Studholm Lodge No. 1591 : Churchill, Titanic, World WarI and the House That Jack Built

Winston Churchill MP, 1901

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, 

KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA 

Winston Churchill, as the British Colonial Secretary, 

in Ottoman Damascus, 1912

"I realised afresh in preparing for this part that I hate Churchill and all his kind - I hate them vehemently.

Stalking through the corridors of endless power, what man of sanity would say of the Japanese in 1943, "We shall wipe them out - there shall not be a Japanese left upon the surface of the Earth"...."

 - Richard Burton

"... Churchill was a man who met a moment, and the moment was much shorter than he's given credit for - about six months. 

He made four speeches, all of which were derivative of Shakespeare and Macaulay. 

Everything else about his wearyingly long public life was self-serving and disastrous: he was a terrible self-publicising hack; he was a loathed soldier; he was the worst First Sea Lord we ever had. 

A staggeringly inept Home Secretary, he was wrong about absolutely everything he set his sights on. 

He was responsible for the Dardanelles, the worst disaster of the First World War. 

He sent soldiers to shoot Welsh miners. 

He put field guns on to the streets of the East End of London. 

During the General Strike, he was so rabid that he had to be kept out of government, because he wanted to machine-gun bus drivers. 

Later, he was the worst sort of empire loyalist, desperate to hold on to India, and racist about Gandhi, that naked little fakir (frankly, if you had to choose the greater man between Gandhi and Churchill, there's no contest). 

He sent the Black and Tans into Ireland. 

He'd have bankrupted the country by returning us to the gold standard; he gave away large areas of eastern Europe to Stalin. 

And he was responsible for the disgraceful but forgotten war of intervention to support the White Russians at the end of the First World War. 

Altogether, he represents everything I find most dispiriting, snobbish, philistine, proudly anti-intellectual and stubbornly backward-looking about Britain.

As someone who championed Shakespeare for the greatest Briton, I would have to vote for Cromwell as my worst - a man who closed down theatres, banned dancing and cancelled Christmas.... 

My other nomination is Churchill." - A.A. Gill

John Charles Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey 

"The Studholme Lodge takes pride in having had no less that 17 Provincial Grand Masters elected from its members. Other prominent Brethren have included HRH the Duke of Clarence, the first honorary and later full member, the Earl of Yarborough, Lord Edward Stanley (later the 7th Earl of Derby) private secretary to Lord Roberts, Sir George Cave, 1st Viscount Cave, later to become Home Secretary, Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, Lord Hugh Cecil, younger son of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury and many more. 

These were Winston Churchill’s contemporaries on 24 May 1901 when he was initiated into freemasonry at the age of 27. Already a keen and dedicated politician, Winston had taken his first seat in Parliament as the Conservative member for Oldham just three months earlier. He was very junior indeed in comparison to the stature of the Freemasons who had accepted him into their midst. It explains why his name is not even mentioned as a member when W Bro T W Wedding addressed the lodge with a brief history, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1926.

The lodge records give the date of his initiation, 24 May 1901 with his address as 105 Mount Street, his age, incorrectly, as 26 and his occupation as a Member of Parliament. An insight into the scene on the day is given by Charles Clive Bingham, Viscount Mersey in his autobiography published by John Murray in London in 1941 A Picture of Life 1872-1940.  On page 188 he states ‘ ….that month I was initiated as a freemason at Studholme Lodge (1591). While waiting for the ceremony I walked round and round Golden Square with Winston Churchill, another candidate...’. 

Within two months, on 19 July, Winston was passed to the second degree and on 5th March 1902 he was made a full fledged Master Mason, all the three ceremonies being conducted in the Studholme Lodge.  His raising on Tuesday 5th March was by special dispensation applied for by the Secretary, Henry James Fitzroy, the Earl of Euston, Provincial Grand Master  for Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, and conducted by the Master J C F Tower. At the same meeting Mr Ferdinand John St John was initiated and the Brethren dined at the Café Royal, as was customary for the lodge."

Brother Speaks to Brother.

After his retirement, Mersey remained active in public affairs, and is probably best remembered for heading the official Board of Trade inquiries into the sinking of steamships, most notably: 

The RMS Titanic [Olympic], 

the RMS Lusitania, 

and the RMS Empress of Ireland.

I quote The Enemy;

"In 1913, Mersey presided over the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and added three more maritime inquiries to his résumé with his heading of the inquiries into the sinkings of the RMS Empress of Ireland (held in Canada in 1914) and the Falaba and RMS Lusitania in 1915. 

About the last, Mersey is among those suspected by conspiracy theorists of a coverup. His biographer Hugh Mooney writes that such suspicions are wholly conjectural, but "the conclusion of the inquiry (which blamed Germany for the tragedy without reservation) was without doubt politically convenient."

Mersey was raised in the peerage from baron to viscount in 1916."

"You have sunk my ship!"

