected into principle. The best
hope of stopping this progressive degeneration is the science of eugenics. But the science is still too
tentative to be made the basis of legislation, and we are not yet agreed what we should breed for.73
It is clear that for some taxation was tied to the to the differential birth-rate, both as a leading factor and as a result.
The issue of ‘value’ is not merely limited to the social problem of the mentally deficient though. When this kind of
thinking is merged with eugenic policy it becomes an issue of ‘value’ and ‘non-value’ in a racial sense, and this is
exactly what happened with regards to the Social Problem Group and the mentally deficient that were believed to
have populated it.
70
Schiller, F.C.S. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable & Co, 1932. P. 22-23
71
Inge, W.R. “The Future of the English Race” Outspoken Essays, ed. by W.R Inge, 82-105. London: Longmans, Green
and Co, 1919. P. 98
72
Inge, W.R. “Eugenics” Outspoken Essays: Second Series, ed. by W.R. Inge, 254-275. London: Longmans, Green and
Co, 1922. P. 257.
73
Inge, W.R. “The Romanes Lecture, 1920” Diary of a Dean: St. Pauls 1911-1934. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1949. P.
201.

22
Inefficiency and Value
In Hereditary Genius which was first published in 1869, Galton proposes a hierarchy divided according to eugenic
principles, he wrote: ‘We may divide newly-married couples in three classes, with respect to the probable civic worth
of their offspring. There would be a small class of ‘desirables’, a large class of ‘passables’ of whom nothing more will
be said here, and a small class of ‘undesirables’. It would clearly be advantageous to the country if social and moral
support as well as timely material help were extended to the desirables, and not monopolized as it is now apt to be
by the undesirables.’74
It can be inferred that Galton refers to the same group of people that Tregdgold does, due to
the claims of the monopolizing of support, we can also infer a hierarchy of value. We can see that this belief was
widespread amongst members of the Eugenics Society and easily found a ready audience in the pages of the Eugenics
Review. The worrying trend of familial limitation by the desirables and the fecundity of the undesirables was a
constant concern the British eugenicists tried to address, but it is important to understand why this differential
fertility occurred.
The concept of value and non-value as it is being applied in this piece, stems from the work of Detlev Peukert.75
Although the article in which the theory appears deals with the radical policies of the Nazi state, parts of it can be
applied with regards to British eugenics. Referring to the Nazi racial programme Peukert writes ‘in steadily widening
areas of social policy, health policy, educational policy and demographic policy, a ruling paradigm and guide to action
became established whereby people were divided into those possessing ‘value’ and those lacking ‘value’. ‘Value’
was to be selected and promoted, and ‘non value’ was to be segregated and eradicated.’76
He continues further on,
‘the common racist factor in the disciplines and profession of the human and social sciences is the differential
assessment and treatment of people according to their ‘value’, where the criteria of ‘value’ are derived from a
normative and affirmative model of the volkskörper as a collective entity, and biological substratum of ‘value’ is
attributed to the genetic endowment of the individual.’77
Although in Britain no legislation or extreme state
74
Blacker, C.P. Eugenics: Galton and After. 107-108.
75
Peukert, D. “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science.” Re-evaluating the Third Reich, ed. by T.
Childers and J. Caplan, 234 – 249. New York, 1993.
76
Ibid, 235.
77
Ibid, 237.

