Prejudice in Power Displays in UCL Student Centre | Image Credits

Welcome to the "Prejudice in Power" installation in UCL Student Centre. As you enter the building from Gordon Street, the panel to the left is the Southside panel; the panel to the right is the Northside panel. We’ve had a lot of interest in the images across the top of the displays. We thought we’d provide more information about them and describe why we included these in the display. (Credit for the contemporary materials is provided on the displays and on the backings.) We didn't want this material distracting from the work of our co-creators and artists.

Southside panel (moving left to right along the top)

What is Eugenics? (1928) book cover

Credit: Leonard Darwin (1928) book, What is Eugenics? Copy from private collection.

Why? This book sold in large quantities. Darwin was Chairman of the Eugenics Society (1911-1928). Darwin was not associated with UCL. The Eugenics Society was an open membership British organisation consisting of medical professionals, mental health professionals, civil servants, and academics. After The Gret War, commercial writers, such as Darwin, were more effective and more aggressive promoting eugenics policies than university programme directors, such as Karl Pearson. Ronald Fisher was a close friend of Leonard Darwin, and he transferred to the Eugenics Society key responsibilities he had as Director of the Eugenics Laboratory.

“Commercial Ability and Liberal Thought,” pedigree

Credit: UCL Science Collections GALT398(3). Published in Eugenics Laboratory, (1912) “Section VIIβ Ability,” pp. 72-78, in Karl Pearson (ed.) (1912) Treasury of Human Inheritance, volume 1. The image is published as plates XXII and XXIII with figure legend, pp. 74-75.

Why? Eugenicists were obsessed with family trees, which they called pedigrees. Pedigrees compressed a huge amount of information about personal characteristics in an effort to find patterns. They gave eugenicists a tool for making inferences about patterns across generations. Pedigrees overemphasized the role of genetics and ignored environment, development, privilege, and advantage when tracing how things were "passed down in families". This image is part of an anonymous human pedigree tracking patterns of inheritance for “ability above the average, especially in business,” “liberal in religious thought,” “liberal in political thought,” “tuberculosis,” “other anomalies,” and “convivial fond of good living, self indulgent”. It’s hard to know whether the author of the study considered these qualities to be genetic or behavioural in nature. But it shows clearly how prejudice and cultural assumptions entered into seemingly objective research.

This work appears in an otherwise highly technical volume about inheritance of medical conditions. It mimics those biological studies and seems carefully inserted here for referencing later. Pearson was in full control of this editorship, and he avoided external scrutiny.

Galton family in drawing room, silhouette, 1837

Credit: UCL Science Collections GALT353.

Why? Silhouettes were familiar decorations for Georgian and Victorian white, middle class Britons. Long before the invention of photography, these provided memorable representations of friends and family. They were relatively inexpensive to make. They usually were created by girls and women as a way to show artistic refinement. Sometimes they were the only representation for a person that a family had, so they might become cherished objects. Represented in this portion of the silhouette are Erasmus Galton, brother to Francis (1815-1909) (left), Emma Sophia Galton, sister (1811-1904) (centre), and Elizabeth Anne Galton, sister (1808-1906) (right).

Lantern slide of fingerprint, 1878-92

Credit: UCL Science Collections GALT387.

Why? Francis Galton had interests in many subjects. His key contribution in most of these was to introduce systematic data collection and quantitative analysis. He described this as being "scientific", as when he described eugenics as a “science of good breeding”. Galton’s contribution to the study of fingerprints was to introduce quantitative methods of pattern recognition. One reason he encouraged “Anthropometric Laboratories” was to collect data in real settings from volunteers so he could use those methods to separate real patterns from noise. Galton did the same when collecting data on other physical features and physical performance.

Letter to Karl Pearson regarding Brunsviga calculating machine, 18 October 1920

Credit: UCL Special Collections Pearson-11-1-2-133.

Why? Calculating machines were the hi-tech computing tools of their day. Pearson was proud when he found enough money to purchase the latest and most sophisticated devices both for research and teaching. Several of these historical devices remain in UCL Science Collections and in UCL Department of Statistical Sciences. In several of his portraits, Pearson is pictured proudly standing over one of his favourite devices. Students were taught to use them quickly and accurately. Pearson’s research teams included “calculators,” a skilled job normally at an assistant level and normally done by women. Pearson employed many women in his research teams, several for much of their long careers.

Northside panel (moving left to right along the top)

“Diagram showing the method of pairing in an allotetraploid species…”

Credit: Darlington (1932) Recent Advances in Cytology, page 206, figure 73. Copy from private collection.

Why? Cyril Darlington (1903-1981) was an English biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist. He helped to discover the mechanics of chromosome crossover, a process that exchanges genetic materials and can result in significant mutations and evolution. This figure shows crossing over as a general process. Darlington was a talented cell biologist (cytologist). He also was an overt racist who presented pseudoscientific arguments against activities such as multiethnic marriages.

