Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T04:43:03.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contraception and the Working Classes: The Social Ideology of the English Birth Control Movement in its Early Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Angus McLaren
Angus McLaren
Affiliation:
Oxford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A host of social movements which had as their goal the improvement of the living conditions of the working classes emerged in England in the 1820s and 1830s. Owenism and Chartism come first to mind, but historians have recently acknowledged the social significance of a number of less well-known groups that proclaimed the benefits of temperance or mechanics' institutes or phrenology or infidel missions. The birth control movement in its early years has as yet received little attention from the historians of the English working classes. A possible reason is that the opposition of the 'pauper press' to the movement has led later observers to adopt the view that it was simply a middle-class Malthusian crusade which set out to convince the poor that the only escape from poverty lay in individual self-help. In what follows I shall sketch out the general lines of argument advanced by the advocates of birth control and their antagonists in the working-class movement. The purpose of the paper is not to provide yet another history of the first neo-Malthusians, but to use the arguments their activities elicited to gain a better understanding of nineteenth-century working-class culture.

Type
Social Attitudes Toward Fertility
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 236 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a brief account by a sociologist see Peel, John, ‘Birth Control and the Working Class Movement’, Society for the Study of Labour History Bulletin, 7 (1963), 16–22.Google Scholar

2 For the history of birth control, see Himes, Norman E., A Medical History of Contraception (Baltimore, 1936);Google ScholarField, James Alfred, Essays on Population (Chicago, 1931);Google ScholarBanks, J. A., Prosperity and Parenthood: A Study of Family Planning Among the Victorian Middle Classes (London, 1954);Google ScholarMicklewright, F. H. Amphlett, ‘The Rise and Fall of English Neo-Malthusianism’, Population Studies, 15 (1961–1962), 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For the Malthusian debate, see Glass, D. V., ed., Introduction to Malthus (London, 1953);Google ScholarBoner, H. A., Hungry Generations: The Nineteenth Century Case Against Malthusianism (New York: 1955);Google ScholarEversley, D. E. C., Social Theories of Fertility and the Malthusian Debate (Oxford, 1959);Google ScholarGriffith, G. T., Population Problems in the Age of Malthus (London, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Malthus, Thomas, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London, 1803), p. 531.Google Scholar

5 Malthus, An Essay, p. 154.Google Scholar

6 Annals of Agriculture and Other Useful Arts, 29 (1797), 422.Google Scholar

7 Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1824), III, 261.Google Scholar

8 On Place's role see the notes and introduction of Himes, ' to Francis Place, Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population (London, 1830).Google Scholar

9 Holyoake, G. J.,Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life (London, 1900), I, pp. 126ff;Google ScholarHimes, Norman E., ‘The Birth Control Handbills of 1823’, Lancet, N. S. 3 (08 6, 1927), 313–7; see also the documents conserved at the British Museum in the Place Collection, 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 What is Love? first appeared in Carlile's Republican (05 6, 1825)Google Scholar and was brought out as a pamphlet in February 1826. Eight editions were produced by 1828. Carlile's imprisoned shopmen supported his argument in the Newgate Monthly Magazine. See Carlile to Place, (08 8, 1822),Google ScholarPlace to Carlile, (08 17, 1822, 09 1, 1824),Google Scholar Place Collection 68; Place to Carlile, Republican, 10 (11 12, 1824), 581.Google Scholar

11 The Free Enquirer (08 7, 10 16, 10 23, 1830).Google Scholar

12 Himes, Norman E., ‘Charles Knowlton's Revolutionary Influence on the English Birth Rate’, New England Journal of Medicine, 199 (1928), 461–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Place, Illustrations and Proofs, p. 155.Google Scholar

14 Knowlton, , Fruits of Philosophy (London, 1841), pp. 7–8;Google ScholarOwen, , Moral Physiology (New York, 1831), p. 25.Google Scholar

15 Carlile, , Every Woman's Book (London, 1838), p. 19;Google ScholarOwen, , Moral Physiology, p. 36;Google ScholarKnowlton, , Fruits of Philosophy, p. 40.Google Scholar

16 Carlile, , Every Woman's Book, pp. 23–24;Google ScholarKnowlton, , Fruits of Philosophy, p. 37;Google ScholarOwen, , Moral Physiology, p. 35.Google Scholar

17 The Lion (10 3, 1828).Google Scholar

18 Newgate Monthly Magazine (06 1, 1826).Google Scholar

19 Newgate Monthly Magazine (01 1, 1826).Google Scholar

20 Place Collection, 68.Google Scholar

21 Owen, , Moral Physiology (London, 1832, 8th edition), p. 25.Google Scholar This section on the wage fund was not included in earlier editions.

