Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John
of the popular, and influential, ‘Penguin Specials’ series whose aim was, as Nicholas Joicey puts it, ‘to provide a topical commentary on international and domestic events’. Published in paperback, and relatively cheaply priced, the series was a ‘phenomenal success’, with a ‘significant number of titles’ selling over 100,000 copies.30 It should also be seen as part of a broader demand, especially from those on the progressive left, for informed commentary on current affairs, domestic and international.31
As the title of the Le Gros Clark and Titmuss book suggests, it was written with the deepening European crisis very much in mind. If war came, Britain would have to call upon its citizens ‘for a show of courage and endurance as great as any that their forefathers had reason to display’. In order to do so, though, national ‘stamina’ would have to be increased. This could be done through, for example, state-subsidised milk for all pregnant and nursing mothers, all young children, all schoolchildren, and young workers up to at least the age of 25. The last group should also have access to subsidised canteens. While such schemes would undeniably be expensive, ‘we must take some measures if we are to survive’, and, in so doing, take a chance with the consequences. All this was ‘democratic’, for the ‘same rules of feeding hold good for rich and poor alike’. And while Britain was certainly living ‘through a serious phase in our history’, measures such as those suggested ‘could in a remarkably short time establish the physical and spiritual stamina of our people on a foundation that would be well-nigh unassailable’. There was such a flimsy ‘borderline between normal and sub-normal humanity’ that the ‘sacrifices we would have to make are trivial in comparison’.32 Phrases such as ‘normal and sub-normal humanity’ jar on the modern ear. But these are seen here as positions on a spectrum, rather than the fixed entities a more ‘hard-line’ eugenicist would claim. In summer 1939 Le Gros Clark wrote to Titmuss enclosing a cheque for £11. This reflected the proportion of the book, around one fifth, written by the latter. Sales were ‘at present almost thirty thousand. Not bad but might be better’.33 This was a considerable achievement, and one way in which Titmuss’s views were being brought a wider reading public.
This particular volume was also cited as an authority in Eleanor Rathbone’s own Penguin Special, The Case for Family Allowances, in which she noted, too, that she was ‘indebted to Mr R.M. Titmuss for his help in providing me with some of my facts and figures’.34 Rathbone was a leading advocate of family allowances, a supporter of refugees, a campaigner for women’s rights, and an independent MP. Oakley suggests that she paid Titmuss to do certain calculations, and to read the entire script, resulting in an eight-page memorandum which Rathbone duly took on board.35 Although the document in the Titmuss archives is undated, unsigned, and slightly shorter than Oakley suggests, it looks to be Titmuss’s response to Rathbone’s manuscript. Some of the comments, meanwhile, accord with Titmuss’s own preoccupations. For instance, he wondered whether longstanding family allowance schemes abroad had been of any assistance in raising the birth rate.36 Oakley also records a visit, as a child, to the Cornish cottage once occupied by Rathbone, suggesting a more than professional relationship between the latter and the Titmuss family.37 Titmuss’s friendship with Rathbone, who was also an intimate and collaborator of Eva Hubback’s, further illustrates the close-knit, and influential, circles within which he increasingly moved.
Titmuss’s growing reputation as an expert on population health resulted in work for the British state. This reputation, combined with his networking skills, meant that, as Oakley puts it, by early 1941 ‘the Ministries of Food and Information were fighting for his services’.38 Other departments likewise sought his expertise. In autumn 1940 he told Kingsley Martin that he was ‘at present advising the Ministry of Health’ on an in-depth investigation of German vital statistics. No results were as yet available, and the work was being kept secret ‘as we do not wish the Germans to forbid the export to certain countries’ of various publications.39 In the letter to Blacker in late 1941 noted earlier, Titmuss also told him that he was working for the Ministry of Economic Warfare ‘on the trend of German Vital Statistics’, and that thus far a fair amount of material had been accumulated. The ‘trend of the conception rate’ was ‘rather fascinating – the birth-rate is dropping much more sharply than in this country’.40 It is not clear whether these were two separate projects, but the point is that Titmuss was in demand in official circles.
Titmuss had already engaged with German population data, and it continued to be yet another of his concerns. In March 1939, for instance, he wrote to the editors of the American publication Population Index seeking information as to where he could find data on mortality rates for various countries, including Germany and the UK. This was one of several such letters searching out German mortality statistics.41 One outcome was an article in The Spectator, published just after the outbreak of war, addressing ‘Hitler’s Man-Power Problem’. This, Titmuss claimed, underlay every social and military issue in Germany. For ‘six propaganda-riddled years’ the Nazi government had tried to force up the birth rate ‘with every conceivable weapon’. Policies included family allowances, and the banning of contraception, but all had been unsuccessful. There were two main contributory factors to Germany’s ‘demographic battle’. The first was that Nazi ideology, ‘trimmed of all its mysticism’, was simply ‘a reversion to the ethnic level of the jungle’. Such an environment needed a high birth rate because it also entailed a high death rate, and the latter had been going up steadily under Nazi rule. The second was the continuing demographic impact of the First World War, which had seen both significant deaths and casualties, and the beginnings of a downturn in the birth rate. So Germany was not reproducing itself and, on the available information, its population would eventually decline. Hitler, then, for all his talk of the ‘sacredness of motherhood’, had chosen a path with the ‘surest means of destroying the fittest of his people, forcing down the birth-rate, and of making certain that the German population will eventually decline. Of this sowing, like many others, Germany will eventually reap the harvest’.42
Titmuss’s analysis, including the point about the ‘finest’ being lost, was later shared by Hitler himself who, as the war went on and military losses mounted while the birth rate continued to fall, became increasingly concerned about his country’s demographic future.43 Titmuss returned to these matters in 1940 when reviewing a work on German medical data. This showed that mortality rates were increasing in every age-group in German society, and especially those aged 1–15 years and those aged 20–45 years, and this was ‘borne out by the preliminary results of an investigation the present author is carrying out’. Similarly, and once again unlike most comparable societies, the German infant mortality rate was rising. The one ‘indisputable conclusion’ which could be drawn from the book under review was that ‘freedom is the first condition for the biological advancement of the individual and of the social group’.44
In the run-up to the publication of the Spectator piece, Titmuss, writing on Eugenics Society matters to Ursula Grant-Duff, asked her if she had read the recent book by R.R. Kuczynski, Titmuss’s entrée to the Society.