How Marie Stopes, Edinburgh-born sexual revolutionary, blew the doors off Britain's bedrooms – Susan Morrison

Dr Marie Stopes elevated sex to a medical necessity to the outrage of censors, the government and others – and the delight of many

Edinburgh’s New Town isn’t the first place that springs to mind as the birthplace of a sexual revolutionary. A bit too respectable. So it is mildly surprising that perhaps Britain's most influential sex expert was born in Abercromby Place in 1880. Her name was Marie Stopes, and in 1918, she published Married Love, the book that blew the nation's bedroom doors off.

It was a no-holds-barred look at how to keep a marriage happy, and Stopes made no bones about it, joyful matrimonial friskiness was utterly essential. As she writes in chapter ten, “each coming together of man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure.”

It was the ‘50 Shades’ of its day. It literally flew off the presses of Fifield & Co. Copies were discreetly acquired from the publisher and passed around by ladies who wished to be better informed. The advice, if a little flowery, was frank. Timing was of the essence. Men had to pay at least “ten to 20 minutes of actual physical union" for women’s maximum satisfaction. She doesn’t say how she arrived at this figure, but it does lead to the alarming image of Dr Stopes standing stoically by a bedside with a stopwatch in her hand.

Dr Marie Stopes with her husband Humphrey Verdon Roe and their son Harry Stopes-Roe in 1933 (Picture: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Annulled marriage

Armed with such knowledge, Stopes assured her readers that “the pair will reach from the physical foundations of its bodies to the heavens where its head is crowned with stars”. Not surprisingly, it caused an uproar in Britain, was condemned by the church and promptly banned by the Americans for 20 years.

Stopes didn’t care. She had written the book because, as she herself said, her own marriage foundered because of what she described as “sex-ignorance”. She had married Canadian geneticist Reginald Ruggles Gates in 1911. The marriage was annulled after three years on the grounds of non-consummation.

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Astonishingly, therefore, when she was laying down the laws for sex in marriage, she was theoretically a virgin, with no sexual experience. Where would she have acquired such knowledge? The notion of a woman having any sort of relationship outside or – heaven forbid – before marriage was unthinkable. Her readers didn’t care. After all, this was sex elevated to a medical necessity, and the author was not just any woman, but a doctor.

Stopes was indeed a doctor, but not of medicine. She was a paleobotanist. Her research lay in the field of fossilised plants, and she was brilliant. She became the first woman appointed to a scientific post at the University of Manchester. Her work was highly respected.

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Leprosy excuse

In 1907, the Royal Society granted her funds to study plant-containing nodules in coal seams on Hokkaido. A tremendous honour, and it also allowed her to reunite with what she thought was her true love, Japanese professor Kuyiro Fujii.

They met and apparently fell in love in 1904. Marie clearly believed that he would leave his wife and child to marry her. Of course, he didn’t. As she sailed to Japan, his letters to her grew cooler by the mile. Finally, he refused to see her, claiming he had leprosy, which is quite the good-bye statement. He didn’t. He died at the age of 86.

That relationship seriously soured, and we have no way of knowing if it ever moved beyond steamy glances over fossilised ferns, but there is the tantalising possibility that Stopes knew exactly what married women should expect in the bedroom. It could also explain why Gates, her first husband, declared that his wife was “super-sexed to a degree that was almost pathological”. Did she, shockingly, know more than him?

Racy silent film

In the 1920s, Stopes found a new way to her audience. The silver screen. In 1923 she co-wrote the silent hit, Married Love, a tale of a young woman thrown out by her father, finding work as a maid to the educated middle classes and discovering that the secret to a happy marriage is a small, planned family.

It was racy stuff. Naturally, the authorities meddled immediately. The Board of Censors demanded changes, even to the name of the film. It was to be known as Maisie's Marriage. This fooled precisely no one. A quarter page advert for Sheffield’s Page Hall Cinema boldly announced that this film was written by Dr Marie Stopes and asks would-be customers “Can YOU guess?” the film's real title.

The Home Office threw a temper tantrum and tried to get the cuts and the title enforced, but failed. By November of that year, the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald openly advertised Married Love, 6.30 and 9.30. The tickets were 9d or a shilling.

Letters to Hitler

Two more books were added to complete the Stopes Trilogy. Wise Parenthood and Radiant Motherhood, manuals addressing birth control and parenting advice. This time Stopes knew what she was talking about. The very day that Married Love was published in 1918, she met Humphrey Roe, and married him only two months later. Things appear to have been far more satisfactory, physically. Stopes gave birth to their son, Henry. Not surprisingly, she doted on him.

Stopes created yet more fury when she opened the very first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921, and championed an effective contraceptive device for women, the cervical cap. Scotland’s fearless sexual liberator should be celebrated, but there is a very, very dark side to this woman.

She was a crashing snob, an enthusiastic eugenicist and sent gushing love notes to one Adolf Hitler. A show-down with a Dambuster nearly cost her a relationship with her son. Her legacy is so troubled that the very institution that bore her name, Marie Stopes International, rebranded in 2020 to MSI Reproductive Choices. We’ll catch up with that turbulent past at a later date.