"It is not for me to harrow your feelings – try to make peace with your Maker. We both belong to the same Brotherhood, and though that can have no influence with me this is painful beyond words to have to say what I am saying, but our Brotherhood does not encourage crime, it condemns it."

SIR RUFUS                                219

oratory but confined itself to a definition of the issues and an analysis of the evidence in regard to each. Did Miss Barrow die from arsenical poisoning ? If so, was the poison administered by Mr. or Mrs. Seddon ?

His final words were a sharp contrast in their simplicity to Marshall Hall's dramatic exhortation :

All I ask you is, when you have made up your minds, not to shrink from the conclusion to which you think you are forced by the evidence that has been given. If you are satisfied, say so, whatever the consequences. If you are not satisfied, do not hesitate to acquit either the one or both. Give effect to the results of your deliberations . . , and justice, I am satisfied, will have been done.

There were passages in the Attorney-General's final speech which seemed to indicate to the jury the possibility of convicting Seddon while acquitting his wife, and this outcome was rendered more probable by the summing up of Mr. Justice Bucknill, which was on the whole adverse to him but favourable to her.

The strain had told upon the judge, who was old and in failing health, and the summing up was more cursory and less helpful than might have been expected after a trial lasting eleven days; but after only an hour's absence the jury found Seddon guilty and Mrs. Seddon not guilty.

At once Seddon turned to his wife and gave her a resounding kiss before she was taken away, weeping hysterically, and he faced the judge to make a long and carefully prepared statement, in which once again he denied his guilt, swearing it in Masonic form "by the Great Architect of the Universe."

The judge was deeply affected, for he was himself a prominent Freemason, and his voice faltered and broke as he passed sentence of death. The spectacle of the judge's distress in addition to the poignancy which is inseparable from the last scene of a murder trial greatly moved everyone in the thronged court except Seddon himself, who appeared to regard such an exhibition of human frailty with detached contempt. When it was all over, he turned on his heel and marched from the dock with firm step and defiant eyes.

The judge paid tribute to the "remarkable fairness" with which the Attorney-General had conducted the case, and Marshall

Hall did likewise in terms of unqualified praise. But Sir Rufus had found it a most trying ordeal and was thankful when it was over, though he had no doubts of the rightness of the verdict. He was greatly interested to learn later that in his younger days in Liverpool Seddon had followed with the closest attention the

EDWARD THE CARESSER

When Edward VII married, he chose Princess Alexandra of the Danish Royal House, who had her own anti-German revanche complex because of Bismarck’s war against Denmark in 1864. Victoria remained in mourning, gazing at a marble bust of Albert. Victoria refused to appear at state occasions, so Edward had to assume these functions, for 40 years. Edward set up a household in Marlborough House in London, and began his career as a royal rake. He became the undisputed leader of British high society. Hence the Edwardian legend of the sybaritic hedonist and sex maniac whose mistresses included Lillie Langtry, Daisy Countess of Warwick, Lady Brooke, Mrs. George Keppel, and others too numerous to mention. Some of the can-can dancers painted by Toulouse- Lautrec had been Edward’s girlfriends.

There was a fling with Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress. When Bernhardt was playing in “Fedora” in Paris, Edward told her that he had always wanted to be an actor. The next night, in the scene in which Fedora comes upon the dead body of her lover, few recognized the heir to the British throne: Edward VII had made his stage debut as a cadaver.

Edward’s home at Marlborough House in London was also a center of the “Homintern.” One of Edward’s friends, Lord Arthur Somerset – known to his friends as Podge – was arrested during a police raid in one of London’s numerous homosexual brothels. A satire of Edward was written in the style of Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.” This was called “Guelpho the Gay – the Coming K.” Some recalled a predecessor on the throne, Edward the Confessor. This future king was to go down as Edward the Caresser.

Prince Felix Yussupov was the heir to the biggest fortune in Russia. He was also considered the most beautiful transvestite in Europe. One evening Yussupov, dressed as a woman, attended the theater in Paris. He noted a portly, whiskered gentleman ogling him through an opera glass from one of the box seats. Within minutes, Yussupov received a mash note signed King Edward VII. Remember that Yussupov is the man who assassinated Rasputin, the holy man and reputed German agent, in December 1916, detonating the Russian Revolution a few months later. Here we see the great political importance of King Edward’s Homintern.

Prince Albert Victor Edward Duke of Clarence

Bertie's son, Albert Victor Christian Edward, known as Eddy, was born 8th January 1864 at Frogmore House, Windsor. Queen Victoria decided that the boy should be named Albert, after her beloved late husband, much to the dismay of his parents. At the christening the Queen, once again dressed in deepest mourning. Eddy was no stranger to scandal and gossip throughout his life, and was reputed, while at Cambridge, to have conducted relationships with both sexes. Author Michael Harrison wonders if there might have been a homosexual relationship between Eddy and James Kenneth Stephen. While there is no direct evidence to support this claim, it does remain a possibility. A poem written by Stephen under the euphemism 'Sucking Peppermints', does hint at such a relationship, though is rather vague.

