Eugenics, insanity and feeblemindedness : British Columbia's sterilization policy from 1933-1943
Date
1995
Authors
Wosilius, Monica
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Abstract
This thesis looks at the people who were sterilized from British Columbia's Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, pursuant to British Columbia's 1933 sterilization act. This study examines the early period of sterilization policy from 1933-1943. In particular, this thesis looks at how patients, their families, physicians, and social welfare workers all were involved in the implementation of social policy. Sterilization resulted from the culmination of numerous inter-related issues such as eugenics, morality, medical practices and perceptions of proper motherhood. Issues of race, class, gender and sexuality contributed to the discourses of insanity and feeblemindedness and led to the selection of sterilization candidates.
Proponents of the social control model have argued that physicians and middle-class reformers attempted to control the reproduction of those deemed "unfit". These scholars generally have looked at a singular issue such as race or class in the social control of the lower and working-classes. Patients and their families are often portrayed as middle-class reformers. Even though sterilization was a social control policy, implemented in order to preserve racial hygiene through selective breeding, patients and their families, at times, were able to negotiate, redefine and/or reject sterilization policy. Thus a more nuanced approach is taken in the analysis of patient case files that includes issues of race, class, gender and sexuality. Furthermore, generational and gender conflict within and between various social groups is examined in order to show that families did not always share similar interests. Implementation of sterilization policy required compromise and a flexible notion of existing social welfare policies on the part of mental health professionals, patients, and their families.