By Scott Forster and Tom Leonard
14th May 2019
Dear Professor Leonard
RE: Invitation to meet with the Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL
I write to invite you to address the Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL.
The Inquiry is now at the stage where it would be helpful to gather insights from experts around the UCL Community. Your name was proposed by members of the Inquiry as a person who could aid our understanding of the complex issues under exploration. Your testimonial will also assist in the formulation of recommendations to UCL, to be included in our final Report at the end of the year.
I would be grateful if you could attend - in person (in Room 104/106 UCL Main Library) or via Skype - at 14.45 on July 19th 2019. We would require just 30 minutes of your time in total, comprising a 15-minute presentation based on the three questions below, followed by 15 minutes for questions from the members of the Commission.
It would assist our planning greatly if you could confirm your availability before May 31st 2019. We can try to reschedule to another sitting of the Commission if a different date or time would suit you better.
The three questions for the presentation are as follows:
1. How did you become aware of the history of eugenics at UCL? What does this mean to you and did knowledge of this history change your perception of UCL?
2. How do you think UCL should address this going forwards? Should action be taken in relation to the names of prizes, spaces and endowed professorships on campus, especially those named after persons who founded and zealously promoted eugenics? e.g. The Galton Chair (formerly the Chair of Eugenics); the Galton Lecture Theatre; the Pearson Building; the Petrie Museum
3. How do you think UCL should approach its historical role in the teaching and research of eugenics in the future?
Please note that if you prefer, you may also submit a written statement based on the above questions by replying to this email address.
Thank you in advance for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
pp. 
Professor Iyiola Solanke
Chair, Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL
SCOTT FORSTER AND TOM LEONARD ATTENDED THE HEARING IN THE UCL LIBRARY ON 19TH JULY 19, Tom''s verbal submission was favourably received by the members of the Commission, with much more enthusiasm than we could have ever dreamt of. During the verbal version he referred to our WRITTEN SUBMISSION
But several further issues were addressed in the verbal submission,
Here is:Tom's verbal submission
I am appalled that Eugenics was rife at University College London in the Galton Lab, the Department of Applied Statistics, and other departments such as Psychology and Archaeology. Since Eugenics was influential at UCL long after Galton first coined the term in 1883, the failure is not only Galton's, Pearson's and Fisher's. Indeed, this should, first and foremost, be regarded as a profound institutional failure.
UCL has continued to allow conferences on eugenics and intelligence to be held on its ground from at least 2014 to 2018. UCL must truly apologise rather than give legitimacy to a 'marketplace of ideas' approach.
B. I would also like to recommend the creation of a Centre for the Intersectional Treatment of Mental Distress which while rejecting a reductionist medical model would investigate how to achieve improvements in mental distress diagnosis and treatment exploring the relational interaction between biology, personal experience, stress, trauma, and socio-political conditions.
UCL needs to ensure that none of its present and future research e.g. relating to the human genome project, stem cell research, and new productive technologies, contributes to even further Eugenics. Finally, much more of UCL''s research effort should be put into investigating novel ways of preventing climate change. This impacts disproportionately on women, people of colour and the indigenous peoples of the world.
HERE IS SOME SUBSEQUENT CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE COMMITTEE:
SCOTT FORSTER AND TOM LEONARD ATTENDED THE HEARING IN THE UCL LIBRARY ON 19TH JULY 19, Tom''s verbal submission was favourably received by the members of the Commission, with much more enthusiasm than we could have ever dreamt of. During the verbal version he referred to our WRITTEN SUBMISSION
But several further issues were addressed in the verbal submission,
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1:12 PM (7 hours ago)
|  | ||
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Dear Tom and Scott,
Thank you for taking the time to contribute to the work of the Commission of Inquiry into the history of eugenics at UCL. We are very grateful for your testimonial and the insights that you shared when you attended the meeting last Friday. The Commission particularly appreciated your open and honest answers to the questions posed.
The documents you sent (including your verbal presentation and these additional documents) have been uploaded to the Commission’s shared folder. As agreed at the meeting, we will make these public in due course.
