Eugenics, socialism and artificial insemination: the public career of Herbert Brewer

Abstract

The article considers the life and work of autodidact eugenist Herbert Brewer (1897–1968). He promoted ‘eutelegenesis’ (artificial insemination for eugenic purposes) from the nineteen-thirties to the nineteen-sixties. Brewer also tried to reconcile the views of eugenists and socialists. Using his correspondence with the Eugenics Society, and published and unpublished pro-eugenics literature, the article regards Brewer as far from successful in these tasks. But it argues throughout that eutelegenesis and reform eugenics were a revival of Francis Galton's original doctrine and that socialist eugenics is intellectually coherent. Fuller details about Brewer are given than in previous scholarship.

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