Madeleine Simms (1930-2011)

We were saddened last week to hear of the death of Madeleine Simms, who had been present earlier this year and on fine form at the Population Investigation Committee Symposium held at the Wellcome in February.

Our contacts with Madeleine go back to the early 1980s at the time when the archives of the Abortion Law Reform Association were transferred to what was then the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre. She gave us a collection of her own papers reflecting her activities as Press Officer and General Secretary of ALRA (supplementing others already in the original accession) during the period after the passing of the 1967 David Steel Abortion Act, when it became clear that the fight was not yet over and that efforts would have to be made to prevent the terms of the Act being restricted.

As well being passionately committed to activism in that cause, she was also (jointly with Keith Hindell) the author of the first and pioneering history of abortion law reform in the UK, Abortion Law Reformed (1971). Although when she became involved with ALRA a number of the original pioneers had died (Janet Chance, Berthe Lorsignol, Stella Browne) there were still a few individuals around who could remember the early days of struggle before the Second World War, such as Dora Russell and Mrs Garrett, as well as Alice Jenkins, the only member of the original Executive Committee still alive when the Act was passed. She thus had access to their memories before these were completely lost to the record.

Madeleine Simms, in her breach with the 'restrained and discreet' stance of ALRA's campaign in at the beginning of the 1960s, brought back some of the fiery radical outspokenness of Stella Browne in her long campaign to get the significant of abortion recognised as an issue not only to do with women's health and well-being but their freedom.

Stella Browne in the archives at the Wellcome Library

This week my biography of Stella Browne, early twentieth century British feminist sex radical and socialist, was published by I B Tauris: The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Spirit. While it contains the fruit of extensive research in archives and libraries over three continents, a solid core of essential material for any study of Stella Browne is to be found in the archives at the Wellcome Library.

She was one of the founders of the Abortion Law Reform Association (1936). Her own activism on the subject during the previous two decades had been an inspiration to other campaigners – in her chronology of the movement, Janet Chance placed one entry, STELLA CAMPAIGNS ALONE, between the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act on which the criminal status of abortion rested, and the informal discussions in 1935 leading to the inauguration of ALRA. Stella Browne’s activities in pursuit of ALRA’s aims are particularly well-documented for the latter part of the 1930s. A file of correspondence (SA/ALR/B.5) with her colleagues during the 1940s and 50s, following her move to Liverpool for family reasons during the War, reveals how committed she remained even when she was physically distant, poor, ageing and in deteriorating health, communicating with them on matters of mutual interest until very shortly before her death.

This is however by no means her only appearance in the collections in the Wellcome Library. Her rather tense relationship with Marie Stopes, whom she had known prior to the latter’s emergence into notoriety with the publication of Married Love in 1918, is discernable in a small group of letters preserved among the latter’s ‘ML [Married Love] – GEN’ correspondence (PP/MCS/A.42). Although there is a letter of warm congratulation about Married Love and commiserations with the difficulties the US edition was experiencing under the Comstock Laws, the tone soured rapidly. In 1922 Stella Browne was appalled by Stopes’s rewriting of the history of her involvement with birth control to conceal Margaret Sanger’s priority. This escalated into high levels of antagonism on both sides, and Stopes’s correspondence in the British Library indicates that she even considered suing Stella Browne for libel (a rather pointless exercise, given Stella’s continual state of penury).

Her relations with Dr C P Blacker, General Secretary of the Eugenics Society, were also somewhat fraught. Although she attended meetings at the Eugenics Society, and was briefly a member, her antipathy to the class-biased and anti-feminist nature of hereditarian ideology is extremely well-documented, as is her opposition to authoritarian solutions to social problems. However, as part of Blacker’s reform eugenics initiative of the 1930s, the Society was increasingly forming strategic alliances with campaigners in related areas such as birth control and family allowances. Although when Stella Browne first mooted the topic of abortion in a Society meeting, it was met, according to Alice Jenkins of ALRA, by a silence ‘that could be felt’, the question of legalisation was at least up for discussion by the later 1930s, and the Eugenics Society constituted a forum where ALRA might find potential allies and sympathisers.

Blacker’s own views on Stella Browne, expressed to various correspondents in his capacity as General Secretary of the Eugenics Society, and among his personal papers, were not sympathetic (‘moderately mad’). She contacted him about a delegation to the Ministry of Health being organised by the National Birth Control Association in 1933 – her letter survives among his personal papers (PP/CPB/C.3/3) – with which he was very reluctant that she should be involved.