Thanks once again for a tour de force of a presentation, which was highly informative and enjoyable.
Best wishes,
Iyiola
--
Professor Iyiola Solanke
Chair, Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL
Thank
you, Professor Solanke,
1.
When I was studying for a Masters Degree and Ph.D. in the Statistics
Department at UCL between 1970 and 1972, I was taught to revere and
respect the pioneering contributions to Statistics and Eugenics by
Karl Pearson and Sir Ronald Fisher as disciples of Sir Francis
Galton.
But
I recently became absolutely disgusted, while
working on my Scottish mental health campaign, when I discovered that
the efforts of Galton and his followers to improve the human race
were absolutely devastating to the well being and mental health of
vast swathes of the world's population.
My
colleague Scott Forster and I have now studied the deeply
racist and class conscious nature of many of Galton's, Pearson's and
Fisher's' outrageous assertions, which fuelled
patriarchal
colonialism and brutalised,
marginalized
and oppressed people throughout
the world. I
feel extremely
disturbed
by our discoveries, and utterly appalled by all the attempts
at
whitewashing,
for
example by the President of the Royal Statistical Society, and by
Professor Stephen Stigler of the University of Chicago in the June
2019 issue of Significance.
A
selection of the results of our historical investigations are
described in our written document.
I
agree with the Swedish
statistician Nathaniel Joselson in his Meditations on Inclusive
Statistics that Pearson and Fisher employed at least three
supposedly objective statistical techniques (significance tests for
differences, correlation, and discriminant analysis) in the context
of falsely objectifying their conclusions in Eugenics. I am dismayed
that in so doing, they seem to have detrimentally affected the
subject of Statistics to this very day,
I
also conclude that
Galton and Fisher were unscientific in regards to Eugenics, and
Pearson was statistically ruthless on these matters. Pearson
was unapologetically
ableist, racist, anti-Semitic and
colonialist.
Galton
wrote
an extremely anti-semitic letter to Alphone
de Candolle in
1884. This
met with Karl Pearson's approval in his 1924
biography
of Francis Galton. Furthermore,
Galton's
influence on the German eugenicist
Alfred Ploetz in 1904 preceded
the
cruel
genocide
of
the Herero and Namaqua tribes in Namibia
from
1904 to 1908
and the dreadful medical experiments on tribe members by
Dr.
Eugen
Fischer whose
hair gauge
was later discovered in the UCL Museum.
Galton,
Pearson, and Fisher were
all advocates of
white supremacy
being very
active and influential in international terms. For example,
the USA, Canada
and Germany latched very quickly onto their teachings, with
horrendous consequences. Pearson published many of his racist
findings in his two UCL
house journals
Biometrika,
between 1901 and 1936, and the Annals of
Eugenics, from 1925 onwards.
In
our section 2.1,
we describe how Galton used pseudo-science to justify his many
contributions to Eugenics. We for example report that
Galton
estimated that the African people were 'two grades' below the
Anglo-Saxons' position in the normal frequency distribution of
general mental ability, which gave claim to the scientific validation
of Africans' mental inferiority compared with Anglo-Saxons.
Galton
thereby imposed his white supremacist measures of mental ability on
Africans, and used statistical
pseudo-science
involving the conveniently
renamed normal distribution, a very
misleading theoretical construction, to
justify British Colonialism.
Galton
had an
obsession for the normal distribution and falsely believed
that many types of measurements were normally distributed.
Moreover,
the damaging misapplications of the
normal curve which Galton initiated have
continued to the current day
e.g. during investigations of feeblemindedness, in mental testing,
and in medicine. A
great many
human beings
have thereby been falsely rejected as inferior
or abnormal.
In
Part
Two of his
splendid
2002
book Mad
in America:
Bad
Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally
Ill, Robert
Whitaker
describes
how the rise of eugenics during the first half of the twentieth
century did
away in
large part
with moral treatment of the mentally ill in
the U.S., and
led to forced sterilizations and
horrendous treatments of those within
asylums.
