Eugenics. This word from the past has suddenly hit the headlines. We thought it disappeared with the death of Hitler. But revelations of recent forced sterilisations in of all countries, liberal Sweden, have shocked commentators. Research is uncovering recent eugenic policies in other western democracies, and it has even been revealed sterilisations of the intellectually handicapped are relatively common in New Zealand. 1

What is this word eugenics? It comes from the Greek ' eugenes ' meaning well-born. The word was coined by Francis Galton (Charles Darwin's cousin) in 1883 and means 'the study of ways in which the physical and mental quality of a people can be controlled and improved by selective breeding, and the belief that such a situation should occur.' 2

To those familiar with the word it probably means something that Hitler attempted in his desire to create a German master race by exterminating Jews, homosexuals, the handicapped and other 'undesirables'. Recent 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia and tribal and racial conflicts in other countries make many of us uneasy, but surely eugenics is not relevant to us in the enlightened 1990s?

Wrong. Eugenics is alive and well today and has everything to do with us. Take fertility issues. What is the purpose of amniocentesis and other pre-natal tests offered routinely to pregnant women, but to abort the foetus if it proves to be 'abnormal'? This is a eugenic decision. Recent controversy in New Zealand surrounds free pre-natal testing and whether easier access to tests will encourage more terminations.3 In these times of limited resources for health care and education it is a brave parent who decides to continue a pregnancy with a known foetal abnormality. What implications does this have for the disabled in the community?

China is one country not afraid to legalise eugenics. With a fifth of the world's population this crowded country now has a law requiring compulsory pre-natal testing and termination of imperfect foetuses. Persons with mental illness or disease are reputedly only allowed to marry if they agree to permanent contraception.4 Pre-natal testing is also used get rid of the less desirable female foetuses in some countries.

Testing is getting more thorough. The Human Genome Project intends to have mapped all three billion human genes by the end of the century - genes for pre-disposition to obesity, depression, alcoholism, and cancer as well as those for characteristics such as blue eyes and blond hair.5 With advances in invitro fertilisation only perfect embryos might be allowed to develop. The state could penalise those who disobey, or medical insurance companies withdraw coverage. This is not just the science fiction of Margaret Atwood's chilling book A handmaid's tale. This technology is here now.

What's more New Zealand is not isolated from the rest of the world. A bioprospecting project involving the corporate patenting of genes of indigenous races around the world is underway in an effort to determine genetic pre-disposition to certain diseases, and to what the New Internationalist calls 'essentially socio-economic conditions - alcoholism, lung cancer and domestic violence'.6 The magazine claims the Scottish company which cloned Dolly the sheep is conducting research among Maori as well as Australian aboriginal people and the huge ethical and biological implications are attracting little media attention. The eugenic possibilities are scary. Libertarians are already demanding withdrawal of state support for the long term unemployed and blame a possible genetic fault for 'dysfunctional' families. And calls for the adoption of illegitimate children of teenagers by more 'desirable' parents harks back to attitudes of past decades.7

To understand how to deal with the ethical implications of possible eugenic practices today it might help to look at our past. Advocates of eugenics (eugenists) were vocal in New Zealand 's past from the turn of the twentieth century to at least the Second World War when the excesses of fascism made it unpopular, although elements of Nazi Germany's health and fitness policies appealed to many. Plunket, health camps, compulsory military training, youth hostels, the Scout movement, children's homes, the family benefit, large maternity hospitals, even milk in schools had some eugenic reasoning behind them. Eugenics appealed to large range of people across the political spectrum - from conservatives who sought to limit the fertility of the 'unfit' to the advocates of free love and sexual selection. Only when the birth rate started to rise after the war did the voices quieten.

This essay will look at ideas some eugenists were promoting here in the first half of this century.

