Halliday Sutherland

Halliday Gibson Sutherland (24 June 1882 – 9 April 1960) was a Scottish medical doctor, writer, public-health pioneer, and outspoken critic of eugenics and neo-Malthusian population theory. Trained at the University of Edinburgh, he became known for his early work in tuberculosis prevention and treatment, including producing The Story of John M’Neil, which is considered to be Britain’s first public-health education film. Sutherland’s medical career included running tuberculosis dispensaries, developing open-air treatment programmes for children, and publishing widely on public health. One of his books with the venerable Catholic publishing house Sheed & Ward was banned in Ireland, which increased its popularity everywhere.

A prolific author, Sutherland wrote both medical and autobiographical works, and he became a prominent figure in public debates over birth control and eugenics in the early 20th century. His opposition to the eugenics movement culminated in the notable libel action Stopes v Sutherland (1923), in which Marie Stopes sued him over his criticism of her birth-control clinic. Sutherland prevailed in the House of Lords, and the case remains an important episode in the history of medical ethics and reproductive politics.

Later in life, Sutherland travelled widely and continued writing, producing accounts of social conditions in Britain and Ireland, including early commentaries on mother-and-baby homes and institutional care. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to public health, social justice, and the belief that poverty arose from social and economic conditions rather than hereditary defects.

Private life Halliday Sutherland was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 24 June 1882, the son of John Francis Sutherland and his wife, Jane MacKay, daughter of John MacKay, a Free Church minister in Caithness. His father was physician to HM Prisons at the time of his birth, and later Depute Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland. The family lived at 19 Roslea Drive in Glasgow. then moved to Edinburgh around 1895, living at 4 Merchiston Bank Avenue, close to the Edinburgh Asylum at Craig House. By 1905 the family were living at 3 Moston Terrace in the Mayfield district.

Halliday was educated at High School of Glasgow and Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh. Shortly after the First World War he became a Roman Catholic. In 1920 he married Muriel Fitzpatrick. They lived at 5 Stafford Terrace Kensington in London and had six children. He died aged 77 in the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, St Marylebone, London on 19 April 1960.

Career Sutherland graduated from Edinburgh University with a MB, Ch B in 1906 and MD with honours in 1908. Following graduation he worked closely with Robert William Philip (later "Sir"), a "pioneer of modern anti-tuberculosis schemes". In 1911, Sutherland founded a tuberculosis clinic and an open-air school in the bandstand of Regent's Park in London and produced "The Story of John M'Neil", thought to be Britain's first cinema film on health education. During the First World War, Sutherland served in the Royal Navy (including service on RMS Empress of Britain) and in the Royal Air Force. ran to 35 editions in English, and was translated into eight languages.

Film

In 1911, Sutherland produced "The Story of John M'Neil", Britain's first public health education cinema film. The 22-minute film was produced for the then new and highly popular silent films shown in cinemas. It depicts various aspects of tuberculosis including the transmission of the disease between family members, the treatments of the various stages of the disease and Sir Robert Philip's "Edinburgh System" for the prevention, treatment and cure of tuberculosis.

Public opposition of eugenics, Malthusianism and disputes with Marie Stopes

Sutherland publicly opposed the doctrines of eugenics and Malthusianism. This brought him into a bitter and public dispute with Dr Marie Stopes.

Eugenics In the main, eugenists agreed with the sentiments of Dr John Haycraft who, in an 1894 speech on "Darwinism and Race Progress" at the Royal College of Physicians, had said the "preventative medicine is trying a unique experiment, and the effect is already discernible – race decay". The argument was that providing medical attention to those who would have perished in previous eras ran in the face of "the survival of the fittest". Race decay would surely result as the unfit, given succour, would live long enough to propagate their genes. Haycraft believed that the bulwark against this race decay was disease: “If we stamp out the Infectious Diseases we perpetuate Poor Types. It is a hard saying, but nonetheless a true one, that the bacillus tuberculosis is a friend of the race, for it attacks no healthy man or woman, but only the feeble.”

These views persisted into the new century and were reflected in the views of the Professor of Eugenics at London University, Karl Pearson, and by the President of the British Medical Association, Sir James Barr.