During
the 1930s, the
highly
eminent psychiatrist Lionel Penrose developed
non-verbal
intelligence
tests while
attempting to
investigate
mental defect and
its possible genetic causes. In
1945, Penrose was
to become the third Galton Professor of Eugenics at UCL,, following
which he worked closely with the 1600 or so patients in Harperbury
Hospital in London's so called lunatic fringe while strongly
influenced by his biological model for mental deficiency.
Many
anti-psychotic drugs were introduced around the world during the
1950s, starting
with
the debilitating
and
much dreaded chlorpromazine, more
commonly known nowadays as Largactil.
By
this time Penrose was regarded as a leading expert in schizophrenia
and other defect disorders, and the new anti-psychotics were used to
treat and mistreat these disorders [ Note added later: Maybe I am
alone in asserting that, despite the ways he has been publicly
described, Penrose was a medical eugenicist, strongly influenced, and
mislead in terms of bad statistics, by Galton, Fisher, and Penrose,
whose work turned out to be highly damaging to vast swathes of our
vulnerable populations]
I
therefore find it very disconcerting that in
papers describing
the screening of psychotic behaviour by
non-verbal intelligence tests, Lionel
Penrose used a simplistic
modification
of Fisher's discriminant analysis together
with bivariate
NORMAL
assumptions
to supposedly objectify their highly
subjective
conclusions.
In
his highly influential 1949 book the Biology of Mental Defect, the
fourth edition of which was published in 1972,
Penrose followed
Galton and Pearson by
including
as mentally defective people situated
in the tail of a normal curve supposedly representing the
distribution of general
intelligence
in the population.
I
find this procedure to be both ad hoc and discriminatory e.g. towards
children with special abilities.
In
his 1975 book
Prenatal
Diagnosis and Selective Abortion, the
Fourth Galton Professor Harry Harris advocated
the
abortion
of foetuses when the
baby
is predicted,
via genetic markers, to be
mental defective,
(e.g. suffering
from
Down's syndrome). So
that sort of eugenics
was
still going on, amidst
all the gloss,
while I was at UCL.
In
their online advertising, the Galton Institute, while supposedly
disapproving of Eugenics, nevertheless continues to publicly praise
and extol Sir Francis Galton's apparent statistical achievements,
many of which are based on his harmful misuses of the normal curve.
This is completely unacceptable.
In
our section 2.2., we describe how Pearson used bad, falsely objective
Statistics to justify existing systems of oppression.
For
example, in the Annals of Eugenics (1925) Karl Pearson
and
Margaret Moul
wrote a lengthy
article
entitled The
Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, illustrated by an
Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children, which
is
full of questionable
Statistics.
The
falsely
objective concepts
of correlation and
mean squared contingency
were
used to extract a
variety of subjective
conclusions
about
the Jewish children
from a
sprawling non-randomised
data set
with
a large number of explanatory
variables relating
to anthropometric
measurements,
medical
information, sociological facts, and intelligence ratings. By
reference to even cruder statistical techniques, the
Jewish children were judged
to be 'inferior' to
'native
Gentile'
children in
about
nine
very
carefully
selected categories
relating
to health and hygiene,
(In
other words the authors seemed to pick and
choose their
variables in a manner which unfairly
discredited
the
Jewish Children.). The
authors thereby recommended
in racist terms
that the
future
immigration of Jews from
Eastern Europe should
be restricted.
I
would also like to cite as
key evidence
to this inquiry, the terribly bad Statistics on pages 314 and 315 of
the article by Pearson, Stouffer and David in the 1932 edition of
Biometrika,
which
led
the
authors to make preposterous and unfounded insinuations
in
attempting to explain
supposed differences
between
frequency distributions of cephalic indices measuring the headshapes
of Jewish boys
born in Eastern Europe, in
England, and
in the United States.
The
British Eugenics Society, the International Society for Racial
Hygiene in Berlin. and the U.S. Eugenics Records Office all
maintained good contact during this period.
It
has to be concluded that
Karl Pearson's unscientific papers in the Annals of Eugenics and
Biometrika were in
combination
highly
damaging to Jews
from
Eastern Europe.
