Marie Stopes was the first woman in England to gain a DSc and, in 1905, she was also Britain's youngest doctor of science.She is probably best known today as a pioneer of birth control, & this little ditty is attributed to her friend The Hon Mrs Geoffrey Edwards.
Dr Marie Stopes,
After reading the Lives of the Popes,
Remarked: "What a difference it would have made to these pages
If I had been born in the Middle Ages"
Marie Stopes was also a passionate supporter of the eugenics movement; in pre-war England days, bad genes were a matter of social class, intelligence & mental impairment, rather than race, but considered none the less disreputable now for that. We still frighten ourselves with headlines about feral children & a broken society however.
I had a little trouble trying to find out anything about the Hon Mrs Geoffrey Edwards. She was the daughter of John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, a lawyer & politician who was born in Manchester’s Moss Side, the son of a Congregational minister. He later won a scholarship to Fettes (Tony Blair’s old school).
But looking through the membership lists of the Eugenics Society, I came across another Margaret Simon, confusingly related (sister) to the 1st Baron Simon of Wythenshawe (also in Manchester). This Baron Simon was a well known industrialist & Lord Mayor of Manchester. He also set up the Simon Population Trust which was the first to study sterilisation and conclude it was lawful with the arguments later used to legalise sterilisation.
