No. 18 - A Helping Hand

1930's issues of Health and Strength magazine.

Physical Culture

In Until the Real Thing Comes Along, Malcolm Trevelyan, a young man struggling with his sexuality, found it hard to get advice regarding his predicament.

Malcolm's predicament.

But, there was at least one publication which a young man struggling with his sexuality might have turned to. Health and Strength, a magazine established in 1898, was ‘the official organ of the Health and Strength League’ and it was mainstream enough for respectable companies such as Hovis and Ovaltine to advertise in it. What could be more wholesome and reliable than a magazine devoted to clean living physical culture?

There had been a growing movement surrounding physical culture since the late 19th Century and its figureheads, bodybuilders such as the American Charles Atlas and the German Eugen Sandow, had become household names. Often the front cover of the magazine would feature a young woman, always respectably covered up, or a young man wearing as little as possible to show off his impressive physique to the best advantage.

Members of the Health and Strength League from the People's Palace Physical Culture Club, Mile End, East London.

Alongside articles on bodybuilding and weightlifting, its pages featured others warning young men of the dire consequences of sin and immorality and offering advice on how to deal with problems such as ‘exhausting night losses’. Not all the problems were sexual - it gave advice on diabetes, asthma, nasal catarrh - anything the readers were concerned enough to ask about - and there is something admirable about that. The magazine openly discussed problems that would have been the cause of anxiety for many young people, but considered by many too vulgar or embarrassing to share. It should be credited for not avoiding sexual issues in a world which offered very little in the way of practical help - in that way it was ahead of its time.

A Helping Hand

Had a desperate Malcolm purchased a copy he could have read articles confirming that his attraction towards his own sex was abnormal, and that the 'self-abuse' he practised was ill-advised - a symptom or maybe even the cause of his 'neurasthenia'. But it would also have reassured him that a cure was possible so that he could lead the pure and normal life of a healthy young man. He would have been able to write in with his specific worries and enter correspondence which, although likely to be published as a case study, would remain anonymous.

However, whatever his intention in buying the magazine, he might have got more for his threepence than he bargained for. Although designed to satisfy the legions of weightlifters and bodybuilders who aspired to develop a ‘manly’ physique, Health and Strength would almost certainly have appealed to another audience. Women may have featured on many of its covers, but there weren’t that many to be found inside. Most of the photos were of male ‘Leaguers’, proudly flexing their muscles. They were offered prizes for stripping off and mimicking the poses of classical statues. For someone engaged in a futile battle against his homosexuality, the messages could hardly be more mixed. Alongside advice on how to suppress his immoral thoughts and behaviour, Malcolm would have been presented with a great opportunity to look at photos of naked and near-naked young men in prime condition, albeit tame stuff by the standards of today.

Health and Strength League lapel badge.

There was a ‘Leaguers’ Rendezvous’ section where they could find like-minded members to go camping with or whatever - mostly innocent I dare say, but very helpful to those inclined towards misbehaviour under canvas in some remote beauty spot. The magazine potentially inspired, aided and abetted the very things its experts endeavoured to cure. While their words aimed to dampen down the baser instincts of confused young men, the pictures could only have inflamed them.

We might snigger at the sexual misinformation issued in the past, from figures we picture as being grey men like Mr Cholmondley-Warner from The Harry Enfield Show, but closer examination of the views of some of those behind the advice can lead us to ideas that are not remotely funny.

Health and Morality

In the 1930’s one major contributor was Thomas Bowen Partington, who was described in a Daily Mirror article as ‘the famous health authority’, elsewhere as the ‘well-known public health and morality lecturer’, the ‘famous public health lecturer’ and, more frighteningly as, ‘official lecturer, Ministry of Health’. His real expertise seems to have related to trade with China, but after the Great War, on his return from his navy posting in Hong Kong, he somehow became a member of the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases.

Partington wanted to shine a beam of light into the darkness of ignorance, but his faith and ‘common sense’ didn’t equip him with much of a torch. He advised on sexuality with an authority based on his own beliefs - his knowledge of the science of it was something left to the reader to assume. Partington was an advocate of sex education for children, a relatively enlightened view for the time, but I dread to think what that education would have comprised of - the usual attacks on ‘self-abuse’, homosexuality and ‘sex mania’.

A Dark Turn

In 1926, Partington’s pursuit of physical culture of healthy minds and bodies for the nation took a sinister turn. In John Bull he wrote, “Crime (which I regard as a form of insanity), imbecility and insanity are on the increase…Criminals, drunkards, paupers, prostitutes, and the feeble-minded may marry. Such a union is a crime against society, an insult to the holy estate of marriage, and a curse to future generations.”

A 1926 John Bull sketch (British Newspaper Archive)

Then he proposed a solution that chills the blood: “the enactment of adequate laws regulating the marriage of certain classes and depriving the hereditary degenerates of the creative function.” Without specifying any names he went on to say, “The ablest doctors in the land and the leaders in great social movements are rapidly committing themselves to the opinion that all the worst cases of hereditary degeneracy should be deprived of their creative function.” John Bull cautiously pointed out that the views of the contributor were not necessarily those of the magazine.

Partington in the 1935 Halloween Daily Mirror (British Newspaper Archive)

In a 1935 Daily Mirror article Partington argued that couples shouldn’t be permitted to get married simply because they were ‘in love’. “With crime, imbecility and insanity increasing, thinking people are beginning to see that the only reasonable solution to the problem is to stop the production among all undesirable classes.”

As a ‘homosexual’ Malcolm was technically a criminal and therefore, according to Partington, insane. Although undoubtedly part of an 'undesirable class,' he would not become a threat to the gene pool, unless ironically, he were to suppress his nature and try to live the ‘normal’ life Partington advocated, a life that he insisted could still be achieved with his guidance. He was perhaps not a person who should have been advising on morality in a physical culture magazine, just as he shouldn’t have been writing in the national press about arranging for ‘undesirable classes’ to be ‘deprived of their creative function’. I believe they call that eugenics.

It is no surprise that Partington's columns were not a feature of national newspapers from 1939 onwards. After the Second World War, Partington confined himself to delivering lectures on the time he spent in China and other Asian countries.

A Worrying Conclusion

When it comes to eugenics and government involvement in morality, until recently, I might have reassured myself that this was a problem of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Surely nothing like this could possibly happen in these more enlightened times, the lessons of Nazi Germany having been learnt the hard way. Given who is in power in the United States and who would like to be in power in the United Kingdom, I no longer feel reassured.