This
is something which UCL should not be permitted to whitewash.
In
our
section
2.3, we discuss
Sir
Ronald Fisher's
remarkable leaps of logic when he
found a high correlation between inter-generational fertility rates
and a strong negative correlation between income and number of
children. Fisher
proposed giving
family allowances to those defined as “fit” which inevitably with
Fisher's
eugenic class prejudices meant the wealthier.
From 1932 to 1934, he
was Chairman of the infamous
family
planning committee of the Eugenics Society.
In
our section 3, we discuss the innumerable atrocious Crimes of
Eugenics which have been perpetrated against humanity since Galton,
Pearson, and Fisher.
I am appalled that Eugenics was rife at University College London in the Galton Lab, the Department of Applied Statistics, and other departments such as Psychology and Archaeology. Since Eugenics was influential at UCL long after Galton first coined the term in 1883, the failure is not only Galton's, Pearson's and Fisher's. Indeed, this should, first and foremost, be regarded as a profound institutional failure.
UCL has continued to allow conferences on eugenics and intelligence to be held on its ground from at least 2014 to 2018. UCL must truly apologise rather than give legitimacy to a 'marketplace of ideas' approach.
I
am deeply ashamed that the subject of Statistics in its modern form
was largely created by Galton, Pearson, and Fisher, and that my very
own Alma
mater was responsible for housing so many socially harmful academics.
Trite apologies are
not enough. Institutional
changes are called for.
2.
A. I would
very much support the creation of a Centre
for the Study of Race and Racism which
could explore eugenics links to white supremacy and colonialism. This
appears to be in its early beginnings, following
the
appointment of a Professor of Race and Racism.
B. I would also like to recommend the creation of a Centre for the Intersectional Treatment of Mental Distress which while rejecting a reductionist medical model would investigate how to achieve improvements in mental distress diagnosis and treatment exploring the relational interaction between biology, personal experience, stress, trauma, and socio-political conditions.
While
psychiatry is
still tainted by harmful, pseudo-scientific treatment programs, a
centre
of this type
would do much
to atone for the
appalling number of sterilizations, misdiagnoses,
gross
maltreatments and deaths of
people with mental health issues which have been brought about
or influenced
by Eugenics.
C.
Since
Pearson and Fisher once worked in the same Pearson building, I think
that this building should be renamed following a vote by students and
lecturers. I
personally
would
like to name
the building after Phyllis Wheatley, who was transported from Africa
to America as a slave when
still
a child, but
later visited Britain.
She
was
the first African-American female poet to be published, and her her
Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
of
1773 made her famous both in Britain and America.
Furthermore,
plaques
bearing the true reality of what Pearson
and Fisher actually did
to the world
together with
a
full apology should be maintained in perpetuity in the College
quadrangle and in the entrance-way of the Department of Statistical
Science.
D.
UCL should seek ways of paying reparations to victims of eugenics
world-wide. Which specific groups needs to be determined. Jewish
groups or descendants of the victims of the Genocide in Namibia
spring to mind initially. This must be done in a manner that is not
tokenistic.
3.
FUTURE TEACHING AND RESEARCH: As
students have asked “why is my curriculum white?” we must
thoroughly decolonise the
curriculum by having it focus much more on the thought and research
of non-white, non-European, and non-male thinkers and scientists.
With continuing
advice from
the students, the curriculum should be broadened to make it more
intersectional.
UCL needs to ensure that none of its present and future research e.g. relating to the human genome project, stem cell research, and new productive technologies, contributes to even further Eugenics. Finally, much more of UCL''s research effort should be put into investigating novel ways of preventing climate change. This impacts disproportionately on women, people of colour and the indigenous peoples of the world.
HERE IS SOME SUBSEQUENT CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE COMMITTEE:
Dear Professor Solanke and Dr. Meunier,
Many thanks for the Committee's generous reactions to our written submission.
