HIS3MHI BART SCHOFIELD

THAT DARK SCIENCE: EUGENICS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AUSTRALIA

BART SCHOFIELD

1. The Eugenics Tree, The American Philosophical Society, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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The mathematics building at the University of Melbourne is named for an academic whose work had absolutely nothing to do with that particular discipline. The tribute has survived criticism, petitions and campaigns to have it renamed by the University’s contemporary students and academics who consider it an offensive reminder of a less enlightened past.1 The building, which previously housed the anatomy school, is titled in recognition and honour of Professor Richard Berry, an anatomist, anthropologist and neurologist who worked at the University and helped to rejuvenate the department between 1906 and 1929.2 Berry was also an ardent and extremely influential proponent of eugenics, that dark science which led to some of the most severe horrors of the Holocaust.

Until Carol Bacchi’s 1980 revelation that proponents of eugenics were active in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century this chapter of Australian history was subject to amnesia, obscurity and sometimes, suppression.3 Bacchi’s study highlighted the impact of environmental eugenics on social reforms while discounting the significant influence that proponents of hereditary eugenics, like Richard Berry, had on policy makers and the press. Scholarship after Bacchi suggests that hereditary eugenics in Australia was an extremely influential theory that had a significant effect on the development of educational policies and birth control and provided the justification for racist policies and practices.4 As a nation that was eager to prove itself progressive and strong, and already experimenting with racial purity, Australia proved a ripe ground for proponents of eugenics to take root and spread their word. Seldom acknowledged among historians and the wider Australian public is the significant influence that eugenics, particular the hereditary branch, had on Australian society throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Seeking to continue shedding light on this chapter of history this article will discuss eugenics and its influence in Australia.

Background on Eugenics Conceived by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, in 1883 eugenics is the idea that the human race can be improved by “controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics”.5 It is a misapplication of Darwin’s theory of evolution that places nature over nurture and incorporates pseudoscientific practices such as craniometry (head measuring) in an attempt to identify correlations with intelligence. The central idea to eugenics is that heredity is an impassable barrier for some individuals and that those people

should be prevented from procreating. Secondary to heredity is the view that an individual’s environment affects their development, however, eugenics implies that those considered inferior are incapable of gaining benefit from environmental reforms or education. In practice eugenics proved little more than a rationale for racism and class-based discrimination. Eugenics was embraced to

2. Eugenics, Gennie Stafford, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

An example of the type of imagery and propaganda used to promote Eugenics.

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varying degree by several countries as well as Canada and the United States who along with the Scandinavian countries and Germany imposed the most severe eugenic measures.6 James Gillespie identifies that “The language of eugenics was a pervasive discourse which structured most interwar debate on the relationship between the health of individuals and national welfare”.7 In the first half of the twentieth century Australia was a nation that saw itself as vulnerable to racial dilution and susceptible to the imported European anxiety about the decline and degeneration of civilisation.8 Eugenics in Australia was seen as a solution to these perceived problems. Its theories reinforced assumptions about Indigenous people and their future as well as providing further ammunition for the White Australia policy and immigration restrictions. Eugenics was such a persuasive philosophy that two separate lobby groups were formed in Melbourne and one in NSW and on several occasions States came close to enacting legislation that allowed for its more sinister practices of segregation and sterilisation.

People Proponents of eugenics were active in Australia from virtually the beginning of the twentieth century. Arguably, its most notorious and ardent champion was Richard Berry, the aforementioned professor of anatomy at the University of Melbourne. Berry was an English scientist interested in anatomy, neurology and anthropology whose work relied on and reflected the eugenic assumption of “rotten heredity”.9 For over 20 years Berry lectured both publicly and for the University, spreading and advocating for hereditary eugenics and the institutionalisation, segregation and sterilisation of individuals seen as eugenically ‘unfit’. His research included measuring inmate’s heads at Melbourne Gaol and Pentridge Prison in order to “determine the amount of brain in cubic centimetres possessed by a class of the community which is presumably of an

inferior position in the human scale of society.”10 Like eugenicists in other nations, the primary target of Berry’s studies were those members of the population categorised as ‘mentally deficient’, ‘mentally defective’ and ‘socially inefficient’. These were loosely defined categories that included alcoholics, people suffering mental illness, people with low I.Q.s and people engaged in lifestyles deemed deviant such as homosexuals and sex workers.11 In a letter to the Eugenics Review in 1930, Berry gave his views about the extermination (by gas chamber) of the more severely disabled and undesirable members of the population, stating “there would be many who would agree with me that such an act of extinction would be the kindest, wisest, and the best things one could do for all concerned.”12 In a further demonstration of the severity of his opinions Berry goes on in this letter to describe these individuals as “human refuse”.13 Berry’s obsession in proving a correlation between head size and intelligence and his hierarchical theories about race also led him to measure and collect the skulls and skeletons of Indigenous people. The collection, which consisted of the remains of over 400 individuals was only recently discovered and returned to the Indigenous community for repatriation, over 70 years after Berry’s departure from the University and Australia.14

