BOOK REVIEW: Mark Jackson.THE BORDERLAND OF IMBECILITY: MEDICINE, SOCIETY AND THE FABRICATION OF THE FEEBLE MIND IN LATE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN ENGLAND. pp. x + 273. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Abstract

In Edwardian England eugenics was very topical. Guests at polite London dinner parties discussed the threat of the "unfit" and the virtues of the "lethal chamber." In Whitehall, Home Secretaries pondered the merits of sterilisation of "mental defectives" and by 1908 the massive Royal Commission into the Feeble-Minded, designed to answer questions about the nature of defectiveness and how to deal with this "threat," was under way. Given the volume of debate, and the important social policies that resulted from these deliberations, the relative lack of attention to the history of eugenics in Britain is surprising. There is a rich corpus of good articles, theses and chapters, and pioneering work by historians such as G. R. Searle, but in comparison to North America, where the historiography on eugenics is extensive, the volume of British work looks remarkably thin. Perhaps this state of affairs reflects the difference between a culture where sterilisation laws were enacted, and one where the campaign for sterilisation largely failed. Nevertheless why Britain preferred segregation to sterilisation is an important question, one that stands to tell us much about the nature of British culture and politics.