At your request, I attach a copy of my verbal commission, together with a copy of the informal Galtnotes which I prepared for myself in advance of the meeting. These included details of how eugenics poisoned the Liberal Welfare reforms and the Welfare State, discussion of several scientists who opposed Eugenics early on, and details of how the US Eugenics Records Office influenced both America and Nazi Germany.
You gladly have my and Scott Forster's permission to put all three of these documents into the public domain.
I will later send you some further information relating to Scott's discussions with Professor Thomas subsequent to the Meetings.
Maybe I could add that Dr. Neil Turner of the University of Edinburgh Medical School has advised me that Sir Francis Galton came from a Quaker family that acquired much of its wealth from arms trading and the slave trade. Maybe that was how Sir Francis was able to finance his researches and also the founding of the Galton Institute,
With all best wishes.
Tom and Scott
INFORMAL GALTNOTES
Liberal Welfare Reforms included:-
NOTES
A: IN RESPONSE TO QUESTION ABOUT MY MEMORY OF EUGENICS (1970-72), OR
ABOUT EUGENICS RIFE AT UCL
Fourth
edition
in 1972 of the Biology of Mental Defect, has
eugenics
content
was
prepared with the help of Helen Lang Brown of the Galton Lab
and
the American Jeremy MBerg.
NOTES
B: IN RESPONSE TO QUESTION ABOUT THE WELFARE STATE
QUOTE
FROM SPECTATOR November 2009 article on how eugenics poisoned the
welfare state
William
Beveridge, argued
in 1909 that ‘those men who through
general
defects are unable to fill such a whole place in industry, are to be
recognised as “unemployable”.
They must become the acknowledged dependents of the State… but with
complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights — including not
only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood.’ And that,
except for the loss of fatherhood, has effectively been his legacy.
The Liberal Welfare Reforms of 1906-1914 were motivated by a desire after the Second Boer War to raise health to protect and maintain the British Empire because poverty was seen as impacting on the ability to defend and extend the British Empire. This politics is known as Social Imperialism.
The Liberal Welfare Reforms of 1906-1914 were motivated by a desire after the Second Boer War to raise health to protect and maintain the British Empire because poverty was seen as impacting on the ability to defend and extend the British Empire. This politics is known as Social Imperialism.
Liberal Welfare Reforms included:-
-
non compulsory Free School meals
-
Very low paid means Tested Pensions for over 70s only if had been employed most of their life.
-
Labour exchanges to help unemployed find work(mostly casual and part time).
-
National Insurance Act 1911- compulsory health insurance which took money from the poorest an didn't cover all medical expenses.
-
Medical Treatment for Children.
-
Wage boards to limit low pay.
They did reduce poverty to some extent but did not go far enough and had many qualifications.
ANOTHER
QUOTE FROM SPECTATOR ARTICLE
“In
1913, the eugenicists succeeded in getting the Mental Deficiency
Act through
parliament. As a result, somewhere
between
40,000-65,000
men and women were incarcerated without trial, having been deemed to
fall into various specious categories such as ‘feeble-minded’ or
‘morally
defective’.”
(https://www.spectator.co.uk/2009/11/how-eugenics-poisoned-the-welfare-state/ )
(https://www.spectator.co.uk/2009/11/how-eugenics-poisoned-the-welfare-state/ )
NOTE
FROM WRITTEN DOCUMENT:
This
Act,
though
containing elements of welfare state provision, also made judgements
on mental abilities as if they were fixed and biological rather than
the result of material social conditions.
NOTES
C: IN RESPONSE TO QUESTION ABOUT OPPONENTS OF EUGENICS
G5
NOTES Eugenics
was not universally popular in its heydays. Early
critics of Eugenics included Lester
Frank Ward, GK Chesterton(see
his
1917 book Eugenics
and Other Evils),
Franz Boas, Halliday Sutherland, and
Aldous Huxley.
Liberal
MP
Josiah Wedgwood would
speak
against the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. This
Act,
though
containing elements of welfare state provision, also made judgements
on mental abilities as if they were fixed and biological rather than
the result of material social conditions.
