Helena Rosa Wright (17 September 1887 – 21 March 1982) was an English pioneer and influential figure in birth control and family planning both in Britain and internationally.
Helena became renowned as an educator and also as a campaigner for government funded family planning services and became associated with international organisations promoting population control programmes.
Although almost penniless he soon became a wealthy businessman through a variety of ventures, including buying up rundown theatres in the West End of London and starting a brewery producing non-alcoholic beer in Fulham when the temperance movement had taken hold.
Her beliefs precluded her from joining the Royal Army Medical Corps but she worked as a civilian junior surgeon under military supervision at the Bethnal Green Hospital in east London.
Helena discovered Marie had been badly affected by losing a protracted libel action she had initiated against the Roman Catholic Church.
[1] This experience contrasted with Helena's visit to the Women's Centre in North Kensington where she met its founder the social reformer, Margery Spring Rice.
Following protracted discussions agreement was reached on establishing a single co-ordinating body on which the leading birth control practitioners would sit.
Despite Helena's best efforts, Marie Stopes' participation in the national association survived only until 1933 when she resigned from the executive committee having found her opinions on contraception increasingly ignored.
After obtaining charitable status for the NBCA in 1931, Helena worked with the medical committee which she now chaired to establish standards in the use of contraceptive devices and the safety of procedures and medicines.
She failed to persuade the War Office that the FPA should train medics but was able to offer her own support and a place to stay for women who became pregnant.
Helena worked closely with others, including Margaret Sanger, the American birth control campaigner, to promote the development of family planning programmes on a worldwide basis.
She continued to support the work of the IPPF, travelling abroad to conferences and to lecture including, for example, a visit to Sri Lanka in 1974 at the age of 87.
[7] In addition to mentioning her parents, childhood and education she talks about the British birth control movement in the 1930s and 40s, referencing Marie Stopes and Eva Hubback.
[1] Helen and Peter's work was not financially well rewarded, at least initially, and in the period following their return to England they found it a struggle to sustain a lifestyle at the level they had both been used to.
Helena had access to money from her mother's estate but they were also committed to supporting the private education of their four boys who all presented their parents and teachers with problems and challenges.
By 1955, the surprise success of Helena's book, The Sex Factor in Marriage, particularly in the US, provided much needed income to meet the rising costs of their larger house in London.
[4] She thought Christopher had strong extrasensory perception and at the time of his death her conviction in attending séances was reinforced as she reported receiving a 'message' from him and other deceased friends of hers.
This was a weekend retreat for Helena and her close friend Bruce McFarlane the medieval historian based nearby at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Helena died, age 95 in 1982 and was buried along with her sister, Margaret and alongside her cousin, Günther's wife, Claire Loewenfeld at the Church of St Lawrence, Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire.
[4] Around 1957 Helena initiated 'third party' adoptions by bringing together childless couples with mothers seeking abortions or being unable to look after their newborn children.
Although her actions were frowned on by local authority social workers who wanted her activities stopped they were deemed legal under the Adoption Act 1957.