Marie Stopes Comes to Oxford

Extract

Population is vexation,
Genetics are as bad;
The law of God perplexes me,
And babies drive me mad

Ostensibly to deliver a serious lecture, but actually to spread birth control propaganda, Dr. Marie Stopes came to Oxford. Her talk, which had been announced as a scientific one, soon wandered off into a maze of confusing statistics and sentimental appeal. Having tried vainly to disentangle these elements from the rest of the text, the casual observer must be forgiven for wondering whether Dr. Stopes is ever capable of either scientific or logical thought.

Dr. Stopes, who is a doctor of philosophy and not a medico, is a lively and amusing speaker, as well as a woman of considerable charm, but it is difficult to decide whether she is a sentimental scientist or a scientific sentimentalist.

Taking her audience into her confidence at the very start, Dr. Stopes, very prettily, asked them please to stop smoking, not only because it hurt her throat, ‘but because,’ with a slight feminine flutter, ‘I just don’t like smoking.’ Having taken this womanly prerogative, she launched into her unwomanly subject with considerable vigour.