Notable Landmarks · London, Greater London
The Mothers' Clinic for Constructive Birth Control
A landmark of women's sexual liberation — though Stopes' motives were entangled with eugenics, a fact this entry states plainly rather than airbrushing.
The place
Britain's first birth-control clinic, opened 17 March 1921 by Marie Stopes and Humphrey Verdon Roe; free contraceptive advice to married women; moved to Whitfield Street, Bloomsbury, in 1925.
Sources
Nearby on the map
The Hampstead villa where Keats fell desperately for the girl next door — literally next door, the two households sharing the house — and wrote 'Bright Star' for her. Engaged but too poor and too ill to marry, he sailed for Rome wearing her ring and died at 25 with her letters unopened, too painful to read.
Documented historyBohemian & Libertine46 Gordon Square (Bloomsbury HQ)London, Greater London · EnglandThe drawing room where, one evening in 1907, Lytton Strachey pointed at a stain on Vanessa's dress and said a single unprintable word — and, as Woolf recorded, 'all barriers of reticence and reserve went down'. British conversation about sex was never quite the same; pair with Charleston for where the theory went to live.
Documented historyHot spotBohemian & LibertineThe Fitzroy TavernLondon, Greater London · EnglandThe pub that named a district: Fitzrovia's all-comers salon where Dylan Thomas drank, Nina Hamnett — 'Queen of Bohemia' — held court on the subject of her lovers, and Quentin Crisp arrived nightly in full defiant maquillage. Louche, literary and gloriously unrespectable.
Documented historyHot spotSpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.