| Date Note | 1935 from the date of the published article referred to below |
| Description | Incomplete manuscript draft of a paper on the petrology of coal by Marie Stopes, [?1935], written on the reverse of three AGM notices for The Society and Clinic for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, 1931. Also copy of booklet Hickling, George, "The Microscopic Constitution of Coal", reprinted from the Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, January 1916 which belonged to Stopes and includes some annotations within.
Also, two menus from the Holborn Restaurant, one of which is for a Dinner given by the President of the British Homeopathic Society, October 1911. Marie Stopes was a member of the organisation, but there is no indication that these belonged to her. One menu is annotated but not by Stopes.
File includes: copy of article by Eric Robinson "Marie Stopes and Coal Balls", 'The Bulletin', UCL, vol 6(1), December 1983; typescript letter from Dr Y Heslop-Harrison to Eric Robinson, 23 Jan 2006, recalling her and her husband's [Jack Heslop-Harrison] university and academic careers, and notably including an account of Stopes' and her mother's meeting at Bushey Lodge when each were about to give birth [CLOSED]; Letter from Eric Robinson to Nina Morgan, 6 October 2019, relating a long history of Marie Stopes' adventures at UCL and Imperial College [CLOSED]. |
| Administrative History | Although now known as an advocate of birth control and sex education, Marie Stopes was a respected palaeobotanist specialising particularly in the fauna of coal measures. Her nomenclature for the four constituents of coal (vitrain, clarain, durain, and fusain) became standard terms.
A longtime advocate of eugenics, Stopes set up the Society and Clinic for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress in 1921 as part of her aims to 'improve the human race' by removing its supposed degenerative elements - in this case the poorer classes. |