See where the K in sturdy self reliance, thoughtful and placid as a brooding dove, stands firmly sucking in the cause of science, just such a peppermint as schoolboys love. Suck placid K the world will they debtor, though they eyes water and thine heart grow faint. Suck and the less thou likest it the better. Suck for our sake and utter no complaint.

Eddy, by all accounts was a slow child, considered educationally subnormal, it was reported that he could not concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. Without any proper education he grew up to be described as a rather dull adult. In 1877, at the age of thirteen, he sailed with his younger brother George on the naval training ship Britannia, it was hoped travel might stimulate his desire for education. While George developed a natural passion for the sea and decided on a naval career, Eddy displayed no such aptitude and continued his education on land. He was tutored at Cambridge between 1883/85 by James Kenneth Stephen, who was himself also a Ripper suspect. Eddy's dandyism earned him the nickname 'collars and cuffs' on account of the high starched collars he wore to cover an unusually long thin neck. He was also, due to an hereditary condition from his mothers side of the family, partially deaf.

In an attempt to mask these insecurities and to portray his public image as being more masculine, he took up hunting and joined the Tenth Hussars Cavalry Regiment, where he gained the rank of major. Pictures from this period often depicted him in the uniform of the Tenth Hussars. It has been claimed that he was known at several homosexual establishments, and was also a regular visitor at 19 Cleveland street, which was a homosexual brothel. The release in 1975, of Public Record Office police papers, and more importantly the publication of the letters of Lord Arthur Somerset, one of the principle players in the Cleveland Street affair, clearly show a cover up had taken place, and that the prince was involved beyond a reasonable doubt in the 1889 Scandal.

Eddy was made the Duke Of Clarence and Avondale and Earl of Athlone in 1891, and in December of that year became engaged to Princess Mary Of Teck, later to become Queen Mary after marrying his younger brother George.

He died of pneumonia at Sandringham House on 14 January 1892, during the flu epidemic which swept the country, he was 28 years old. 

[AHEM so, that's terminal 'flu - and not Cerebral Syphilis... To be clear.]

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/cjmorley/4.html

The "Stab in the Back" Armistice forced upon the German General Staff followed an artificially prolonged World War I, with the Generals initially demanding of the Kaiser an immediate truce and armistice from at least early September 1918.

For reasons never publicly elaborated upon, Germany was not permitted to surrender or declare a ceasefire until November 11th 1918 - and instead of the ceasefire coming into effect immediately, or at dawn, or Noon on the 11th, it was agreed that the Great War would come to an end at 11am.

11am 11/11

11 + 11 + 11 = 33.p

On 11/11/2011, a gunman fired 11 shots from an automatic rifle at the White House.

ELEVEN

In the Prestonian lectures, eleven was a mystical number, and was the final series of steps in the winding stairs of the Fellow Craft, which were said to consist of 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. The eleven was referred to the eleven apostles after the defection of Judas, and to the eleven sons of Jacob after Joseph went into Egypt. But when the lectures were revived by Henning, the eleven was struck out. In Templar Freemasonry, however, eleven is still significant as being the constitutional number required to open a Commandery; and here it is evidently allusive of the eleven true disciples.

- Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

Winston Churchill spoke of the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives" in the House of Commons in February 1911. In May 1912 a Private Members' Bill entitled the "Feeble-Minded Control Bill" was introduced in the House of Commons, which called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's conclusions. It rejected sterilisation of the "feeble-minded", but had provision for registration and segregation.

One of the few voices raised against the bill was that of G.K. Chesterton who ridiculed the bill, calling it the "Feeble-Minded Bill, both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate".

The bill was withdrawn, but a government bill introduced on 10 June 1912 replaced it, which would become the Mental Deficiency Act 1913.

The bill was passed in 1913 with only three MPs voting against it.

One of them was Josiah Wedgwood, who said of it, "It is a spirit of the Horrible Eugenic Society which is setting out to breed up the working class as though they were cattle."

The new act repealed the Idiots Act 1886 and followed the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded. It established the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency to oversee the implementation of provisions for the care and management of four classes of people,

a) Idiots. Those so deeply defective as to be unable to guard themselves against common physical dangers.

b) Imbeciles. Whose defectiveness does not amount to idiocy, but is so pronounced that they are incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so.

c) Feeble-minded persons. Whose weakness does not amount to imbecility, yet who require care, supervision, or control, for their protection or for the protection of others, or, in the case of children, are incapable of receiving benefit from the instruction in ordinary schools.

d) Moral Imbeciles. Displaying mental weakness coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities, and on whom punishment has little or no deterrent effect.

