respects, however, Gowing’s was a partial account which consolidated the by then standard view of Titmuss’s origins and career. Put simply, this stressed the deprivations of his childhood and youth, so throwing into sharp contrast his eventual place as Britain’s leading authority on social policy, an expert advising governments at home and abroad, and public intellectual. For instance, a sympathetic profile in The Observer in 1959 noted the challenges Titmuss’s family had faced, and how Titmuss himself claimed to have learned little at school, save an enduring love for cricket and football.2 A few years later, another newspaper article suggested that the origins of ‘The Poverty Lobby’ of the 1960s lay in the early hardships of one of its members, Titmuss. While colleagues such as Abel-Smith were middle class, and had come to socialism ‘by conviction’, Titmuss had reached this position ‘by experience’.3 The last point begs more questions than it answers, not least the nature of Titmuss’s political beliefs.
In his application for the LSE chair in 1950 Titmuss said little of his formal education save that, ‘As the son of a farmer’, he had been sent to ‘a preparatory school in Bedfordshire which drew most of its pupils from farmers in the district’. At 14 he was then sent to Clark’s Commercial College for six month to learn bookkeeping.4 The downbeat account of Titmuss’s early years was most vigorously promoted by his wife, Kay. Shortly after his memorial service in June 1973, she told an American friend who had spoken at the event that Titmuss’s ‘only schooling was at a private school of poor quality from which he was frequently absent due to ill health in childhood’. ‘And’, she continued, ‘he knew what it was to be on the poverty line when he struggled to keep the family going after his father’s death on a mere pittance of an insurance clerk’s salary’.5 Kay’s comment about Titmuss’s health reminds us that this was certainly a feature of his childhood, but also of his whole life. And the idea that Titmuss was, as a consequence of his early hardships, especially sympathetic to the poor is a variant on the notion that he came to ‘socialism’ through ‘experience’, and is likewise questionable.
And here lies the problem. Ann Oakley has disputed aspects of Gowing’s account of her father’s origins and subsequent career, substantiating her case with archival and other evidence. What Gowing wrote, she argues, was ‘weakened by its reliance on the singular perspective’ of Kay. Kay’s concern had been to highlight ‘how important she had been to (Titmuss’s) success and how unimportant, indeed damaging, had been the contribution of his own family’. Such a narrative was attractive as it appeared to show ‘this champion of equality and the welfare state transcending his own impoverished background through sheer hard work, a truly self-made man’.6 And it was not only Kay who promoted this somewhat self-regarding version of Titmuss’s life, so did many of those around him, and influenced by him. The entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for instance, written by his friend A.H. Halsey, suggests that the Titmuss family ‘lived an isolated and impecunious life in Bedfordshire’, that Titmuss never took a formal examination in his life (a fact he allegedly did not regret), and that he instead preferred to ‘applaud the public library as the most precious of British social services’. Halsey suggests, too, that Titmuss’s ‘first step out of obscurity was made in 1934’ when he met his future wife, Kay.7 Parts of this are, to say the least, debatable.
Oakley certainly has the advantage over Gowing in her access to her parents’ papers, some of which are not in the public domain.8 To be fair, Gowing acknowledged that she had spoken extensively with Kay, noting her especial gratitude for access to ‘Richard’s voluminous records’. But she also, as her memorial noted, spoke to others.9 For instance, in a letter to Walter Adams, LSE director, she thanked him for ‘spending so long in talking to me about Richard Titmuss and for sending me the information’. This would be extremely useful in the preparation of her article, of which she would send him a draft. Gowing agreed not to refer directly to correspondence which Adams had shown her. This concerned Titmuss’s appointment at the LSE, and in particular T.H. Marshall’s recommendation.10 Nonetheless, as Howard Glennerster remarks, Oakley’s research has dispelled some of the ‘myths’ about Titmuss’s early life. It, too, provides a crucial source for what follows.11
This chapter attempts to steer a path through the rather scant evidence about that early life. First, Titmuss’s origins and childhood are examined. Then his entry into employment is described, and specifically his work for the County Fire Office. Next comes a discussion of Titmuss’s life outside employment. While Titmuss’s political and research activities in the 1930s are alluded to, they are dealt with more fully in subsequent chapters. Perhaps the central point, though, is that the degree to which Titmuss’s early years were, or were not, deprived should not unduly colour an indisputable fact – that he went, in the course of half a century, from being an insurance clerk to being an internationally recognised authority on social welfare.
Titmuss was born on 16 October 1907, son of Morris, at this point a farmer, and Maud, née Farr.12 Titmuss had an older sister (who pre-deceased him), and, later, a younger brother (another sister died in infancy). The family home was Lane Farm in Stopsley, a hamlet north of Luton in Bedfordshire. Here wheat, barley, oats, and beans were grown in clay soil. In addition to its Anglican church, Methodists and Baptists also had a local presence.13 Bedfordshire had a strong Nonconformist tradition, being a parliamentary stronghold in the English Civil War as well as home to another famous son, the writer and polemicist John Bunyan. There is no evidence that Titmuss was in any way religious (although he was married in an Anglican church and his memorial service was held in one too, probably at Kay’s behest). Nonetheless, he cannot have been unaware of the cultural surroundings in which he grew up. And, while unprovable, his commitment to the Liberal Party may have owed something to this dissenting cultural context. More broadly, we can also find a fit here with the notion of Titmuss as a radical of a peculiarly English sort. It is intriguing, too, that, according to Oakley, Titmuss retained an affection for rural Bedfordshire.14
Gowing suggests that the Titmuss children led an isolated life, but were free to roam the surrounding countryside. Titmuss’s education came at St Gregory’s, the preparatory school disparaged by Kay.15 But as Oakley sensibly points out, although the school did seem to prioritise sport, its ambitions to send pupils on to public schools – it was, after all, a preparatory school – suggests rather more academic rigour than is allowed in the usual accounts of the Titmuss ‘myth’.16 Nonetheless, Titmuss’s early education was probably less than satisfactory, partly because illness curtailed his school attendance. By Gowing’s account, Titmuss’s parents were not up to much. His mother is presented as ‘incompetent domestically’, although if this was part of the story which came from Kay it should be treated with care for, as we shall see, she was no admirer of her mother-in-law. Morris, meanwhile, is portrayed as failing as a farmer. This precipitated a move to Hendon, North London, in 1922, where he set up a haulage business. Again,
