position in this country now presents, both from the quantitative and qualitative points of view, very serious and urgent problems’.38 As Chris Renwick points out, Carr-Saunders was a key figure in the 1930s as a social scientist, and sought to promote a reform-oriented eugenics, so edging it away from proposals associated with ‘negative’ eugenics such as sterilisation.39 His position as chair was, therefore, crucial. Among the early members of the committee were Marshall, Blacker, Hubback, and Huxley.40 The PIC’s activities were curtailed on the outbreak of war before being revived in 1943. This revival was, as Eugenics Review reported, in part prompted by Titmuss’s agitation on the Eugenics Society’s council in 1942, and facilitated by Blacker’s return from the RAMC. The Eugenics Society also granted £500 per annum for two years in support of the PIC’s activities.41
Titmuss, although not a member of this body until its reconstitution in 1943, when he was ‘elected by unanimous consent’, was nonetheless interested in its work from the outset, known to a number of its members, and prepared to send it suggestions for research. For example, in 1940 he reviewed Leybourne and White’s Education and the Birth Rate, a book resulting from two years of ‘intensive research sponsored by the Population Investigation Committee’ which brought together ‘for the first time a wealth of social statistics relating to the structure of the educational system in this country in its bearing upon family size’. One key finding was that there existed ‘enormous hidden reserves of intellectual capacity … among the children of the 60 per cent of income earners who receive on the average less than 60s a week’. As matters presently stood, such children could not realise their potential, something which was even more detrimental to society when it was acknowledged that this group would constitute ‘the bulk of our future population’. So it was in the 90 per cent of children currently attending state-run elementary schools that the ‘national problems of quantity and quality lie’.42 Educational inequality, and the unused intellect of working class children, were ideas which Titmuss was to continue to pursue.
Also the early 1940s, it was noted that ‘Mr R.M. Titmuss, while not a member of the Committee’, had written that there were ‘two short-term pieces of work which the Committee might investigate’ – the incidence of first births, classified by factors such as regional and class differences, and problems of maternity in wartime.43 At the meeting at which he was admitted to membership, 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