Family Planning Pioneers - Birmingham Made a Difference
ROLE OF BIRMINGHAM WOMEN IN THE FAMILY PLANNING MOVEMENT
2005 is the 75th Anniversary of the Family Planning Association that, by making contraception available, made such a difference to so many women’s lives. The Birmingham family planning movement covered this period from 1926 to 1991 and pioneered The Pill, Free Family Planning, Psycho Sexual Clinics and the Domiciliary Service, to name but a few of its achievements. The making of the Birmingham Family Planning Association, was in great part due to the commitment and determination of some redoubtable Birmingham women
Mrs Audrey Court, now 91 years of age, was one of the principal players in the development of the family planning movement in Birmingham.
77 ago years a Committee was formed to set up the Birmingham Women’s Welfare Centre offering family planning advice. The moving spirits included Edward Mason a local industrialist and his wife, whose father had been a Lord Mayor of Birmingham; Mrs Geo Cadbury; Sir John Sumner of Typhoo Tea who provided the funds to open the first clinic premises in 1927 in Castle Street; Miss Hilda Shufflebotham later to become Dame Hilda Lloyd, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Professor Humphreys later the Vice Chancellor of Birmingham University. Dr Clara Macirone was appointed the first family planning doctor at the Centre, soon to be joined by Dr Dorothy Sandilands who qualified in Birmingham 1922.
The doctors had to be both mentally and physically brave as eggs and tomatoes and even bricks and stones were thrown at them! Mrs Ethel Emanuel, the wife of Dr J G Emanuel Consultant to the Queen’s Hospital, became the Chairman in 1932 until her death in 1951.
In the 1940’s, the wives of three members of staff in the Faculty of Commerce, became active in the work of the Centre. They were Mrs Lella Florence, the wife of Philip Sargant Florence, Professor of Commerce; Mrs Audrey Court, wife of W.H.B. Court, Professor of Economic History and Mrs Mavis Walker, the wife of Gilbert Walker the Professor of Economics. Lella Florence was Chairman of the Birmingham FPA from 1951 to 1961. Through her husband she Birmingham University in a follow up study of patients registered at the Birmingham FPA in 1948, and in 1951 a joint Faculty of Commerce and FPA Committee was set up to plot and conduct the survey, Professor Charles Madge was Chairman and Mrs Barbara Lewis (later Dame Barbara Shenfield) Lecturer in Social Study was involved with the planning. Professor Walker’s research assistant, Cynthia Walton, undertook the pilot survey.
Under the Chairmanship of Lella Florence the Birmingham FPA became one of the most innovative and forward-looking clinics in the country. From her surveys she realised that what was needed was a really easy method of birth control. It was due to her American connections that Dr Geoffrey Pincus was invited to address a large-meeting at the Birmingham Medical Institute in 1960, which precipitated the first oral
Contraceptive clinical trials in Britain run by Dr Glenys Bond at an FPA Centre in Birmingham. Captain Bird of Bird’s Custard gave a large donation to set up a trust for Pill Trials and Research.
A special Medical Advisory Committee was set up to supervise the research, chaired by Miss Margaret Shotton, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. Other members included Dr Peter Eckstein later a Professor in the Department of Anatomy; Mr Wilfrid Mills, a consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist; Dr John Waterhouse, medical statistician at Birmingham Medical School, Dr Dorothy Sandilands and Mrs Audrey Court. This and subsequent trials in other parts of the country enabled women throughout the country to have a simple method of birth control now taken for granted by later generations of women.
In 1961, Mrs Audrey Court became FPA Chairman, and it was due to her foresight and energy that the great expansion of the FPA took place with sub-clinics throughout the city and the setting up of a number of special services. Dr Elinor Corfan started a special clinic for Psycho-Sexual difficulties; the Domiciliary Service, run by Dr Helen Humphreys and Nurse Eileen Rutledge, offered advice and help to women in their own homes; and a social worker, Mrs Gill Stein, was appointed to make the service known to the helping services and to undertake case work. Later the FPA pioneered the intrauterine device with one of the first trials; and was the first Branch to offer cervical smears to patients, well before the smear became available as a national screening service.
Birmingham was the first big city in the country to provide a free family planning service to residents, very much due to Councillor John Charlton who was then Chairman of Birmingham Health Committee.
When the FPA clinics went into the NHS in 1976, Midlands Region FPA carried on the pioneering spirit. Ethnic workers were employed on Birmingham Inner Cities Projects, some of whom such as Daisy Lisk Carew, Venda Daly and Harbans Matheru now work in the social and health field. In 1978 a Menopause clinic was started and training courses were run for Doctors in ‘Management of the Menopause’; and a large Workplace Project was set up in the Midlands, which involved various firms such as Cadbury’s, Rank Hovis McDougall and Coventry and Birmingham City Councils to take family planning information to occupational health staff for the benefit of their clients.
In 1991 the Midlands Region was closed by the FPA along with other English FPA Regions due to financial problems. But the work of the Birmingham women pioneers lives on.
‘Birmingham Made a Difference’.138pp. Now £2.50 POST FREE from BARN BOOKS LTD t: 0121 705 7178 SEND ME A COPY PLEASE
posted by Cynthia Walton @ 1:21 AM
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