A person deemed to be an idiot or imbecile might be placed in an institution or under guardianship if the parent or guardian so petitioned, as could a person of any of the four categories under 21 years, as could a person of any category who had been abandoned, neglected, guilty of a crime, in a state institution, habitually drunk, or unable to be schooled.

At the height of operation of the Mental Deficiency Act, 65,000 people were placed in "colonies" or in other institutional settings. The act remained in effect until it was repealed by the Mental Health Act 1959.

Barlow and Watt - The Highest in the Land (1973) from Spike EP on Vimeo.

Left to Right : The Duke of Connaught, The Prince of Wales, and The Duke of Clarence.

“LONDON, Nov. 1, 1970 (AP) – The Sunday Times expressed belief today that Jack the Ripper, infamous London murderer of nearly 100 years ago, was Edward, Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria and older brother of George V. The Times was commenting on the statement of an eminent British surgeon who said that the Ripper ‘was the heir to power and wealth.’ The surgeon, Thomas E.A. Stowell, while claiming to know who the criminal was, refused to identify him in an article to be published tomorrow in The Criminologist…. The Sunday Times, in commenting on Dr. Stowell’s article, said there was one name that fitted his evidence. It said: ‘It is a sensational name: Edward, Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria, brother of George V, and heir to the throne of England. All the points of Dr. Stowell’s story fit this man.’” (Spierig, p. 11)

Shortly after having published his article in The Criminologist and thus made his allegations public, Dr. Stowell wrote a letter to the London Times in which he disavowed any intention of identifying Prince Eddy or any other member of the royal family as Jack the Ripper. In this letter Stowell signed himself as “a loyalist and a Royalist.” Stowell died mysteriously one day after this letter appeared, and his family promptly burned all his papers.

An American study of the Jack the Ripper mystery was authored by the forensic psychiatrist David Abrahamsen, who sums up his own conclusions as follows: “It is an analysis of the psychological parameters that enabled me to discover that the Ripper murders were perpetrated by Prince Eddy and J.K. Stephen.” (Abrahamsen, pp. 103-104) J.K. Stephen had been chosen as a tutor for Prince Eddy, who was mentally impaired. Stephen was a homosexual. He was the son of the pathological woman-hater Fitzjames Stephen. J.K. Stephen’s uncle was Sir Leslie Stephen, the writer. There is evidence that J.K. Stephen sexually molested his cousin, best known today by her married name, Virginia Woolf, the novelist. This experience may be related to Virginia Woolf’s numerous suicide attempts.

While he was at Cambridge, Prince Eddy was a member of the Apostles secret society. Abrahamsen quotes a maxim of the Apostles: “The love of man for man is greater than that of man for woman, a philosophy known to the Apostles as the higher sodomy.” [p. 123] Prince Eddy died on Jan. 14, 1892. J.K. Stephen died in a sanitarium on Feb. 3, 1892.

Prince Eddy’s younger brother, the later George V, assumed his place in the succession, married Eddy’s former fiancée, Princess May of Teck, and became the father of the Nazi King Edward VIII. If the persistent reports are true, the great-uncle of the current queen was the homicidal maniac Jack the Ripper. Perhaps the recurring dispute about what to call the British royal house – Hanover, Windsor, Guelph, Saxe- Coburg- Gotha, etc. – could be simplified by calling it the House of Jack the Ripper.

(Or The House that Jack Built)
Of the existence of a coverup there can be no doubt. One of the main saboteurs of the investigation was a certain Gen. Sir Charles Warren, the chief of the London Metropolitan Police. Warren suppressed evidence, had witnesses intimidated, and was forced to resign amidst a public outcry about Masonic conspiracy. Warren was the master of a new Freemasonic lodge that had recently been created in London. This was the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, number 2076 of the Scottish rite. The Quatuor Coronati lodge had been founded in 1884 with a warrant from the Grand Master of British freemasonry, who happened to be Edward VII.

Churchill and Eugenics

By Sir Martin Gilbert CBE

Abstract: When he was Home Secretary (February 1910-October 1911) Churchill was in favor of the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the "feeble minded." The most significant letter Churchill wrote in support of eugenics was not, however, deliberately left out of the official biography by Randolph Churchill for reasons of embarrassment, but simply through oversight. -Ted Hutchinson

The author (www.martingilbert.com) is an honorary member and trustee of The Churchill Centre, is the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill and the author of more than eighty books, on the two World Wars, the Holocaust and 20th century history as well as Churchill.

Randolph Churchill has been accused of deliberately omitting from his narrative volumes and from the companion volumes-because he was ashamed of it-a letter from Churchill to Asquith, written in December 1910, stating that "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate."

I can state without fear of contradiction that Randolph never saw this letter, of which there was no copy in the Churchill papers. Here is the story of that letter, and its context.

