Official and public morality in the 1920s and 1930s was still very strict by today’s standards. If women practised premarital sex it was not something to which they would publicly admit, and illegitimacy was deeply shameful. Books were strictly censored, particularly for sexual explicitness. This is why James Joyce’s Ulysses and DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were banned in Britain.
From 1922 Hollywood films were also censored. In the 1930s, the Catholic League of Decency watched them closely to ensure that, for example, married couples used twin beds and were never seen sleeping together. Even film titles had to be squeaky clean: one called Infidelity had to be renamed Fidelity.
Discussion of sexual matters, for example in women’s magazines, was still coy. Advertisements for maternity dresses referred to pregnancy in euphemisms such as "that interesting condition,” and promised to “keep your secret.”
The British Home Secretary of the 1920s banned mixed bathing in London’s Serpentine lake, and the London Underground banned an advertisement showing a woman in a backless evening dress.
It was against this background that, while some upper and middle class women concerned themselves with issues surrounding equal pay, the ending of the marriage bar and extending voting rights for women, others put their energies into the more controversial issue of birth control. For a large number of women the greatest restriction to their freedom came from the number of pregnancies they endured. Birth control campaigners realised that there could be no real improvement in the lives of poorer women until they had the means to control the size of their family.
Marie Stopes was one such campaigner. She had become interested in the subject after meeting Margaret Sanger, a birth control campaigner from America. Sangar believed that no woman could “call herself free who doesn’t own and control her own body.” She was forced to flee to Britain after being charged with publishing an “obscene and lewd article”, and it was while she was in London that she met Marie Stopes. When Marie followed her book on marriage with one entitled “Wise Parenthood” in 1918, there was a huge outcry. This second book, which recognised that the main obstacle to the enjoyment of sex within marriage was the fear of pregnancy, advocated the use of birth control. She had to be careful how she wrote as, in the past, anyone daring to tackle the subject was liable to prosecution under the obscenity laws and sentenced to imprisonment.
In 1921 she went even further and opened the first British birth control clinic in Holloway, North London. Some objected to birth control on religious grounds, while others seemed concerned about the effects it would have on an already falling birth rate. One Anglican bishop, for example, condemned contraception on the grounds that the French used it and had thereby reduced their national birth rate to such an extent that they were obliged to import foreign labour.
In some cases objections were part of a wider resentment to women’s changing role. A note on the “Dr Hannah Brown” case in the National Archives file has the comment, “It is rather a sign of the times that married women should decline to accept the responsibilities of motherhood, notwithstanding the state gives so much assistance to parents.” (The 1920s, p61)
In spite of the obvious risks of repeated pregnancies to a woman’s health, neither the Government nor the medical profession was prepared to act. When women asked for advice on birth control at the Maternity and Child Welfare clinics they were refused, even when a further pregnancy would endanger the woman’s life. A health visitor in Edmonton lost her job for giving birth control advice to one of her mothers.
In the absence of reliable birth control, many women turned to abortion as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Marie Stopes claimed that many uneducated women, not knowing the difference between contraception and abortion, had written to her asking for advice on abortion, not realising that it was illegal. In 1924 a twenty-seven year old wife of a farm labourer wrote to Marie Stopes asking for advice on how to stop having children. The woman was expecting her fourth child and her family had an income of one pound seven shillings (£1.35) a week. She wrote; "My children do not have enough to eat and I cannot buy boots for them to wear…. I have got into trouble with the school, because my boy did not go, as I had no boots for him to wear. I wrote and told my mother but she cannot help me because my father has died and left her with three children still going to school. She says I must stop having children…. Do you think it would be best if I leave my husband and go into the workhouse … so we don’t have any more children? I have gone without food and have tried to win money but everything I try fails. If you can kindly advise me I would be very grateful.”
In the 1920s many unscrupulous firms advertised pills claiming to correct “irregularities” in a woman’s cycle. Women recognised the code and would buy them if they suspected they were pregnant. Often the pills were harmless, deliberately so. When they failed to induce a miscarriage, the firm could not be charged with breaking the law. In some cases the pills sold were genuine and extremely dangerous. Some women resorted to other self-inducement methods, using violent purgatives such as penny royal, slippery elm and ergot of rye, or even oxide of lead, or the traditional combination of gin, hot baths and violent exertion. If these methods failed women all too often resorted to backstreet abortionists, with tragic consequences for untold numbers of them.
In 1930 the Government finally accepted the need to provide birth control advice in special cases. After years of campaigning by the birth control pioneers, a Ministry of Health circular was sent out to clinics allowing them to give birth control advice to married women whose health would be endangered by further pregnancies. Further advances were made in 1939 when the Family Planning Association was set up. By the end of the 1930s large families were no longer the norm.
Although birth control became more acceptable during the 1930s, the open display of condom vending machines offended many people. Condoms were selling in large numbers by the 1930s, and reliable diaphrams were available, but despite the benefits of birth control many people and organisations remained hostile. The Roman Catholic Church opposed it and women’s magazines, probably concerned with the effect on circulation, ignored it. The ease with which condoms could be obtained caused some sections of the community great concern. A letter written by a Rev. Basil Wood, referred to the sale of condoms through automatic vending machines as a “dangerous public evil”, and newspaper reports claimed that the machines were lowering moral standards and were a “commercial exploitation of vice”. They also condemned manufacturers for, “enriching themselves by encouraging lust in men and women.”
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| Reference: | 749 |
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| Updated: | Wed 23 Apr 2008 - 1 |
| Interpretation written by | Barbara Harris |
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