1 Lewis, Jane, ‘The English movement for family allowances, 1917–1945’, Histoire sociale/Social History (1978) 11(22), pp. 441–59Google Scholar; Macnicol, John, The Movement for Family Allowances 1918–1945: A Study in Social Policy Development, London: Heinemann, 1980Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France 1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993Google Scholar. See also Soloway, R.A., Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 292–301Google Scholar.

2 Freeden, Michael, ‘Eugenics and progressive thought: a study in ideological affinity’, Historical Journal (1979) 22(3), pp. 645–67CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Paul, Diane B., ‘Eugenics and the left’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1984) 45(4), pp. 567–90Google ScholarPubMed; Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, New York: Knopf, 1985, Chapter 11Google Scholar.

3 On ‘reform’ eugenics see Kevles, op. cit. (2).

4 For characterizations of Fisher as a ‘reform’ eugenist see Kevles, op. cit. (2); Soloway, op. cit. (1). For criticism see Elazar Barkan's review of the latter book in Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1991) 21(4), pp. 672–5. For Fisher as staunch critic of the ‘pedigree’ method, a favoured approach among early eugenists, see Mazumdar, Pauline M.H., Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain, London: Routledge, 1992, Chapter 3Google Scholar.

5 Rathbone, E.F., The Disinherited Family: A Plea for the Endowment of the Family, London: Edward Arnold, 1924Google Scholar. On the writing and reception of The Disinherited Family see Pedersen, Susan, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 202–10Google Scholar.

6 Rathbone, op. cit. (5), pp. 232–48. On relations between the eugenics and feminist movements in the period see Lesley Hall, ‘Women, feminism and eugenics’, in R.A. Peel (ed.), Essays in the History of Eugenics: Proceedings of a Conference by the Galton Institute, London: The Galton Institute, 1998, pp. 36–51; Makepeace, Clare, ‘To what extent was the relationship between feminists and the eugenics movement a “marriage of convenience” in the interwar years?’, Journal of International Women's Studies (2009) 11(3), pp. 66–80Google Scholar.

7 R.A. Fisher, ‘The Disinherited Family, by E. F. Rathbone’, Eugenics Review (1924) 16(2), pp. 150–3.

8 Fisher, op. cit. (7), p. 150.

9 Soloway, op. cit. (1).

10 Fisher, , ‘Some hopes of a eugenist’, Eugenics Review (1914) 5(4), pp. 309–15, 311Google ScholarPubMed.

11 In so doing, Fisher drew inspiration from a brief article by a certain J.A. Cobb published in 1913 in the Eugenics Review – see Cobb, J.A., ‘Human fertility’, Eugenics Review (1913) 4(4), pp. 379–82Google ScholarPubMed. An attempt, in just over three pages, to extend Galton's heiress theory beyond the confines of hereditary peerages, Fisher said of Cobb's contribution that it was ‘the greatest addition to our eugenic knowledge since the work of Galton’. Fisher, op. cit. (10), p. 312.

12 Fisher, op. cit. (10); ‘Positive eugenics’, Eugenics Review (1917) 9(3), pp. 206–12; ‘The evolution of the conscience in civilised communities: in special relation to sexual vices’, Eugenics Review (1922) 14(3), pp. 190–3.

13 Jones, Greta, ‘Eugenics and social policy between the wars’, Historical Journal (1982) 25(3), pp. 717–28, 718CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, R.A., ‘Income-tax rebates: the birth-rate and our future policy’, Eugenics Review (1928) 20(2), pp. 79–81Google ScholarPubMed.

14 Fisher, op. cit. (7), pp. 151–2.

15 Rathbone, E.F., ‘Family endowment in its bearing on the question of population’, Eugenics Review (1925) 16(4), pp. 270–5, 274Google ScholarPubMed. ‘Lest this argument appear undemocratic,’ she added in a note to the published paper (p. 275), ‘I may point out that an exactly analogous argument is used in the Report issued on behalf of the Trades Union Congress on Unemployment insurance by industry, to justify graded rates of unemployment insurance’.