Eugenics has been presented in the past as a science and a philosophy. I prefer to label it a mindset. Imagine this scenario. You are a middle class pakeha in early 20th century New Zealand . There has been much media publicity that the birthrate of your class/type is dropping but the birthrate of other groups is escalating. These 'other' might be from a difference race or socio-economic group, or might appear less intellectually or physically able than you, or less healthy and certainly less ‘responsible' than you. They could be a burden on you as a tax payer or citizen by using scarce state resources. They appear less financially secure, and are maybe unable to earn an income because of unemployment or disability. Their mental state could be a perceived threat to you or your family. You could also have fears that your lifestyle, country or Empire, is at risk from 'landhungry' nations who have rapidly growing populations and there is a threat from them of possible invasion or war. Are your soldiers healthy and fit enough to defend you? Perhaps you worry that war will rob your country of the most virile breeding male stock. Other mothers do not seem to be parenting as well as they should and their children are suffering. Some 'selfish' women might appear to be keener on having a career than children, or want to limit their families because childbirth and childrearing is such hard work. Perhaps academic education is harming the health of many girls so they are unable or unwilling to breed, or perhaps the education they are receiving is not teaching them useful domestic skills. Above all, healthy food and outdoor living are essential to building character, healthy children and responsible adults who will be the healthiest breeders and the saviours of the race. Yet people are not always heeding this message.

These were some of the eugenic beliefs of New Zealand 's past (and would still have many supporters today). Eugenists tended to be the educated middle class who were anxious to find solutions to the perceived social and economic problems of society and knew about Darwin.

BEGINNINGS

Charles Darwin, of course, played a vital role in eugenics. He published his best-selling and ominously named On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life in 1859. But he was not the only one writing on evolution. The nineteenth century was a time of many new scientific theories. Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) believed that acquired characteristics were inherited. Although this theory was discredited later in the century it remained popular among some eugenists, particularly in his native France, who liked the idea that self improvements could be passed on. Darwin 's cousin Francis Galton wrote on heredity and intelligence and the Galton Eugenics Laboratory in London was a major disseminator of eugenic scientific information in the early part of the twentieth century. Gregor Mendel was an Austrian Monk who discovered that inheritance was governed by dominant and recessive characters (the word 'gene' was not used until 1909). He wrote up his theories in the 1860s but his work was not publicised in England till the turn of the century.8

Social Darwinism is the term used when Darwin 's theories of survival of the fittest are applied to human economic and social theory - whereby it is accepted as right that only those who are ‘able' survive. Social Darwinists today are opposed to 'welfarism', or perceived dependency on the state, and approve of individual responsibility over social responsibility.

The general perception in New Zealand (and in much of the western world) at the beginning of the twentieth century was that the vast range of scientific and social advances hadn't produced the better society that the rationalists of the Enlightenment had hoped for. 'Survival of the fittest' hadn't caused society to rid itself of problems of crime and poverty. Many migrants had left the Old World for a better life in New Zealand but for many it had not eventuated. In spite of women's suffrage in 1893 and its hoped for moralising influence on the electorate, there were still 'immoral' elements in society. The suffrage debate and compulsory education from the 1870s had lead to a highly literate population interested in the outside world. New Zealand was part of the British Empire and Britain was seen as 'Home' by a large sector of the population, so it was not surprising that the eugenic debate here was largely influenced by the British one.

The language of eugenics included words and phrases such as fit and unfit, eugenic and dysgenic, race suicide and race improvement, mental defective, degeneracy, laws of nature. Each writer or speechmaker knew what these words meant for their own purposes and definitions were neither absolute, nor necessary. Determinism and environmentalism - nature versus nurture - were not always in conflict in New Zealand , and some eugenists incorporated elements of both. Negative eugenists sought to limit the birthrate of the 'unfit' while positive eugenists had pro-natalist desires to make motherhood more attractive and improve children's health.

