The Church Congress: Social Responsibility: Care of the Feeble-Minded: Mrs. Pinsent (Birmingham) a member of the Royal Commission on the Care of the Feeble-Minded, uttered a warning voice. Our altruistic feelings and efforts by improving the environment of the poorer classes were perpetuating the unfit, while at the same time the reproduction of the higher types was neglected, and the average standard of humanity lowered. We ought, she argued, to put the mentally defective under continuous control. There should be the recreation of the old ideal of a living faith in the paramount duty of fatherhood and motherhood. The Bishop of Ripon declared that our birth rate was declining so rapidly that there would by next year be a shortage of a million and a half in ten years. If this shortage were amongst the unfit, few would view it with apprehension, but, unfortunately, it was in the more vigorous, bodily, and mentally of the population. If this decline continues a day must come when the population would be stationary. Nations were not exempt from Nature’s Law of the survival of the fittest. He pointed to the reawakening of Asiatic nations and expressed a fear lest we, by race suicide, should be surrendering the sceptre to the East. He called to the manhood of England to face its duties of fatherhood and upon the womanhood to free itself from political aspirations (laughter and cheers) and do its duty at the domestic fireside and in the nursery. We ought to encourage an Imperial idea of national life. There was ample room and employment in our overseas dominions for all out children. …
Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.
Referenced
GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949