16 ‘Family endowment: discussion’, Eugenics Review (1925) 16(4), pp. 279–84, 283, 280. Notwithstanding the noted support for eugenics on the left, ‘socialism’ was still a distinctly dirty word for many of those in and around the Eugenics Society throughout the 1920s.

17 Bashford, Alison, Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014Google Scholar.

18 Soloway, R.A., Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877–1930, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 ‘Family endowment’, op. cit. (16), pp. 280, 281–3. Fisher knew full well that his family allowances scheme would stir fears of overpopulation, and he often challenged Malthusian thinking in print. See e.g. Fisher, R.A., ‘The over-production of food’, The Realist (1929) 1(4), pp. 45–60Google Scholar; Fisher, ‘Population and depopulation’, Nature (1929) 123(3097), pp. 357–8.

20 Minutes of Eugenics Society council meeting, 10 December 1924, Eugenics Society Papers, Wellcome Library, London (subsequently ESP), SA/EUG/L.6, Box 81.

21 On the Eugenics Society's campaign for legalizing voluntary eugenic sterilization see Barker, David, ‘The biology of stupidity: genetics, eugenics and mental deficiency in the inter-war years’, BJHS (1989) 22(3), pp. 347–75CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Macnicol, John, ‘Eugenics and the campaign for voluntary sterilization in Britain between the wars’, Social History of Medicine (1989) 2(2), pp. 147–69CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

22 ‘An outline of a practical eugenic policy’, Eugenics Review (1926) 18(2), pp. 95–9, 98.

23 In an earlier draft of the policy outline, the family allowances clause went further, suggesting that the society would actively campaign for graded schemes. This was amended as it passed through council. Minutes of Eugenics Society council meeting, 14 April 1926, ESP, SA/EUG/L.7, Box 82. Three years later, Fisher managed to push a much lengthier and more detailed statement through the council. A new version of the outline of policy including this addition was printed for internal circulation, but never published in Eugenics Review. Minutes of Eugenics Society council meeting, 9 October 1929, ESP, SA/EUG/L.8, Box 83.

24 On the FES see Macnicol, op. cit. (1), Chapter 2; Pedersen, op. cit. (1), pp. 183–5.

25 Fisher to Leonard Darwin, 30 October 1930, in J.H. Bennett (ed.), Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics: Including Selected Correspondence of R.A. Fisher with Leonard Darwin and Others, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 133.

26 The FES held a conference at the London School of Economics in October 1927, at which Fisher read a paper on ‘The effect of family allowances on population: some French data on the influence of family allowances on fertility’. The society published the proceedings, including Fisher's paper, as a pamphlet: Six Aspects of Family Allowances: The Report of the Family Allowances Conference, 1927, London: Family Endowment Society, 1927. He also contributed a paper to the first issue of the FES's short-lived journal. Fisher, R.A., ‘The biological effects of family allowances’, Family Endowment Chronicle (1931) 1, pp. 21–5Google Scholar.

27 For instance, the FES quoted Fisher's expert testimony when giving evidence in 1930 to the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. Macnicol, op. cit. (1), p. 35.

28 See e.g. Provine, W.B., The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971Google Scholar.

29 See e.g. Crow, James F., ‘Second only to Darwin’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2000) 15(5), pp. 213–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brian Charlesworth, ‘The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection: A Complete Variorum Edition by R.A. Fisher (ed. with foreword and notes by J.H. Bennett)’, Genetics Research (2000) 75(3), pp. 369–70.

30 Crow, op. cit. (29), p. 213.

31 Bernard J. Norton, ‘Fisher and the neo-Darwinian synthesis’, in E.G. Forbes (ed.), Human Implications of Scientific Advance, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978, pp. 481–94; Norton, ‘Fisher's entrance into evolutionary science: the role of eugenics’, in Marjorie Grene (ed.), Dimensions of Darwinism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 19–29; MacKenzie, Donald, Statistics in Britain, 1865–1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981, Chapter 8Google Scholar.

32 A.W.F. Edwards, ‘Hereditary genius’, London Review of Books, 6 August 1981, pp. 12–13; Bennett, op. cit. (25), p. 17. See also James Moore, ‘R.A. Fisher: a faith fit for eugenics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2007) 38(1), pp. 110–35, 113–14.