23
measures were enforced, discussion of eugenic issues still occurred along similar lines. A prime example of the
application of these ideas is readily available when we turn to the concept of the differential birth-rate, a contentious
issue in the years leading up to the First World War and for some time after it. From various sources we can see
references to the lower classes as the inefficient when comparatively viewed with those higher up the social ladder.
Take for instance the contribution of Dr Killick Millard, Medical Officer for Health for Leicester to a discussion on
birth control held in 1920, Millard argues:
[Major Leonard Darwin] points out that there is good reason to fear that efficiency and infertility are
becoming correlated, and in so far as this comparative infertility is due to birth control (and nearly all
those who have studied the question believe that this is the principle cause) we must pronounce birth
control, as at present practised, to be distinctly dysgenic in its operation. For it is quite clear that the
less efficient sections of the community are multiplying faster than the more efficient.78
Here we see a direct comparison between the upper and lower classes, whose differential fertility was being
discussed, with the terms efficient and inefficient (‘less efficient’ in this case) being attached to those classes
respectively. Furthermore, he argues that the differential birth rate is dysgenic, implying the ‘less efficient’ members
of society have lesser value.
The case is stated elsewhere even earlier, Brabrook writes, ‘the circumstance that these people (the habitual
unemployed) frequently have wives, and still more frequently have children, points to the possibility that an
hereditary caste of morally and physically deteriorated person - potentially a burden upon the community as
paupers, but certainly valueless to the community as workers - is being created.’79
Once again we see, in this case
the habitual unemployed (one of the attributes assigned to the residuum it must be pointed out), being referred to
as having no value as they fail to contribute to society. A pamphlet produced by the Eugenics Society argues a similar
line and suggests what measures should be taken in this instance with regards to mental defectives, it reads ‘if high
grade defectives, together with the bulk of other undesirables, tend to be born from the social problem group, it is
78
Eugenics Society. “Birth Control: A Discussion,” Eugenics Review 12, no.4 (1921): 291-298. P. 293
79
Brabrook, E. “Eugenics and Pauperism,” Eugenics Review 1, no.4 (1910): 229-241. P. 233

24
manifestly in the communities’ eugenic and economic interests that the fertility of this group be somehow limited.’80
A.F Tredgold expressed a similar view when he wrote, ‘[The Feeble-minded] are essentially persons on the down-
grade and they not only contribute nothing to a nations advance, since they divert, for their own support, no little
of the resource and energy of the country.’81
F.C.S. Schiller wrote on the topic of the feeble-minded also, arguing:
the sterilization of the fit, the spoiling of the cream, is not, however, the only deleterious process
permitted to go on in modern society. It is deadly to the prospect of progress and to the possibilities
of intelligent guidance in human affairs, but it is not in itself incompatible with a stationary civilization
in which the men of average stupidity might contrive to muddle along indefinitely without disaster.
There is however, in addition, operative in modern society a deteriorating agency which is directly
conducive to a rapid irremediable decline. It, too, is incidental to the differential birth rate, and in the
magnitude of volume of its effects it greatly surpasses the sterilization of the fit. We may call it the
proliferation of the feeble minded at the bottom of the social scale.82
The increase in the supposedly worrying differential fertility can be explained by the second stage of the
demographic transition that Britain experienced during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Richard
Soloway explains the second stage of the demographic shift as this:
In contrast to the first stage of transition, which was characterised by high fertility and mortality and
slow population growth, the second stage was marked by a substantial decline in infant mortality while
fertility remained relatively high. People, however, began to recognize they could conceive fewer
children to achieve a certain family size; beyond that number the costs of rearing and educating an
excessively large brood became an increasingly heavy burden. Consequently, the pressures for high
80
Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Eugenic Sterilization, Second Edition,” S.D. [1932]
SA/EUG/D.50:Box 34 p.7
81
Tredgold, A.F. “II: The Feeble-minded – A Social Danger,” Eugenics Review 1, no.2 (1909): 97-104. P 100.
82
Schiller, F.C.S. Social Decay and Eugenical Reform. London: Constable & Co, 1932. P. 20