She enjoyed better relations with other bodies active in the campaign for birth control, including the Malthusian, later New Generation, League, and the Workers’ Birth Control Group. However, although she was clearly very active in promoting the latter’s endeavours to obtain official permission for birth control advice to be given in local authority maternity welfare clinics, her name is striking absent from their literature, a little of which survives among the archives of the Family Planning Association. The clue to this mystery is provided by Dora Russell’s files relating to the WBCG in the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, which indicate a policy decision that the names associated with the group should all be of married people who were parents (except for Dorothy Jewson, MP, their main Parliamentary ally). Stella’s strong ties with the WBCG are confirmed by the very significant overlap in membership between the by then defunct WBCG and the founding group of ALRA.

Her enduring connections with the wider world of sexual reform movements even in later life are testified to by her listing as one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society for Sex Education and Guidance, active during the 1940s and 50s, literature of which has been preserved among the archives of the Family Planning Association.

Archives and Manuscripts cataloguing - August 2010

August saw the completion of several long-running projects, with newly catalogued collections and retroconverted catalogues both entering the online database for the first time. Several thousand new records were made available for searching, chiefly relating to twentieth-century collections.

Our first highlight this month (already described more fully in an earlier blog posting) is an indication of how up-to-the-minute archives can be and a valuable addition to our holdings on genetics, complementing the hard science with information on its human impact. Genetic Alliance UK is an umbrella organisation bringing together various groups representing persons affected by genetic conditions (the initial impulse came from a member of the Huntington's Disease Association, whilst in its first years it was run on a voluntary basis by a member of the Tuberous Sclerosis Association): it was founded in 1989 as the Genetic Interest Group and adopted its new name in June this year. It deals, then, with very current issues and the archives include material created only a few months ago. The papers total four boxes (50 database records) and include minutes and agendas of the society's AGMs, Trustee Board and Operational Group, annual reports, and newsletters and publications produced by the society, either alone or in conjunction with other groups. The papers are available under the reference SA/GIG.

In the 1980s the Library received a small collection of papers relating to the work of the biochemist Norman Heatley (1911-2004) and his work as part of the team that developed penicillin; these were made available under the reference GC/48. At the end of Heatley’s life a much larger amount of material was given to the Library, transforming the original single box into a collection filling thirty: this new material has now been catalogued and the original GC/48 merged with it, to form a large new collection with the reference PP/NHE. A fuller description of the papers is to be found in a blog posting by their cataloguer.

A letter by the great cricketer (and general practitioner) W.G. Grace (1848-1915), previously held in the Library’s old Autograph Letters Collection, was added to the online catalogue. It includes information on one of his younger brothers, who is about to take an exam at the Royal College of Surgeons: Grace discusses with the College how to minimise the effects of his exam nerves. The letter can be consulted using the reference MS.8746.

As noted last month, work continued behind the scenes on the papers of the psychiatrist Henry Dicks (PP/HVD) and on a project to expand the amount of material catalogued and available that relates to Wellcome Witness seminars on various topics in medical science (GC/253). Work also continues on a radical expansion of the catalogue of the papers of the geneticist Professor Hans Grüneberg (PP/GRU) which will make available much more detailed information about his individual correspondents. For the moment, the original catalogue of the Grüneberg papers has been taken off-line to avoid creating confusion: contact the archives and manuscripts department to access this material.

Last month's cataloguing highlights mentioned that the retroconversion project, which aims to convert all the Library's old hard-copy archive catalogues to database form, is coming very close to completion. We mentioned then the catalogue of the Abortion Law Reform Association, which completed retroconversion in the final hours of July and went live very early in August, adding 758 new records to the database. The archive includes records of the Association, its officers, and individuals connected with the attempt to reform the abortion laws, plus various associated materials such as papers of Chairman Janet Chance, and, following the passing of 1967 Act making abortion legal, papers of the 'Lane' Committee on Working of the Aberdeen Act and Abortion Amendment Bills. Its reference is SA/ALR.