Another prominent eugenics advocate was William Ernest Jones, the Inspector General for the Insane. Jones was a friend of Berry and together they formed the driving force behind eugenics in Victoria during the 1910s and 1920s.15 A report from the Argus in March, 1913 reflects Jones’ eugenic assumptions about class and racial superiority. Quoting Jones, the Argus calls for tighter immigration restrictions in Victoria stating “that immigrants had been responsible for an increase in insanity in this State.”16 William Jones was also responsible for carrying out the National Survey of Mental Deficiency in 1928. His findings reflected the general hysteria regarding the

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increase in ‘mental deficiency’.17 Like Berry, Jones was an advocate of the sterilisation of the eugenically ‘unfit’, although he was less optimistic about its wider acceptance acknowledging that, “to be really effective it would have to be applied to such a very large number of persons that public outcry would soon make it impossible.”18 Jones’ and Berry’s influence on Australian, particularly Victorian, society is evident in the organisations and attempted legislation that were motivated by their work.

Societies The interest that Berry and his fellow eugenics proponents generated led to the formation of the Eugenics Education

Society of Melbourne as well as the Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales and the Eugenics Society of Victoria. Each of these organisations passionately advocated hereditary eugenics as well as the institutionalisation and sterilisation of those not eugenically ‘fit’ and aimed to lobby state and federal governments for the implementation of eugenics inspired legislation. Both of the Victorian organisation’s memberships and subscriber lists consisted of some of Melbourne’s most prominent and influential medical and education professionals as well as politicians and court officials.19 The Eugenics Education Society also boasted affiliations with Charles Davenport, a leader of the eugenics

3. The Eugenics Education Society in New South Wales, Luncheon in honor of Dr. C.B. Davenport (standing second from left), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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movement in the US and founder of the Eugenic Records Office in New York.20 In July of 1914, the Argus announced the Eugenics Education Society’s formation, naming its committee members, including William Ernest Jones and Alfred Deakin among others, and stating its objectives as:

(1) To set forth persistently the national importance of eugenics in order to modify public  opinion, and

to create a sense of responsibility in the respect of bringing all matters pertaining to human parenthood under the domination of eugenic ideals.(2) To spread a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they are surely known, and so far as thatknowledge may affect the improvement of the race.(3) To further eugenic teaching at

home and elsewhere.21

The Eugenics Society of Victoria held similar objectives and conceptions. In its second publication, Eugenics and the Future of the Australian Population, Wilfred Agar outlines the Society’s central theory as:

The total elimination of reproduction by mental defectives and the insane, brought about by sterilisation or confinement in institutions, or even its partial elimination by voluntary sterilisation and contraceptive instruction, would result in a steady reduction in the number of person suffering from theses conditions, and also a gradual rising of the level of intelligence in the general population.22

The Eugenics Education Society folded shortly after the breakout of Word War 1 while the Eugenics Society of Victoria, which lasted until 1961, eventually softened its stance and embraced environmental improvements informed by eugenics such as slum clearance and birth control.23 The Racial Hygiene Society eventually shed its eugenic goals and morphed into the Family Planning Association.24 In alliance with these societies, proponents of eugenics included the press, the Protestant Church and Women’s groups.25 Together these groups gained the momentum to urge State governments to pursue eugenics informed legislation.

Attempted Legislation The introduction and near enactment of three separate bills in Victoria, as well as the various attempted and adopted eugenic

4. An article from The Argus, 14 July 1914, reporting on the formation of The Eugenics Education Society.http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/10796010

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legislation throughout other Australian states demonstrates the influence eugenics proponents had in the early twentieth century. Unlike several other countries, provisions for sterilisation in these bills were swiftly defeated in favour of compulsory institutionalisation of the ‘mentally deficient’. As was the case with the Mental Deficiency bill in Western Australia that originally called for the “compulsory sterilisation of mental

defectives before entering into marriage.”26 The first two bills proposed to the Victorian Parliament in 1926 and 1929 passed the Legislative Assembly and were expected to pass the Legislative Council until constitutional crises of both minority Labour Governments interrupted their ratification.27 The 1939 bill, which according to the Argus was “in many respects a duplicate of the bill introduced in 1929”,28 managed to pass both houses but was never actually enacted. Ross Jones has speculated that this was possibly due to the outbreak of World War Two and the discrediting of eugenics as a legitimate scientific theory.29 He acknowledges, however, that because the role eugenics played in the atrocities of the Holocaust were not yet discovered, the amount to which its theories were undermined in Australia is debatable.30

