Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John

poor more vulnerable to infant mortality, the situation had actually worsened, again a recurring theme in his work. For Titmuss, the ‘inescapable lesson’ of his study was that the ‘infants of the poor are relatively worse off to-day than they were before the 1914 war’. British society was thus, notwithstanding increased social service expenditure, ‘further away from the goal of equalised health than we were thirty years ago’. Was it, therefore, too much to suggest that ‘if the gradient of economic inequality had become gentler with the years, a statistical study of infant mortality would have yielded results very different from those recorded in this book?’.²⁴ Blacker’s observation about how this would be received by more conventional eugenicists is easy to understand in the light of such arguments.

For such traditionalists there was, though, to be no respite. Reviewing the book in Eugenics Review, R.R. Kuczynski told its readers that it was a ‘brilliant study of infant mortality’. Summarising Titmuss’s work, Kuczynski noted the importance of social class, that the situation had actually deteriorated over the past few decades, and that other countries had performed better – here he cited the author’s comparison of Glasgow with other cities. So it was ‘very much to be desired that the conclusions arrived at by Mr Titmuss be universally known’. Parliament, and the general public, were being ‘spoon-fed with complacent statements about the allegedly extraordinary decrease in our infant mortality rate’, without acknowledgement of how much better results had been achieved elsewhere.²⁵ The notice in The Times, meanwhile, was largely descriptive but broadly sympathetic, notably remarking that Titmuss’s findings were in ‘complete disagreement’ with Galton’s prioritising of nature over nurture.²⁶ Kuczynski’s brother, Jürgen, was clearly also a fan. In his capacity as chair of a branch of the Association of Scientific Workers, he suggested a talk by Titmuss on the subject of his book. As the branch secretary told Titmuss, a large proportion of his membership was ‘drawn from the medical and allied sciences, and we feel sure that they would especially welcome the opportunity of taking part in the proposed meeting’.²⁷ It is not clear whether Titmuss did talk to this body, his employment as a civil servant possibly preventing him from doing so, but the invitation indicates the sort of impact the book was having. His old political ally Richard Acland, meanwhile, wrote to ‘congratulate you on the amazing reviews you are getting for your book’ while conceding that he had not actually read it himself, a common enough fate for academic authors.²⁸

Just how contentious the whole field of eugenics could be, though, is illustrated by Lancelot Hogben’s review. Hogben was a biologist who had been, at one point, Professor of Social Biology at the LSE, later becoming first editor of the British Journal of Social Medicine. He was famously combative, politically on the left, and notably hostile to eugenics on both methodological and social grounds.²⁹ Hogben had, in addition, been one of the early, non-Eugenics Society, members of the PIC.³⁰ In his review, in the leading science journal Nature, Hogben attacked Galton, and his modern-day followers. He berated the ‘combination of naivete and nonsense’ uttered by ‘reputedly competent men of science’ regarding the supposed predominance of nature over nurture. Such nonsense was ‘transparently belied’ by work on human nutrition and, in Titmuss’s case, on mortality data. Titmuss had made accessible in a ‘readable narrative facts too apt to remain buried in census volumes on the shelves of libraries’. His book was, therefore, ‘a refreshing indication that there is a rising generation of statisticians and social biologists’ who had ‘thought their way through the luxuriant growth of misconceptions which Galton’s generation planted and Pearson’s followers watered’. Titmuss’s work was ‘temperate and stimulating, lucid and well-documented’. He had raised problems which urgently needed addressing ‘above the fog of political indignation to the level of a factual analysis of human needs and human knowledge available for implementing their satisfaction’. As such, the book deserved ‘a wide circulation among those who cherish what Bacon called the true and rightful goal of science’.³¹

In private at least, Titmuss must have been delighted with such a glowing notice, in an important journal, from such a high-profile scientist. The Eugenics Society was less impressed. In an editorial in Eugenics Review, Newfield acknowledged the positive aspects of Hogben’s review. All such praise was ‘well merited’, and it was gratifying that it was being used in material advertising the book. Nonetheless, Hogben had not only commended Titmuss, he had also, and not for the first time, launched his familiar attack on Galton. Consequently, Horder and Blacker had, on behalf of the Eugenics Society, written to the editor of Nature suggesting that Hogben was preoccupied with what eugenicists were saying 30 years earlier. Nor had it been acknowledged that Titmuss had been a member of the Society’s council for a number of years, had acted as editor of Eugenics Review, and that ‘the publication of his book was made possible by a grant from the Society – a fact clearly acknowledged by the author in his preface’. Nature was, therefore, responsible for a false impression being created and, thereby, for its refutation. The letter, though, was not published on the basis that, as far as far as Nature was concerned, its content would serve no ‘useful purpose’.³² If nothing else, this episode illustrates Hogben’s ability to get under people’s skins and, by the same token, the Eugenics Society’s sensitivity to criticism concerning the nature/nurture debate.

The Population Investigation Committee

Titmuss was far from being alone in his concerns about population, and population health. A Royal Commission on Population was set up in 1944 by the coalition government’s Home Secretary, and former Labour leader of the LCC, Herbert Morrison, reporting in 1948. When Titmuss joined the PIC, in 1943, he told fellow member R.R. Kuczynski that he had recently been called to see Morrison’s private secretary, as ‘Herbert is going to make a speech about the birth rate’.³³ This summons is yet another indicator of Titmuss’s assumed authority in the field, although he was also, of course, by this point a government employee. Among the Royal Commission members well known to Titmuss were Carr-Saunders, while witnesses included Blacker, Hubback, Glass, and Cyril Bibby, a regular contributor to Eugenics Review.³⁴ A quarter of a century later, Bibby was to send Titmuss a letter of support during ‘The Troubles’ at the LSE. As Pat Thane notes, the Commission’s Report admitted concern about the birth rate, and recommended the expansion of certain welfare benefits and services. Ultimately, though, it ‘expressed some lasting fears but offered no solutions’.³⁵ In any event, the post-war ‘baby boom’ was to resolve at least the birth rate issue.

The Population Investigation Committee was set up jointly by the Eugenics Society and PEP in the mid-1930s, yet another manifestation of contemporary concern about population issues. After the war, it was absorbed by the LSE, and founded the journal Population Studies. The latter had Glass as its editor, and an advisory board on which Titmuss sat along with, among others, Kuczynski and T.H. Marshall.³⁶ At various points the PIC received funding not only from the Eugenics Society, but also from the Carnegie Corporation and the Nuffield Foundation.³⁷ As its longstanding chair, Carr-Saunders, noted around the time of the committee’s