"The improvement of the British breed is my aim in life," Winston Churchill wrote to his cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. Churchill's view was reinforced by his experiences as a young British officer serving, and fighting, in Arab and Muslim lands, and in South Africa. Like most of his contemporaries, family and friends, he regarded races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race. As a young politician in Britain entering Parliament in 1901, Churchill saw what were then known as the "feeble-minded" and the "insane" as a threat to the prosperity, vigour and virility of British society.

The phrase "feeble-minded" was to be defined as part of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, of which Churchill had been one of the early drafters. The Act defined four grades of "Mental Defective" who could be confined for life, whose symptoms had to be present "from birth or from an early age." "Idiots" were defined as people "so deeply defective in mind as to be unable to guard against common physical dangers." "Imbeciles" were not idiots, but were "incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so." The "feeble-minded" were neither idiots nor imbeciles, but, if adults, their condition was "so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or the protection of others." If children of school age, their condition was "so pronounced that they by reason of such defectiveness appear to be personally incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in ordinary schools." "Moral defectives" were people who, from an early age, displayed "some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment had little or no effect."[1]

In 1904, as Churchill was crossing from the Conservative to the Liberal benches, A.J. Balfour's Conservative government set up a Royal Commission "On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded." When the commission reported in 1908 to the Liberal Government-which had come into office at the end of 1905, and of which Churchill was a Cabinet Minister-it recommended compulsory detention of the mentally "inadequate," as well as sterilisation of the "unfit," so that it would be impossible to have children and thus perpetuate what were then seen as inherited characteristics. Until that time only the criminally insane, whom the courts had judged to be a danger to themselves and others, were sent to mental asylums. Detention of the "feeble-minded"-for life-was considered by the Royal Commission to be vital to the health of the wider society.

Such detention, as well as sterilisation, were at that time the two main "cures" to "feeble-mindeness." They were put forward by the eugenicists, those who believed in "the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)."[2]

In introducing its recommendations in 1908, the Royal Commission On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded-one of whose eight members was the chairman of the eugenics-influenced National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-Minded-expressed its concern about "the numbers of mentally defective persons" in Britain "whose training is neglected, over whom no sufficient control is exercised and whose wayward and irresponsible lives are productive of crime and misery...and of much continuous expenditure wasteful to the community." The Royal Commisison suggested that permanent institutional care was the means to establish control over the feeble-minded. It also advocated the establishment of industrial "colonies" with schools.[3]

Churchill shared the Royal Commission's fears and supported its recommendations. The improvement of the health and well-being of the British race was a central aspect of his political and social outlook. As President of the Board of Trade, while advancing important measures of social reform, he had seen widespread poverty and demoralisation throughout Britain. In 1910, on becoming Home Secretary, he read a booklet by Dr. H.C. Sharp, The sterilisation of Degenerates. Dr Sharp was a member of the Indiana Reformatory. In 1907, while the Royal Commission was taking evidence in Britain, the State of Indiana had passed a Eugenics Law making sterilisation mandatory for those individuals in State custody who were judged mentally unfit. They were also refused the right to marry.[4] Other States passed similar laws. Between 1907 and 1981, more than 65,000 individuals were forcibly sterilised in the United States.[5]

Using a thick blue pencil, Churchill marked in Sharp's pamphlet the sections about the Indiana legislation and the operations that had been carried out on both men and women to sterilise them. In September 1910, Churchill wrote to his Home Office officials asking them to investigate putting into practice the "Indiana Law"-dominated by sterilisation, and the prevention of the marriage of the "Feeble-Minded." Churchill wrote: "I am drawn to this subject in spite of many Parliamentary misgivings....Of course it is bound to come some day." Despite the misgivings, "It must be examined." He wanted to know "what is the best surgical operation?" and what new legal powers would be needed to carry out sterilisation.

Churchill was answered by his Chief Medical Adviser of Prisons, Dr. Horatio Donkin, who described the Indiana arguments for eugenics as "The outcome of an arrogation of scientific knowledge by those who had no claim to it....It is a monument of ignorance and hopeless mental confusion."[6]

In October 1910 a deputation to the Government called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations without delay. Churchill, in his reply, recalled the fact that there were at least 120,000 "feeble-minded" persons "at large in our midst" who deserved "all that could be done for them by a Christian and scientific civilization now that they are in the world," but who should, if possible, be "segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations."

Churchill had not given up his belief in sterilisation as well as segregation. On studying the case of Alfred Oxtoby, who had been convicted in June 1910 of bestiality and of indecently assaulting a twelve-year-old girl-and who had been described by the local police in the East Riding of Yorkshire as mentally inadequate and "over-sexed"-Churchill wrote to his advisers: "This seems to be a case where a complete cure might be at once effected by sterilisation." Churchill went on to ask: "Can this ever be done by consent?" In reply, Donkin wrote that sterilisation would not in fact remove Oxtoby's sexual drive, and that he was too insane to give informed consent. Oxtoby was sent to Broadmoor criminal lunacy asylum. Churchill asked that his case be kept under review at the Home Office in the hope that sterilisation would become possible in the near future.[7]

With Dr. Sharp's pamphlet and the Oxtoby case much in mind, Churchill decided to take the initiative with regard to the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations. He wrote to the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, in December 1910, about the "multiplication of the unfit" that constituted "a very terrible danger to the race." Until the public accepted the need for sterilisation, Churchill argued, the "feeble-minded" would have to be kept in custodial care, segregated both from the world and the opposite sex.

