“People want to know these same things about venereal and other infringements of social hygiene and I cannot tell them… our general principles are more and more widely accepted, but when I tell a man, the average man with the family of five that he pays an annual veneral tax of 850 I want to be able to prove it to him.”
President of Connecticut Society for Social Hygiene, Dr. Wm. H. Carmalt, New Haven, 1914
The Watkinson Library at Trinity College recently acquired the Hartford Medical Society Collection in the fall of 2023. Within this collection contains the Connecticut Society for Social Hygiene scrapbooks. The scrapbook contains multiple”positive eugenics” pamphlets published by the organization centered on promoting the mental “fitness” and biological procreation.
Thomas Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn’s father, was the secretary of the organization, as well as prominent board members of Connecticut’s academic and social spheres, including American Eugenics Society founder, Irving Fisher. The Connecticut Society for Social Hygiene lauded itself as a progressive organization and focused on dismantling the taboos associate with sex education and the prevention of venereal disease. The pamphlets were translated into Italian, French, and Polish, and were divided among gendered lines.
Connecticut Society for Social Hygiene, Hartford Medical Society Records, Watkinson Library, Trinity College.
