The Unexpurgated Case Against Women Suffrage

Sir Almroth Edward Wright (1861-1947) was a British bacteriologist and immunologist of mixed Anglo-Irish and Swedish descent. He is notable for developing a system of anti-typhoid fever inoculation, recognizing early on that antibiotics would create resistant bacteria, and being a strong advocate for preventive medicine. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with first class honours in modern literature, simultaneously graduating in medicine in 1893, and went on to work with the British armed forces to develop vaccines and promote immunisation. In 1902 he started a research department at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London where he developed the system of anti-typhoid inoculation and during WWI he established a laboratory attached to the British Expeditionary Force’s hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer. He returned to St Mary’s after the war where he remained until his retirement in 1946. Over the course of his career he received many honours, including a knighthood, and was nominated 14 times for the Nobel prize from 1906-25. Wright was strongly opposed to women’s suffrage, arguing that women’s brains were innately different from men’s and were not constituted to deal with social and public issues. His arguments were most fully expounded in this book published in 1913 in which he vigorously opposes the professional development of women. The book includes as an Appendix a letter he had published in The Times in March 1912 on ’Militant Hysteria’. Rebecca West and May Sinclair both wrote articles criticizing Wright’s opposition to women’s suffrage, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman satirized his opposition in her novel Herland. Wright was a close friend of fellow-Irishman George Bernard Shaw who immortalised him as Sir Colenso Ridgeon in The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), but Shaw, who campaigned for women’s suffrage, strongly disagreed with Wright on the subject of women’s brains and dismissed his views as absurd. 3