In his letter, Churchill told Asquith: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race." Concerned by the high cost of forced segregation, Churchill preferred compulsory sterilisation to confinement, describing sterilisation as a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."

Churchill's letter to Asquith showed how much he regarded British racial health as a serious and an urgent issue. As he wrote to the Prime Minister: ‘I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.'[8].

To reinforce his sense of urgency, Churchill circulated to his Cabinet colleagues the text of a lecture by Dr A.F. Treadgold, one of the expert advisers to the Royal Commission. It was entitled "The Feeble-Minded-A Social Danger." Written in 1909, the lecture gave, in the words of Churchill's covering note, "a concise, and, I am afraid not exaggerated statement of the serious problems to be faced." Churchill added: "The Government is pledged to legislation, and a Bill is being drafted to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission."[9]

In February 1911, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons about the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives." As for "tramps and wastrels," he said, "there ought to be proper Labour Colonies where they could be sent for considerable periods and made to realize their duty to the State."[10] Convicted criminals would be sent to these labour colonies if they were judged "feeble-minded" on medical grounds. It was estimated that some 20,000 convicted criminals would be included in this plan. To his Home Office advisers, with whom he was then drafting what would later become the Mental Deficiency Bill, Churchill proposed that anyone who was convicted of any second criminal offence could, on the direction of the Home Secretary, be officially declared criminally "feeble-minded," and made to undergo a medical enquiry. If the enquiry endorsed the declaration of "feeble-mindedness," the person could then be detained in a labour colony for as long as was considered a suitable period.

No legislation was introduced along these lines while Churchill was at the Home Office. In October 1911 he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, in charge of the Royal Navy, with new concerns and new responsibilities. On 17 May 1912, while he was at the Admiralty, a Private Members' Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, entitled the "Feeble-Minded Control Bill." This called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's conclusions. Hundreds of petitions were sent to Parliament in support of legislation. The Committee to further the Bill was headed by the two Anglican primates, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. H.G. Wells was a supporter of the Bill. G.K. Chesterton led a public campaign against the Bill. Dean Inge, the Dean of St Paul's, complained that eugenics was so logical it was only opposed by "irrationalist prophets like Mr. Chesterton." In his public lectures and published articles W.G. Chesterton ridiculed what he called "the Feeble-Minded Bill.'"

The Feeble-Minded Control Bill rejected compulsory sterilisation, but made it a punishable misdemeanour to marry or attempt to marry a mental defective, or to solemnise, procure or connive at such a marriage. It provided for registration and segregation. And it gave the Home Secretary the power to commit any person who fell outside the definition of feeble-mindedness but whose circumstances appeared to warrant his inclusion.

On its first reading, the Bill had only thirty-eight opponents. But the Liberal newspapers opposed it vigorously, and Josiah Wedgwood, a Liberal Member of Parliament, denounced it as a "monstrous violation" of individual rights. Roman Catholics leaders denounced it as "contrary to Christian morals and elementary human rights." When Wedgwood spoke in the House of Commons against it, he called it "legislation for the sake of a scientific creed which in ten years may be discredited."

The Private Members Bill was withdrawn, but the Liberal Government, conscious of the strength of public feeling in favour of a measure based on the Royal Commission's conclusions, decided to introduce its own "Mental Deficiency Bill," for the compulsory detention of the "feeble-minded." This Government Bill was introduced to Parliament on 10 June 1912. In urging the passage of the new Bill, Churchill's successor as Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, said: "I commend it to the House in the confident assurance that if it is passed into law we shall be taking a great step towards removing one of the worst evils in our time."

In his summing up, Josiah Wedgwood said: "I urge that the Government should, if this legislation goes through, see that all the homes in which defectives are looked after are homes run by the Government, and not for private profit, where the inspection is of the best and where the treatment is of the very highest character, and that the earliest possible term should be set to this licensing of private homes where private profit is likely to be the main cause of the existence of the home, and where, to a large extent, employment will be carried on under extremely undesirable conditions by people who are absolutely unable to protect themselves."[11]

Between 24 and 30 July 1912, a month after the Second Reading of the Mental Deficiency Bill in Parliament, the first international Eugenics Conference was held in London, and was attended by four hundred delegates. Churchill was a Vice-President of the Congress, and Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was one of its directors, as was Charles Eliot, a former President of Harvard, and the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Sir William Osler. The Canadian-born Osler, who had been created a baronet the previous year, was one of the world's most prominent practitioners of clinical medicine.

