Joan Malleson Historic Abortion Campaigner Lecture Old Cambridge Poster

CHAU3349  A large 24" x 18" poster for a lecture at Cambridge which it seems Dr Joan Malleson, Dame Louise McIlroy, and two other speakers were all lecturing about abortion.  The two main speakers were highly controversial - please see the web and details of they campaigning etc - It is undated but I think it is 1930s - I can only scan in two sections as its so big - so the gallery image is the second half and image 1 is the top half - I still have not been able to quite show it in full due to the width too big too -  it has a few folds which is how I will send but otherwise great condition.

Joan Graeme Malleson (née Billson; 4 June 1899 14 May 1956) was an English physician, specialist in contraception and prominent advocate of the legalisation of abortion. In 1931, while working for Ealing Borough Council, she became one of the first British doctors to provide birth control advice on behalf of a local authority. Malleson shared a practice with her close friend and colleague, Dr Cecile Booysen, which ended with Booysen's death in 1937. In 1935 she published The Principles of Contraception, a practical guide. She became a member of the executive committee of the National Birth Control Association (later the Family Planning Association).  In 1936 the Abortion Law Reform Association was started by Alice Jenkins and Janet Chance. Malleson was amongst its more influential supporters. She courted controversy by supporting the campaign to reform the abortion law. In 1938 she precipitated one of the most influential cases in British abortion law when she referred a pregnant fourteen-year-old rape victim to gynaecologist Aleck Bourne. He performed an abortion, then illegal, and was put on trial for it; the King v Alek Bourne trial. Malleson gave evidence at the trial and Bourne's acquittal set a precedent that doctors could not be prosecuted for performing an abortion in similar circumstances.Malleson was also a supporter of eugenics and member of the Eugenics Society. In 1950 she was appointed head of the contraceptive clinic at University College Hospital.

This came from the private collection from the estate of Doctor Elston Grey-Turner CBE MC TD (16 August 1916 20 January 1984) who was a British medical doctor who served in World War II and was on the staff of the British Medical Association for many years. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as regimental medical officer to the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards 19421945. He was awarded the Territorial Decoration, and also the Military Cross.