Ruth Darwin

Who was Ruth Darwin?

Ruth Frances Darwin CBE was Commissioner of the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency and an advocate of eugenics.

She was the middle child and elder daughter of Sir Horace Darwin, through whom she was a granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Her mother, The Hon. Ida Farrer, was the daughter of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer. Her younger sister Nora, later became Lady Barlow after marrying Sir Alan Barlow, 2nd Baronet, while her elder brother Erasmus was killed during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915

She was appointed to the Board of Control, as an unpaid member, in 1921, replacing Ellen Pinsent

In 1929, with money from the estate of her father who had died in 1928, she founded the Darwin Trust to foster research into "mental defect, disease or disorder".

In 1932 she was appointed to the Brock Committee that produced the Brock Report that called for the forced sterilisation of "mental defectives"

She was awarded the CBE in 1938. In 1948, she married the Welsh psychiatrist William Rees-Thomas, who was a colleague of hers on the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency. She retired from the Board of Control in 1949. She died in 1972, predeceasing her husband.