Carmichael Stopes, Marie Charlotte (1880-1958)
Scottish geologist, paleobotanist, and social reformer
Although best known for her later work on birth control issues, Marie Stopes began her career as a geologist and pale-obotantist. Stopes advanced the classification of coal-associated macerals (microscopic organic portions of coal) through an identification system. Stopes' work on petrography (the classification of coal and other petroleum related deposits) contributed to the modern system of identification based upon color, reflecting ability, and general morphology. Stopes' was an accomplished expert on the subject of coal balls (roundish nodules composed of mineral and plant deposits).
Stopes was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to the English architect, archeologist, and geologist Henry Stopes (1852–1902) and his feminist wife, Charlotte Carmichael (1841–1929), one of the first women to attend a Scottish university. Stopes and her younger sister, Winnie, were raised in London in a curious mixture of socially progressive scientific thought and stern Scottish Protestantism. Her authoritarian mother trusted the Bible, but supported woman suffrage, clothing reform, and free thought. Stopes' father cared mainly for science. As a young girl Stopes met many of her father's friends in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, including Francis Galton (1822–1911), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), Norman McColl (1843–1904), and Charles Edward Sayle (1864–1924). Through them came Stopes' interest in Charles Darwin, evolution, and eventually, eugenics.
Stopes enrolled at University College, London, in 1900 on a science scholarship, graduating with a B.Sc. in 1902 with honors in botany and geology. She did graduate work there until 1903, then at the University of Munich, where she received her Ph.D. in paleobotany in June 1904. In October of the same year, Stopes became the first woman scientist on the faculty of the University of Manchester. In 1905, University College made her the youngest Briton of either gender to earn the D.Sc. She studied at the Imperial University of Tokyo from 1907 to 1908, then returned to Manchester in 1909. Stopes married botanist and geneticist Reginald Ruggles Gates (1882–1962) in 1911, but obtained an annulment five years later.
Inspired by meeting Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) in 1915, Marie Stopes began crusading for sexual freedom and birth control. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe (1878–1949), she opened the first birth control clinic in Great Britain, "The Mothers' Clinic" in Holloway, North London, on 17 March 1921.
Devoted to eugenics, Stopes founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress in 1921, and after 1937 was a Life Fellow of the British Eugenics Society. Stopes become controversial, in part because she advocated the involuntary sterilization of anyone she deemed unfit for parenthood, including the mentally impaired, addicts, subversives, criminals, and those of mixed racial origin. At one time, Stopes persecuted her son, Harry Stopes Roe (b. 1924), for marrying a woman with bad eyesight. While Sanger's main motivation in promoting birth control was to relieve the misery of the poor, Stopes campaigned vigorously and often flamboyantly for birth control to prevent "inferior" women from reproducing, and to allow all women to lead sexually fulfilling lives without fear of pregnancy. Stopes made enemies on all sides of the issue. Havelock Ellis Sanger (1859–1939), and other left-leaning rivals within the birth control movement accused her of anti-Semitism, political conservatism, and egomania. Stopes' strongest opposition came from the Roman Catholic Church, especially because, unlike most other early advocates of birth control, she did not oppose abortion.
By her own account Stopes had three distinct careers, a scientist until about 1914, a social reformer until the late 1930s, and a poet thereafter. Among her books are Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties (1918), Wise Parenthood: A Sequel to "Married Love": A Book for Married People (1919), Radiant Motherhood: A Book for Those who are Creating the Future (1920), Contraception (Birth Control): Its Theory, History and Practice (1923), The Human Body (1926), Sex and the Young (1926), Enduring Passion: Further New Contributions to the Solution of Sex Difficulties (1928), Mother England: A Contemporary History (1929), Roman Catholic Methods of Birth Control (1933), Birth Control To-Day (1934), Marriage in my Time (1935), Change of Life in Men and Women (1936), and Your Baby's First Year (1939). Stopes died quietly at her home near Dorking, Surrey, England.
Petroleum Detection; Petroleum, Economic Uses Of; Petroleum Extraction; Petroleum, History of Exploration
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