33 Crow, op. cit. (29), p. 213. See also Charlesworth, op. cit. (29), p. 373.

34 In a 1991 essay critiquing both Fisher's eugenics and his interventions in discussions around smoking and lung cancer, Stephen Jay Gould wrote that ‘most of my colleagues … pay little or no attention to the eugenic chapters of our profession's bible’; Gould, ‘The smoking gun of eugenics’, Natural History (1991) 100(12), pp. 8–17, 14.

35 R.A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930, p. x. At the outset of the sequence of human chapters (p. 174), Fisher noted the tendency of ‘modern writers on genetics’ to ‘sum up the human problem in a cursory, and even superficial, chapter at the end of an elaborate, and often admirable exposition of modern inheritance discoveries’. Running to ninety-six pages, Fisher's treatment was neither cursory nor superficial, even if his assumptions were prejudiced and his conclusions contentious.

36 Frank Balfour-Browne, ‘The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R. A. Fisher’, Discovery: A Monthly Popular Journal of Knowledge (1930) 11(127), p. 246; anon. [Peter Chalmers Mitchell], ‘Biological theory’, Times Literary Supplement, 29 August 1930, p. 677; Hill, A.B., ‘The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R. A. Fisher’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (1931) 94(1), pp. 98–100, 99Google Scholar.

37 The Eugenics Society's copy is held at the Wellcome Library, London. The SSE copy is now part of the collection of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library.

38 Fisher to Haldane, 17 December 1930, 6 February 1931, in Bennett, op. cit. (25), p. 213. Even when reviewers did afford the human chapters sufficient space, the results were often disappointing. For instance, in an otherwise pleasing review the physicist Charles Galton Darwin had thoroughly ‘missed the coherence of the different chapters’, and in doing so grossly misrepresented the specifics of Fisher's eugenical views. Fisher to Leonard Darwin, 5 July 1930, Ida Darwin Papers, Cambridge University Library (subsequently IDP), Add 9368.1, Folder 16851; Darwin, C.G., ‘The genetical theory of natural selection’, Eugenics Review (1930) 22(2), pp. 127–30Google Scholar.

39 Werskey, Gary, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s, London: Free Association, 1988, pp. 52–60Google Scholar.

40 Fisher, op. cit. (35), p. 265.

41 Haldane to Fisher, 29 April 1930, in Bennett, op. cit. (25), p. 209; Haldane, J.B.S., ‘Mathematical Darwinism: a discussion of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection’, Eugenics Review (1931) 23(2), pp. 115–17, 116Google ScholarPubMed.

42 Naomi Mitchison, ‘What dare I hope?’, Time and Tide, 16 January 1932; cutting held in the Ronald Aylmer Fisher Papers, University of Adelaide Special Collections (subsequently FP), Series 24, ‘Cuttings book re [early] career. 1930–[38]’.

43 Fisher to Darwin, 16 March 1931, in Bennett, op. cit. (25), pp. 137–8, Fisher's emphasis.

44 Fisher to Eldon Moore, 1 May 1931, FP, Series 1, Box (Mi–Nair).

45 On critiques of eugenics by the scientific left see Mazumdar, op. cit. (4), Chapter 4.

46 Huxley to Fisher, 4 May 1930, in Bennett, op. cit. (25), pp. 221–2; Huxley to Blacker, 23 December 1930, ESP, SA/EUG/C.185, Box AMS/MF/111.

47 Julian Huxley, ‘The vital importance of eugenics’, Harper's Magazine, 1 August 1931, pp. 324–31, 326–9. On Huxley's eugenics see Weindling, Paul, ‘Julian Huxley and the continuity of eugenics in twentieth-century Britain’, Journal of Modern European History (2012) 10(4), pp. 480–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Huxley, op. cit. (47), p. 329.

49 Fisher to Leonard Darwin, 8 September 1931, IDP, Add 9368.1, Folder 16862. Fisher's fears had been aroused when, at a Eugenics Society event in February 1931, Huxley had suggested ‘tentatively, as an inference from my book’, that ‘to work against individualism was eugenic’. See letters between Fisher and Leonard Darwin, 11, 16 March 1931, in Bennett, op. cit. (25), pp. 137–8. On Huxley's political distance from the ‘red’ scientists see Werskey, op. cit. (39), pp. 43–4.

50 Julian Huxley, What Dare I Think? The Challenge of Modern Science to Human Action & Belief, London: Chatto and Windus, 1931. On sales see Peter Bowler, Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 226.

51 Aldous Huxley, ‘Foreheads villainous low’, Week-End Review, 20 September 1930; Huxley, ‘Are we growing stupider?’, New York American, 19 March 1932. Cuttings of both articles held in FP, Series 24.

52 R.W. Chapman (the Clarendon Press) to Fisher, 24 September 1931, FP, Series 1, Box (Ch–Cu). The book had shifted more than a third of its initial print run of 1,500 copies; a level of interest not anticipated by publisher or author. Thomson, J.A., ‘Darwinism vindicated statistically’, Health and Empire: Journal of the British Social Hygiene Council (1931) 6(2), pp. 153–6, 156Google Scholar. The review appeared in June whilst Fisher was touring North America, and Leonard Darwin saved a copy for his return. Upon eventually reading it, Fisher remarked, ‘How does he manage to say such nice things. I can't think what I can say to express my appreciation’. Fisher to Darwin, 15 September 1931, FP, Series 1, Box (Darwin–Das).

53 On the opportunity which the 1931 election presented to the Eugenics Society, and the reasons for its failure to capitalize on this opening, see Hart, Bradley W. and Carr, Richard, ‘Sterilization and the British Conservative Party: rethinking the failure of the Eugenics Society's political strategy in the nineteen-thirties’, Historical Research (2015) 88(242), pp. 716–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Letters between Gunston and Fisher, 16, 18 November 1931, FP, Series 1, Box (Gaddum–Gurgel).

55 Minutes of Eugenics Society council meeting, 1 June 1932, ESP, SA/EUG/L.9, Box 84.

56 Soloway, op. cit. (1), pp. 299–300. See minutes of the Family Allowances Sub-committee, ESP, SA/EUG/L.42, Box 96; SA/EUG/C.185, Box AMS/MF/111.

57 Minutes of Eugenics Society council meeting, 3 July 1932, ESP, SA/EUG/L.9, Box 84; Alexander M. Carr-Saunders, ‘Note on the attitude to family allowances of the Eugenics Society’, unpublished memorandum dated 4 July 1934, ESP, SA/EUG/D.65, Box 36.

58 Minutes of Positive Eugenics committee meeting, 1 October 1934, ESP, SA/EUG/L.45, Box 97. This work formed the basis of Glass's books. Glass, David, The Struggle for Population, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936Google Scholar; Glass, Population Policies and Movements in Europe, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.

59 Fisher, ‘Eugenics, academic and practical’, Eugenics Review (1935) 27(2), pp. 95–100, 99, original italics.

60 R.A. Soloway, ‘From mainline to reform eugenics: Leonard Darwin and C.P. Blacker’, in Peel, op. cit. (6), pp. 52–80, 55.

61 Chris Renwick, ‘Eugenics, population research, and social mobility studies in early and mid-twentieth-century Britain’, Historical Journal (2016) 59(3), pp. 845–67, 851.

62 Huxley, Julian, ‘Eugenics and society’, Eugenics Review (1936) 28(1), pp. 11–31Google ScholarPubMed. In May 1934 Blacker sent Hogben the Eugenics Society's latest ‘Outline of Policy’. In an accompanying note he wrote, ‘I think that you will find in it less to criticise than in our previous Outline of Policy. You will see that reference has been made to the eugenic or dysgenic tendencies of different types of social structure. This opens the door to a discussion on Eugenics and Communism, Socialism and Capitalism’. Blacker to Hogben, 25 May 1934, ESP, SA/EUG/C.163, Box AMS/MF/110.

63 Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 235–48.

64 Tabery, James, ‘R.A. Fisher, Lancelot Hogben, and the origin(s) of genotype–environment interaction’, Journal of the History of Biology (2008) 41(4), pp. 717–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Huxley, op. cit. (62), p. 27.