Who were the 'unfit'? As one would expect from the fluid nature of language the word encompassed a whole range of 'other'. It could include the following: alcoholics, imbeciles, illegitimate children (and their mothers), prostitutes, criminals, the feeble-minded, lunatics, epileptics, deaf-mutes, the unemployable, the tubercular, the immoral (e.g. homosexuals), anyone from another race, those with incurable diseases such as. syphilis or tuberculosis, and even ‘mouth-breathers'. The 'unfit' was a construction of anything not 'fit'. (Comparative terminological constructions today include beneficiaries, immigrants, rapists, child abusers, solo mothers, homosexuals, paedophiles, those from 'dysfunctional' families). What they had in common was that they were all 'other' and were breeding faster than the eugenists. Many eugenists liked to validify these groupings by quoting statistics of breeding rates provided by the Galton Eugenics Laboratory.9 The eugenists constructed a monster that gobbled up taxes, and provided images of the 'unfit' for people to measure themselves against (and thus feel morally superior). The 'unfit' was always someone else. (I suppose if you had someone tubercular in your family you could ignore that image and concentrate your disapproval on another group.)

So by the start of the twentieth century, the ideas of eugenics, like genetics, were not new. But public concern at the falling birthrate and an ideological framework helped popularise it as an issue. I will show some examples.

Kate Sheppard, an icon of the suffrage movement, told the National Council of Women in 1898 that 'good morals and good health went together'.10 This assumption underlay the eugenics movement for many women.

In 1903, W. A. Chapple, Liberal MP in New Zealand and later in Britain , published one of the first eugenic tracts entitled The fertility of the unfit. Sterilisation of wives of degenerate men was his preferred option. His pamphlet was welcomed by influential men such as the Chief Justice, Robert Stout. Eugenics had now become a political cause.11

Grace Neill, a nurse by training, was third in charge of the Department of Health and Charitable Institutions (forerunner of the Health Department) and a major provider of state welfare. Typically of the time she distinguished between the ‘deserving' and ‘undeserving' poor. As a pronatalist and to counter the contemporary concern at the falling birthrate, she persuaded Premier Richard Seddon to set up the state-funded St Helens Hospitals. The first one opened in 1904. Here the wives of working men would get good, affordable maternity care. She had previously organised state registration for nurses and midwives. Her aim was to make childbirth more attractive for the preferred breeders - the respectable wives of working men - and is remembered today in the Grace Neill block, formerly Wellington Women's Hospital.12

The Women's Christian Temperance Union's paper, the White Ribbon, was edited and published by women and for two decades took an interest in eugenics. Suffragists like Lucie Smith became interested in the debate on the 'unfit' and the following quote from 1904 shows how eugenics could become part of one's personal agenda as she brings in temperance, dress-reform, women' s morality and the laws of nature. 'It has been said that the most effective way of preventing the "fertility of the unfit" is to make all people fit. That prenatal influences are largely responsible for infant mortality is certain, and to women's transgression of the laws of life in the three particulars of air, exercise, and dress may be charged many an empty cradle and easily filled grave. The male whisky has a active partner in his death dealing industry the female corset'.13

By 1910 articles on eugenics appeared frequently in the White Ribbon. In March 1910 there was an item on the Government's proposed penal reforms which included the provision of segregated homes for girls and boys, the main purpose of which was to keep 'degenerate girls' (women) away from males to prevent their reproducing. As their children would, of course, inherit all their worst characteristics. 'Were these women, half idiots many of them, to be preyed upon and allowed to produce off-spring?'14

In June that year it reported on the laws passed in various parts of the United States providing for the sterilisation of the unfit. 'Such a law would doubtless shock a large proportion of the public, but when one stops to consider the terrible consequences which it is intended to obviate and prevent, one does not feel like criticising it too severely'.15

Fanny Cole's presidential address was published in the April 1911 issue. On the WCTU's interest in eugenics she stated 'without fear of contradiction...that the deterioration of the race is largely due to the drinking habits of a section of the people'. 16

In August that year in an article entitled 'Eugenics' the paper suggested that 'It is improved quality rather than quantity that is desired...[the] teeming millions of China and India show that quantity will not raise the standard of the race'.17

The White Ribbon provides a good illustration of the diversity of the debate as over the years various angles are covered and varying degrees of support expressed. A common theme is the acceptance of the existence of the 'unfit other' who need to be protected for their own and society's benefit, plus the belief in the moral superiority of women like those who are the paper's readers.