22 On Place's laissez-faire views see Place to George Rogers (01 15, 1832), Place Collection, 68;Google ScholarPlace to the London Dispatch (01 29, 1837);Google ScholarThomas, W. E. S., ‘Francis Place and Working Class History’, Historical Journal, 5 (1962), 61–70;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHarrison, Brian, ‘Two Roads to Social Reform: Francis Place and the Drunken Committee of 1834’, Historical Journal, 11 (1968), 272–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Owen, Moral Physiology, 19.Google Scholar

24 Longson, William, ‘Letter I: On Population and Their Wages; Addressed to the Labouring Classes by an Operative Weaver’ (september 15, 1824), Place Collection, 68.Google Scholar

25 Republican (05 5, 1826).Google Scholar

26 Knowlton, Fruits of Philosophy, p. 40;Google Scholar see also Knowlton, to the Boston Investigator (01 11, 1833).Google Scholar

27 Place to the Labourer's Friend (08 5, 1823).Google Scholar

28 Newgate Monthly Magazine (01 1, 1826),Google Scholar and for the continuation of the myth, see the Black Dwarf (11 24, 1823; 10 1, 1823);Google Scholar Holyoake, Sixty Years, I, pp. 126ff; Harrison, J. F. C., Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: The Quest for the New Moral World (London, 1969), p. 61.Google ScholarOwen denied the charge in a letter to the Morning Chronicle (10 8, 1827).Google Scholar

29 Newgate Monthly Magazine (05 1, 1826).Google Scholar William Thompson foresaw the possible use of some ‘preventive check’ in his reformed community but his suggestion, because of its hypothetical nature, seems to have stimulated little interest: An Enquiry Into the Distribution of Wealth (London, 1824), pp. 536, 547–9;Google ScholarPractical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities (London, 1830), pp. 229–48.Google Scholar

30 Carlile, , Every Woman's Book, pp. 25–26;Google Scholarcf. Owen, , Moral Physiology, pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

31 Place, ‘To the Married of Both Sexes of the Working People’, Place Collection, 68.Google Scholar

32 Boston Investigator (02 15, 1833);Google Scholar Knowlton stated that this was why he had been jailed ‘...while other works of like purpose, as well as that dirty, useless thing called “Aristotle,” are publically sold with impunity’, Boston Investigator (01 11, 1833).Google Scholar

33 The Lion (10 3, 1828).Google ScholarPubMed

34 Ibid.

35 Parker, S. D., Report on the Argument of the Attorney of the Commonwealth at the Trial of Abner Kneeland for Blasphemy (Boston, 1834), p. 89.Google Scholar

36 Alfred, G., Richard Carlile, Agitator: His Life and Times (London, 1923). No adequate biography of Carlile has yet been written.Google Scholar

37 Republican (01 1, 1825), preface. See also the writings of Eliza Sharpies Carlile in the Isis of 1832.Google ScholarPubMed

38 The Lion (10 10, 1828).Google ScholarPubMed Place spoke of the need for overcoming the ‘squeamishness’ induced by traditional religions; Place to Morning Chronicle (08 30, 1825).Google Scholar

39 Knowlton, Charles, A History of Recent Excitement in Ashfield (Boston, 1833);Google ScholarTwo Remarkable Lectures (Boston, 1833);Google ScholarElements of Modern Materialism (Adams, Mass., 1829);Google Scholar for Knowlton's lectures in Frances Wright's Hall of Science, see the Correspondent (04 11, 05 6, 1829)Google ScholarPubMed and the Free Enquirer (05 6, 07 10, 07 1, 07 22, 1829).Google Scholar