25
fertility gradually weakened in the course of the nineteenth century, and the motivation and desire
for limitation strengthened.83
This theory is reinforced by the results of the 1911 census, which showed that the upper classes were seeing a faster
decline in fertility than the manual labouring classes. This was in part due to the embourgoisement of the middle
class, who were developing a pre-occupation with individual well-being and fulfilment, which in turn resulted in
family limitation to maintain a certain lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed.84
At the time however, social
Darwinist thought combined with the fear of sterility in the upper classes helped convince some contemporaries of
the degeneration of the British people. As Soloway notes:
To the pessimistically inclined, in particular, the enumeration of deterioration or degeneracy as
reflected in military recruitment, declining fertility, small physical stature, increased criminality or
insanity, unemployment, the rising costs of poor relief and countless other real or imagined indicators
only confirmed their worst expectations about modern society and the future of the once dominant
British race.85
Soloway even obliges to show just why these stages of the transition are of relevance to British eugenics, explaining
its relevance as this, ‘to contemporaries, a reading of the demographic map of society often led to the discovery that
the poorest and the least educated, healthy, intelligent and skilled portion of the population were continuing to
reproduce themselves in large numbers, while more and more people in the wealthiest, best-educated, and highly
skilled classes were rapidly reducing the size of their families.’86
This conclusion is exemplified in a lecture given by
William Inge, Dean of St. Pauls and long-time member of the Eugenics Society. When delivering the Galton Lecture
of 1919, Inge claimed, ‘we are at present breeding a large parasitic class subsisting on the taxes and hampering the
83
Soloway, R.A. Demography and Degeneration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. References to
the 1995 edition. P. xix
84
Haines, M.R. “Social Class Differentials during Fertility Decline: England and Wales Revisited,” Population Studies
vol. 43, no. 2 (1989): 305-323. P. 306-307
85
Soloway, R. “Counting the Degenerates: The Statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian England,” Journal of
Contemporary History vol. 17, no. 1 (1982): 137-164. P. 160.
86
Ibid, xxi

26
Government. The comparative fertility of the lowest class as compared with the better stocks has greatly increased,
and is still increasing. The competent working class families, as well as the rich, are far less fertile that the waste
products of our civilisation.’87
The aforementioned claims of Leonard Darwin, who claimed that efficiency and
infertility were becoming correlated, and that the comparative infertility was due to birth control directly supports
Soloway’s observations, as do the references regarding the reproduction of the inefficient cited above. From this it
is clear that the second stage of transition was in effect in Britain at the time, and some of those who lived through
the demographic change were keen to limit what they believed were its damaging effects. Now you may ask, where
does this digression into the fear of the residuum and the attached concepts of value and non-value in terms of
efficiency and inefficiency lead us? It leads us back to the issue of eugenic sterilization and the Social Problem Group.
As already seen the fertility of the Social Problem Group was much higher than that of other areas of society. The
fertility of the Social Problem Group was recognised by some eugenicists as one of the damaging results of what we
now understand to be the second stage of demographic transition. This particular social group was merely one target
of the voluntary sterilisation campaign however. The other was the poorer members of society, primarily the
working class, who were not ‘defective’ but supposedly merely lacked moral restraint.88
This is where classic historiographical accounts come into play. Most works argue that British eugenics was
motivated by issues arising from social class. Searle notes that eugenicists were working to increase the birth-rates
of the efficient middle classes, while reducing those of the socially dependent.89
Mazumdar notes class was crucial
to the Society’s problematic.90
Soloway summed up the British eugenicists concerns with class thusly:
British eugenics as a product of late Victorian and Edwardian middle class society remained fixed on
the subject of class no matter how much its adherents talked imprecisely about race. Class in Britain
was, in other words, as much a way of thinking and perceiving as it was a definable socioeconomic
87
Inge, W.R. “The Future of the English Race” Outspoken Essays, ed. by W.R Inge, 82-105. London: Longmans, Green
and Co, 1919. P. 99
88
Ibid. P. 20. An example of this is in the Poor Law Report of 1909 as cited by Mazumdar, which states the most
important causes of pauperism as old age, families dependent on casual labour, criminal offences, venereal disease
and intemperance. The last two being linked to lack of moral fibre.
89
Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 46
90
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 1

