Influence of eugenics
The rise of the pseudo-science of eugenics and what became known as Social Darwinism became very influential during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
On this page
Social Darwinism
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his bestseller, 'The Origin of the Species by natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'.
The ideas of evolution, genetics, heredity and the potential of selective breeding in humans were taken up by his cousin, Francis Galton, who named the new science eugenics.
In New Zealand ‘Social Darwinism’ was embraced by liberals and conservatives concerned about the declining white middle class birth rate and consequent fears of losing their racial and moral supremacy. Improving racial ‘fitness’ was vital.
Two influential Social Darwinists in colonial New Zealand were Dr Duncan MacGregor external and Robert Stout external.
MacGregor from Scotland was Professor of Mental and Moral Science at Otago University, and advocated in the 1870s for the extension of the definition of insanity to include “hopeless drunkards, hopeless criminals, and hopeless paupers”, so that these dangerous classes might be: “made to work for their support, and deprived of liberty until they die, in order to prevent their injuring society either by their crimes or by having children to inherit their curse.” (MacGregor, 1876:320).
In the 1880s, Premier Robert Stout, a former student of MacGregor, who believed moral failings caused poverty, warned of an emerging class of permanent paupers which would pollute the new society.
His wife, Anna, was a prominent suffragist. Many feminist writings of the era also reflected eugenic beliefs, particularly as a means to rid society of undesirables such as alcoholics and to reduce the ‘caring’ demands placed on women.
The 'science' of eugenics
By the turn of the twentieth century, many of New Zealand's leading politicians, doctors and academics believed in the false scientific validity of eugenics.
In New Zealand disabled or mentally unwell people and Chinese people were the main targets (In 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to Chinese New Zealanders).
In 1903, WA Chapple, a politician and doctor, published his influential booklet, 'The Fertility of the Unfit'. The problem he saw was the decline in the fertility of the ‘fit’ and the increasing birth rate of the ‘unfit’.
His solution lay in encouraging the ‘fit’ to have more children and by sterilising the ‘unfit’ (those with mental, moral and physical impairments).
The Eugenics Education society was founded in Dunedin in 1910 with an influential membership, one of whom was Truby King external, at that time the Medical Superintendent of Otago’s Seacliff Asylum.
Theories and language linked intellectual impairment and some physical impairments like epilepsy to inferiority and moral degeneracy.
Negative eugenists sought to limit fertility while positive eugenists supported interventionist policies to increase population ‘fitness’.
Truby King
Truby King founded Plunket in 1907: he was a positive eugenist who believed that teaching mothers the strict rules of ‘scientific’ mothering would increase the fitness of the race.
But surveillance of those deemed dangerous and deviant required legislation to segregate, classify and contain them. For the ‘unfit’ various institutions were developed to keep the sexes apart and prevent reproduction.
The 1911 Mental Defectives Act external classified groups of ‘other’ into six categories: “persons of unsound mind”, ”mentally infirm”, “idiots”, “imbeciles”, “feeble-minded” and “epileptics”. Each label had a specific meaning. The 1914 Education Act required parents, teachers and police to report ‘mentally defective’ children to the Department of Education.
Residential schools
The School Medical Service was founded to identify ‘defective’ children so they could be subject to surveillance. Health Camps developed to temporarily remove children from their families to instill ideals of health and fitness. The new science of IQ testing provided a valuable classification tool.
But certain types of intellectual impairment continued to be linked with immorality. So girls’ and boys’ homes and farm schools were founded mainly to keep the sexes apart and prevent criminality, deviant behaviour or reproduction.
In 1908, Otekaike (Campbell Park School) near Oamaru was opened as a residential school for ‘feeble-minded’ boys and a few years later a similar residential school for ‘feeble-minded’ girls, Salisbury, was opened in Richmond, near Nelson.
These special schools were run by the Education Department, while Templeton near Christchurch and Levin Farm, later the Kimberley psychopaedic hospital, came under the Mental Hospitals Department.
