by Thomas Locke
Imagine you’re walking through London and you
find your feet at the entrance of University College London, the city’s ‘global
university’. You stare at its impressive architecture - akin to a Roman Palace
- in awe of its prestige and integrity. Little do you know that within this
university’s four walls is the birthplace of eugenics, one of the most
contentious issues of our time. UCL prides itself on a legacy of ‘disruptive
thinking’, and its pioneering work on eugenics certainly lives up to that
ethos. But now there’s a campaign to do away with its eugenic past and cut ties
with its creator, Sir Francis Galton, altogether. Francis Galton will be the
subject of this article, as I try to unpick the question as to whether we ought
to judge him - and by and large historical figures in general - by the morals
of today. This debate over Galton has particular relevance; in June of this
year, UCL renamed the ‘Galton Lecture Theatre’ to signal that it had moved
beyond eugenic thinking.
Francis Galton was a British academic,
primarily concerned with genetics and inheritance. He had over 500 publications
to his name and most notably found that fingerprints could be used to
accurately identify people and coined the now-ubiquitous phrase, ‘nature versus
nature’. Galton conceptualised the idea of eugenics and in 1904 defined what it
was. He said that eugenics is “the science which deals with all influences that
improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to
the utmost advantage”[1]. This, in
essence, meant encouraging the healthy - those with ‘desirable’ traits - to
reproduce and discouraging the poor and sick from doing so. The aim was to make
tomorrow’s Britain healthier and stronger, nationally efficient.
To understand Galton and his motivations, we
need to understand the world around him, he didn’t exist in a vacuum. This
wasn’t the age of advanced genetics and identity politics. This was Britain in
the early 1900s. Industrialisation of the 19th-century caused malnutrition,
disease and overcrowding in the cities. Long-standing legislation, namely the
Poor Law of 1834, failed to adequately support such people[2].
The philanthropist, Seebohm Rowntree, found in 1901 that a third of Britain’s
town population were impoverished[3] while the
Liberal writer Charles Masterman wrote of ‘demographic degeneration’ among the
‘new town types’[4].
Furthermore, the life expectancy of a typical labourer was just 22[5] and
two-thirds of those who had volunteered to join the Army failed to pass a basic
fitness test[6]. This came
at a time when Britain relied heavily on military force to imperialise
countries around the world.
Something needed to be done, and clearly not
just for philanthropic reasons. People questioned why there was social
degeneration among the lower classes while the upper classes prospered. The
answer, they thought, was down to their ‘heredity’ or - what we might now call
- their DNA. This was a time of biological determinism, with father figures
Darwin and Mendel trailblazing a new way of thinking. The cause, they thought,
of this burgeoning underclass was not poor sanitation, malnutrition or
overcrowding but something innate, something predisposed that could not be
socially controlled. Let’s not forget that at this time one’s social class was inextricably
one’s destiny. Born a pauper, always a pauper, with very few exceptions.
So to ‘enhance’ the population, people began
to wonder whether implementing the principles of eugenics could be a rational,
scientific solution to Britain’s social problems. Indeed, Winston Churchill -
at the time a well-respected Liberal government minister - was the
Vice-President of the First International Eugenics Conference in 1912. Even
Beatrice Webb, a key social reformer of the 20th century, whose Fabian Society
helped to form the Labour Party, took great interest in it, writing that
eugenics was “the most important question of all”[7].
Furthermore, the writer HG Wells - also a member of the Fabian Society - said
that eugenics was the first step towards removing “detrimental types and
characteristics“[8] and the
key to the “fostering...desirable types“ instead. The philosopher Bertrand
Russell went so far as to suggest the introduction of colour-coded ‘procreation
tickets’ to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by those of
genetic inferiority. [9] So
mainstream was the idea of eugenics that it actually became law. The ‘Mental
Deficiency Act’ of 1913 kept the “mentally feeble” or “morally defective”
literally under lock and key, in a desperate effort to stop them from having
children.
Crucially, this is a story of bad science.
Galton’s theory of eugenics is fundamentally wrong, so much so that today it is
considered pseudoscience. But isn’t that the very nature of science? That we
propose a hypothesis - an idea - hold it up to scientific scrutiny and let it
evolve, adapt, or be proven wrong. Yes, biology today tells us that ‘race’
isn’t a helpful construct and that the genetic difference between a poor man
and a wealthy man is non-existent, but biology in 1904 couldn’t say that. It
was only by the mid-20th century when the flaws of eugenics were exposed; a UN
communique published in 1950 stated that ‘“race” is not so much a biological
phenomenon as a social myth’, and that ‘all men are probably derived from the same
common stock’[10]. But this
only came after eugenics’ most sinister manifestation, The Holocaust.
