Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John
methods of professional historians’, contributors had been ‘compelled by the unusual problems confronting them to exercise a good deal of ingenuity in their methods of research’. While the official go-ahead for the series as a whole came just after the war ended, Hancock noted, too, that three volumes had previously been agreed, and that of these the ‘problems of war time social policy stood clearly defined and were entrusted to Mr R.M. Titmuss’.9 Hancock’s faith in Titmuss was to be crucial in the deliberations, at the end of the decade, over the proposed Chair in Social Administration at the LSE.
Titmuss’s research involved dealing with numerous official bodies, and a huge volume of material. As Jose Harris suggests, Titmuss and Michael Postan, writing on wartime industrial production, had particular problems since, in both cases, there was ‘the conceptual problem of how to interpret [the evidence], in an era when the very nature of total war seemed to insist that everything was integrally related to everything else’.10 Titmuss was also required to carry out other official work. In late 1943, for example, he told Hancock that the Ministry of Health had requested a statistical study of current trends in British and German morbidity and mortality, and that this would take around one week. The matter was to be raised in the House of Lords by Lord Cranborne, who had read a piece by Titmuss in The Lancet, presumably his brief analysis of German health data.11 Titmuss only spoke English, and he was assisted by the refugee German economist, Marie Meinhardt. Meinhardt was later to help Morris and Titmuss with their early research in social medicine.12 Titmuss was also engaged, in a return to his roots, as statistical advisor to Luton Town Council. The outcome was a book, co-authored with Fred Grundy, the Medical Officer of Health. The authors made it clear that they were not providing a ‘plan for reconstruction’, but rather sought to present ‘basic physical and social facts as a guide to planning’. The work also noted the impact of evacuation, a central theme in Problems of Social Policy. At least as far as Luton was concerned, the ‘reception, medical inspection and billeting of 8,000 evacuees in three days passed off without confusion’. It was likewise recorded that infestation rates among evacuees, a source of much popular criticism, were no higher than those found in the local population.13
It is clear that Titmuss often felt frustrated, stressed, and angry during the writing of his volume. There was, for example, confusion over who was to cover what territory. In early 1944, Titmuss told Hancock that he had recently sent a draft on evacuation to the Department of Health for Scotland. The latter had responded that ‘Professor Mackintosh has agreed to write the war history from the Scottish angle’, and that this was to be ‘complete in itself’. This was, as Titmuss put it, ‘news to me’, and he understandably sought clarification.14 No such Scottish volume materialised. There were also constant wrangles about the employment of research assistants, and the amount of material Titmuss had to handle. One positive outcome here was that in autumn 1944 Hancock was able to tell Sir John Wrigley, Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Health, that Titmuss had been allocated a ‘new assistant to help him grapple with his greatly extended task’.15 In Problems of Social Policy Titmuss duly acknowledged the assistance of Mrs B.E. Pollard, Miss R. Hurtsfield, and, especially, Hilde Fitzgerald.16
As publication neared, Titmuss was increasingly convinced that the Stationery Office was not operating efficiently. In late 1949 he wrote to the Cabinet Office official with whom he frequently dealt, A.B. Acheson, with a series of complaints. Summing up, Titmuss told him that it seemed ‘a pity to invest so much labour and expense in the preparation of the Official Histories and then to be so dilatory and casual about publication and sales’.17 A year later, he again complained to Acheson, this time that no copies of his volume appeared to be available for sale, notwithstanding that it had been out for nearly nine months. He was fending off enquiries about its availability, and had first raised this issue the previous July.18 In reply, Acheson reported that, in fact, sales had already exceeded over 2,500 copies, and that it had been advertised in around 16 journals.19 As Harris points out, in the event the volumes by Titmuss, Hancock, and Postan ‘sold in substantial numbers’.20 But, again, we see Titmuss’s unhappiness when matters appear not to go his way.
The central problem which he and his team faced, at least by his account, was that evidence, and commentary, arrived in a haphazard, unsystematic way. When drafts were produced, they were scrutinised not only by the Cabinet Office, but also by the government departments on whose evidence Titmuss depended, and which were wary about any criticisms perceived as levelled against them. They could also be maddeningly slow in responding. The Civil Service’s culture was challenging, perhaps especially to a newcomer. Shortly after the war’s end, for instance, Norman Brook, an immensely powerful figure soon to be Secretary to the Cabinet, told Hancock that Titmuss’s draft chapters which he had read were ‘very readable and interesting’, so promising ‘a good book’. He also had some mildly critical comments.21 Two years later, though, Brook, now Sir Norman, was more demanding. He produced a ten-page memorandum which identified three main criticisms of Titmuss’s work: that the ‘treatment of pre-war estimates of the probable scale of attack … is out of scale and to some extent out of place’, that the book was written ‘too exclusively from the Ministry of Health angle’, and that the draft had taken ‘insufficient account of the co-ordination of Civil Defence work’. Brook, who had first-hand administrative experience in a number of these areas, then elaborated at length.22 Others picked up such points. A Treasury official, identified only by the initials P.D.P., disputed Titmuss’s criticisms of his department (which, in the published version, were in fact relatively mild). But ‘quite apart from the Treasury interest’, he had found the volume a ‘thoroughly bad book’. It was a ‘niggling production, written from a single, very narrow, point of view’. Brook’s comment that it was the ‘war as seen from the Ministry of Health Registry’ was exactly right. Finally, the book’s title was misleading as a range of ‘social policy’ issues were not covered. So, the ‘proper thing to do’ was to ‘tear it up and start all over again’.23 We might recall here Hancock’s comments on the clarity of what constituted wartime social policy, and that Titmuss was the person to write about it.
Brook was problematic in another, related, way. Titmuss addressed his criticisms in April 1948, accepting some points, rejecting others.24 As he told Acheson the following July, Brook had not, as yet, responded. Nor had he received any Treasury feedback, so presumably the document cited earlier had not yet reached him.25 The following month, Titmuss informed Hancock that he had had a useful discussion with Acheson, and had apologised to him for all the difficulties he had apparently created. It was unfair on Acheson to have to sort everything out, though Titmuss had found it ‘very hard to restrain my temper’. He again complained of the lack of feedback from both Brook and the Treasury, before apologising for this ‘outburst’. But he had ‘not quite simmered down yet’.26 Further difficulty from Brook came in