Norman Haire

He was a feeling, thinking and doing man, equal parts hedonist and humanist; a tall, fat and flamboyant rationalist who was secretly homosexual and said blunt things in a beautiful voice.

He sought out Havelock Ellis who introduced him to key people in the fields of eugenics and sexual reform, including birth control pioneers Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and Charles and Bessie Drysdale from the Malthusian League.

In 1921 Haire became the chief honorary medical officer at their free birth-control clinic – the Walworth Women's Welfare Centre in East London.

Haire managed to combine his medical and theatrical talents and played a small part when Ivor Montagu directed a cast of his friends in a 1928 silent slapstick movie called Blue Bottles (British slang for police) which used innovative special effects.

The 'rejuvenation' craze appealed mostly to men and it was really only a vasectomy (women had their ovaries irradiated) but, until the medical claims were refuted, hopeful patients paid high fees to revitalise their sex lives or defer senility.

He returned to Australia, expecting to die or be an invalid but once he began using insulin he was able to resume his medical work in Macquarie Street, Sydney.

Editor, columnist and ex-parliamentarian Peter Coleman called Haire 'one of Australia's most famous free thinkers and sex reformers' and said the column in Woman was 'probably the most free-thinking series of articles ever written for a mass circulation magazine'.

Haire gave a list of his opponents to his lawyers but, amazingly, he did not believe the woman's charges were part of a 'premeditated plot' but said that, once his enemies and Ezra Norton's scandal sheet Truth found out, 'they decided to exploit it, and encouraged her to make the most of it'.

Four days before he was charged, The Sydney Morning Herald noted on 25 April that Haire had withdrawn from rehearsals for his much-acclaimed role as Sir Ralph Bonnington-Bloomfield at the Independent Theatre.

This was a brave stance when Australian newspapers refused to print the word "abortion" and substituted euphemisms such "an illegal operation" or "bringing on the periods".

He returned to London in 1946 and during most of his final years in Britain he bravely persevered in his quest to fine tune sexual morality so that individuals and communities could live as harmoniously as possible.

Haire's executors (his solicitor Philip Kimber and Lloyds Bank Ltd) felt it was in the public interest to ignore his will and destroy his papers.