27
category. People consciously and unconsciously attached to it projective qualitative concepts of social
and moral value, fitness and unfitness, or worthiness and unworthiness.91
A study of this concept of unworthiness being attached to class has been undertaken by John Welshman.
Welshman’s research deals entirely with the concept of an underclass and the various measures taken to investigate
and deal with it.92
But as already stated, the voluntary sterilisation measures were proposed as a solution to those
suffering from some form of ‘defect,’ and as such attributed as being of ‘non-value,’ hence landing them as part of
the Social Problem Group. Therefore, it should be argued that in this regard, the measures were in fact racial hygiene
not social hygiene as suggested in previous scholarship or arguably a blending of the two concepts, with the Social
Problem Group being seen as a racially degenerate underclass. The measures were designed to increase the
efficiency of the population and remove the supposedly defective of the ability to reproduce. By offering voluntary
sterilization to the working class however, they were hoping to reduce the future numbers of the socially dependent
through family limitation, similar to what the other classes were doing. For example, correspondence between
Havelock Ellis, a prominent sexologist, and Blacker highlights this reason, Ellis points out the distinction between the
two groups that voluntary sterilization would affect stating: ‘to deal with the defectives under control is a definite
and separate question and probably requires an enabling Act. The objection raised against such a [Voluntary
Sterilisation] Bill…would be that it is class legislation, and it is not likely to appeal to the Labour Party. It is necessary
to make clear that the object of the Bill is not to inflict a deprivation on the poor, but to confer a blessing already
enjoyed by the rich.’93
What they were hoping to achieve with their work on voluntary sterilization, was the ability
for the working class and the poor to have access to sterilisation as a family limitation measure. As such this aspect
of the measure was in fact social hygiene, for it aimed to limit the number of parents who would turn to the state
for welfare due to the increasing and unsupportable size of their families. The origins of the campaign do deserve
explanation however.
91
Soloway, R.A. Demography and Degeneration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. References to
the 1995 edition. P. 62
92
edition.
93
Letter to Blacker from Havelock Ellis, 2nd
January, 1931. Welcome Library, PP/CPB/B.5/1 Box:10 p.4

28
The Campaign for Voluntary Sterilisation started in 1929 and hoped to secure legislation enabling people to undergo
surgery resulting in sterilisation.94
Highly active throughout the 1930’s, it was strengthened by the findings of both
the Brock Report and Colchester Survey which advocated sterilisation as a preventive measure with regards to mental
deficiency. The Eugenics Society formed a committee to lead the campaign, but later dissolved it to assist the
formation of the Joint Committee on Sterilisation, containing members of varying medical bodies as well as the
Eugenics Society. By producing propaganda such as pamphlets,95
holding meetings around the country, along with
relying on the support of publicly influential members of the Society, the campaign hoped to get a draft Bill based
on the recommendations of the Brock Report passed in Parliament. The prime target of the Bill would have been the
mentally defective. As expressed in a pamphlet produced by the Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilisation, they
believed that defectives’ and undesirables’ fertility should be limited to guard the community’s eugenic and
economic interest.96
By allowing people to volunteer, or by enabling Doctors to recommend people for surgery it
was believed that the stigma of sterilisation would be lessened. Despite securing votes of support from official
bodies, such as the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, staunch opposition from the political Left and the
Catholic Church halted the progress of the campaign and no legislation materialised.97
The former historiographical trends, notably the assertion that British eugenics was predominantly concerned with
class seems somewhat myopic after considering that which has been laid out above. The campaign for voluntary
sterilization was an attempt to secure measures of both racial and social hygiene. It seems that the fact the measures
were aimed to help the poor and to limit the growth of the social problem group, who were primarily the lowest
group on the social ladder, has caused academics to take the campaign at face value. The fact that the measures
were hoped to affect distinct socioeconomic groups does bring class into the equation, yet it does not limit it merely
to that motive. On the surface, it appears a class measure, but when you scratch past that surface and consider the
94
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 204.
95
“What is Human Sterilization,” Pamphlet, 1934. PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10, being a prime example.
96
Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization. “Committee for Legalising Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D.
[1930-32] PP/CPB/B.5/3:Box 10. P.5
97
Mazumdar, P.M.H. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings. Oxon: Routledge, 1992. P. 210, 211.

