Aberdeen’s birth control pioneer
October 2007
Fenella Paton: a radical who empathised with the plight of working-class mothers.
by Clare Debenham
Fenella Paton has been described as a well-born radical who had all the advantages that birth, good breeding and a fine education could convey. She became involved with the birth control movement while living in London and was keen to introduce it to Scotland.
Many of the English birth control pioneers were married with families of three or four, but Fenella was an attractive young woman who had been married for only three years. Her actions were altruistic and far-sighted, and her correspondence showed her empathy with the difficulties of local working class mothers.
In the 1920s birth control was an extremely controversial subject, although it was not illegal; indeed middle class women could conveniently pay to consult their private physicians for contraceptive advice. Working class women, however, had no such facilities – they could not afford private care and the general hospitals had neither the time nor expertise to deal with them. Chronic poverty, the result of their large families, led to the unnecessary deaths of mothers and infants.
It is often assumed that birth control was exclusively a Labour Party cause, partly because of repeated resolutions at the Labour Women’s Conference in the 1920s, but in reality women activists were drawn from all political persuasions.
The Liberal Party Women’s Conference passed a resolution urging a change of policy, so that birth control advice could be given at municipal clinics. It was appropriate then that Fenella, grand-daughter of a Liberal Privy Councillor, the daughter of Liberal MP J.W. Crombie and a president of the Women’s Liberal Association of Central Aberdeenshire, should see this as a political issue.
Fenella, unlike the founders of other clinics, did not wait to form a bureaucratic committee, but took the courageous step of founding the clinic with her own money and help from her mother and half a dozen friends. In fact, she dissociated her clinic from a committee already in existence and was blacked out from the clinic’s cards.
Fenella’s clinic did not gain universal approval, as birth control was an issue which aroused strong emotions. Thus Dr James Hay of Aberdeen (The Press & Journal, 13 December 1926) denounced this initiative as an affront to Aberdeen’s civic morality.
The attack was continued by a Professor McKerron, Chair of Midwifery at the University of Aberdeen, in a well attended talk. He, too, condemned birth control as immoral and added three further arguments against it. He stated that large families were usually the healthiest and happiest, and quoted from Burns on these sentiments.
He argued that large families were frugal and able to budget sensibly. Finally Professor McKerron used eugenic arguments and said the country’s falling birth rate would threaten the survival of the race.
Fenella received correspondence from the Eugenic Society, and sent them funds in return for advice, but she never espoused eugenic views in her correspondence.
On her side were those who strongly supported the cause of birth control. Mary Henderson was one of those who disagreed with Dr Hay. As a social worker she was thankful for the light of knowledge that had filtered down from the middle classes to meet the needs of the poor. Her experience led her to believe that large families all too often produced the maimed, halt and blind.
Fenella retained her enthusiasm in the face of opposition: “I am tremendously keen on the subject,” she said in February 1930. But funding was a problem for the voluntary birth control clinics and those for miners’ wives had to close because of financial difficulties. By 1933 the clinic was taking all her spare funds, and she agonised whether to hand it over to the State. She calculated that it cost her 25 shillings to treat each patient at the clinic, a great drain on her finances.
There must have been times when she felt isolated, because by May 1934 she wrote, “I have been alone for the last six years. Time to collect a committee, as the responsibility is too great.”
Fenella was conscious of the need for sensitivity and for bridges to be built with working class mothers, doctors and councillors. She described inter-war Aberdeen as a fairly conservative place with a big Catholic population. It was important for the birth control clinic to be accessible to working class mothers, and in an area in which they felt comfortable. In Salford the local clinic was situated above a pie shop, which provided a convenient cover for patients. In Aberdeen the birth control clinic was set up in a working class area at Number 4 Gerrard Street, in an unremarkable stone terrace house. It opened two days a week for married women, who could attend without the referral of their doctors.
Lay members supporting birth control held differing views about the role of the medical profession. Marie Stopes, the birth control pioneer, employed nurses but not doctors. Doctors were available for separate consultation but not integrated into the life of Stopes’ clinics. On the other hand members of the Society for the Promotion of Birth Control Clinics, of which Fenella was a member, valued the contribution of doctors.
The difficulty was in locating female doctors trained to fit diaphragms who were willing to work in an unpopular specialism for a low salary. Fenella was fortunate in attracting a sympathetic nurse, Mrs Rae, and a most conscientious doctor, Dr Flossie Malcolm, a general practitioner from Kintore.
Marie Stopes, never one to miss an opportunity, suggested in June 1934 that Fenella leave the umbrella organisation, the Society for the Promotion of Birth Control Clinics, and join her organisation with its different contraceptive methods.
Fenella replied that she valued the professional expertise of the SPBCC, her doctor was trained by them and they had given her a grant to help her set up the clinic. “We have been working this way for eight years and I have no wish to change,” she added.
Links had been created with the other Scottish clinics, which used the same methods. Fenella felt that co-operation was most useful, and envisaged a Scottish branch being formed eventually. She told Marie that she didn’t want to be a wet blanket, but she certainly did not feel it would be helpful for an expert from Marie’s organisation in England to visit Aberdeen.
As arranged, Marie Stopes came to speak at Aberdeen in September 1934, when it was announced that the clinic would open every day. It continued on a voluntary basis until 5 July 1948, the first day of the National Health Service, when it was taken over by the State, fulfilling Fenella’s vision of free contraceptive advice for all.
Just one year later, this admirable young woman, mother of six children, died of cancer, having achieved so much in her short life.
[This account is constructed from contemporary articles in the local newspaper and from Fenella’s extensive correspondence dating from 1930 with Marie Stopes, which is in the British Library in London. The author wishes to acknowledge the help of Fiona Watson, Archivist of Northern Health Centre, and the Archivists at the British Library.]
CLARE DEBEHNAM, a mother and grandmother, is a doctoral student at the University of Manchester. For the past 30 years she has been interested in the politics of reproduction and is currently researching ‘grass roots’ feminism in inter-war Britain.
This is an article from the October 2007 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.