Resistance to eugenics and the various legislation proposals in Australian States were virtually non-existent. The Catholic Church maintained the only opposition to its theory of heredity, arguing against the 1929 Victorian bill in its mouthpiece, the Advocate, that “mental deficiency is no more inherited than wooden legs” and identifying that “it is always the poorer paid of manual workers who are the first to be victimised”.31 The nearly complete lack

5. The Argus reporting on the latest eugenics bill before parliament and discussing its similarity with earlier bills.http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12447659

6. The Age reported on the more extreme measures proposed with eugenics legislation in W.A.http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/203266050

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of opposition to the proposed legislation in Victoria demonstrates the persuasive influence of eugenics and its proponents during the first half of the twentieth-century.32

Conclusion The mood of anxiety that Richard Berry, William Jones and their fellow eugenics proponents fostered in Australia during the early twentieth-century reflected global anxieties about nationalism, racial purity and mental health. Australia was not isolated in its experimentation with eugenics and nor is it alone in its amnesia regarding this chapter of history. Continued historical analysis of the eugenics era in Australia and elsewhere will undoubtedly broaden understandings of its impact on the development of contemporary society.

Notes

1 Gary Foley, ‘Eugenics, Melbourne University and me’, Tracker Magazine, February, (2012). http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/tracker/tracker10.html, accessed online 28 September 2015.

2 K.F. Russell, ‘Berry, Richard James Arthur (1867-1962), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berry-richard-james-arthur-5220/text8703, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 29 October 2015.

3 Rob Watts in Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.319.

4 Stephen Garton, ‘Sound minds and healthy bodies: Re-considering eugenics in Australia, 1914-1940’, Australian Historical Studies, 26:103. Gary Foley, ‘Eugenics, Melbourne University and me’, Tracker Magazine, February, (2012).

5 Oxford Dictionaries, ‘Eugenics’, Oxford Dictionaries, 2015, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/eugenics, accessed 10 October 2015.

6 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.322.

7 James Gillespie in Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.323.

8 Mary Cawte, ‘Craniometry and eugenics and Australia: R.J.A. Berry and the quest for social efficiency’, Historical Studies, 22:86, p.36.

9 Lionel Penrose on Berry in Daniel J. Kelves, In The Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the uses of Human Heredity, (Oakland:University of California Press, 1985), p.159.

10 R.J.A. Berry and L.W.G. Buchner, ' The correlation of size of head and intelligence, as estimated from the cubic capacity of brain of 355 Melbourne criminals' Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. 25, p. 229.

11 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.322

12 Richard Berry, ‘The lethal chamber proposal’, Eugenics Review, 22:2, (1930), p.155.

13 ibid.

14 Gary Foley, ‘Eugenics, Melbourne University and me’, Tracker Magazine, February, (2012), Erica Cervini, ‘Call to rename uni building’, The Age, 23 Feb. 2003, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/22/1045638538311.html, accessed 02 Oct 2015.

15 Ross Jones, ‘Removing some of the dust from the wheels of civilisation: William Ernest Jones and the 1928 Commonwealth Survey of Mental Deficiency’, Australian Historical Studies, 40:1, (2009), p. 67.

16 ‘Undesirable Immigrants, The Argus, 20 Mar. 1913, p.11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10773086, accessed 05 October 2015.

17 Ross Jones, ‘Removing some of the dust from the wheels of civilisation: William Ernest Jones and the 1928 Commonwealth Survey of Mental Deficiency’, Australian Historical Studies, 40:1, (2009), p.65.

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18 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.328

19 ‘Eugenics’ The Argus, 14 Jul 1914, p.11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10796010, accessed 02 October 2015. Erica Cervini ‘Out of the shadows’ The Age, Sept. 20, 2011,http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/out-of-the-shadows-20110919-1khqf.html, accessed 02 Oct 2015.

20 Biography 14: Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944), DNA Learning Centre, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, https://www.dnalc.org/view/16339-Biography-14-Charles-Benedict-Davenport-1866-1944-.html, accessed 04 October 2015.

21 ‘Eugenics’ The Argus, 14 Jul 1914, p.11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10796010, accessed 04 October 2015.

22 Wilfred Agar, Eugenics and the Future of the Australian Population, Melbourne: Brown, Prior and Anderson Pty. Ltd., (1939), p.7.

23 Ross Jones, ‘Eugenics in Australia: the secret of Melbourne’s elite’, The Conversation, Sept. 21 2011, http://theconversation.com/eugenics-in-australia-the-secret-of-melbournes-elite-3350, accessed 02 October 2015.

24 Jane Carey, ‘The racial imperatives of sex: birth control and eugenics and Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years’, Women’s History Review, 21:5, p.743.

25 Stephen Garton, ‘Sound minds and healthy bodies: Re-considering eugenics in Australia, 1914-1940’, Australian Historical Studies, 26:103, p.164, p.170.