29
deeper implications, it is equally a racial measure, especially in terms of those who constitute the social problem
group, primarily those suffering from mental defect. If we turn to the work of Foucault, we can substantiate this
claim. In his discussion of power and biopolitics, Foucault demonstrates the State’s attempts to bring the biological
under control, in the case of this study the biological component is the Feeble Minded. He asserts that biopolitics
deals with the population as a political problem that is both scientific and political, a problem that is biological and
one to be dealt with by the State.98
Yet in the English case, the State exercised this power in a limited context, despite
the eugenic movements efforts to extend this power. However, as Foucault points out biopower can dictate a
person’s death, which need not be limited to the literal expression of the term, but can also include political death,
described as ‘expulsion, rejection and so on,’99
in this case segregation and detention. Yet this is not the most crucial
point arising from the work in question. His definition of racism is of great interest; he writes:
It is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control: the
break between what must live and what must die. The appearance within the biological continuum of
the human race of races, the distinction among races, the hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races
are described as good and others, in contrast, are described as inferior: all this is a way of fragmenting
the field of the biological that power controls. It is a way of separating out the groups that exists within
a population.100
So according to this line of thought, could we not see the mentally deficient and the Social Problem Group as a
separate distinct group, a race if you will?
To sterilise those who were seen as defective, and in the eyes of eugenicists suffering from hereditary conditions,
was a eugenic safeguard to prevent the continued propagation of those deemed as having ‘non-value’ due to their
inborn inherited deficiencies. For example, in one pamphlet produced by the Committee for Legalising Eugenic
Sterilization, it is stated that they differ from other organisations who merely hope to aid defectives, due to the fact
98
Foucault, M. “17th
March 1976” Society Must Be Defended, eds. M Bertani and A. Fontana, 239-264. London:
Penguin, 2003. Translated by David Macey. P. 239-240, 245.
99
Ibid, 256.
100
Ibid, 254-255.

30
that they are ‘interested in the defective chiefly from the point of view of the prevention of his propagation.’ They
follow this up with the claim that they are ‘concerned with racial rather than individual problems.’101
Although the
definition of race was loosely defined and multifaceted, its use in propaganda and in contemporary literature means
it cannot be entirely disregarded as a subject, despite the efforts of contemporaries and later scholars on the subject.
With these concepts in mind, we must move on to deal with more explicit concerns for the race and its hygiene.
101
“Eugenic Sterilization,” Pamphlet, S.D. [1930] Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/D.50: Box 34 P. 4

31
Chapter Two: Race and Value
As seen in the preceding chapter, although theories of social hygiene provide a solid foundation for analysis, it cannot
merely stop there. Race played an imperative part in the British eugenics movement, despite some of its members
attempts to dissociate itself from the German strand of eugenics. In recent decades a new revisionist wave has begun
to emerge, in its wake challenging the formerly held assumptions of eugenics in Britain. These newer studies have
focused on Britain’s movement itself and how it fits into the intellectual history of the period, as well as dealing with
the relationships between Britain’s movement and its foreign counterpart institutions, mainly those found in
Germany. Although these studies have proven to be extremely valuable additions to the resurgence of academic
interest around the subject, some areas still have yet to be elaborated upon. Take for instance one of the subjects
explored in this chapter, that of the interpretations of the concept of race in the period in question. Although
historians have commentated on the issue, no one has yet fully explored it within the context of the British eugenic
movement. As such it will be the first issue explored in this chapter. Before we delve further in to the issue however,
it must be considered that the conceptions of race happened to fluctuate throughout the period in question; they
changed with public opinion, scientific advances and, even upon the personal beliefs of the author of a specific work.
Despite these varying interpretations however, eugenics was a movement concerned with ‘racial improvement’ and
eugenicists often employed the language of race.102
Interpretations of Race
H.G. Wells, in a series of essays which appeared serialized at the turn of the nineteenth century, but later published
as a collection in 1906, discussed amongst other topics the field known as Anthropology. His description was not
particularly flattering and painted a rather lavish, negative picture of the then emerging field. To be exact he
described it in these terms:
Anthropology has been compared to a great region, marked out indeed as within sphere of influence
of science, but unsettled and for the most part, unsubdued. Like all such hinterland sciences, it is a
102
Stepan, N. The Idea of Race in Science: 1800-1960. London: Macmillan, 1982. P. 124.

32
happy hunting-ground for adventurers. Just as in the early days of British Somaliland, rascals would
descend from nowhere in particular upon unfortunate villages, levy taxes and administer atrocity in
the name of the Empire, and even I am told, outface for a time the modest herald of the government,
so in the department of anthropology the public mind suffers from the imposition of theories and
assertions claiming to be “scientific”, which have no more relation to that organized system of criticism
which is science, than a brigand at large on a mountain has to the machinery of law and police, by
which he finally will be hanged.103
Disparaging, to say the least. Wells goes on further, mocking the field and its belief that criminals can be identified
through physical attributes, stating that those who propound such views are in ‘need of urgent polemical
suppression.’104
Searle picks up on this tendency to study anthropometry, stating that eugenicists were from the
start attracted to this field, that there existed a category of persons termed ‘hereditary’ criminals based upon
Lambroso’s work.105
Political historian Paul B. Rich draws further attention to the link between anthropology and
eugenics, making a point of the fact that Francis Galton was president of the Anthropological Institute between 1885
and 1889. Interestingly it was within this period that British anthropologists reached a consensus over the cephalic
index, in 1886 in particular.106
It is interesting to see Wells attack contemporary anthropology as a field with no real
scientific basis. Yet the field, in spite of its detractors, would prove vital to the eugenics movement, especially with
regards to the concepts of racial difference.
Some notable anthropologists were attracted to the eugenicists’ cause, Sir Arthur Keith and George Pitt-Rivers
among them, both of whom were members of the Eugenics Society. Their esteemed names lent some credibility to
the eugenicists’ program. As already mentioned above, theories of race were in flux and the importance given to
them varied upon the commentator. This was a time before the UNESCO statement on race supposedly outlined the
official scientific standing on race. In 1952 they made their position unquestionably clear:
103
Wells, H.G. Mankind in the Making. London: Chapman and Hall, 1906. P. 52
104
Ibid, 52-53.
105
Searle, G.R. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914. Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing, 1976. P. 31.
106
Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition.
P. 18.

33
National, religious, geographical, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial
groups; and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated connexion with racial traits.
Americans are not a race, nor are Frenchmen, nor Germans; nor ipso facto is any other national group.
Muslims and Jews are no more races than are Roman Catholics and Protestants; nor are people who
live in Iceland or Britain or India, or who speak English or any other language, or who are culturally
Turkish or Chinese and the like, thereby describable as races. The use of the term ‘race’ in speaking of
such groups may be a serious error, but it is one which is habitually committed.107
In a post-war world in which the results of extreme, imprecise theories of racial difference were there to behold, it
would seem the clarification was needed. But prior to the war, the term race was often applied to those groups the
UNESCO statement disqualified. Kevles supports this view writing that in the era in question, racial differences were
identified with variations not only in skin colour but in ethnic identity and was a feature prominent in both British
and American eugenics.108
A most notable example is found in the book Some Racial Characteristics of the People of
England. The author describes the various types of Englishman, writing that they ‘are a very mixed multitude. They
show distinct racial differences; and the effect of these on the social and political life of the country, owing amongst
other courses, to the extension of the franchise, demands our careful consideration.’109
Here Higgens links racial
issues with social ones, in this case the extended franchise, and then goes on to list various racial types as described
by Rowland Dixon, of Harvard University, before analysing the characters of Englishmen on a county by county basis.
For Higgens, even county divisions create a distinct anthropometric category. Interestingly Higgens puts eugenics at
the core of the interest in racial characteristics claiming ‘the study of Eugenics seems to have exploded the theory
of human and racial equality.’110
Sir Arthur Keith offered up a similar line of argument, questioning:
107
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Statement on the nature of race and race
differences. 25th
August, 1952. KCL. K/PP65/4/43. P.1
108
Kevles, D.J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Reprinted with new preface. London: HUP,
1995. References are to the 1995 edition. P. 74.
109
Higgens, T.W.E. Some Racial Characteristics of the People of England. London: Robert Scott, 1928. P.8
110
Ibid, 6.

34
What is the relation of nation to race? Huxley said there was none. He regarded a nation as an artificial
production, and this is the view which is still held and taught by most anthropologists…Where Huxley
went wrong was in believing that Europeans belonging to separate racial stocks and guided by
different traditions were planted together in the same land, they became, if I may coin a term,
deracialized and remained permanently so. They were no longer races but merely mongrel breeds. It
never occurred to him that there still remained deeply implanted in their natures those “instincts”
which are concerned in race building.111
Sir Arthur Keith wrote further on Huxley’s theories. The principle matter on which Keith disagreed within Huxley’s
work was the idea that nationality held no place when discussing races, that race should be based rather on a
zoological system founded upon the shared common physical traits of peoples. Huxley argued that ‘a nation…was a
congeries of people held together by territory, speech, politics and traditions, and could not, on scientific grounds,
claim the status of a race.’112
This claim seems strikingly similar to the UNESCO declaration that Huxley’s son, Julian
Huxley, would eventually help draft. Yet Keith did not accept this idea. He countered it with the theory that races
were developed from segregation and from isolation; divisions made along the lines of tribes, nations, castes and
classes.113
In the Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1928 he stated that ‘no matter how potent may be the physiological
machinery which is at work within a group of people, it cannot work its full effect unless there is also in operation
some system of segregation which causes the members of a group to cling to each other, and which also at the same
time serves to isolate its members from all surrounding or competing groups.’114
In the past this isolation was
imposed by geographical concerns, mountains, rivers and oceans. However, in time it became caused by what Keith
dubbed ‘Racial Spirit.’ This core theory underpinned a great deal of Keith’s work and was often used interchangeably
with the term ‘National Spirit.’ Keith argued that this idea was instilled in each race and was an evolutionary factor
111
Keith, A. Ethnos or the Problem of Race. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co Lt, 1931. P. 26-27.
112
Keith, A. The Evolution of the Human Races – Huxley Memorial Lecture. 1928. Royal College of Surgeons.
MS0018/2/10/5. P. 4
113
Keith, A. Racial Spirit as a Formative Force in History. 1935. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/7/2 P. 12.
114
MS0018/2/10/5. P 21.