The Congress opened with a reception and a banquet that was addressed by the former Prime Minister, A.J. Balfour. A programme of entertainment was provided by a committee headed by the Duchess of Marlborough (the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was married to Churchill's cousin the Ninth Duke of Marlborough). Churchill did not attend.

The Congress on Eugenics led to renewed public pressure for Britain to adopt eugenics laws. In October 1912, Churchill discussed the proposed laws with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary: "Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to sterilise them. It was possible by the use of Roentgen rays, both for men and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many would ask to be sterilised as a condition of having their liberty restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but could be stopped by such means."[12]

The views of the eugenists were much influenced by the American psychologist Henry H. Goddard, who asserted that "feeble-mindedness" was a hereditary trait, almost certainly caused by a single recessive gene. His view was widely spread in 1912 with the publication of his book The Kallikat Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, about those in the general population who carried the recessive trait despite outward appearances of normality. Goddard, the creator of the term "moron," was the director of the Vineland Training School-originally the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children-in New Jersey. In his book, Goddard recommended segregating the "feeble minded" in institutions like his own, where they would be taught various forms of menial labour.[13]

The Mental Deficiency Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons in 1913, with only three votes being cast against it. The new law rejected sterilisation, which Churchill had earlier advocated, in favour of confinement. On 16 November 1914, in describing the working of the Act during the previous year, Reginald McKenna told the House of Commons: "Institutions and homes provided by religious and philanthropic associations, and by individuals, have come forward in considerable numbers, and the Board has certified or approved of thirty-one of them, making provision for 2,533 cases. In addition to these there are the nine hospitals and institutions formerly registered under the Idiots Act which have become certified institutions or houses under the Mental Deficiency Act, and continue to provide accommodation for many hundreds of defectives. Nine local authorities have entered into contracts with one or other of these institutions for the reception of defectives from their area; five of these contracts cover a number exceeding eighty, and in the remaining four the numbers to be received are not specified."[14]

The concept of hereditary mental illness that could be halted by sterilisation remained widespread for many years. In 1927, in the United States, in the case of Buck versus Bell, the distinguished Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then in his twenty-fifth year on the Supreme Court, closed the 8-1 majority opinion upholding the sterilisation of Carrie Buck-who along with her mother and daughter had been labelled "feeble-minded"-with the six words: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

In 1928 the Canadian Province of Alberta passed legislation-the Sexual Sterilisation Act of Alberta-that enabled the provincial government to perform involuntary sterilisations on individuals classified as "mentally deficient." In order to implement the 1928 act, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created to approve sterilisation procedures. In 1972, the Sexual sterilisation Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the forty-three years of the Eugenics Board, 2832 sterilisation procedures were performed.[15]

Britain never legislated for sterilisation or carried it out. Detention in institutions was the chosen path since the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. That act continued in force for almost half a century. The 1959 Mental Health Act, introduced by Harold Macmillan's Conservative Government, was described in its preamble as "An Act to repeal the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts 1890 to 1930, and the Mental Deficiency Acts, 1913 to 1938, and to make fresh provision with respect to the treatment and care of mentally disordered persons and with respect to their property and affairs; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid."[16]

A year later the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 

repealed the Lunacy (Scotland) Acts 1857 to 1913, and the Mental Deficiency (Scotland) Acts, 1913 and to 1940 "to make fresh provision with respect to the reception, care and treatment of persons suffering, or appearing to be suffering, from mental disorder, and with respect to their property and affairs; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid."[17]

Detention, not sterilisation, had been the chosen legislative path in Britain between 1913 and 1959. But with the advances in medical science and medical ethics, fewer and fewer categories of "persons suffering... rom mental disorder" were considered needy of detention. Causes such as food and nutritional deficiency, poverty and deprivation, abuse and neglect, were identified as among the reasons-and early diagnosis, medication, therapy, community care and family support systems as the methods of treatment-of what was considered, at the time of Churchill's support for eugenics before the First World War, as hereditary "feeble-mindedness" with no cure.

[1] The text of the Medical Deficiency Act 1913 was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in its issue of 16 November 1912, pages 1397-9.

[2] ‘Eugenics': Random House Dictionary: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 21 March 2009.

[3] Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1908. His Majesty's Stationery Office, Command Paper 4202 of 1908.

[4] sterilisations were halted in Indiana in 1909 by Governor Thomas R. Marshall, but it was not until 1921 that the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the 1907 law was unconstitutional, as it was a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. A 1927 law provided for appeals in the courts. In all, approximately 2,500 people were sterilised while in State custody. Governor Otis R. Bowen approved repeal of all sterilisation laws in 1974. By 1977 the related restrictive marriage laws were repealed.

