were critical, though. In December 1943, the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, F.M. Powicke, informed Hancock that he had read Titmuss’s draft on evacuation ‘with much admiration’. Titmuss had a ‘natural gift, cultivated and strengthened by his earlier experience, for the exposition of complicated fact in the manner of a historical student’. He could, moreover, on occasion ‘write with much force and clarity’. Hancock had been ‘fortunate to have found Mr Titmuss’, and Powicke hoped ‘very much that every facility, finance included, will be given him to complete the full plan of the Social Services survey’.31 In early 1946, James Alison Glover, Deputy Senior Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, told Titmuss that he had studied the material supplied ‘with attention’. It was an ‘admirable study of recent history, brilliantly expressed’. Although Glover had been involved in a number of the events described, Titmuss had thrown fresh light on some of these, while bringing others to his attention for the first time. Glover had a few minor suggestions but, overall, he ‘very warmly’ congratulated Titmuss.32 From the Department of Health for Scotland, meanwhile, A. Bruce Auckland responded to Titmuss’s drafts on evacuation. Again, only minor changes were suggested. Auckland added that he had had ‘several complimentary comments on the way the chapters have been written … One person said you were “making a grand job of it”’.33 From a Scottish civil servant, gushing praise indeed.
And in 1949, the Ministry of Education’s Permanent Secretary, Sir John Maud, told Brook that he had not had time to fully absorb the part of Titmuss’s draft dealing with the later stages of evacuation, the hospital services, and social care. But several colleagues had ‘studied it carefully’. From what they had told him, and what he had gleaned from his own preliminary reading, it was clear that ‘it is a fair, well balanced and wise appreciation of what took place’.34 This was an especially intriguing letter. Maud, like Brook, was a high-flying civil servant, and they would have known each other well. So did Brook seek Maud’s advice, or did Maud offer it unsolicited? Was Maud aware of the criticisms of Titmuss by Brook and his colleagues that was currently circulating? It would have been surprising if he was not. In any event, Titmuss had supporters in Whitehall, as well as critics. This even extended to the Treasury. In March 1950 Titmuss wrote to an official thanking him for ‘the trouble you took in writing letters about reviews of my War History. The article in the Manchester Guardian yesterday was excellent and pleased us all’.35
The tensions involved in the volume’s production notwithstanding, Titmuss’s labours undoubtedly made an impact, even before its actual publication. Shortly after the announcement that the series would go ahead, Titmuss was contacted by the Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, and editor of Economic History Review, Michael Postan. Postan had been educated at the LSE (including by Tawney), had taught there, and was central to the Civil Histories series. It was with his editorial hat on that he wrote, offering Titmuss the chance to ‘introduce yourself to economic historians’ by contributing an article to the Review ‘on public health services during the last forty years or, say, since Lloyd George’. Were he to do this for publication in the coming year, ‘it would probably also serve as a background study for your synoptic volume’. Titmuss regretfully turned this offer down, due to the demands of Problems of Social Policy. The type of study Postan had suggested, Titmuss agreed, did not presently exist, and was ‘something I have wanted to do for a while, but have never had the time’.36 It was a small enough incident in its own way, but nonetheless Postan, like Hancock and Powicke a professional historian, clearly had a positive view of Titmuss’s own historical abilities.
Titmuss’s analysis of the war’s domestic impact can be summarised as follows. First, the conflict engendered a sense of social solidarity and moral purpose – the Dunkirk or Blitz ‘spirit’ – where everyone was in it together, sharing equally in necessary sacrifice, while fundamentally questioning pre-existing ideas and practices. Second, the war revealed, notably through the process of evacuation, the poor condition of Britain’s urban working class. This awakened the nation’s conscience and had both immediate effects, for instance a more humane attitude on the part of social service providers, as well as contributing to rising demands for post-war social reconstruction. Social solidarity further enabled a consensus over such reconstruction. Third, British citizens came to see the government as the mechanism whereby social injustices could, indeed should, be remedied, and the government duly responded. This contrasted with the official inertia of the 1930s. Fourth, the war and its aftermath, with the rapidly expanding social services eventually coalescing in the ‘welfare state’, again stood in contrast to the economic depression, and poor social provision, of the preceding decades. As John Welshman elaborates, Problems of Social Policy articulated many of what were to become key features of the ‘Titmuss paradigm – his optimism about human nature, belief in universal services, and opposition to means testing’.37
Titmuss’s work runs to over 500 pages, plus appendices. On one level it is a detailed analysis of particular areas of experience, and of health and social service provision. The volume remains indispensable to those working on civilian life and official policy during the Second World War. Structurally, it adopted for the most part a chronological approach, starting with the build-up to war. Then comes the era of ‘The Invisible War’, whose main characteristic was the first wave of evacuation of children from areas threatened by aerial attack. This is followed by a section on the impact of aerial bombing when it actually arrived, including an important discussion of civilian mental health. This had been of concern before 1939, particularly to psychiatrists and government officials who had feared a collapse in morale. But Titmuss demonstrated that these fears had not been realised. The next part deals with ‘The Long Years’ following the Blitz. It describes both the second wave of evacuation, and hospital care for the civilian casualties of war as well as for those who needed such treatment for ‘normal’ reasons. Throughout the book, Titmuss was not unwilling to criticise local authorities and voluntary agencies. Nonetheless, such bodies had often learned from experience, and adapted positively. Eleven statistical appendices follow the main text. Later, however, the focus is not on the data Titmuss gathered and analysed, monumental task though this was, or on issues such as the mechanics of evacuation, or the workings of the administrative machine. Rather, we examine the conclusions Titmuss drew from the civilian experience of war. This comes in the last chapter, challengingly entitled ‘Unfinished Business’.
First, though, we briefly consider Titmuss’s methodological approach. He noted the huge volume of material available to him, official and unofficial, within which lay ‘the essential facts for a history of the social services during the Second World War’. The historian therefore had to untangle changes in policy on a case-specific basis before assessing ‘the results achieved’. The outcome would thus be a ‘social history’ (not, it is worth remarking, a generally recognised branch of historical study at this time). But writing such a work was difficult, especially when the author was ‘so close to events’. A further problem was generalising at the expense of ‘concreteness’. He had, therefore, selected problems for ‘exact investigation’, using the method of ‘selective illustration’. Titmuss then outlined the book’s structure, noting that in its final part the ‘dominant theme’ was the strain of war on family life because the ‘needs that arose challenged the existing character of social service, shifted the emphasis in policy, and called into play new instruments of welfare’.38 It is worth digressing here to consider Tawney’s 1932 inaugural lecture at the LSE. Here he argued
