This book originated at a lunch at the London School of Economics in spring 2015, one of the (very) unexpected outcomes of which was that I was commissioned by LSE Health (now the Department of Health Policy), supported by the Brian Abel-Smith Foundation Fund, to write this biography, part of the series ‘LSE Pioneers of Social Policy’. The driving force behind this was Jane Lewis, then Professor of Social Policy at the School. The late Walter Holland became my principal LSE contact, and gave me much calm advice. Early on in my research I contacted Sally Sheard, biographer of Brian Abel-Smith. Sally gave me a number of invaluable pointers as to how to approach a project of this type as well as providing me with some of the key primary materials used here. Other material came from Nick Timmins, for which I am grateful.
Titmuss’s daughter, Ann Oakley, kindly allowed me access to papers of her father which she still holds, and to her family photograph album. She was an endless supply of information, and a congenial companion over post-research glasses of wine. In a more formal sense, I also interviewed Ann about her memories of her father. Others who knew Titmuss and kindly gave me their recollections, either in person or by email, were Alan Deacon, the late David Donnison, Frank Field, Howard Glennerster, Jose Harris, the late Walter Holland, Maggie May, David Piachaud, Bob Pinker, Adrian Sinfield, and Pat Thane. Sonia Exley of the Department of Social Policy at the LSE allowed me early access to the interviews she had undertaken with former department members. Lise Butler, City University, generously sent me a copy of her DPhil thesis on Michael Young.
Papers given at the University of Warwick, the University of Oxford, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Durham, the Royal Dublin Society, the Institute of Historical Research, the University of East Anglia, the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Birmingham gave me the opportunity to try out ideas, and I am grateful for the feedback I received.
A work of this sort would not be possible without the assistance of library and archive staff and here I should mention in particular colleagues at the Archives Reading Room, British Library of Political and Economic Science; the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick; Archives and Special Collections, Oxford Brookes University; and Labour Party Archives, Salford. At the LSE/BLPES Sue Donnelly and Anna Towson were helpful from the outset, important not least given the amount of time I spent there. The administrative staff at the Department of Health Policy were always supportive and reliable. Our family friend, Sue Sidgwick, provided me with a base in London from which to make my forays into papers held at the BLPES.
Since starting this project I have had numerous conversations with colleagues and friends about Richard Titmuss, and would like to acknowledge the support, encouragement, and insights of Virginia Berridge, Linda Bryder, Martin Gorsky, John Hall, Harry Hendrick, Jane Lewis, John Macnicol, Robert Page, Margaret Pelling, Sally Sheard, Nick Timmins, and John Welshman. Draft chapters were read by Linda Bryder, George Campbell Gosling, Janet Greenlees, John Hall, Harry Hendrick, Eddy Higgs, Vicky Long, Ann Oakley, Glen O’Hara, Margaret Pelling, Chris Renwick, Sally Sheard, Sue Stewart, and John Welshman. I am grateful to each of them for their comments. Ann Oakley also helpfully corrected a number of factual errors in the penultimate draft.
This book is dedicated to Ada Mary Susan Stewart, born July 2019, and to her parents, Caitlin and Neil, uncle Jim, and grandmother Sue.
Also available in the LSE Pioneers in Social Policy series
The Passionate Economist
How Brian Abel-Smith Shaped Global Health and Social Welfare
By Sally Sheard
“Sheard provides powerful evidence as to why Brian Abel-Smith, through his incisive and infl uential contributions to the development of health and social welfare policy both in Britain and further afi eld, should be regarded as one of the titans of post-1945 social administration.” Journal of Social Policy
HB £45.00 ISBN 9781447314844
576 pages November 2013
For more information about the book and to order a copy visit
policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/lse-pioneers-in-social-policy
Titmuss in the twentieth century
Richard Morris Titmuss was born in October 1907, and died in April 1973. His life thus embraced a period central to British social welfare history. At the time of his birth the reforming Liberal governments of 1906–14 were enacting measures such as old age pensions. In his inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1950, Titmuss acknowledged ‘the great surge forward in legislation for collective help’ in the decade preceding the First World War.1 That conflict was followed by the uncertainties of the inter-war era, the consequences of which informed Titmuss’s early work, and political activities. By the late 1930s, now married to social worker Kathleen (Kay) Caston Miller, he had produced his first published volume, Poverty and Population, which opened with the striking statement that there could be ‘no subject of more fundamental importance to any nation than the physical and mental well-being of its people’.2 Titmuss was, at this point, an active member of the Liberal Party. His research, again mostly on population and population health, continued into the Second World War. But his most significant wartime activity came with his engagement to contribute to the series of official histories of the war on the Home Front. Titmuss’s volume, Problems of Social Policy, was published in 1950, contributed to a life-changing advance in his career, and continues to influence how we perceive wartime Britain. The war also engendered much discussion about post-war social reconstruction, of which Titmuss was a committed advocate, leading him to shift his political allegiance to the Labour Party.
The wartime coalition, and the Labour governments of 1945–51, duly instituted measures which came to be collectively known as the ‘welfare state’. Perhaps most famously, the National Health Service (NHS) was created. Titmuss later described this as ‘one of the most unsordid and civilised actions in the history of health and welfare policy’.3 Nonetheless, he viewed the ‘welfare state’ as unfinished business. The expression itself, moreover, had acquired unwelcome, and inaccurate, connotations. Particularly for the political right,