26 ‘Mental Defective, Drastic Measures Proposed’, The Age, 27 Nov 1929, p.14. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article203266050, accessed 01 October 2015.

27 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p. 340.+arg1938

28 ‘’Bill Revived’, The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) 23 Jul 1938, p.2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12447659, accessed 01 October 2015.

29 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.341

30 ibid.

31 ‘Science and Culture’ Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 - 1954) 26 Sep 1929, p.9, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171662158, accessed 02 October 2015.

32 Ross Jones, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), p.341.

Images

1. The Eugenics Tree, The American Philosophical Society, CC BY-NC-ND, https://www.dnalc.org/view/16330-Gallery-14-Eugenics-Tree-Emblem.html.

2. Eugenics, Gennie Stafford, CC BY-NC-ND, https://flic.kr/p/6iPPUF.

3. The Eugenics Education Society in New South Wales, Luncheon in honor of Dr. C.B. Davenport (standing second from left), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, https://www.dnalc.org/view/11683-Eugenics-Education-Society-of-New-South-Wales-luncheon-in-honor-of-C-B-Davenport-standing-2nd-from-left-Sydney-Australia-9-25-1914-.html

4. ‘Eugenics. Victorian Society Formed’ The Argus, 14 July 1914, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/10796010

5. ‘Bill Revived’ The Argus, 23 July 1938 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12447659

6. ‘Mental Defectives, Drastic Measures Proposed’ The Age, 27 November 1929, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/203266050

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary

Agar, Wilfred, Eugenics and the Future of the Australian Population, Melbourne: Brown, Prior and Anderson Pty. Ltd., (1939).

Berry, Richard, ‘The lethal chamber proposal’, Eugenics Review, 22:2, (1930), pp.155-156.

Berry, Richard and Buchner, L.W., ' The correlation of size of head and intelligence, as estimated from the cubic capacity of brain of 355 Melbourne criminals' Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. 25.

‘’Bill Revived’, The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) 23 Jul 1938, p.2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12447659, accessed 01 October 2015.

Cervini, Erica, ‘Call to rename uni building’, The Age, 23 Feb. 2003, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/22/1045638538311.html, accessed 02 Oct 2015.

Cervini, Erica ‘Out of the shadows’ The Age, Sept. 20, 2011,http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/out-of-the-shadows-20110919-1khqf.html, accessed 02 Oct 2015.

‘Eugenics. Victorian Society Formed’ The Argus, 14 Jul 1914, p.11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10796010, accessed 04 October 2015.

Foley, Gary ‘Eugenics, Melbourne University and me’, Tracker Magazine, February, (2012). http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/tracker/tracker10.html, accessed online 28 September 2015.

‘Mental Defective, Drastic Measures Proposed’, The Age, 27 Nov 1929, p.14. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article203266050, accessed 01 October 2015.

Oxford Dictionaries, ‘Eugenics’, Oxford Dictionaries, 2015, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/eugenics, accessed 10 October 2015.

‘Science and Culture’ Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 - 1954) 26 Sep 1929, p.9, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171662158, accessed 02 October 2015.

‘Undesirable Immigrants, The Argus, 20 Mar. 1913, p.11, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article10773086, accessed 05 October 2015.

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Secondary

‘Biography 14: Charles Benedict Davenport (1866-1944)’, DNA Learning Centre, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, https://www.dnalc.org/view/16339-Biography-14-Charles-Benedict-Davenport-1866-1944-.html, accessed 04 October 2015.

Carey, Jane, ‘The racial imperatives of sex: birth control and eugenics and Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years’, Women’s History Review, 21:5, pp.733-752.

Cawte, Mary, ‘Craniometry and eugenics and Australia: R.J.A. Berry and the quest for social efficiency’, Historical Studies, 22:86, pp.35-53.

Garton, Stephen, ‘Sound minds and healthy bodies: Re-considering eugenics in Australia, 1914-1940’, Australian Historical Studies, 26:103, pp.163-181.

Jones, Ross, ‘Eugenics in Australia: the secre of Melbourne’s elite’, The Conversation, Sept. 21 2011, http://theconversation.com/eugenics-in-australia-the-secret-of-melbournes-elite-3350, accessed 02 October 2015.

Jones, Ross, ‘Removing some of the dust from the wheels of civilisation: William Ernest Jones and the 1928 Commonwealth Survey of Mental Deficiency’, Australian Historical Studies, 40:1, (2009), pp.63-78.

Jones, Ross, ‘The master potter and the rejected pots: eugenic legislation in Victoria, 1918-1939’, Australian Historical Studies, 29:133,(1999), pp.319-342.

Kelves, Daniel J., In The Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the uses of Human Heredity, (Oakland:University of California Press, 1985).

Russell, K.F., ‘Berry, Richard James Arthur (1867-1962), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/berry-richard-james-arthur-5220/text8703, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 29 October 2015.

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