In "Tuberculosis, Heredity and Environment", Pearson said that the "importance of the discovery of Koch [of the tubercle bacillus] cannot be overrated," but he went on to say that this had led to a focus on infection as the cause of tuberculosis. His view was that there should have been a proper scientific inquiry as to the relative importance of the hereditary and environmental factors and of the liability to infection in the cause of the disease. Pearson had previously asserted that "the influence of environment is not one-fifth of heredity, and quite possibly not one-tenth of it," so he felt that by focussing on infection, the significant cause, heredity, was being ignored. Towards the end of his lecture, Pearson outlined the political ramifications of his findings:

Sir James Barr delivered the presidential address at the British Medical Association's 1912 conference. Recognising the progress that had been achieved in the field of medicine, he pointed out the dysgenic consequences: “We have successfully interfered with the selective death-rate which Nature employed in eliminating the unfit, but, on the other hand, we have made no serious attempt to establish a selective birth-rate so as to prevent the race being carried on by the least worthy citizens.”

Doctors had a major contribution to “raise up a vigorous, intelligent, enterprising, self-reliant and healthy race”, which “must be renewed from the mentally and physically fit...moral and physical degenerates should not be allowed to take any part in adding to the race.” He then turned his attention to tuberculosis:

The first evidence of Sutherland's opposition to eugenics appeared in a November 1912 article in the British Medical Journal: "The Seed or the Soil in Tuberculosis". In it, he rebutted the view that tuberculosis was primarily a hereditary affliction and he provided the statistics to support his assertions. He spoke out again in September 1917 when he addressed the National Council of the Y.M.C.A. in a speech: "Consumption: Its Cause and Cure". He said that while "modern medicine [has]...found the cause, sources and cure of this disease", he identified that the barriers to its prevention were man-made. The obstacles were apathy, arrogance, ignorance, indifference, and eugenics.

Stopes outlined her eugenic vision in the final chapter of Radiant Motherhood: A Book for those Who Are Creating the Future, published in 1920. She outlined her "ardent dream" of "human stock represented only by well-formed, desired and well-endowed beautiful men and women". An obstacle to its accomplishment was "inborn incapacity" which lay "in the vast and ever increasing stock of degenerate, feeble-minded, and unbalanced who are now in our midst", a class of people who were "appallingly prolific". The solution was "a few very simple Acts of Parliament" for the compulsory sterilisation of "the miserable, the degenerate [and] the utterly wretched in mind and body". In March 1921, Stopes opened her birth control clinic in the east-end of London.

What followed concerned politics as much as it concerned birth control. Sutherland attacked what he described as "the essential fallacies of Malthusian teaching": “Malthus did a greater and more evil thing. He forged a law of nature...that the masses should find no room at her feast; and that therefore our system of industrial capitalism was in harmony with the Will of God. Most comforting dogma!”

He said there was "no evidence whatever to prove that the population is pressing on the soil. On the contrary, we find ample physical resources sufficient to support the entire population, and we also find evidence of human injustice, incapacity, and corruption sufficient to account for the poverty and misery that exist in these countries". Sutherland argued that "organised poverty" arose when in the sixteenth century "the greater part of the land, including common land belonging to the poor, had been seized by the rich" and the acts of Parliament for the enclosure of common land between 1714 and 1820.

In conclusion, Sutherland foreshadowed the impact of a declining birth-rate that afflicts many developed nations today:

The Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial of 1923

Birth Control is remembered today as the work that contained the passages that Stopes asserted were defamatory, which led to the Stopes v. Sutherland case.

Under the headings "Specially Hurtful to the Poor" and "Exposing the Poor to Experiment", Sutherland wrote: "In the midst of a London slum a woman, who is a doctor of German philosophy (Munich), has opened a Birth Control Clinic, where working women are instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as 'The most harmful method of which I have had experience'. When we remember that millions are being spent by the Ministry of Health and by Local Authorities – on pure milk for necessitous expectant and nursing mothers, on Maternity Clinics to guard the health of mothers before and after childbirth, for the provision of skilled midwives, and on Infant Welfare Centres – it is truly amazing that this monstrous campaign of birth control should be tolerated by the Home Secretary. Charles Bradlaugh was condemned to jail for a less serious crime." He asked Bishop Browne: "Is there anything to hide?", later adding: "I want to find out how you treat unmarried mothers."

Permission was granted, on condition that Sutherland allowed his account to be censored by the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the institution. Accordingly, the account of his visit to the Laundry in "Irish Journey" was censored. In 2013, the publishers draft of "Irish Journey" was discovered in a cellar and the uncensored version was published in "The Suitcase in the Cellar" on hallidaysutherland.com.

Irish Journey caused ripples, which Sutherland described this way, in the preface to the 1958 American edition: