1892–1952
○ Natural causes
Australian-born sexologist who spread birth control in London and became a president of the World League for Sexual Reform
With Dora Russell he organised the World League for Sexual Reform’s London congress in 1929, and in 1930 became one of the League’s presidents.
A physician and sexologist born Norman Zions in Sydney. Moving to London in 1919, he built a successful gynaecological practice in Harley Street and spread contraception through a free birth-control clinic. He organised the World League for Sexual Reform’s London congress in 1929, became one of its presidents in 1930 and dissolved it in 1935. After the Second World War he founded the Sexual Reform Society, and he died in London in 1952.
Also known as: Norman Zions
Activities and affiliations
-
1919–1952
Science and technology
Related historical events
Birth control and the World League
Born Norman Zions in Sydney, he discovered Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex in a library as a teenager anxious about his homosexuality, and resolved to devote his life to saving people from sexual misery. After graduating from the University of Sydney in 1915 and working in hospitals, he moved to London in 1919, changed his name and built a successful gynaecological practice in Harley Street. In 1921 he became chief honorary medical officer of the free birth-control clinic in Walworth, East London, and in 1923 visited Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin with a letter of introduction from Ellis. With Dora Russell he organised the World League for Sexual Reform’s London congress in 1929; from 1930 he was one of its presidents with the Dane Jonathan Leunbach, and in 1935 the two dissolved the League. Back in London after the Second World War he founded the Sexual Reform Society and published The Journal of Sex Education. He fell ill with a heart attack on a lecture tour of the United States in 1952 and died in London; his executors burned all his papers.