Titmuss argued that there was reason to believe that the policies now being considered by the Ministry of Health for post-war housing ‘paid insufficient attention to demographic problems, in particular provision for large families’. After discussion, a housing subcommittee was duly formed consisting of Horder, Hubback, Glass, and Titmuss.44 Titmuss’s concern with housing and family size was not new. In his 1941 piece for Town and Country Planning, discussed in Chapter 5, he had argued the need for future housing plans to take family size into account.
Titmuss began to play an active part in the PIC, especially on some of its committees. For instance, he sat on the General Purposes Sub-Committee which, in July 1943, set up another subcommittee, on maternity services and child welfare. Members included Titmuss, Glass, Hubback, Lafitte, and Blacker.45 At its first meeting, it was agreed that its work should take place in two phases: first, a short-term investigation to establish the facts about existing services, and, second, a more comprehensive survey, potentially to be used as the basis of recommendations for post-war reconstruction. Titmuss and Lafitte were given the task of preparing a draft statement.46 A few months later it was agreed that the pre-war ‘Programme of Future Research’ should be updated and include references to housing, maternity provision, and child welfare. Titmuss, along with Glass and Kuczynski, was charged with this redrafting, although most of the work seems to have been done by Glass.47 These three were also initially asked to prepare a memorandum on the ‘Reform of Vital Statistics’, to be submitted to the Royal Commission on Population, although this was not in fact used as Carr-Saunders, Glass, and Kuczynski were to be members of the Royal Commission’s Statistics Committee.48 Nonetheless, his early involvement does remind us of Titmuss’s lifelong concern over the quality of official data. His employment as a civil servant, on the other hand, no doubt curtailed any more public activities on the PIC’s behalf.
One notable PIC initiative was the formation of a committee, jointly with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, to survey maternity services. The enquiry was funded by grants from the National Birthday Trust Fund, set up in 1928 to tackle problems of maternal mortality, and the Nuffield Foundation. As the subtitle of the published report makes clear, the focus was very much to be on the ‘Social and Economic Aspects of Pregnancy and Childbirth’.49 This was a sign of the times, reflecting the analyses of commentators such as Titmuss, and contemporary developments in social medicine. The investigation was chaired by Professor James Young, a leading figure in obstetrics and gynaecology, and included Titmuss, Blacker, Glass, and Lady Rhys Williams.50 Rhys Williams had been a founder member of the National Birthday Trust Fund, was a prominent member of the Economic Research Council, a leading advocate of improvements in maternity services, and, in the early part of the Second World War, had published on issues close to Titmuss’s heart, notably family allowances. She was active in the Liberal Party, as was Titmuss until the early 1940s. Oakley points out that the two had corresponded prior to the war on issues around infant mortality, and that Rhys Williams had been impressed by Titmuss’s work.51
Titmuss did a considerable amount of reading, and statistical commentary, on various drafts of the report, eventually published in 1948. For example, in autumn 1947 he acknowledged the receipt of five draft chapters, and asked of his correspondent that he be allowed to retain copies as these would be ‘extremely useful to me as a member of the Midwifery Working Party’.52 This was a reference to the Working Party set up by the Ministry of Health and the Scottish Office to look into the recruitment and training of midwives. Titmuss had been engaged as a representative of the Cabinet Office, and the Working Party, which was chaired by Mary Stocks (later a prominent figure on BBC radio, and a biographer of Eleanor Rathbone), also included Dr Albertine Winner from the Ministry of Health, someone with whom Titmuss enjoyed a long and friendly relationship, and presumably known to him already.53 The more general point is that Titmuss was, by this point, clearly identified as an authority on issues around childbirth, and it is notable that, in his application to the LSE, he drew attention to his Working Party membership.
Titmuss played an active part in the Eugenics Society, and its offshoot the PIC, throughout the war. As before 1939, he was determined to promote a version of eugenics which prioritised nurture over nature, and to address issues of population health. His commitment to the Society was reciprocated by its support for Birth, Poverty and Wealth, a work which focused especially on infant mortality. While not saying anything which Titmuss had not said before, it nonetheless consolidated his views, and should be seen more broadly as a further contribution to ‘progressive opinion’, and proposals for post-war reconstruction. Importantly, at least for Titmuss, it was well received. The next chapter examines further aspects of his media profile.
Notes
1‘Annual Report, 1939–40’, Eugenics Review, 32, 1, 1940, p 32.
2EUGENICS, SA/EUG/C.33, letter, 18 September 1939, RMT to Ursula Grant-Duff.
3‘Notes of the Quarter’, Eugenics Review, 32, 2, 1940, pp 47–8.
4‘Eugenics Society: Annual Meeting and Election of Officers and Council’, Eugenics Review, 37, 2, 1945, p 73.
5‘Annual Report, 1941–2’, Eugenics Review, 34, 1, 1942, p 40.
6‘Notes of the Quarter’, Eugenics Review, 33, 4, 1942, pp 99–105.
7‘Notes of the Quarter’, Eugenics Review, 34, 1, 1942, pp 3–9.
8R.M. Titmuss and F. Lafitte, ‘Eugenics and Poverty’, Eugenics Review, 33, 4, 1942, pp 106–12 (emphasis in the original).
9‘Eugenic Aspects of Social Security’, Eugenics Review, 36, 1, 1944, pp 17–24.
10L. Bland and L. Hall, ‘Eugenics in Britain: The View from the Metropole’, in A. Bashford and P. Levine (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, p 218.
11C. Lawrence and G. Weisz, ‘Medical Holism: The Context’, in C. Lawrence and G. Weisz (eds), Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, p 7.
12R.M. Titmuss, ‘The Effect of the War on the Birth Rate’, Eugenics
