Eugenics Between 1945 and 1990

Lionel Penrose was appointed as director of the Galton Laboratory in 1944. He immediately jettisoned eugenics in favour of human genetics, bereft of the ideological assumptions. Consequently, in the post-war period the doctrine was only fronted by the organization known as the Eugenics Society since 1926. In the 1950s its main interests were ‘problem families’ and their antithesis, ‘promising’ families. Race became more important in the context of Commonwealth immigration and its effects on society. The campaign for ‘voluntary’ sterilization was not restarted, but abortion was supported and emphatically defended. Contraception had become the main tool of ‘negative’ eugenics. The Society helped launch the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952. In her will, Marie Stopes left a birth control clinic to the Society, which it ran from 1961 to 1976. In order to maintain its status as a charity, it officially stopped its propaganda efforts in 1963. Instead, it promoted eugenics through an annual symposium, joint lectures with other organizations and its publications. Significant amounts were channelled towards research, especially after the founding of the Marie Stopes Research Fund in 1978. A downgrading of eugenic ideology gradually occurred and in 1989 the Society changed its name to the Galton Institute.