Sybil Neville Rolfe

Career

Neville-Rolfe and Francis Galton founded the Eugenics Education Society (renamed the Galton Institute in the 1980's, and currently known as the Adelhpi Genetics Forum) in London in 1907, with Galton serving as its first honorary president. She took the role of honorary secretary upon the Society's founding until 1920. The Eugenics Education Society believed that social class and poverty were directly linked to one's genetics and their ideals were closely linked to the Committee of the Moral Education League (1898). She also founded the Imperial Society for Promoting Sex Education and was the Deputy Chair of the Child Welfare Council. Therefore, the Society aimed to reduce poverty in England through reducing the birth rate of the lowest classes and those of low intelligence. In 1912, she was the driving force behind the Society's organisation of the first International Eugenics Congress in South Kensington. After 1920 she acted as the Society Council's vice-president and later was elected to serve on the consultative council, a position that she held until her death in 1955.

Neville-Rolfe implemented the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. She was also one of the establishing members of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now known as Gingerbread) in 1918, where she worked on reforming poor-law institutions and hostels for unmarried mothers and their children. She was also a leading figure in the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases (NCCVD) which was founded in 1914. Upon the NCCVD's founding she held the position of Honorary Secretary. Later in the NCCVD's life she held the position of secretary-general. The NCCVD changed its name to the British Social Hygiene Council in 1926, and Neville-Rolfe remained working for them until her retirement in 1944.

Awards

Neville-Rolfe was awarded an OBE for her work during the First World War with the War Savings Committee in the Treasury. In 1941, she became both the first woman and the first non-American to receive the Snow Medal from the American Social Hygiene Association, for distinguished services to humanity.

Beliefs

Neville-Rolfe's beliefs concerning eugenics and prostitution developed when she trained and worked as a rescue worker in a shelter for troubled girls. She was determined to study these issues in efforts to eliminate prostitution and venereal disease. She stopped working at the shelter because she felt the staff were not well educated on physiology and reproduction. She then left to find work in Bethnal Green, London, where even there, she thought the staff of rescue workers was not competent or knowledgeable about contraception. Because of this, she insisted they educate themselves further in the area of biological sciences. She also believed that single mothers were not to blame as they had been manipulated and enticed by men. In an effort to prevent this, she was determined to help educate these women on sex and contraception.

Eugenics

Neville-Rolfe published an article in 1917 titled "The Eugenic Principle in Social Reconstruction" which detailed her beliefs regarding eugenics. She believed that certain people were genetically "superior" to other people within a society, and that these people who were genetically superior to their peers but born into the lower classes would naturally rise up to attain a higher quality of life, as they were inherently more productive and useful people within society, which would be proven by the fact that they were able to achieve financial independence. Conversely, she felt that children born into families of people who had proven themselves to be of a higher genetic status than their peers could also be of a lower genetic worth than their parents and would naturally sink in status through the course of their life, and also never achieve the financial independence that is used in this system to prove one's genetic worth. She called this process eugenic selection.

Throughout her life she made several assertions as to how eugenics could be implemented into the governing bodies and institutions in Britain to preserve the Anglo-Saxon race. She felt that changes needed to be made at both a social and government level to encourage people with better genetics to marry and have children together early in life while also discouraging people who could not attain financial independence, contracted a venereal disease, or were otherwise mentally deficient from having children. To this end she suggested several changes to social norms and the policies of the government, including:

Discouraging people who lived in workhouses from having children.

Discouraging homosexual relationships.

Encouraging young people to obtain financial independence early to allow them to marry and have children early in life.

Allowing for easier access to divorce, because if young people were going to marry early there would have to be a system in place that would allow for the rectification of mistakes in their choice of partner.

Changing the policies on illegitimate children to hold fathers accountable, along with the mother, for the care and support of their child even if that child was conceived and born out of wedlock.

Prostitution

Throughout her life Neville-Rolfe took a stance against the practice of prostitution and suggested many ways in which this problem could be dealt with, especially within the article she published in 1918 titled "The Changing Moral Standard: Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century and After." Instead of blaming the prostitute for the profession that she ended up in, Neville-Rolfe blames the degeneration of morals and the perpetuation of the profession by three different interest groups associated with the practice: the prostitutes themselves who supply the profession, those that purchase and demand their services, and the middle-men who encourage this practice for their own material gain. Each of these groups have their own distinct subgroups.

The feeble-minded, who should have been cared for through provisions within the government that existed in this era to help prevent them from needing to turn to prostitution to support themselves.

The morally defective, who she felt should have been dealt with through amending the Mental Deficiency Act

Women charged and convicted of a crime who had served their sentence but, because of their conviction, find it impossible to return to their profession or be hired into another respectable profession after serving their sentence.

Unmarried mothers, who were often disowned by their families and fired from their jobs because of their status of unwed motherhood. The social machinations of the era often prevented these women from being able to find respectable work and many unwed mothers were forced to turn to prostitution to pay for the care of themselves and their child.

Normal girls led astray by wanting to have a good time and the relaxation of moral codes that condemn premarital sex.

Men who only turn to prostitution one or a few times before marriage, then marry and live a normal life.

Men who seek prostitutes and extra-marital sex after marriage

Personal life

She was born Sybil Katherine Burney in Queen's House, Royal Naval College, Greenwich on 22 June 1885. She was the daughter of Admiral Sir Cecil Burney and Lucinda Marion Burnett. Her brother was Dennistoun Burney, a marine, aeronautical engineer, and Conservative MP. As a child, she often lodged in different naval quarters, but these moves were always temporary. She was home-schooled by French and English women who were privately hired governesses. She knew multiple languages as she travelled to France and Germany as a teenager, however even this knowledge did not compare to her yearning for a University education.

Her first husband was Lieutenant Arthur Corry Gotto, whom she married on 29 December 1905, though this marriage was extremely brief due to his death in a coaling accident in September 1906. Her second marriage was to Commander Clive Neville-Rolfe on 24 March 1917.