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. With her husband she undertook missionary work in China for five years. She qualified as a medical doctor, later specialising in contraception medicine. 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. She was the author of several books and training guides on birth control, sex education and sex therapy.
Family background Helena's father, Henryk (Henry) Loewenfeld had arrived in England from Silesia, Austro-Hungarian occupied Poland in the early 1880s. 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. He married an English woman, Alice Evans in 1884. Helena was born in Tulse Hill, Brixton. Soon after her birth, the family were able to move into a large house, staffed by servants in Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, West London. Helena was initially educated at home by governesses and attended Princess Helena College then located in Ealing followed by Cheltenham Ladies College in Gloucestershire. Her younger sister, Margaret Lowenfeld, also became a doctor and was a renowned pioneer in the fields of child psychology and psychotherapy.
Career
Medical training and hospital surgical work Helena had wanted to become a medical doctor from the age of six despite strong parental opposition. From 1908 she attended the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women in Bloomsbury, London obtaining a MRCS (Eng.) and LRCP (Lond.) in 1914 and MB, BS (Lond.) in 1915. Later that year she started work in the outpatients department of Hampstead General Hospital in Camden Town, later transferring to the main hospital in Haverstock Hill as house surgeon. However, having been reported to the police due to her foreign name, she was required to resign her job at the hospital in May 1915. After a short break she took up an appointment as a house surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. Meanwhile, she was active in the Student Christian Movement and was a member of the London Inter-Faculty Christian Union and had declared herself a pacifist. 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.
Missionary work Even before their marriage both Helen and her husband Peter discussed their shared vocation to become student missionary volunteers in China. In October 1921 she fulfilled her ambition by taking up the position of associate professor of gynaecology at the Shandong Christian University, now part of Shandong Medical University in Jinan. Helena and Peter had intended this missionary work to continue for the rest of their lives. However, in the event it came to an end after five years when the missionary work was halted due to increasing hostilities and the imminent arrival of the Nationalists. After their visit to England in March 1927 they were unable to return. Despite this, Helena recorded her experiences in China as 'a complete fulfilment of all I expected and more'.
Pioneer in birth control and sex education On her return after five years in China, Helena had become convinced her future vocation lay in enhancing the status of contraception medicine. She first sought out Marie Stopes whom by chance she had met in 1918, during a holiday at Lands End in Cornwall. Marie had mentioned her plans to open a birth control clinic in England, the first of its kind. By 1921, Marie had opened the Mothers' Clinic for Constructive Birth Control in Holloway, north London and then a second clinic in Walworth, south London which Helena visited. Helena discovered Marie had been badly affected by losing a protracted libel action she had initiated against the Roman Catholic Church. In Helena's view this had left Marie bitter, bordering on paranoia, as well as resentful towards the medical profession, almost exclusively male at the time, which had been opposed to her views that women should receive birth control advice from trained nurses rather than doctors. This approach was also at odds with Helena's own views. 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. Helena was able to persuade Margery that contraceptive advice should be given by specially trained gynaecologists. Margery offered Helena the job of Chief Medical Officer at the Kensington Centre, a role which she continued in for thirty years becoming also Chairman of the Medical Committee. Working in collaboration with Margery, Helena was able to ensure the Centre became a focus for training medical students and nurses in birth control, sex education and therapy which also gave Helena an international reputation. In 1930 Helena addressed the Lambeth Conference, persuading bishops of the Church of England to give their blessing to the use of contraceptives in marriage. Helena was paid just £2 per weekly session in 1928 for her work at the Kensington Centre. For income Helena relied on family money and in due course a private gynaecological practice she was building, temporarily based at her sister Margaret's consulting rooms prior to Helena and Peter being able to set up separate consulting practices in Weymouth Street, premises which she continued to occupy throughout her career.
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