In an allied area, the catalogue of the Birth Control Campaign was also converted. The 257 new records for searching document the work of the Campaign and its parent body the Birth Control Trust, focusing in particular on Parliamentary action: topics addressed include wider availability of vasectomies, free provision of contraception under the NHS, and general improved NHS facilities for contraception, abortion and sterilisation. There is also a large section of press cuttings, and files relating to attempts to promote and publicise its aims and to relations with other bodies in connected fields. The papers can be found by searching for the reference SA/BCC.

Earlier we mentioned new cataloguing that relates to genetics: retroconversion also contributed to this theme, making available the catalogue of papers relating to the
Medical Research Council Blood Group Unit. Another 498 records were added to the database, the many scientific symbols used in the data leading to a considerable extension in the archivists' HTML abilities. The MRC Blood Group Unit succeeded the Galton Laboratory Serum Unit set up in 1935 under the direction of Professor (later Sir) Ronald Fisher and financed through the Medical Research Council by the Rockefeller Foundation (the need for safe transfusion therapy intensified blood group research in the run-up to the Second World War). The Unit was reconstituted in 1946 at the Lister Institute for Preventive Medicine as the Blood Group Research Unit, under the directorship of Dr Robert Race, and acquired an international reputation in the highly specialised field of haematology, extending its work in 1965 into the genetics of blood groups. Upon the retirement of Dr Race in 1973, Dr Ruth Sanger became director of the Unit. Under Dr Sanger's direction, the Unit continued to make a unique contribution to the identification of blood groups, and to the applications of the blood group systems to the problems of human genetics. The Unit was disbanded in September 1995, although its work continues in other research centres. This collection will be one of those to be digitised early as part of the Library’s focus on material relevant to the history of genetics; the data can be browsed under the reference SA/BGU.

Finally, the catalogue of the papers of Sir Edward Mellanby FRS (1884-1955) and Lady May Mellanby née Tweedy (1882-1978) was converted. The Mellanbys worked together in the field of nutrition, with particular emphasis on vitamins and deficiencies; in addition, Sir Edward was Secretary to the Medical Research Council from 1933-1949. The papers include personal material, correspondence, research notes, lectures and drafts, and add another 876 records to the database which can be found under the reference PP/MEL.

Images:
1/ screenshot of the website of Genetic Alliance UK.
2/ Lady Mary Mellanby and Sir Edward Mellanby in Kew Gardens, c.1950, from PP/MEL.

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Archives and Manuscripts cataloguing - July 2010

Our archive cataloguing during July was chiefly dominated by on-going projects rather than the release of new records to the database: although several of those projects will appear very shortly, some as early as August’s round-up. One very small collection was catalogued swiftly and released on the same day: various items of correspondence, mostly undated, by the author and medical man Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) (MS.8744).

The papers of the biochemist Norman Heatley (PP/NHE) will be released in the very near future: cataloguing is completed and what remains is the final editing of the catalogue and the necessary physical processing (boxing up, labelling and so forth). As mentioned in a recent blog post, this will tell another side of the penicillin story to that given in the recently-retroconverted papers of Sir Ernest Chain (PP/EBC).

Behind the scenes, work continued on the papers of the psychiatrist Henry Dicks. In addition, under the heading of new cataloguing, we can include a radical expansion of the catalogue of the papers of the geneticist Professor Hans Grüneberg (PP/GRU) which will make available much more detailed information about his individual correspondents.

A project is also under way to expand the amount of material catalogued and available that relates to Wellcome Witness seminars on various topics in medical science – the fruits of this will appear in the near future as GC/253.

The retroconversion project to convert all our old hard-copy archive catalogues to database form moves ever closer to completion. This month saw the release of the catalogue relating to Sir Graham Selby Wilson (1895-1987), bacteriologist (PP/GSW). Wilson’s particular research areas were the Salmonella group of bacteria, brucellosis and tuberculosis, milk hygiene and the control of diphtheria. His papers include biographical information, research materials, lectures and material on his academic career in Manchester and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and papers on the setting up and operation of the wartime Emergency Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS), of which Wilson became Director in 1941, continuing as Director of the peacetime service until retirement in 1963.

Also of particular note is the collection of papers from the Abortion Law Reform Association (SA/ALR), whose catalogue completed retroconversion and checking during the final hours of July and went live on Monday August 2nd – these will be mentioned in more detail in next month’s round-up.

In addition, behind the scenes retroconversion work also continued on various collections such as the Medical Research Council’s Blood Group Unit (SA/BGU) and the Birth Control Campaign (SA/BCC).