Proposed Architectural Plans for Francis Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics, circa 1911

Credit: UCL Special Collections Pearson-4-9-1-lab-design.

Why? Francis Galton died in 1911, leaving a bequest to UCL large enough to fund a professorship and support much of the work of a research team. In 1911, as had long been planned at UCL, Karl Pearson was appointed as Francis Galton Professor of Eugenics, and the university reorganised to give Pearson near complete independence as a head of department. Building on the momentum of these changes, Pearson led a fundraising campaign for a new facility to house his teams. UCL fully backed this campaign. The campaign failed to raise enough money for a whole separate building, but monies raised were added to a similar project related to creating a school of architecture. The end result was the building now known as North-West Wing at UCL. After The Great War, this housed both the School of Architecture and Pearson’s Department of Applied Statistics and Eugenics. The architectural plans here show Pearson working closely with architects and planners to design the proposed new building for the fundraising campaign.

“Pattern of causes of mental deficiency in patients of all ages,” Lionel Penrose lecture notes, circa 1950

Credit: UCL Special Collections, Penrose Papers 2/45/6, page 5.

Why? From lecture notes by Lionel Penrose as part of a course in eugenics at UCL, circa early 1950s. Penrose was making the point that very little of a character’s final manifestation in a person is determined by single genes. This was a technical criticism about eugenics: characters are not as simple to manage as eugenicists fantasized. Penrose taught a postgraduate module titled “Eugenics” beginning in the 1945-1946 session. He changed the title to “Human Genetics” in the 1952-1953 session, and then to “Human Population Genetics and Clinical Genetics” in the 1957-58 session.

Eugenics messaging from “Shall I Marry This Man?”

Albert Edward Wiggam (1927), “Shall I Marry This Man?” Good Housekeeping 84 (June): 28+. Illustrations by T.D. Skidmore. Copy from private collection.

Why? Eugenicists within universities were far less prominent in middle class British life than eugenicists who used popular culture. The commercial US writer, Albert Edward Wiggam is a good example of an effective communicator about eugenics. This image was part of an advice article in a magazine tailored for young middle class cis white women. It focuses on their decisions around who to marry. It carries a direct eugenics message: when you marry a man, it said, you marry a pedigree; beware of hidden flaws and make decisions for the best of your future line. Eugenicists concentrated their campaigning on control of women’s behaviour.

“Distribution of cephalic indices for series of men in Central Europe”

Credit: Geoffroy Morant (1939) The Races of Central Europe, figure 5, page 58. Copy from private collection.

Why? Morant was part of the research community at UCL in statistics and eugenics. His book is a closely argued criticism of Nazi racial policies built on the idea that “German-speaking peoples” were a distinct biological race. Morant showed this was far from the case and that European race science was nonsense. His book was promoted by anti-eugenicists at a time when race science (really, racist pseudoscience) was underpinning horrific actions in all Axis countries.

“Pearson's model of underlying variables”

Credit: Donald MacKenzie (1981) Statistics in Britain 1865-1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, page 157, Figure 2.

Why? Pearson developed statistical tools focused on correlation and measures for gauging the strength of correlations. This image is a theoretical trace meant to illustrate how the distribution of two different features might exist in relation to each other. For the sake of simplicity, the x-axis and y-axis are drawn so that the centre of the 'bell' is directly above their mutual zero-point. Eugenicists often worked in with abstractions such as this ignoring the impacts of their thinking on the victims of their discrimination.

Arrangement of cress seeds to illustrate Law of Frequency and Error – Francis Galton, 1875

Credit: UCL Science Collections GALT029.

Why? Francis Galton was forever in search of real data to apply his statistical methods. In this case, he collected some cress seeds, then sorted them by size. The arrangements were then studied for a mathematical pattern. The search for real data in real world situations lead Galton to develop his testing platform, which he grandly titled an “Anthropometric Laboratory” in which volunteers (normally, people who paid or volunteered for admission) performed a series of physical tests, such as holding a weight or jumping a length.

“Stable genetical equilibrium in a population with fully assortative mating and strongly negative correlation between intelligence and family size”

Credit: Lionel Penrose (1959) Outline of Human Genetics, page 117, figure 18. Copy from private collection.

Why? This figure appears in a textbook about human genetics. Penrose was illustrating the point that eugenics - run on the terms eugenicists set themselves - won’t succeed. This is due to the genetics principle of heterozygosity in which “carriers” of a recessive allele do not always manifest the condition sought. The language “normals”, “morons”, and “imbeciles” is offensive to us today, and it was antiquated in 1959, too. At the same time, Penrose was a champion of rights for all people regardless of such classifications. His main point in the figure was that eugenics was poor science as well as inhumane policy.

Author: Professor Joe Cain, UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS)