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, this is generally portrayed as unsuccessful.17 It would certainly appear that Morris Titmuss was not in the vanguard of British entrepreneurship. But the context is also important. After the First World War an agricultural depression took hold, with prices for crops such as wheat falling dramatically, while the limited measures of protection accorded to agriculture were abolished in 1921. The British economy as a whole, following a post-war boom, began to contract from the early 1920s onwards although, to balance this, London and the South East were largely spared the miseries of the inter-war slump. Morris may have been feckless, or unlucky, or, most probably, a combination of the two. But, as Oakley observes, he was able to leave farming without leaving any debt behind, continued to pay at least his older son’s school fees, and bought the Hendon house. The last was an end-terrace building which would have been, in Oakley’s words, ‘sparklingly new then’, part of the suburban expansion London was then experiencing. Home ownership was, at this time, characteristic not of the working class, most of whom rented, but rather the middle class. So perhaps Morris was not so feckless after all. In any event, the move to Hendon saw the end of Titmuss’s time at St Gregory’s (which was about to happen anyway), and the start of his short time at Clark’s Commercial College, situated at Chancery Lane in Central London.18 Coincidentally, this was close to the institution where Titmuss would come to play a leading role, the LSE.
Following his bookkeeping course, he was then employed by Standard Telephones, based in North London, as well as helping out with his father’s business. However, in 1926 Morris died. According to an insurance policy application which Titmuss made some 40 years later, his father’s cause of death was angina, from which he had suffered for ‘some months’ (in a very un-Titmuss like mistake, he got Morris’s year of death wildly wrong).19 This did pose financial problems, although again Oakley suggests that the ‘extent of the family’s poverty had perhaps been a little exaggerated’. Nonetheless, this was a life-changing moment for Titmuss. Through a contact of his mother’s, he was taken on, initially as a probationary clerk, by the County Fire Office. Titmuss, still only in his late teens, now became the family bread-winner.20 His mother, from now until her death in 1972, relied on him as her sole source of financial support.21
The County Fire Office had been founded in 1807 and, by its own account, was an ‘association of noblemen and gentlemen’. It was one of 19 such companies founded in the first decade of the nineteenth century, a testament to contemporary trends in industrialisation and urbanisation. As Harold Raynes notes, it had ‘some individual characteristics’, and sought to ‘seek support from the counties where there was a demand for fire insurance and a desire for local responsibility’. Around the time Titmuss joined, the company had acquired a new building at 30 Regent Street, in London’s West End. This was the office to which Titmuss was to commute for the next decade and a half. The First World War and its aftermath brought considerable changes to the County Fire Office, including the employment of women, and the range of coverage it offered. Various staff benefits were introduced, including schemes to assist with house purchase, and a staff canteen. The company clearly saw itself as progressive, with many staff enjoying long periods of service.22 Whether Titmuss (or any of the other staff) felt the same way is open to question. By the time he came left he had become increasingly disgruntled with his insurance career, notwithstanding his promotion, at the relatively young age of 32, to London Inspector a few years earlier.23
As later chapters show, even before this point he was devoting much of his time to political activities, and to research on population issues. And as a profile written in the 1960s suggested, once promoted to inspector he could ‘do his inspecting at home by phone in the mornings which left the afternoons free for study’.24 Presumably, this information was provided by Titmuss himself. But back at the beginning of his insurance career, he was initially paid £85 per annum, rising by £20 per annum to, ultimately, £265 per annum. Gowing, as we have seen, was sceptical about Titmuss’s formal schooling, suggesting that he was largely ‘self-educated with a special interest in working out mathematical problems’.25 Again, this presumably