66 Though he did not officially resign his position on the council until 1941, by this point he had ‘for some years taken no part in the work of the Eugenics Society’. Fisher to Mrs Collier (secretary of the Eugenics Society), 30 June 1941, ESP, SA/EUG/C.108, Box AMS/MF/110.

67 ‘Big families hereditary’, Daily Mail, 13 June 1935, p. 4; ‘Pay mothers for A1 babies’, Daily Sketch, 27 May 1938, p. 17; ‘Citizens of the future. Burden of a falling birth-rate. The case for family allowances’, The Times, 10 April 1939, p. 11.

68 On the ‘depopulation panic’ see Soloway, op. cit. (1), Chapters 10, 11.

69 Letters between Fisher and the Clarendon Press, 15, 18 November 1938, Oxford University Press Archive, L.B.6398. Fisher included with his letter two cuttings from The Times newspaper for 15 November, each addressing the issue of family allowances. Clearly, Eleanor Rathbone sensed a similar brightening in the prospects of family allowances at this time; in August 1938 she asked her publishers to re-publicize The Disinherited Family. Pedersen, op. cit. (5), p. 361.

70 Kenneth Sisam (the Clarendon Press) to Fisher, 21 November 1938, FP, Series 1, Box (Ch–Cu).

71 Letters between Fisher and the Clarendon Press, 26, 27, 28 July 1939, FP, Series 1, Box (Ch–Cu).

72 Renwick, Chris, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State, London: Allen Lane, 2017Google Scholar.

73 Beveridge, William, ‘Eugenic aspects of children's allowances’, Eugenics Review (1943) 34(4), pp. 117–23Google ScholarPubMed.

74 Beveridge to Fisher, 17 February 1943, British Library of Political and Economic Science, William Beveridge Papers (subsequently WBP), 9A, 78, Folder 1. Along with the letter, Beveridge sent ‘two articles written as for the Observer’ (to which he was a regular contributor), wherein he attempted to set out the essential steps of Fisher's argument, and which Fisher thought were ‘altogether excellent’; Fisher to Beveridge, 19 February 1943, WBP, 9A, 78, Folder 1. The articles never appeared in The Observer, though Beveridge did include them in a book of his essays published later that year. See William Beveridge, ‘Children's allowances and the race’, in Beveridge, The Pillars of Security: And Other War-Time Essays and Addresses, London: Allen & Unwin, 1943, pp. 151–61.

75 Beveridge, op. cit. (73), pp. 121, 123; ‘The Galton Lecture’, Eugenics Review (1943) 34(4), pp. 124–8, 125.

76 On the implementation of the Beveridge report see Harris, José, William Beveridge: A Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, Chapter 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the passage of the 1945 Family Allowances Act see Richard Chapman, ‘The development of policy on family allowances and national insurance in the United Kingdom, 1942–1946’, PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, 1991.

77 Beveridge had, however, already thought through the possible objections. A graded scheme was not ‘undemocratic’, as might easily be thought. Indeed, the notion of ‘equality of opportunity’ was at its very heart, in the sense of giving a fair start to those within each social grade who would ordinarily be disadvantaged by coming from large families. Beveridge, op. cit. (73), p. 123.

78 Harris, op. cit. (76), p. 332.

79 Fisher, R.A., ‘The birthrate and family allowances’, Agenda: A Quarterly Journal of Reconstruction (1943) 2(2), pp. 124–33Google Scholar.

80 Letters between Fisher and C.S. Stock, 8, 11 November 1951, FP, Series 1, Box (Soal–Taylor).

81 See e.g. Berent, Jerzy, ‘Fertility and social mobility’, Population Studies (1952) 5(3), pp. 244–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, Wolf, ‘Fertility and social mobility among teachers’, Population Studies (1958) 11(3), pp. 251–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hope, Keith, ‘Social mobility and fertility’, American Sociological Review (1971) 36(6), pp. 1019–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. According to the introductory historical chapter of one 1980s textbook of social-mobility studies, Fisher's ‘thesis of the social promotion of the relatively infertile neither gained acceptance nor won empirical confirmation’. Kasarda, John D., Billy, John O.G. and West, Kirsten, Status Enhancement and Fertility: Reproductive Responses to Social Mobility and Educational Opportunity, London: Academic Press, 1986, p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.