The National Childbirth Trust and the Margins of Medicine in Modern Britain

This project investigates the history of the National Childbirth Trust, from its foundation as the Natural Childbirth Association in 1956 to the present. Established to provide women with an alternative to hospitalbased, medicalised maternity care, the NCT has sat adjacent to the National Health Service for almost seventy years. The charity (since 1961) has proven profoundly influential; not only shaping the experience of pregnancy, labour, and early parenthood for millions of families, it has also shifted the national dialogue on childbirth and women’s health and reshaped NHS policy and practice. This small project is one part of my larger research programme at the University of Edinburgh that explores the twentieth-century history of health scepticism and the margins of British medicine. With this grant’s support, I will consult the NCT’s archive at the Wellcome Collection, conduct and transcribe oral history interviews, and organise two workshops with Scottish midwives and NCT practitioners.