The Council having deliberated in private, the President delivered the following judgment:
“In the opinion of the Council, Mr. Allbutt has committed the offence charged against him, that is to say, of having published and publicly caused to be sold a work entitled The Wife’s Handbook, in London and elsewhere, at so low a price as to bring the work within the reach of the youth of both sexes, to the detriment of public morals. Secondly, the offence is, in the opinion of the Council, ‘infamous conduct in a professional respect.’ Thirdly, the Registrar is hereby ordered to erase the name of Mr. H. A. Allbutt from the Medical Register.”
Thus ended the futile attempt of the General Medical Council to put a stop to the publication of Malthusian works “at so low a price.” Nobody was a penny the worse for the ponderous proceedings of this archaic tribunal. Dr. Allbutt has never ceased to practise legally as a physician; twenty editions of The Wife’s Handbook have been issued and 180,000 copies sold.
This case aroused much attention in the press. The Pall Mall Gazette declared that “the decision of the General Medical Council to erase from its rolls the name of a physician who published ‘at a low price’ information as to the best means for preventing the excessive multiplication of children beyond their parents’ means of subsistence or the possibility of education and control, will before long become familiar as one of the most glaring illustrations of professional prejudice and human folly. When such a cool-headed respectable as Lord Derby feels bound to call attention to the increase of 400,000 per annum in our population as one of the most pressing problems of our day, it is really too fatuous for the General Medical Council to brand as ‘infamous’ a practitioner who, in a work to which no objection is taken on the score of impropriety or immorality, supplies to the poor information already possessed by the rich.”
We have to record but one later attempt to interfere with the free discussion of the population question in this country. In October, 1891, Mr. H. S. Young, M.A., was summoned to appear at Bow Street Police Court on a charge of sending through the post a leaflet entitled Some Reasons for Advocating the Prudential Limitation of Families. The proceedings were taken under the Post Office Protection Act. Mr. Besley, in conducting the prosecution, made the remarkable statement that the only check against immorality in this country was the fear of pregnancy! Speaking in his own defence, Mr. Young contended that there was no “obscenity” involved in pointing out to the poor how they might limit their families. The magistrate (Mr. Lushington) admitted that the leaflet was written in very careful language, and not intended to be at all offensive; but still he held that it was “obscene,” convicted Mr. Young, and ordered him to pay a fine of £20 and costs. The defendant applied to the magistrate to state a case, as he intended to appeal; but Mr. Lushington refused to do so.
This prosecution led to the formation of a Free Discussion Committee, and public meetings were held in various parts of the metropolis, protesting against the infringement of public freedom by legal proceedings. Repeated attempts were made by Mr. Young and his advisers to bring the case before a court of law, but technical difficulties rendered this practically impossible, and the matter was allowed to drop.
Meantime the propaganda of New-Malthusian views is steadily continued. The pages of The Malthusian, the monthly organ of the League, bear constant witness to activity which hastes not and rests not. Whether its energies are to be again stimulated by persecution, time alone can show.
A brief statement concerning the position of the Malthusian movement in foreign countries may be usefully added to this chapter.
Holland.—Several years ago a Dutch Malthusian League was established by Mr. S. Van Houten (Doctor of Laws, and Deputé), Mr. C. V. Gerritsen, Dr. C. de Rooy, Dr. Lobry de Bruyn and others. In 1887 the League numbered amongst its members, in Amsterdam alone, six Doctors of Medicine, eleven Doctors of Law, and three Professors of the University. At Amsterdam a dispensary has long been open, where a lady (Dr. Aletta H. Jacobs) and other medical members attend and give advice to those seeking practical information upon prudential checks. Large numbers of poor married women apply at the dispensary for instruction as to the best methods by which they can restrict the size of their families. Several pamphlets upon the population question have been issued by the Dutch Malthusian League. In 1887, thirty thousand copies of one of its publications had been circulated in a country with a smaller population than that of London. The most recent pamphlet on Malthusianism, from the pen of Mr. J. A. Van der Haven, is entitled The Dark Netherlands, and the way out of it. The author draws a sad picture of life in some of the poor quarters of Holland, where, he says, “laughter is seldom heard, and hunger and early death are constant visitors.” There is, however, hope for a brighter future. Mr. Gerritsen states that in Holland “directors of large industrial establishments and railway societies make their workmen acquainted with the means of preventing themselves from drifting into poverty.”