THE PLUNKET SOCIETY

'The destiny of the race is in the hands of the mothers,' wrote Truby King, founder of the Plunket Society. The Society which has had a huge influence in developing the New Zealand national psyche was founded in the midst of the eugenics fears with its slogan to 'help the mothers and save the babies'.18

Frederic Truby King was himself tubercular and blind in one eye. His wife Isabella was tertiary educated, suffered from rickets and rheumatic fever. and could not have children. They adopted their daughter Mary in 1905. 19 Not surprisingly given their circumstances, they were mainly environmentalist eugenists determined to save even the 'better dead' babies. The Society for the Health of Women and Children was founded in 1907 and was soon named Plunket after the Governor's wife. Isabella wrote a widely syndicated newspaper column called 'Our babies' by Hygeia for several years and was Fred's devoted wife, business and campaign manager, secretary, publicist and link to the society's mothercraft homes. Mary also took up the Plunket cause with missionary zeal. Plunket comprised dedicated nurses (often childless) and committees of mainly upper middle class older women who enjoyed their social duty of raising the funds for the Plunket cause and telling the breeders of the country what to do.20

King believed the body was a closed system with a limited amount of energy. The inappropriate education of girls, in anything other than domestic skills, used up their energy and could make them unable to breed or breastfeed. From his observations as Superintendent of Seacliff Asylum near Dunedin he believed mental degeneration was caused by poor mothering. If only women could be taught the 'science' of mothering the racial decline of the Empire could be arrested, and there would be fit soldiers when the inevitable war came.21

He, his wife, daughter and nurses, popularised the prescriptive ideology of a regime dictated by the clock which was designed to build 'character'. It involved four hourly breast feeding (never at night), toilet training from two weeks of age, lots of fresh air, rest and no 'spoiling' as playing with or cuddling the child could weaken 'his' character. Constipation and masturbation were to be avoided at all costs as they could lead to moral decline. Childrearing was like training little soldiers.

Some women doctors criticised King's dislike of education for girls and promoted the idea that a well educated wife was a more perceptive and interested mother. 22 The first School of Home Science opened in Dunedin in 1911 almost as a compromise between the camps. So a man who was known to personally to dislike children founded a whole movement and created a whole society on his constructions of 'mother' and 'child'.

Yet King was greatly admired by the medical profession and others, and the infant mortality rate did come down, although it also did in many other countries without Plunket probably due to improved medicine, hygiene and socio-economic conditions.23 Even opponents of eugenics like Mother Aubert, one of the few who took in unwanted and disabled babies, adapted his methods for her own homes. 24

THE EUGENICS EDUCATION SOCIETY

In September 1912 the White Ribbon published a letter to the editor from Lillian Macgeorge of Dunedin , the ‘Hon. Organiser and Acting Hon. Secretary of the New Zealand Branch of the Eugenics Education Society', an organisation which had already been mentioned in previous issues. This was not surprising considering that the Vice-President of the WCTU, Lily Atkinson, was a member of the Wellington Branch of the Eugenics Education Society and her brother, biologist Professor Harry Kirk was president.25 The letter lists the branch's vice-presidents, a who's who of influential men of the time. Included were the Prime Minister, the Primate of New Zealand, public servants in charge of health, prisons and mental hospitals, and an army general. So although the society which had been founded in Dunedin in 1910 and had several branches throughout the country was never very big numerically, it was very influential because its supporters were in powerful public policy making and academic positions.

In Lillian's letter she gives the cost in government taxation for the support of 'undesirables' and their dependents and states that their fertility rate is twice that of the rest of the population.26 The society also reprinted publications from the British parent body. Writings by New Zealanders were also published overseas such as A.N. Field's 'Medical marriage certificates; a suggestion from New Zealand' (published in the Eugenics Review January 1912), which proposed four graded fitness-to-breed certificates before marriage. The society did not appear to survive the First World War, but the ideas of eugenics certainly did.

THE 1920s - VD and MENTAL HEALTH

The imperialists in the eugenics movement had long been anticipating war and the necessity of defending the British Empire . But the First World War when it came was much more devastating than was foreseen. About 50% of recruits were rejected as unfit, and this became one of the catalysts of the post war eugenics revival. The war saw the 'cream' of New Zealand 's malehood killed or wounded. Venereal disease also had to be confronted.

The mentally fit and the immoral came up as issue again. The National Council of Women, which was reformed in 1917, was very concerned at the declining birth rate and moral depravity, the latter a distinct risk to themselves and their children. They became fierce critics of other women's 'inefficient' mothering and lack of interest in breeding. They proposed segregated colonies to solve the problems of the fertility of the 'unfit'.27

In the 1920s the government used two initiatives to consult the public. A Committee of Inquiry into Venereal Disease reported in 1922 and the Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders reported in 1925. The first inquiry seemed mainly concerned with the role of 'feebleminded' women in infecting men and causing debauchery and corruption. The second looked at the whole area of 'mental defect', its prevention and treatment. On it were representatives from all the relevant government departments: Public Health, Mental Hospitals, Education, Justice and Prisons, and included one woman, Ada Paterson from the Health Department. Women's groups such as the NCW, the WCTU, and the Society for the Protection of Women and Children took a great interest in the committee, and suggested various levels of segregation, sterilisation and castration, and marriage certificates, as remedies for the perceived problems. Jean Begg, recently returned from social work in the United States urged the committee to set up a complete and continuing census of all 'defectives.'28

However, there was a level of discomfort in the community over the inquiry's recommendations. Most of the more extreme suggestions, like sterilisation of the 'mentally defective' and banning of marriage with same were dropped from the Mental Defectives Bill of 1928, much to the anger of those like Nina Barrer of the Women's Division of the Farmers' Union.

A Eugenics Board was set up to keep a register of 'mentally defective persons' and two women were among those appointed to it. They were Jean Begg, and Janet Fraser from the Wellington Hospital Board. Janet Fraser was married to future Prime Minister Peter Fraser, ironically a critic of negative eugenics, possibly because of the mental health problems in his own family. Dr Theodore Gray became Acting Inspector General of Health (replacing Truby King) and the Board under his control. A member of the public wrote a rhyme expressing concern at the proposed travelling clinics which would examine and classify ‘mentally defective' children

'"Oh Mother, save me from Dr. Gray

'Cause teacher says he's coming to-day

And if I'm stupid he'll take me away. Oh, Mummie save me from Dr. Gray!"

"I cannot save you, my little child,"

His mummie said and her eyes were wild.

"You belong to the State, you're no more my child!

But Oh, my darling, don't stupid be

Or he'll say we've tainted heredity,

And must be eradicated - you and me!" ' 29

Nina Barrer meanwhile went on to campaign for eugenics among rural women, using stock breeding metaphors for the perceived problems, and wrote a pamphlet in 1933 called The problem of mental deficiency in New Zealand of which the following is a sample 'There is increasing in this Dominion a grave national danger that, from the material standpoint alone, is costing the country hundreds of thousands of pounds, while, from the racial or biological standpoint, it is menacing the purity of our national stock. The present depression and its consequent problem of unemployment have been the means of awakening more people to the fact of the increasing unemployable, and the alarming rate of multiplication of the mentally deficient'.30

She had support from Dr Doris Gordon, a strongly pronatalist GP from Stratford and an advocate for the medicalisation of childbirth, for example, by using 'twilight sleep' anaesthesia to encourage women to have more children. As the founder of the New Zealand Obstetrical Society in 1927 she saw childbirth as a medical condition requiring large teaching hospitals and doctors rather than midwives. 'In the womb of British womanhood lies the Empire's progress and her strength', she wrote in 1924. 31

She was an admirer and one-time student of Truby King. As a medical student she met Lionel Terry at Seacliff. He had shot a Chinese man in Wellington in 1905 '"to focus attention' so he said at his trial, 'upon the growing menace of the Yellow Peril".' 32

She found him to be 'A man of wonderful physique and a brilliant brain. Terry would propound his brilliant hypotheses; by the time he finished most of the hypnotised students were wondering who should be labelled lunatic and who custodian!' 33

These ideas which today seem distinctly racist are echoed in Gentlemen of the jury an anti-abortion booklet she co-wrote for the 1937 Committee of Inquiry into Abortion. 'In the last hundred years the counties of the West have fought and failed to replace their wasted man-power, while the East - Russia, China, Japan and India - vast, ambitious, aggressive, teeming with surplus population, looks on, patiently waiting.' 34

Yet her autobiographies do not include any notable prejudice against Maori. It is possible that in her practice she came know Maori families and so they were not seen as 'other'.

Motherhood was one's duty, abortion selfish and immoral. But sterilisation was acceptable for the 'permanently "incapable" but highly prolific'.35

THE LIBERAL EUGENISTS

A counter paradigm to the social morality argument for eugenics was provided by the advocates of 'free love'. Included among these were Olive Schreiner, G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells, Ellen Key, Marie Stopes, Havelock Ellis and New Zealander Ettie Rout. 'Neo-Malthusians' had promoted the use of contraception since the 1880s, but there were still eugenic principles to reproducing. Ellen Key wrote that 'passion was nature's way of selecting the most evolutionary fit'. 36 Marie Stopes expressed Lamarckian influence in her belief that a superior race could be produced through sexual pleasure. Shaw believed in a 'life force attraction and that 'legitimacy is secondary to racial vitality'. 37 The idea that an upper class woman could find true love with a superior physical specimen from another class was reflected in fiction of the era such as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Jean Devanny's The Butcher's Shop .

Ettie Rout, known here for her promotion of safe sex for soldiers in the First World War, fitted philosophically into this group. In London after the war she began campaigning for race improvement by sexual selection, birth control, healthy diet, exercise and economic independence for women.38

Her book The morality of birth control published in 1925 sold well in England but was banned in New Zealand. 'But if we really wish to improve the race, we must allow women to select the fathers for their children. This is what natural selection - sexual selection - means. Supposing a healthy intelligent woman were economically free: perfectly sure of the necessaries and comforts and amenities of life for herself and for her children - supposing, that is, she were sure of her reward as the most important 'producer' in the nation - would she not then be free to improve the quality of her product? Would she not then select the finest possible man to act as father for the finest possible children she wanted to produce? Would that tend to improve the race much more efficiently than limiting her choice to the particular man who happens to "provide" for her - even out of the profits if a socially dangerous or undesirable industry?'39

Ettie also borrowed from Maori and other indigenous cultures as it suited her cause. Like the Kings she was concerned about exercise, good diet and preventing constipation but for Ettie they were linked to frigidity and that wasn't good for the enjoyment of sex or breeding. For her eating white bread was almost sinful. As only the wealthy could afford it the poor remained healthier and more fertile.40

She cleverly draws a whole lot of issues affecting women into a larger eugenic whole. What could she have possibly have had in common with Lillian Macgeorge, Isabella King or Doris Gordon on a personal or political level? Yet they were all advocates of the 'science' of eugenics.

Another Christchurch woman was Cora Wilding who was born into an affluent sporty family. After her brother Anthony was killed in the First World War she trained as one of New Zealand 's first physiotherapists in order to work with injured returned soldiers. Overseas in the 1920s she became interested in the New Health Society and the Sunlight League (founded by Sir William Abuthnot Lane and Caleeb Saleeby respectively, both well known in the eugenic discourse). Travelling in Germany and Italy she was impressed by the youth hostels and the emphasis she found on physical culture.41

Back in New Zealand in 1931 she founded the Sunlight League of New Zealand with its aim to 'work for a healthier New Zealand and the betterment of the race'. The League promoted eugenics, physical fitness, heliotherapy (sunbathing), clean air, smoke abatement (a real problem in Christchurch), dental hygiene, wholesome diet, children's health camps and youth hostelling. She gave radio talks on these subjects and recruited prominent men to front the organisation. These included the aging Truby King and John Macmillan Brown, the latter an academic and keen eugenist (although, unlike King he promoted the education of women so they could be more skilled wives and mothers.)42

She ran health camps until 1936. The new Labour government wanted to standardise health camps and hers didn't fit the model, being only for girls of 'civic worth', the daughters of the ‘deserving poor', not the 'unemployable' or 'mentally deficient'. Her girls were taught good citizenship and healthy habits in the hope that they would have a positive influence on the outside world and become good mothers. Her camps were modelled on the culture of ancient Sparta plus the youth culture she had observed in Germany , sprinkled with Maori influences.

The population decline caused concern until the birthrate started to rise with the post war baby boom. Population: New Zealand's problem was published by H. I. Sinclair in 1944 and was promoted as 'an impartial discussion of vital population questions - national security; our right to retain New Zealand; racial suicide; immigration and natural increase: which?' He quoted extensively from overseas demographic research, notably from British Richard and Kathleen Titmuss, and Gunnar Myrdal, who had done extensive research on Sweden. Significantly, Sweden was one of the few countries to have done extensive demographic research on itself, including a royal commission on population in 1935, and from this had concluded, in Sinclair's words 'that the economic, social, and psychological hindrances to childbearing ought to be removed throughout society'.43 I do not find it at all surprising that there was a eugenic downside to this policy as recently revealed.

Richard Titmuss was influential in the provision of social health in postwar Britain. A eugenist from the political left he claimed that 'capitalism is a biological failure' and 'modern capitalism is promoting the extinction of society'.44 Sinclair himself was impressed by some of the efforts Germany had made to improve its own birthrate such as banning abortion. It appears that Sinclair's book was aimed at concerned liberals and published as an appendix the Wilding Lecture of 1940 given by Dr C. E. Hercus of the University of Otago entitled 'Women and national survival', which advocated 'a positive policy', education and state funding of preschools.

CONCLUSIONS

In this essay I have provided glimpses of the eugenics debate in New Zealand. I have largely concentrated on women as the debate was largely seen by men and women as a women's issue for women provided both the problem and the solution. From Nina Barrer to Ettie Rout those contributing to this debate covered the political spectrum. What is interesting, however, is that the voices of the 'unfit', the targets of all this concern, are silent. It has taken a Swedish victim of eugenic policies to speak out about her forced sterilisation to revive this issue in the public conscience. Holocaust survivors have also told the world what it was like to be despised in their own country merely for who they were. These voices must be heeded.

Population decline is not seen as a major problem in 1990s New Zealand but scarcity of state resources is definitely an issue. We must guard against past eugenic remedies being promoted today by those in power against those considered a burden on society. The following warning from British sociologist Ann Oakley (and incidentally daughter of the Titmusses), writing of Thatcher's Britain, is timely for as the ‘new right' seems increasingly powerful.

'The notion of the family - women- rather than the state as the proper provider of social welfare, the view that poverty can be surmounted by individual effort, that capital accumulation qualifies for parenthood, whereas poverty disqualifies, the importance attached to the transmissability between generations of defective social and biological qualities - all these were prominent strands of thought in the eugenics movement'.45

Darwin , and the eugenists of New Zealand 's past, could never have imagined the possibilities genetic engineering has now given us. We must be vigilant against its use for eugenic oppression.