Differing classifications of ‘defect’, as listed the 1911 Act, determined which government department was responsible for each individual.
The Census of 1916 was the last time until 1996 that specific questions about disability were asked, possibly due to the repercussions for identification.
Seacliff Hospital, Dunedin, showing the grounds, taken 1912 by an unidentified photographer. Alexander Turnbull Library Ref: PAColl-8769-02
French-born nun, Suzanne Aubert external, had personal experience of disability and was one of the few to speak out against eugenics.
She founded her Home for Incurables in Whanganui in 1899 and, in 1907, opened her first Home of Compassion for all ‘needy’ or disabled adults or children in Wellington.
A 1922 committee on venereal disease was led by William Triggs, a Member of the Legislative Council. His concluding remarks expressed concerns with the role of ‘feeble-minded’ women infecting men, causing debauchery and corruption.
By now moral panic was high so Mr Triggs was appointed to chair a Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders external which reinforced the links between intellectual impairment, moral degeneracy and sexual offending in the public mind.
Theodore Gray external was a Scottish clinician influential in New Zealand psychiatric hospital administration. He advocated villas instead of old multi-storey hospitals.
In 1927, he succeeded Truby King as head of the Department of Mental Hospitals. To protect white racial fitness he wanted segregated farm colonies for those with intellectual disability or mental illness, registration, screening and sterilisation.
These were proposed in the 1928 Mental Defectives Amendment Bill external. Under the Bill at-risk children could be taken off families and the short-lived Eugenics Board kept lists of ‘defectives’.
Protest from the community
A rare voice of protest was expressed by a mother about the proposed travelling clinics which would examine intellectually impaired children.
Oh Mother, save me from Dr. Gray
‘Cause teacher says he’s coming to-day
And if I’m stupid he’ll take me away.
Oh, Mummie, save me from Dr.Gray!”
“I cannot save you, my little child.”
His Mummie said and her eyes were wild.
“You belong to the State, you’re no more my child!
But Oh, my darling don’t stupid be
Or he’ll say we’ve tainted heredity.
And must be eradicated – you and me!”
(Quoted in Robertson, S. Production not reproduction: the problem of mental defect in New Zealand, 1900-1939. Unpublished BA Hons, University of Otago, 1989.)
After much political debate on the 1928 Bill, sterilisation was rejected under the leadership of Opposition Labour MP, Peter Fraser external, who would become Prime Minister a few years later.
His was a rare voice against eugenics possibly because of his own family experiences of mental illness.
Even though eugenic sterilisation was never legalised in New Zealand many were likely disguised as operations such as appendectomies.
The 1928 Mental Defectives Amendment Act led to the establishment of our first psychopaedic institution, Templeton Farm Mental Deficiency Colony, near Christchurch, in 1929 under the authority of Dr Gray and his Mental Hospitals Department.
The first residents were boys but soon girls were sent there too, although sexes were segregated inside the institution.
Dr Gray personally signed some of the admission forms. When Templeton closed in the late 1990s some residents had been there for decades unsure why they had ever been placed there.
Over time more psychopaedic hospitals were established, including Braemar (Nelson), Kimberley (Levin) and Mangere (Auckland).
Residential units were also established in some hospitals, or in psychiatric hospitals, such as Porirua which set up an autism unit in the 1970s when that diagnosis started increasing.
Many disabled children spent time in mainstream psychiatric hospitals. Pukeora, an institution for children and young adults with physical impairments, was founded near Dannevirke in the late 1950s.
Support for eugenic policies was widespread globally and it was in this context in 1939 that a German father asked the state authorities to kill his disabled child.
That was the start of the euthanasia policies of the Nazis. It is estimated that over 200,000 disabled people were killed in what is known as the ‘silent holocaust’.
Support for eugenic policies dimmed internationally, including in New Zealand, but did not die with the Nazis.