"That's what we're all in it for," he said last night, as he looked forward to extending his team's run of six wins in their last seven matches "We're scoring goals now and not giving them away. We've changed a few things for the better."Unlike some of their rivals in the Conference, who have paid out sizeable fees to strengthen their squads, Gateshead have signed their five recruits this term on free transfers: strikers Dean Trott from Northampton, Paul Thompson from Hartlepool and Sam Kitchen from Doncaster, plus midfielder Derek Ord from Gretna and goalkeeper Sean Musgrave from Sunderland. While Humphrey supplied the initial idea and funding for the first birth control clinics, he got little credit for it. Stopes became marriage guidance counsellor and sex therapist to the nation, advising millions of readers on how often they should copulate - "three or four days of repeated unions followed by 10 days without any unions at all" - and recommending an aphrodisiac diet of oranges, eggs, whitebait and oysters.Stopes was a virgin when she wrote the book - her first marriage was unconsummated - and her subsequent marriage to Humphrey Roe was physically and emotionally disastrous.
The publication in 1918 of her book Married Love had set Edwardian society on fire with its controversial suggestion that women could, and should, enjoy sex within marriage. I think any woman displacing her would have had to have a very special relationship to her to have been acceptable."Stopes's jealous reaction to her son's engagement betrayed the fact that her own marriage was, privately, a failure; another of the contradictions in her life. She believed that Mary and I would not make a happy marriage and was rationalising what she felt. Harry is more forgiving in his interpretation of his mother's fury "It was emotional, she was finding a pretext.
To her husband she complained the marriage would "make a mock of our lives' work for eugenic breeding and the race," and suggested that their grandchildren would be burdened with "defective sight and the handicap of goggles"."She was like a snake," says Mary under her breath. "On eugenic grounds, I should advise against the marriage were they strangers to me," the world-famous campaigner for equal rights wrote to Barnes Wallace in 1947. "I honestly thought she might poison us both, but I didn't want to become involved in a battle for him. I was much too frightened." It was the start of a campaign against their relationship that Marie was to wage to her grave and beyond, largely cutting Harry and his family out of her will.The cause of offence, astonishingly, was Mary's mild short-sightedness. The fact that Harry's betrothed wore glasses showed a genetic deficiency which, Marie claimed, would be passed on to her own descendants. He is immensely proud of what she achieved through her groundbreaking sex manuals and birth control clinics, but both Harry, now 71, and his wife Mary still flinch when they describe how Marie received the news of their engagement. "I thought she was going to kill us," says Mary, herself a doctor of psychology and daughter of another popular legend, Barnes Wallace, the inventor of the bouncing-bomb. The gap between Stopes's public image and her personal actions was, on occasions, very wide, as her son, Dr Harry Stopes Roe explains, nearly 40 years after her death in 1958.
A retired philosophy lecturer living in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley, Dr Stopes Roe bears a striking resemblance to his fiery mother, whose intense eyes and strong-set jaw he has inherited. But Stopes's campaign for the widespread availability of birth control was underpinned by an interest in the "perfection of the race" through selective breeding - ideas that are uncomfortably redolent of those pursued by Hitler. Author of the first sex manual, advocate of women's right to enjoy sex and founder of the nation's birth control clinics, she improved the lives of subsequent generations of women beyond measure. Marie Stopes is remembered as one of the great liberators of British women. Only 800 spectators, including 92 Birmingham fans, were at Wednesday's match.Non-League Notebook, page 28.
The club secretary, Alan Jones, issued a terse "no comment" yesterday.The Anglo-Italian Cup has suffered poor crowds and disciplinary problems since being resurrected in 1992. Television pictures showed the coach being wheeled away on a stretcher, evidently with face wounds.Barry Fry, the Birmingham manager, initially branded his opposite number "a disgrace" for his alleged incursions on to the pitch, but by the time Birmingham's plane landed in Britain, Fry was tight-lipped. The League expects a report today from the referee, John Lloyd of Wrexham, who also needed hospital treatment on two fingers injured as he sought to end fighting in the tunnel after the match.The only British newspaper journalist present, Colin Tattum of Birmingham's Evening Mail, reported yesterday that he saw Cacciatori run on to the pitch to strike one Birmingham player, Paul Tait, and seize another, Ricky Otto, round the throat.No arrests were made, and Daish denied striking Cacciatori "If that's what they want to say, let them Nothing happened, " Daish said. We've referred the case to the Italian League, and we will make up our minds calmly over the next few days."The Football League confirmed it is likely to set up an inquiry into events during and after Birmingham's 2-1 win. Conviction for assault can carry a prison sentence of up to three years, but if Cacciatori's recovery period is less, he can sue his alleged assailant(s) through the civil courts.A spokesman for Ancona maintained that Cacciatori had been "punched and butted" during an "outrageous" attack He added: "What's happened has happened. Under Italian law, criminal proceedings are automatic if a person is certified unfit to work for 20 days or more.
