circumstances. He was educated at an institution which does not seem to have shone academically, but there is no reason to suppose that it was any worse than the many other private and preparatory schools then in existence, and which catered in the inter-war era for over a quarter of a million scholars.58 And, in any event, Titmuss’s poor health did little to enhance his educational experience. Titmuss’s first major employer, the County Fire Office, provided him with, if nothing else, financial security and a solid foundation in statistical analysis. He was clearly good at his job. So far, so relatively straightforward. We have an ambitious, talented, young man, keen, as we shall see in the next three chapters, to make an impact on inter-war society, although at this point his future successes could hardly have been anticipated. In making his mark, and here matters become more complicated, he was supported and encouraged by Kay. But at what cost to her? Ultimately, this is an extremely difficult question to answer. For present purposes, what we can say is that her experience was hardly untypical, oppressive and constricting as we might now perceive it to be.
Notes
1M. Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss, 1907–1973’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXI, 1975, pp 3–30.
2‘The Observer Profile: Welfare Professor’, The Observer, 22 March 1959, p 13.
3G. Moorhouse, ‘The Poverty Lobby’, The Guardian, 3 December 1966, p 7.
4LSE/Staff Files/Titmuss, R.M. Titmuss, ‘Application for the Chair of Social Administration’, undated but 1950.
5COHEN, Box 235, folder 7, letter, 1 October 1973, Kay Titmuss to Eloise and Wilbur Cohen (emphasis in the original).
6Oakley, Father and Daughter, pp 39–40.
7A.H. Halsey, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
8See, for instance, the description in Oakley, Man and Wife, pp 6–7.
9Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, p 30 (emphasis in the original).
10LSE/Staff Files/Titmuss, letters, 27 July 1973, Gowing to Adams; and 23 and 24 July 1973, Adams to Gowing.
11H. Glennerster, Richard Titmuss: Forty Years On: CASE/180, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London, 2014, p 1.
12For an account of Titmuss’s forebears, Oakley, Man and Wife, p 21ff.
13W. Page (ed), The Victoria History of the County of Bedfordshire: Volume 2, London, Archibald Constable and Co, 1908, pp 348, 374.
14Oakley, Man and Wife, p 27.
15Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, p 3.
16Oakley, Father and Daughter, pp 45–6.
17Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, pp 3–4.
18Oakley, Father and Daughter, p 51.
19LSE/Staff Files/Titmuss, Allied Assurance Company Ltd: Proposal for Life Assurance, 20 February 1958.
20Oakley, Father and Daughter, p 52.
21Oakley, Man and Wife, p 27.
22The information here comes from the celebratory account, A. Noakes, The County Fire Office, 1807–1957, London, H.F. and G. Witherby, 1957, pp 3, 161, 163, 166; and from H.E. Raynes, A History of British Insurance, London, Pitman, 1948, pp 230–32.
23LSE/Staff Files/Titmuss, R.M. Titmuss, ‘Application for the Chair of Social Administration’, undated but 1950.
24TITMUSS/2/140, cutting from the ‘Pendennis’ column, ‘Dark Corners in the Affluent Society’, The Observer, 1 April 1962, p 12.
25Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, pp 3–4.
26Oakley, Father and Daughter, p 52.
27R. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, Part II.
28T. Porter, ‘Statistical Utopianism in an Age of Aristocratic Efficiency’, Osiris, 17, 2002, p 212.
29CROSSMAN, MSS.154/3/TM/7–11, typescript of Crossman’s address at Titmuss’s Memorial Service, 6 June 1973, St Martins-in-the-Field, London.
30CROSSMAN, MSS.154/3/TM/17, letter, 12 June 1973, Kay to Crossman.
31Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, p 8.
32Author interview with Frank Field MP, 5 November 2015.
33Oakley, Father and Daughter, p 75.
34Sheard, The Passionate Economist, p 280.
35Gowing, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, p 4.
36McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, pp 332–9, 379.
37Oakley,
