Today In History... with The Retrospectors
Marie Stopes' "Mother's Clinic"
Published: 17 March 2025 at 01:30 Europe/London
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Episode notes
Marie Stopes’ “Mother’s Clinic” opened its doors in Holloway, on March 17th, 1826.
Stopes was a trailblazer, her birth control clinic providing working-class women with access to contraception and advice for the first time. However, her organisation's full name - "The Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress" - reveals her disturbing underlying belief in selective breeding for racial progress; a commitment that only strengthened as time went on, and she corresponded with Hitler.
In this episode, The Retrospectors consider Stopes’s pioneering work on female desire and sexual health in her bestselling book, "Married Love,"; explain how she pivoted from paleobotany to reproductive health and racism; and ask why Marie Stopes International waited until the 21st century to rebrand itself…
Further Reading:
• ‘Family planning in the 1920s: Marie Stopes and the ‘wise precaution of delay’’ (The National Archives blog, 2022): https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20speople-family-planning-in-the-1920s-marie-stopes-and-the-wise-precaution-of-delay/
• ‘Marie Stopes: a turbo-Darwinist ranter, but right about birth control’ (The Guardian, 2011): https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/sep/02/marie-stopes-right-birth-control
• ‘Marie Stopes’ Eugenics, Feminism and Birth Control’ (Wellcome Collection, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPqog-EV9jI
This episode originally aired in 2024
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The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.
Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Ollie Peart
Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2025.
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