Eugenics Library

Wellcome Libary, Euston, houses works by leading eugenicists of the Galton Institute

Archives and manuscripts of interest to the Wellcome Trust are kept in their library in Euston, London. This information is courtesy of The Galton Institute who on their own webpage, hosted by the University College London, states openly that among their institutes' principal activities is: 'Acting as trustee for the Birth Control Trust of the Galton Institute, which makes grants to support the practical delivery of family planning facilities, especially in developing countries.' [Yep! The Galton Institute still hate black people!]

When the Wellcome Trust first set up the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre (now subsumed into Archives and Manuscripts) within the Wellcome Institute Library in 1979, it was with the aim of collecting and preserving records illuminating twentieth century developments in medicine, biomedical science and healthcare. It was clear that a good deal of important material was falling through existing systems of preservation.

Although the papers of a few organisations had already been placed in the Wellcome Institute prior to the appointment of an archivist, the first organisational archive actively acquired by the newly established CMAC was that of the Eugenics Society, early in 1980. The CMAC has already received an important collection of papers of Dr Marie Stopes which had been rejected by the (then) British Museum Reading Room (now the Department of Manuscripts, British Library), although it had accepted substantial portions of her extremely large archive of personal papers and material relating to the birth control clinics she established. These two accessions laid the foundations for one of the major strengths of our collections, birth control and reproductive health more generally. The Wellcome now holds the most important archive on the birth control movement in the UK.

The Eugenics Society archive has been one of the most popular collections in the Wellcome: files were being made available to researchers even before cataloguing had been fully completed, such was the demand...Some international scholars return year after year (and so on and so forth...).

Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine reside at 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. Why is it that a charity so renowned for medical research which is for the good of humanity house 'the most important archive on the eugenics movement in the UK?'