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Eugenics and public health in Britain, 1900–40: scenes from provincial life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

John Welshman
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Abstract

Historians have attempted to assess the impact of eugenics on public health provision in a number of fields including mental health, birth control, voluntary sterilization and housing. However, most of this work has concentrated on debates at the national level, and we know much less about the ways in which eugenics may have helped shape health services in provincial cities. It has been suggested that Leicester was a city in which eugenicists were particularly prominent, and this article examines the impact of eugenics on three aspects of public health between 1900 and 1940; mental health, birth control and housing. It concludes that while eugenics did have a practical outcome in mental health and birth control, its influence on housing policy was more elusive, and 1935 marked a turning-point after which eugenics was less significant in health policy and intellectual life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 56 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was supported by the Wellcome Trust (project grant 038059/Z/93) and, while they bear no responsibility for its remaining faults, I would like to thank Patricia Garside and David Reeder for their helpful comments.

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