[5] Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and Switzerland have at different times used sterilisation for the mentally ill. The number of sterilisations in Sweden was 62,000. The most notorious sterilisation legislation was promulgated in Nazi Germany in July 1933, under which more than 150,000 Germans, including many children and babies, judged ‘mentally unfit' were sterilised, and an equal number killed by gas or lethal injection between 1933 and 1940.

[6] Home Office papers, 144/1098/197900.

[7] Home Office papers, 144/1088/194663.

[8] Asquith papers, MS 12, folios 224-8.

[9] Cabinet papers, 37/108/189.

[10] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 10 February 1911.

[11] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 10 June 1912.

[12] W. S. Blunt, My Diaries: 1888-1914, 2 Volumes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921.

[13] Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikat Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912.

[14] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 16 November 1914.

[15] The Alberta Sexual Sterilisation Act was disproportionately applied to those in socially vulnerable positions, including women, children, the unemployed, domestic help, rural citizens, the unmarried, people in institutions, Roman and Greek Catholics, and people of Ukrainian, Native and Métis ethnicity.

[16] Royal Assent, 29 July 1959.

[17] Royal Assent, 29 July 1960.

No one, least of all the British, should be surprised at the state of anarchy in Iraq. We have been here before. We know the territory, its long and miasmic history, the all-but-impossible diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans, French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and strategic presence there.

Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission. Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq, even those who have cheered passing troops, have every reason to mistrust foreign invaders. They have been lied to far too often, bombed and slaughtered promiscuously.

Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first world war. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start.

The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain's League of Nations' mandate. The mandate ended in 1932; the semi-colonial monarchy in 1958. But during the period of direct British rule, Iraq proved a useful testing ground for newly forged weapons of both limited and mass destruction, as well as new techniques for controlling imperial outposts and vassal states.

The RAF was first ordered to Iraq to quell Arab and Kurdish and Arab uprisings, to protect recently discovered oil reserves, to guard Jewish settlers in Palestine and to keep Turkey at bay. Some mission, yet it had already proved itself an effective imperial police force in both Afghanistan and Somaliland (today's Somalia) in 1919-20. British and US forces have been back regularly to bomb these hubs of recalcitrance ever since.

Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid.

An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen against the British occupation swept through Iraq in the summer of 1920. In went the RAF. It flew missions totalling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines. The rebellion was thwarted, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed. Even so, concern was expressed in Westminster: the operation had cost more than the entire British-funded Arab rising against the Ottoman Empire in 1917-18.

The RAF was vindicated as British military expenditure in Iraq fell from £23m in 1921 to less than £4m five years later. This was despite the fact that the number of bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris - the future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in London today - took command of 45 Squadron. Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night "terror" raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 "with excellent moral effect".

Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

Conventional raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent. They brought Sheikh Mahmoud, the most persistent of Kurdish rebels, to heel, at little cost. Writing in 1921, Wing Commander J A Chamier suggested that the best way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the "most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle."

"The Arab and Kurd now know", reported Squadron Leader Harris after several such raids, "what real bombing means within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape."

In his memoir of the crushing of the 1920 Iraqi uprising, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer L Haldane, quotes his own orders for the punishment of any Iraqi found in possession of weapons "with the utmost severity": "The village where he resides will be destroyed _ pressure will be brought on the inhabitants by cutting off water power the area being cleared of the necessaries of life". He added the warning: "Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more according to size".

Punitive British bombing continued throughout the 1920s. An eyewitness account by Saleh 'Umar al Jabrim describes a raid in February 1923 on a village in southern Iraq, where bedouin were celebrating 12 weddings. After a visit from the RAF, a woman, two boys, a girl and four camels were left dead. There were many wounded. Perhaps to please his British interrogators, Saleh declared: "These casualties are from God and no one is to be blamed."

One RAF officer, Air Commodore Lionel Charlton, resigned in 1924 when he visited a hospital after such a raid and faced armless and legless civilian victims. Others held less generous views of those under their control. "Woe betide any native [working for the RAF] who was caught in the act of thieving any article of clothing that may be hanging out to dry", wrote Aircraftsman 2nd class, H Howe, based at RAF Hunaidi, Baghdad. "It was the practice to take the offending native into the squadron gymnasium. Here he would be placed in the boxing ring, used as a punch bag by members of the boxing team, and after he had received severe punishment, and was in a very sorry condition, he would be expelled for good, minus his job."

At the time of the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s, Air Commodore Harris, as he then was, declared that "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand, and sooner or later it will have to be applied". As in 1921, so in 2003.

Mers el Kebir Memorial at Toulon, France

In English the text reads "1297 Sailors died for France on the 3rd and 6th of July 1940 at Mers-El-Kabir"

BRITISH ULTIMATUM TO THE FREE FRENCH FLEET

It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty's Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives;

(a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans.

(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment.

If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile.

(c) Alternatively if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans lest they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies — Martinique for instance – where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.

If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.

Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty's Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German hands.