WARD
WAS
AMERICAN PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY strongly
opposed eugenics and white supremacism
BOAS
WAS GERMAN AMERICAN PROFESSOR OF ANTROPOLOGY Opposed Eugen Fischer
in Berlin, though he did contribute data to Pearson, Stouffer, and
David (1932)
HALLIDAY
SUTHERLAND Physician opposed Karl Pearson suggestion that tubercolis
victims should be sterilized because of 'heriditary nature of
disease.
Josiah
Wedgewood. Act is"It
is a spirit of the Horrible Eugenic Society which is setting out to
breed up the working class as though they were cattle.
Huxley
controversial. He supported some Eugenics policies before writing
Brave New World, which GK Chesterton regarded as anti-eugenic.
NOTES
D: IN RESPONSE TO QUESTION ABOUT HARRY LAUGHLIN
Based
on Laughlin's proposals, laws were passed in 18 US States requiring
the compulsory sterilization of the
feeble-minded, the insane, criminals, epileptics, alcoholics, blind
persons, deaf persons, deformed persons,
and indigent persons
In
1933 the Reichstag passed
the Law
for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in
1933, very
similar to Laughlin's
model Over
350,000 people were
subsequently
sterilized in
Germany.
Laughlin
received
an
honorary degree from
the University
of Heidelberg in
1936 for his contributions
to
the
science of racial
cleansing."
In 1935, a review panel concluded that the ERO's research lacked
scientific merit. By 1939, the Carnegie
Institute
withdrew funding for the ERO, and the office closed.
Paul
A. Lombardo. The
American Breed": Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer
Fund. Albany
Law Review,
Vol. 65, No. 3, P. 822.
NOTES
E: IN RESPONSE TO QUESTION ABOUT APPLICATIONS OF NORMAL DISTRIBUTION
TO FEEBLEMINDEDNESS
Rudolf
Pintner, Donald G. Paterson, Psychological Basis for the Diagnosis of
Feeble-Mindedness, 7 J. Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology 32
(1916)
(following
Charles Davenport)
Also
Cyril Burt used intelligence tests to measure feeblemindedness
immediately following Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. Also Lionel
Penrose as in verbal version
Dear Professor Solanke and Dr. Meunier,
Dear Professor Solanke and Dr. Meunier,
Subsequent to yesterday's meeting, Scott and I talked with Dr. Ash Talwar and Professor Mark Thomas in the University quadrangle,
In response to his discussion with Professor Thomas, Scott has asked me to send you the attached minor additions which describe the activities of the eugenicist Dr Caleb Saleeby(1878- 1940)
I would be grateful if you could circulate this fourth document to members of the Committee, and also put it on public record.
Many thanks,
Tom
MINOR ADDITIONS
Minor
Additions.
By Scott Forster.
Due to the sheer
spread of huge widely eugenics percolated society, I regret that we
didn't get too include Herbert Spencer the Social Darwinist who
coined the term “survival of the fittest” and is beloved by
Thatcherites and right wing libertarians today who while not a
eugenicist himself encouraged ideas which were associated with it.
In conversation with
Mark G. Thomas I mentioned Dr Caleb Saleeby(1878- 1940)an English
born physician and journalist known for his support of eugenics who
attempted to distance himself from Eugenics bad reputation. Saleeby
grew up in Edinburgh living in Stockbridge at 3 Malta Terrace
according to the Edinburgh
Post Office Directory 1895i
with
his mother Mrs Elias Saleeby
and
worked in the Royal
Infirmary
there.
In
1906 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1907 he
was one of the founding members of the Eugenics Education Society
later the Galton Institute. Saleeby
was chairman of the National Birthrate commission and
Vice-chairman
of the National Council for Public Morals.ii
In 1911 in his work Woman
and Womanhood
he argued for a Eugenic feminism(P.15).iii
What he has in mind he describes as the demand for “the best women
for our wives”. He was present at the 1912 Eugenics Conference in
Londoniv
He appears to have moved away from eugenics by around 1921.v
ii
Dan Stone, Breeding Superman,P.103.
iiiP.15,
https://archive.org/details/womanwomanhoods00sale/page/14,
accessible July 2019 .
