Cambridge historian Dr Caroline Rusterholz challenges assumptions about the sexual revolution of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and sheds new light on the controversial origins of a sexual health service which is now largely taken for granted.
The study, published in the Journal of British Studies, is the first to examine the history of the Brook Advisory Centres (BAC), officially founded by Helen Brook in 1964, and still a key player in sexual health. By looking for the first time at the contents of the Centre’s Annual Reports and memoranda – now archived in Wellcome Library – this research provides important new information about how the scheme came into being and survived initial opposition.
One record, a minute, in the archive reveals that in November 1962, eighteen months before the official inauguration of the first BAC clinic, Brook launched a secret birth control session for unmarried women in London. To begin this experiment, Brook, then director of the Marie Stopes clinic, used a loophole in the Foundation’s constitution to expand its clientele to include unmarried mothers, a highly controversial move at the time.
Brook had strategically filled the clinic’s committee with committed activists from the Family Planning Association (FPA) to ensure that her plan would be ratified. She presented the session for unmarried people as a fait accompli and in November 1962, in one of the Stopes clinic offices, Brook’s team began to offer contraceptive advice to unmarried mothers.
Then in March 1963, Brook went even further, proposing an early evening doctor’s consultation session to which ‘girls and young men, often still at school or university’ could come for discussion and advice on contraception and problems with sexual relationships.
Helen Brook (1907–97) in the 1980s. Image courtesy of Brook
Helen Brook (1907–97) in the 1980s. Image courtesy of Brook
The committee unanimously supported Brook’s new suggestion, provided that the Marie Stopes Foundation Board agreed. The Board consisted of six members from the Eugenics Society and to pre-empt any opposition, the committee’s letter requesting approval emphasised that the session ‘would not be publicised but would be made known by word of mouth’. Within weeks, even without publicity, word had spread rapidly among women in and around London.
Rusterholz says: “Helen Brook didn’t just want to reduce illegal abortions. This archive shows just how determined she was to help young people avoid unwanted pregnancies at a time when increasing numbers of young girls, in particular, were entering higher education. She saw knowledge about contraception as a crucial way to maintain professional opportunities for women.”
Taking on the ‘Tut-tutting’
When the Board grew nervous that these sessions could result in ‘bad press’, they recommended that Brook set up an ad-hoc trust, using the clinic’s premises, for a few years to mitigate the risks. Dr Faith Spicer, who ran the sessions, assured the Board that they were targeting young students (18–19 years old on average) who were in stable relationships but unable to marry for financial reasons.
Like Brook, Faith Spicer strategically emphasised the commitment of young people and their desire to marry in the foreseeable future to align her work with the older sexual values of the FPA and Marie Stopes. The board unanimously agreed on the clinic’s value and subsidised the project but asked that it be ‘not publicised in the Press’.
Helen Brook didn’t appear to take this request too seriously. In November 1963, she told the Daily Mirror: ‘Tut-tutting will not bring down the illegitimate birth rate figures. Contraceptive and correct sex knowledge will’. And in June 1964, the newspaper welcomed BAC in an article entitled ‘Full mark[s] to this sex-help clinic for the teenage lovers’.
These developments fuelled a fierce debate among FPA members, some of whom feared that providing contraceptive advice to unmarried girls would ‘open the doors to wholesale national fornication’.
Keen to distance itself from youth sexuality, the FPA decided not to develop such a service itself but instead tasked Helen Brook to do so. Helped by an anonymous donation of £5,000 a year over three years, the first Brook Advisory Centre officially opened in July 1964 and quickly gained the support of the Labour-led London County Council.