But to what extent can we blame Galton for how
his ideas were misinterpreted? His vision was noble and inclusive, a country
full of healthy people, achieved through a refinement of the gene pool. And his
vision was grounded in the knowledge - however limited - of human biology of
the time.
It’s also worth noting that he sought to
achieve his vision by encouraging the ‘right’ type of people to reproduce. He
didn’t support sterilisation or involuntary measures of the sort we saw in
Britain and Nazi Germany. He wanted positive eugenics, not negative eugenics.
The ends are the same, but the means are important. But how was Galton to know
that, 30 years after his death, his theory would be used as justification for
the Holocaust? And that’s why we must also consider the role of law in this
debate. Our ‘morals today’ - our perception of what is right and wrong - is
largely determined by law. And law itself is determined by mistakes of the
past. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was produced after the
Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials. And our laws today are very different from
those of Galton’s era. The Mental Deficiency Act was repealed in 1959[11], replaced
by the Mental Health Act. So you wouldn’t be able to lock the “feeble-minded”
away today - there’s a law stopping you, and rightly so.
So it’s easy to jump to a conclusion, to
proclaim that Galton was a fanatic and morally corrupt. But when viewing Galton
through the prism of the attitudes and laws of the early-20th century, eugenics
appears rational, understandable, sensible - even. It was a legitimate
scientific pursuit, evidenced by the naming of the ‘Galton Lecture Theatre’. If
we are to make an objective, historical analysis of those of the past, we must
do it justice. The role of context and law is vital in this. And let’s not
forget that Galton’s scientific discovery went beyond eugenics; his 500
publications[12] covered a
“broad sector of the canvas of 19th-century science”; his academic pursuits
“neither limited nor classifiable”[13].
He was a man of “many-sidedness”[14] To say
that eugenics defines him is to take a dangerously narrow view of his
contribution to science.
We should not, therefore judge historical
figures by the ephemeral morals of today, but rather the morals of the time. As
for UCL, they should respect that Galton represents a vital period of British
history and also of science. Indeed, eugenics provokes a scientific debate, in
which modern-day genetics always prevails. And without open and honest
questioning of science, society can’t move forward. Arguably, it’s all the more
important to remember the full story of Galton and eugenics now, given the
birth of new gene-editing tools like CRISPR, and the now-dismissed special
advisor to Number 10 - Andrew Sabisky - promoting eugenic ideas. We can
scrutinise scientific error and learn from the mistakes of the past, but we
mustn’t judge the past by today’s moral code or, even worse, pretend that it
didn’t happen, and erase Francis Galton from our collective memory.
Bibliography
Galton, F. (1904). Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims.
The American Journal of Sociology.
Murray, P. (1999). Access To History: Poverty and Welfare,
1830-1914. Hodder Education.
Rowntree, S. (1901). Poverty, A Study of Town Life.
Macmillan.
Masterman, C. (1902). The Heart of the Empire, Discussions of
Problems of Modern City Life in England.
Picard, L. (2009). Health and hygiene in the 19th
century. British Library.
Winter, J. M. (1980). Military Fitness and Civilian Health in
Britain during the First World War (p211-244). Journal of Contemporary
History
Richard, L. (2001) Eugenics: A reassessment. Praeger.
Freedland, F. (1997) Eugenics and the master race of
the left.
The Guardian.
Russell, B. (1884-1914) The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell:
The Private Years.
Montagu A. et al. (1950).
The Scientific Basis For Human Unity.
UNESCO Courier
Walmsley, J (2000), "Women and the Mental Deficiency Act of
1913: citizenship, sexuality and regulation”. British Journal of Learning
Disabilities.
Galton, F. (1822-1911). The Collected Published Works of
Francis Galton.
Sir Francis Galton F.R.S.
Newman, J. (1954). Francis Galton. Scientific America
(1922). Francis Galton. Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society
Levine, P. (2017). Eugenics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Saini, A. (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. 4th Estate.
[1] Galton, F. (1904). Eugenics:
Its Definition, Scope and Aims. The American Journal of Sociology.
[2] Murray, P. (1999). Access To
History: Poverty and Welfare, 1830-1914. Hodder Education.
[3] Rowntree, S. (1901). Poverty, A
Study of Town Life. Macmillan.
[4] Masterman, C. (1902). The Heart
of the Empire, Discussions of Problems of Modern City Life in England.
[6] Winter, J. M. (1980). Military
Fitness and Civilian Health in Britain during the First World War
(p211-244). Journal of Contemporary History
[7] Richard, L. (2001) Eugenics: A
reassessment. Praeger.
[9] Russell, B. (1884-1914) The
Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years.
[11] Walmsley, J (2000), "Women
and the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913: citizenship, sexuality and regulation”.
British Journal of Learning Disabilities.
[13] Newman, J.
(1954). Francis Galton. Scientific
American
[14] (1922). Francis Galton.
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
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