Comments on: Eugenics and “mental defectives” in New Zealand ca. 1925 http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/08/14/eugenics-and-%e2%80%9cmental-defectives%e2%80%9d-in-new-zealand-ca-1925/ Professings from the lectern of this psychology teacher cum graduate student... Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:24:24 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: Hilary Stace http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/08/14/eugenics-and-%e2%80%9cmental-defectives%e2%80%9d-in-new-zealand-ca-1925/comment-page-1/#comment-143 Hilary Stace Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:27:10 +0000 http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/08/14/eugenics-and-%e2%80%9cmental-defectives%e2%80%9d-in-new-zealand-ca-1925/#comment-143 Great that people are continually digging up NZ's dark history of eugenics - which has never really gone away if you read commentators like Michael Laws. There have been several academic studies over the years. A scary aspect was its popularity with some liberals - some gave submissions to the 1925 enquiry. I wrote about NZ's historical fascination with eugenics about10 years or so ago in an essay called Gene Dreaming which is on the Professional Historians' Assn of NZ/Aoteora website www.phanza.org.nz Hilary Stace Great that people are continually digging up NZ’s dark history of eugenics – which has never really gone away if you read commentators like Michael Laws. There have been several academic studies over the years. A scary aspect was its popularity with some liberals – some gave submissions to the 1925 enquiry. I wrote about NZ’s historical fascination with eugenics about10 years or so ago in an essay called Gene Dreaming which is on the Professional Historians’ Assn of NZ/Aoteora website http://www.phanza.org.nz

Hilary Stace

]]> By: Jonathan Ah Kit http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/08/14/eugenics-and-%e2%80%9cmental-defectives%e2%80%9d-in-new-zealand-ca-1925/comment-page-1/#comment-142 Jonathan Ah Kit Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:48:30 +0000 http://danaleighton.edublogs.org/2006/08/14/eugenics-and-%e2%80%9cmental-defectives%e2%80%9d-in-new-zealand-ca-1925/#comment-142 Egads. I'm glad someone else picked up on this. I'm the one who scanned it and oversaw the proofreading (I didn't OCR nor help format it) for Project Gutenberg. What's most interesting on the authors is note the presence of Truby King on the committee. What makes it interesting is not only was he the person the Crown got to run Seacliff asylum in Dunedin (home at one stage to the writer Janet Frame), he also helped found the Royal NZ Plunket Society, aka the post-natal care charity. Read between the lines to guess why he set it up! Needless to say the modern organisation (www.plunket.org.nz) does do good works, but the original reason they were set up gets scary... I've written a lot over at my own diary, most recently at http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/diaries/tph/archives/000484.html if you're keen to look at other similar stuff. For example, the 1954 Mazengarb Report also from NZ still blames girls for sexual immorality! Shameful. Then it gets worse by suggesting that contraceptives shouldn't be legally available to minors, which we all found out later (especially in the 1980s, but that's another story) on was a bit of a disaster. The 1955 followup to that wasn't much better either -- http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/section27/ has all the crazed books. Peace, J. Egads. I’m glad someone else picked up on this. I’m the one who scanned it and oversaw the proofreading (I didn’t OCR nor help format it) for Project Gutenberg.

What’s most interesting on the authors is note the presence of Truby King on the committee. What makes it interesting is not only was he the person the Crown got to run Seacliff asylum in Dunedin (home at one stage to the writer Janet Frame), he also helped found the Royal NZ Plunket Society, aka the post-natal care charity. Read between the lines to guess why he set it up! Needless to say the modern organisation (www.plunket.org.nz) does do good works, but the original reason they were set up gets scary…

I’ve written a lot over at my own diary, most recently at http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/diaries/tph/archives/000484.html if you’re keen to look at other similar stuff. For example, the 1954 Mazengarb Report also from NZ still blames girls for sexual immorality! Shameful. Then it gets worse by suggesting that contraceptives shouldn’t be legally available to minors, which we all found out later (especially in the 1980s, but that’s another story) on was a bit of a disaster. The 1955 followup to that wasn’t much better either — http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/section27/ has all the crazed books.

Peace,
J.

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