Marie Stopes facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Marie Stopes
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Stopes in 1918
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Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes
15 October 1880 Edinburgh, Scotland
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| Died | 2 October 1958 (aged 77) Dorking, Surrey, England
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| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | Harry Stopes-Roe |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Palaeobotany |
| Institutions | University of Manchester |
Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and coal classification, and was the first female academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes founded the first free clinic in Britain, where all married women could learn about reproductive health.
In 1925, the Mothers' Clinic moved to Central London, where it remains as of 2015[update]. Stopes gradually built up a small network of clinics across Britain, working to fund them. She opened clinics in Leeds in April 1934; Aberdeen in October 1934; Belfast in October 1936; Cardiff in October 1937; and Swansea in January 1943.
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Early life and education
Stopes was born in Edinburgh. Her father, Henry Stopes, was a brewer, engineer, architect and palaeontologist from Colchester. Her mother was Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, a Shakespearean scholar and women's rights campaigner from Edinburgh. At six weeks old, her parents took Stopes from Scotland; the family stayed briefly in Colchester then moved to London, where in 1880 her father bought 28 Cintra Park in Upper Norwood. Both of her parents were members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where they had met. At an early age, she was exposed to science and was taken to meetings where she met the famous scholars of the day. At first, she was home-schooled, but from 1892 to 1894 she attended St George's School for Girls in Edinburgh. Stopes was later sent to the North London Collegiate School, where she was a close friend of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn.
Stopes primarily focused on her science career in her 20s and 30s. Stopes attended the University of London in 1900, at University College London as a scholarship student, where she studied botany and geology; she graduated with a first class B.Sc. in 1902 after only two years by attending both day and night schools at Birkbeck, University of London.
Stopes' father died in 1902 leaving her family in financial ruin. Her paleobotany professor, Dr. Francis Oliver, took her under his wing and hired her as his research assistant in early 1903. This is what sparked her interest in paleobotany, building a platform to begin her career.
Dr. Oliver was on the verge of debatably one of the greatest finds in paleobotany when he took Stopes on as a research assistant. Initially, it was thought that most of the fossil plants found in Carboniferous Coal Measures were ferns, Stopes was tasked to find the specimens that showed better connection with the seeds of fern fronds. It was discovered that some of the "ferns" bore seeds. "Seed ferns" became known and recognized as the missing link between ferns and conifers. They later became known as the pteridosperm. She was provided the opportunity to work with the world’s leading experts in paleobotany at the time. Within the same year she won the Gilchrist scholarship from University College London, with the help of Dr. Oliver and her geology professor, Edmund Garwood who provided incredible references.
Following this, Stopes earned a D.Sc. degree from University College London, becoming the youngest person in Britain to have done so. In 1903 she published a study of the botany of the recently dried-up Ebbsfleet River. After carrying out research on Carboniferous plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and at University College, London, she put the money she received from the Gilchrist Scholarship towards a year's worth of funding her study on the reproduction of living cycads at the University of Munich. There, she worked with Karl Goebel, who was a leading paleobotanist on cycads. Stopes used this study as her doctoral dissertation, she presented her dissertation in German and received a PhD in botany in 1904. She was, in 1904, one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and was appointed a demonstrator in order to teach students. She was also a fellow and occasional lecturer in paleobotany at University College, London until 1920.
Scientific research
Stopes worked as Lecturer in Paleobotany at the Victoria University of Manchester from 1904 to 1910; in this capacity she became the first female academic of that university.
During Stopes' time at Manchester, she studied coal and coal balls and researched the collection of Glossopteris (Permian seed ferns).
In 1907, Stopes spent eighteen months at the Imperial University, Tokyo and explored coal mines on Hokkaido for fossilized plants. Stopes managed to discover many important fossils, such as the Cretaceous angiosperm floras, which she wrote about in her 1909 article “Plant containing nodules from Japan” for the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London. She also published her Japanese experiences as a diary, called "Journal from Japan: a daily record of life as seen by a scientist", in 1910.
In 1910, the Geological Survey of Canada commissioned Stopes to determine the age of the Fern Ledges, a geological structure at Saint John, New Brunswick. In mid-1912 she delivered her results, finding for the Pennsylvanian period of the Carboniferous. The Government of Canada published her results in 1914.
During the First World War, Stopes was engaged in studies of coal for the British government, which culminated in the writing of "Monograph on the constitution of coal" with R.V. Wheeler in 1918. The success of Stopes' work on marriage issues led her to reduce her scholarly work; her last scientific publications were in 1935.
The Marie Stopes International organisation
The Mothers' Clinics continued to operate after Stopes' death, but by the early 1970s they were in financial difficulties and in 1975 they went into voluntary receivership. Marie Stopes International was established a year later as an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on reproductive health. The global partnership took over responsibility for the main clinic, and in 1978 it began its work overseas in New Delhi, India. Since then the organisation has grown steadily; today it works in 37 countries (2019), has 452 clinics and has offices in London, Brussels, Melbourne and in the US.
Literary life
Stopes wrote poems, plays, and novels; during the First World War she wrote increasingly didactic plays. Her first major success was Our Ostriches. The play ran for three months at the Royal Court Theatre. Stopes produced two other plays for the London stage, "Don't Tell Timothy" and "Buckie's Bears", a children's Christmas pageant, allegedly dictated by her son, Henry Roe-Stopes, produced annually between 1931 and 1936.
In collaboration with Joji Sakurai, Stopes produced a translation of three Japanese plays Plays of Old Japan: The Nō in 1913.
Stopes published several volumes of poetry, including Man and Other Poems (1913), Love Songs for Young Lovers (1939), Oriri (1940), and Joy and Verity (1952). She also published a novel, Love's Creation (1928), under the semi-pseudonym "Marie Carmichael".
Personal life
In 1918 she married Humphrey Verdon Roe. Their son, Harry Stopes-Roe, was born in 1924.
In 1923, Marie Stopes bought the Old Higher Lighthouse on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, as an escape from the difficult climate of London during her court case against Halliday Sutherland. The island's Jurassic fossil forests provided her with endless interest. She founded and curated the Portland Museum, which opened in 1930.
Stopes died on 2 October 1958, aged 77, from breast cancer at her home in Dorking, Surrey. Her will left her clinic to the Eugenics Society; most of her estate went to the Royal Society of Literature. Her son Harry received her copy of the Greater Oxford Dictionary and other small items. An English Heritage blue plaque commemorates Stopes at 28 Cintra Park, Upper Norwood, where she lived from 1880 to 1892.
See also
In Spanish: Marie Stopes para niños