35
of the first importance. He suggested that isolation had been one of the most important factors in the production of
human races, but had not always been produced by geographical concerns such as the ones already stated, but
rather by certain modes of working, which became inborn and ingrained within the human mind.115
Whilst lecturing
upon the racial difficulties found across the British Empire, Keith wrote:
We cannot survey the more signal manifestations of racial instinct which flash out where diverse races
come in contact without being convinced that a sense of race – a racial spirit – is not an assumed vanity
which can easily be repressed by an effort of will; but is a feeling from some intuition or impulse which
goes deep into the grain of our mentality.116
It seems for Keith, racial prejudice was an inborn reaction, something developed as an evolutionary safeguard by
nature to prevent miscegenation.117
We can see this come to the fore when he reviewed a book titled The Nature
of Race Prejudice; Keith disagreed with the author who speculates, in Keith’s words, ‘that the clash which attends
the contact of races is the result of acquired prejudices – prejudices which are grafted on children by parents,
teachers and politicians and that the sooner such behavioural manifestations as patriotism, national spirit and race
consciousness – especially that superior form entertained by Nordic anthropologists – are swept away, the better it
will be for the peace of the world and the future welfare of mankind.’118
For Keith racial prejudice was innate, not
learned. It was a fact of nature, not a result of nurture. He even put the inter-war national self-determination
movement as being based upon the theory of ‘Racial/National Spirit.’ He saw it as an attempt by nature to develop
new pure races, arguing that the small nation movement was ‘due to a recrudescence of the old machinery of racial
evolution,’ brought back to life by the experiences of the war; in essence the movement was a resurgence of the
‘Racial Spirit’ of those groups clamouring for self-determination.119
115
Keith, A. Racial Spirit as a Formative Force in History. 1935. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/7/2 P. 12
116
Ibid, 74.
117
Ibid, 74. Keith wrote: ‘Nature, as it were, having laboured through long epochs to build forms of mankind which
are diverse in mind and body, is loath to lose the fruits of her toils and has implanted her safeguards in the breasts
of men and women, who are, in a sense, her experiments.’
118
Keith, A. The Nature of Race Prejudice – Book Review. 1929. Royal College of Surgeons. MS0018/2/13/10 P. 1-2.
119
MS0018/2/10/5 P. 30.

36
George Pitt-Rivers also weighed in on the debate on the subject of race. In Weeds in the Garden of Marriage, he lays
out what he believed people took issue with in the eugenic field. These issues ranged from social policies, religious
objections and contention on racial difference; Arthur Keith highlights this in the preface.120
From the start Pitt-
Rivers pulls no punches, arguing that ‘[as] we are becoming conscious of eugenics we acknowledge our growing
consciousness of a danger. We are progressing in our awareness of racial, physical and mental degeneration.’121
Once again that grave eugenic concern of degeneration rears its head. The primary group that Pitt-Rivers appears
interested in, especially in terms of racial difference are the Jews. He opens a chapter titled ‘Why the Jewish question
is dragged in’ claiming that ‘the Jewish question is not only a problem of culture, it is also a racial problem even more
obscured than the culture problem, which is at least one reason why racial problems are habitually so perversely
ignored or confused even by anthropologists.’ This passage calls in to question P.B. Rich’s assertion that eugenics
was not intrinsically linked to a coherent ideology of racial superiority or inferiority, but instead that the notion of
‘race’ that the eugenicists employed often referred to the notion of a ‘community of culture’, a parallel to the
German notion of Kulturnation, rather than being a deterministic doctrine denoting the inferiority of other races.122
Pitt-Rivers here demonstrates one of the various interpretations of race extant during the period in question, making
a clear distinction between race and culture. Through this statement Pitt-Rivers creates a racial and cultural
distinction with regards to the Jews. He elaborates further stating that Jews have suffered little from ‘external
dilution’ caused by marriage with non-Jews and through intermarrying amongst themselves and not facing ‘internal
dilution’ caused by bringing non-Jewish blood into their groups.123
Following these explanations, Pitt-Rivers presents
his definition of race:
A ’race’ arises through continuous segregation and inbreeding within a group, it is identified in terms
of measurable distinction and a constant degree of relative homogeneity, and it can be said to survive
only in so far as it remains ethnically isolated, that is to say, preserved from internal dilution.124
120
Pitt-Rivers, G. Weeds in the Garden of Marriage. London: Noel Douglas, 1931. P. vii
121
Ibid, 7.
122
Rich, P.B. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: CUP, 1986. Reprinted 1990, references to 1990 edition.
P. 94
123
Pitt-Rivers, G. Weeds in the Garden of Marriage. London: Noel Douglas, 1931. P. 49.
124
Ibid, 50.

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