Wright (née Lowenfeld), Helena Rosa (1887-1982), birth control pioneer

Correspondence, papers and photographs: personal and re family planning movement, 1920s-1970s, and alternative medicine, 1970s.

1908-1982

3 boxes 1 oversize box

The papers are arranged by section as follows:

A. Biographical and family [1½ boxes, 1 outsize volume]

B. Career and Family Planning Movement [1 box]

C. Alternative Medicine [½ box]

The papers were received from Dr Barbara Evans, author of Freedom to Choose: The Life and Work of Dr Helena Wright, Pioneer of Contraception (1984), with a few items from the surviving family, between 1986 and 1995. It is clear that this collection represents a rather small residue of Dr Wright's papers, and it is known that she destroyed records from her practice on retirement. The papers include some items created or added by Dr Evans, presumably in the process of accumulating material for her biography of Dr Wright.
Copies of publications by Helena Wright received with these papers have been transferred to the Modern Medicine collection of the library at Wellcome Collection.

Helena Wright was born in 1887. She trained at the London School of Medicine for Women, qualifying as MRCS (Eng.) and LRCP (Lond.) in 1914, and MB, BS in 1915. She subsequently worked at the Bethnal Green Hospital, where she met her husband Peter Wright, a Royal Army Medical Corps surgeon. After the First World War she and her husband decided to become medical missionaries in China, working at the Shantung Christian University in Tsinan until 1927.

Following her return to England, Wright became an influential figure in the National Birth Control Association, later the Family Planning Association. She wrote several much reprinted works of popular sex instruction, including The Sex Factor in Marriage (1930). During her later years she became interested in alternative medicine and the paranormal, and there is a small amount of material in this collection which reflects this interest. She died in 1982.

For further details of Wright's life and career see her entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (1996) and Dr Barbara Evans' biography Freedom to Choose: The Life and Work of Dr Helena Wright, Pioneer of Contraception (1984).

At Wellcome Collection: Related collections include the papers of the Family Planning Association (SA/FPA); the Eugenics Society (SA/EUG); the Abortion Law Reform Association (SA/ALR); Marie C Stopes (PP/MCS); and E F Griffith (PP/EFG). The papers of Philip Rainsford and Barbara Evans, PP/PRE/J, contain Barbara Evans's materials for her biography of Wright. At other repositories: The papers of Helena Wright's sister, Margaret Lowenfeld, are held at the Centre for Family Research, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF, email:cfr-admin@lists.cam.ac.uk.

Retained by family

This collection has been catalogued and is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records.

PP/HRW/A.15, Portrait photo of Helena Rosa Wright as young woman, L29694