______________________________________________________

1. Dominion 29 August, 7 September 1997; Time 22 September 1997

2. Hutchinson encyclopaedia. 8th ed. London, 1989

3. Dominion 26 September 1997; Evening Post 29 September 1997

4. New Internationalist August 1997:12-14

5. ibid p. 7-10

6. ibid p. 26

7. See for example Roger Douglas's Completing the circle. 1996

8. Hutchinson encyclopaedia.

9. See Mrs R.J. Hawkes What is eugenics? a plea for racial improvement. Eugenics Education Society, 1911, for fertility rates of various groups.

10. Quoted in Griffiths, Shelley. 'Feminism and the ideology of motherhood n New Zealand , 1896-1930'. MA thesis, Otago, 1984 p. 38

11. Fleming, Philip. 'Eugenics in New Zealand, 1900-1940'. MA thesis, Massey, 1981 p.12

12. Macdonald, C. The book of New Zealand women. Wellington, 1993 p. 467-471

13. White Ribbon July 1904 p. 6-7

14. White Ribbon March 1910

15. White Ribbon June 1910 p. 1.

16. White Ribbon April 1911 p. 7; Dalton , Sarah. 'The pure in heart'. MA thesis, Victoria , 1993 p. 106

17. White Ribbon August 1911 p. 9

18. See Margaret Tennant's 'Matrons with a mission'. MA thesis, Massey, 1976 p. 85

19. Smith, Philippa M. 'Truby King in Australia . A revisionist view of infant mortality'. New Zealand Journal of History 22, No 1 (April 1988):23-43

20. Tennant,Margaret p. 85-117; Olssen, Erik. 'Truby King and the Plunket Society. An analysis of a prescriptive ideology'. New Zealand Journal of History 15, No1 (April 1981): 3-23

21. For the military concerns of eugenists see Goldstone, Paul. 'The imperialist movement and the national defence debate, 1900-1909'. MA thesis, Victoria, 1992, chapter 2

22. Hughes, Beryl. '"Their best aptitudes": girls' education and the tenth Australasian Medical Congress, 1914'. Women's Studies Journal November 1991:66-76

23. Smith, Philippa M.

24. Munro, Jessie. Suzanne Aubert. Wellington, 1996

25. Fleming, P. chapter 2

26. White Ribbon September 1912 p. 8

27. Griffiths, Shelley. p. 246

28. Robertson, Stephen. 'Production not reproduction: the problem of mental defect in New Zealand, 1900-1939'. BA Hons thesis, Otago, 1989

29. ibid p. 123-4

30. Barrer, Nina A.R. The problem of mental deficiency in New Zealand . Wellington, 1933

31. Gordon, Doris . Backblocks baby doctor . London, 1955 p. 159

32. ibid p. 70

33. ibid

34. Gordon, Doria & Francis Bennett. Gentlemen of the jury . New Plymouth, 1937 p. 111

35. ibid p. 93

36. Robb, George. 'The way of all flesh: degeneration, eugenics, and the gospel of free love'. Journal of the History of Sexuality 6, No 4 (April 1996): 594

37. ibid p. 59

38. Tolerton, Jane. A life of Ettie Rout . Auckland, 1992

39. Rout, Ettie A. The morality of birth control . London, 1925 p. 23-24

40. See her book Whole-meal . London, 1927

41. Sargison, Patricia. Notable women in New Zealand health . Auckland , 1993 p. 49-53; S.K.Wilson's 'The aims and idology of Cora Wilding and the Sunlight League, 1930-1936'. MA long essay, Canterbury, 1980

42. See his Women and university education. Christchurch, 1926

43. Sinclair, H.I. Population: New Zealand 's problem. Dunedin, 1944 p. 83-84

44. See Oakley, Ann. 'Eugenics, social medicine and the career of Richard Titmuss in Britain 1935-50'. British Journal of Sociology 42, No 2 (1991) p. 165-194

45. ibid p. 190