Sound minds and healthy bodies: Re-considering eugenics in australia, 1914-1940

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 26, Issue 103, 1994, Pages 163-181

  Garton, Stephen ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0013034530     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314619408595958     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Carol Bacchi, ‘The Nature-Nurture Debate in Australia 1900-1914’, Historical Studies, vol. 19, 1980, p. 199.
2. Ibid., p. 200.
3. There was the 1913 South Australian Mental Defectives Act but this was in effect a revised ‘Lunacy Act’ and not one directed specifically at providing a new mechanism for the detention of defectives.
4. See Moira Fitzpatrick, ‘Preventing the Unfit from Breeding: The Mental Deficiency Bill in Western Australia, 1929’, in Penelope Hetherington (ed.), Childhood and Society in Western Australia, Nedlands 1988, pp. 144–60.
5. Jill Roe, Beyond Belief: Theosophy in Australia 1879-1939, Sydney 1986; Ann Curthoys, ‘Eugenics, Feminism and Birth Control: The Case of Marion Piddington’, Hecate, vol. 15, no. 1, 1989, pp. 73–89.
6. See Judith Bessant, ‘Described, Measured and Labelled: Eugenics, Youth Policy and Moral Panic in Victoria in the 1950s’,Journal of Australian Studies, no. 31, 1991, pp. 8–28 and Vicki Stanton, “The Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales 1926-1940: A Case Study of the Interrelationship of Eugenics and Social Reform’, B.A. Hons thesis, University of Wollongong 1992.
7. Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia 1912-1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 17, no. 1, 1981, pp. 26–35.
8. Reiger, op. ciT, pp. 128–209.
9. Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism and Bourgeois Social Thought 1890-1960, Brisbane 1984, pp. 315–20.
10. Bacchi, op. cit, p. 199.
11. Bacchi here has been influenced by the work of the American historian Nicholas Pastore, The Nature-Nurture Controversy, New York 1949.
12. My arguments here are obviously influenced by the work of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.
13. See Jill Roe, Beyond Belief, and Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, and his ‘Efficiency: The Fascist Dynamic in American Progressivism’, Teaching History, vol. 8, pt. 2, 1974, pp. 38–55.
14. See Norman Dain, Clifford \V. Beers: Advocate for the Insane, Pittsburgh 1980 and G.N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society 1875-1940, New Jersey 1983, pp. 144–78.
15. ‘Foreword’, Mental Hygiene, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1917, pp. 1–2.
16. Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, pp. 280–310. Many of the following details of Miller's career have been drawn from this invaluable study.
17. See E. Morris Miller, Summarized Report of Distributions and Inter-Correlations of Binet and Performance Test Values Obtained from Children in a Mental Survey, Sydney 1928, pp. 3–10 and Miller's Notes, E. Morris Miller Papers, M9/175, pp. 85–6, University of Tasmania Archives (hereafter UTA).
18. Those he consulted included Dr Eric Sinclair, Dr A.W. Campbell, Dr A.H. Martin, Professor H.T, Lovell, Dr W. Ernest Jones, Professor RJA, Berry, Dr J.H.L. Cumpston, Dr Janet Greig and Dr J. A. Barrett.
19. Editorial, “The Public Health Association’, Medical Journal of Australia (hereafter MJA), vol. 1, June 1921, pp. 465–6.
20. His paper to the Association, pleading the importance of mental hygiene, was later published as E. Morris Miller, The Mental Hygiene Movement and Organisation in Australia, Sydney 1923.
21. See ‘Ralph Noble: Obituary’, MJA, vol. 2, July 1968, p. 41. See also University of Sydney, Senate Minutes, 6 December 1926. For details of his work in America and eventual split with Beers, see Dain, op. ciT, pp. 257–66.
22. See ‘Notes on Sensation and Perception’, M9/123, Miller Papers, UTA; E. Morris Miller, Moral Action and Natural Law in Kant, Melbourne 1911, The Basis of Freedom: A Study of Kant's Theory, Sydney 1924 and Libraries and Education, Melbourne 1912, pp. 26–44.
23. See ‘Classification of Levels of Intelligence’, M9/123, Miller Papers, UTA; Miller, Summarized Report of Distributions and Inter-Correlations of Binet and Performance Test Values Obtained from Sub-Normal Children in a Mental Survey.
24. See E. Morris Miller, ‘Mental Deficiency and Crime’, Mercury, 5 June 1923; ‘Influences of the Envi-ronment’, Examiner, 7 September 1925; ‘Child Delinquents’, Voice of Labour, 27 August 1925; ‘Mental Deficients’, News, 29 July 1924.
25. Miller, ‘Child Delinquents’.
26. Miller, ‘Mental Deficiency and Crime’.
27. E. Morris Miller,’ ‘Mental Hygiene and the Teacher’, Advocate, 5 July 1923.
28. J.W. Springthorpe Papers, MS 9898, vol. 10, 7 November 1925, State Library of Victoria (hereafter SLV).
29. W.S. Dawson to A.G. Butler, 19 September 1935, A.G. Butler Papers, AWM 41, 2/6.5, Australian War Memorial.
30. Cawte, op.rit, pp. 45–6.
31. Paul Dane, The Psychology of the Criminal’, MJA, vol. 2, December 1923, p. 643; R.S. Ellery and D.C. Lear, ‘Report on the Results of Cardiazol Convulsion Therapy’, MJA, vol. 2, December 1938, pp. 779–81.
32. Noble, ‘Detection and Prevention of Mental Deficiency’, p. 401.
33. For further discussions of this issue, see Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, pp. 1–20 and David Walker, ‘Introduction: Australian Modem: Modernism and its Enemies 1900-1940’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 32, March 1992, pp. 1–6.
34. G.E. Phillips, “The Measurement of the Intelligence of School Children’, MJA, vol. 1, June 1923, p. 620.
35. Miller, The Mental Hygiene Movement and Organization, p. 4.
36. See, for example, Noble, ‘The Detection and Prevention of Mental Deficiency’, p. 401 and Harvey Sutton, ‘Mental Hygiene’, MJA, vol. 1, April 1935, p. 422.
37. W.E. Agar, Eugenics and the Future of the Australian Population, Melbourne 1939, p. 3.
38. Springthorpe Papers, vol. 10, 7 November 1925, SLV.
39. Miller, The Mental Hygiene Movement and Organization, p. 4.
40. See report on inaugural meeting of the Victorian Council for Mental Hygiene, MJA, vol. 1, June 1930, pp. 793–6. For a broader analysis of these developments, see Reiger, op. cit, pp. 84–175.
41. Editorial, ‘Mental Hygiene in Industry’, MJA, vol. 2, December 1924, pp. 629–30.
42. E. Morris Miller to Eric Sinclair, 4 February 1922, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, Correspondence, 12/3435, State Archives of New South Wales.
43. E. Morris Miller, ‘The Psychologist in Service’, Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, vol. 4, June 1926, pp. 91–103 and Editorial, ‘Mental Hygiene’, MJA, vol. 1, April 1925, pp. 343–4.
44. Eugenics Society of Victoria, Minutes of Meeting, 12 May 1939, Box 2, Wallace Papers, UMA.
45. J.K. Adey to Victor Hugo Wallace, 9 May 1938, Box 2, Wallace Papers, UMA. These papers also contain correspondence between the Eugenics Society and the Victorian Branch of the British Medical Association, which demonstrates the concern the Association had with the policy of sterilisation.