Image: Sir Graham Selby Wilson, the catalogue of whose papers was released to the database this month. Photograph from Wellcome Images.

Channel 4 abortion ad: part of a long history

When Marie Stopes (1882-1958) first began her crusade for birth control and better sexual knowledge, she was horrified to discover that a significant proportion of the correspondence she received following the publication of her books Married Love and Wise Parenthood in 1918 consisted of requests for the termination of a pregnancy already begun, rather than the prevention of potential pregnancies. A similar phenomenon greeted the opening of her Mothers’ Clinic in Upper Holloway, London, in 1921. Desperate women (and some men) sought her advice on how to intervene in suspected or confirmed conception.

In her public statements, Stopes was adamant that birth control was nothing to do with abortion and that wider knowledge of sound methods of contraception would obviate the large number of abortions. As abortion, even by medical professionals was illegal at that date, and often conducted in dangerous and unhygienic circumstances, this was the strategic line to take. She also endeavoured to pursue with legal force the manufacturers of supposedly abortifacient pills who used her name in their advertisements.

However, in private correspondence with specific individuals, Stopes was sometimes more sympathetic. In cases where a delayed period was causing anxiety, she occasionally advocated the use of Widow Welch’s Female Pills, as an emmenagogue. In a few cases which seemed to her particularly deserving, she was prepared to go further and recommend ‘evacuation of the uterus’ and even to pass on the name of doctors who were known to be prepared to perform abortions (usually for a price).

This prudent line was continued by the National Birth Control Association (subsequently the Family Planning Association) when it was established to coordinate the activities of the various groups running clinics or lobbying the government for legislation to permit birth control advice in local authority welfare centres. There is some evidence from oral history that in at least some clinics, the workers were prepared to assist in procuring abortions by qualified medical personnel. But since abortion was still illegal (even if performed by a registered medical practitioner) this would not be recorded at the time.

During the 1930s awareness was growing of the high level of ‘backstreet’ abortion either self-induced by women or performed by some local person known to ‘help out’, with their significant death and morbidity rate. There was also a widespread belief that wealthy women were catered to by profiteering Harley Street doctors prepared to risk the law for a good price. There were increasing calls for a reform in the law and in 1936 an Abortion Law Reform Association was established.

In spite of the severe constraints upon advertising its presence and the difficulties it faced in setting up clinics, the birth control movement continued to expand quietly throughout the 1940s and 1950s, although contraceptive services were not included in the National Health Service when it was set up in 1948. The Family Planning Association remained the main provider of these, though it also trained general practitioners who wanted to develop these skills.

During the 1960s birth control gradually became a more respectable cause. The Pill was introduced in the early 60s, and in 1967 the Labour Government finally passed legislation permitting, but not requiring, local health authorities to provide free contraception. In the same year Liberal MP David Steel’s Private Members Bill for abortion law reform was finally passed, with significant support from the Abortion Law Reform Association. This had been given a new lease of life when the thalidomide scandal revealed that it had been legal to prescribe this drug but that it remained illegal for a pregnancy affected by it to be terminated.

For many decades London Underground had refused to carry even the most discreet advertisements for FPA clinics, but by the 1970s posters advertising the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, a non-profit abortion provider, began to be seen along the sides of the escalators.

Television commercials for contraception lagged significantly behind. It was only with the advent of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s that advertising for condoms, previously very discreet, became more high profile.

It is therefore remarkable that at last, nearly ninety years since Stopes opened the first birth control clinic in the UK, eighty years since the Ministry of Health first permitted the giving of contraceptive advice in maternal welfare clinics to women whose lives were threatened by another pregnancy, that there is at least a strong possibility that an advertisement for abortion advisory services by the sexual health charity Marie Stopes International - based in the Whitfield St London WC1 premises to which Stopes moved her own clinic in 1926 – may finally appear on television.
This story of the long slow road to visibility and acceptability of the right to control reproduction is reflected in numerous collections in Archives and Manuscripts in the Wellcome Library. We hold a large collection of Marie Stopes’ own papers (including thousands of letters from her readers); the archives of the Family Planning Association and of the Abortion Law Reform Association; and even a small group of surviving papers of the Widow Welch’s Pills company. An overview of our copious holdings relating to birth control can be found here. The Library also holds numerous relevant published works and ephemera.