40 Weekly Register (04 15, 1826);Google ScholarPubMed see also the issues of April 22 and September 30, 1826 and November 3, 1827. Carlile replied that he had not even read Malthus; Republican (08 21, 1826).Google Scholar See also ‘Marriages and No Mothers; or the Stage Coach Battle of Cobbett and Carlile’, Paul Pry (05 6, 1826), Place Collection, 61.Google Scholar

41 London Mercury (04 2, 05 28, 1826); Dr. Robert Black and Henry Hetherington were the men under attack.Google ScholarPubMed

42 Trades Newspaper (07 31, 1825),Google Scholar cited by Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1966), p. 777.Google Scholar

43 Trades Newspaper (09 11, 1825).Google Scholar As early as 1805 Charles Hall had warned of plans abroad to use ‘the preventive method’ to restrict the poor-like cattle-to the numbers needed by the rich; Effects of Civilization (London, 1850 2nd edition), pp. 246–7.Google ScholarPubMed

44 The Co-operator (09 1, 1829, 10 1, 1829).Google ScholarPubMed

45 The Labourer's Friend and Handicraft's Chronicle (01 1, 1821).Google Scholar

46 Cited by Hollis, Patricia, The Pauper Press (Oxford, 1970), 231.Google Scholar For O'Brien's attacks on the Malthusians, see the London Mercury (April 2, 9, 1837). For the argument that the employment of labor-saving machinery had caused the ‘population problem’, see the Pioneer (01 25, 02 1, 1834)Google ScholarPubMed and the London Cooperative Magazine (04 1, 05 1, 1827).Google Scholar

47 Republican (11 12, 1824).Google ScholarPubMed

48 The Black Dwarf (12 3, 1823).Google ScholarPubMed

49 The Northern Star (03 31, 1838).Google ScholarPubMed

50 The London Dispatch (01 29, 1838).Google ScholarPubMed

51 The debate over birth control that appeared in the columns of The Black Dwarf from November 1823 to January 1824 was between its editor, Wooler, Francis Place writing as ‘A. Z.’ and the young John Stuart Mill writing as ‘A. M.’

52 The Black Dwarf (09 17, 1823).Google ScholarPubMed

53 Ravenstone, Piercy, A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subject of Population and Political Economy (London, 1821), p. 428.Google Scholar

54 E.g., the Working Man's Friend and Political Magazine (01 5, 19, 1833);Google ScholarThe Examiner (11 11, 1825).Google ScholarPubMed

55 Hodgskin, Thomas, The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted (London, 1832), pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

56 Trades Newpaper (09 11, 1825);Google Scholar cf. the Bolton Express (10 27, 1827).Google ScholarPubMed

57 The Examiner (08 21, 1825).Google ScholarPubMed

58 The Bulldog (09 9, 1826).Google ScholarPubMed

59 Trades Newspaper (09 11, 1825).Google Scholar

60 The Black Dwarf (12 3, 1823).Google ScholarPubMed

61 Godwin, William, On Population (London, 1820), p. 219.Google ScholarPubMed

62 Trades Newspaper (07 17, 1825).Google Scholar

63 Godwin, , On Population, pp. 585–6.Google ScholarPubMed

64 Base to Place (June 21, 1825), Place Collection, 68; and see also ‘P. H. G.’ to the Poor Man's Guardian (03 9, 1833).Google Scholar

65 ‘Committee on the Factories’ Bill', Parliamentary Papers, 15 (1831–32), 132, 545;Google Scholar‘Dr. Loudon's Medical Report’, Parliamentary Papers, 21 (1833), 2, 15, 18.Google Scholar

66 DrRyan, Michael, Philosophy of Marriage (London, 1837), p. 6.Google Scholar

67 On circulation figures, see Glass, D. V., Population Policies and Movements in Europe (London, 1967, 2nd edition), pp. 31ff,Google Scholar and Himes, , ‘Charles Knowlton’, 461–5.Google Scholar

68 Smith, F. B., ‘The Atheist Mission, 1840–1900’, in Robson, Robert, ed., Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark (London, 1967), p. 220.Google Scholar

69 On health fads, see Shryock, Richard H., The Development of Modern Medicine (London, 1948), 205ff;Google ScholarHarrison, J. F. C., The Early Victorians, 1832–1851 (London, 1971), pp. 171ff;Google ScholarHarrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians (London, 1971).Google Scholar