Introduction

In the course of the 1940s, Titmuss continued to play an active part in the Eugenics Society which, as we saw in Chapter 4, he had joined in the late 1930s. This was prompted by his interest in population and population health. But it likewise afforded him the opportunity to network with well-connected individuals who were to become important figures in promoting his career, such as Carr-Saunders and Hubback. This chapter examines Titmuss's work for the Society during the Second World War, especially from early 1942. He was editor of Eugenics Review for the first two editions of that year, standing in for Maurice Newfield while he was unwell. From the outbreak to the end of the war he also contributed six articles and a number of book reviews to the journal, as well as taking to task, in the correspondence columns and in debate, critics of his own approach to population issues. He participated in Society meetings, during the early part of the war was on its Emergency Committee, and by the end he was on its council, the latter an elected position. Titmuss published his third book, Birth, Poverty and Wealth: A Study of Infant Mortality, with Eugenics Society support. He was also co-opted, in 1943, onto the Population Investigation Committee (PIC), set up by the Eugenics Society in the mid-1930s.

Committee man, editor, and contributor

With the outbreak of war one immediate consequence for the Eugenics Society was that C.P. Blacker was called up to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), so depriving the organisation of one of its most active members and administrators. An emergency meeting of the council was called shortly afterwards. It was agreed to set up an Emergency Committee, chaired by Lord Horder, of ‘nine members able to attend regularly, with power to co-opt’, which would ‘act on behalf of Council for the duration of the war’. Titmuss was one of these, as were Carr-Saunders and Hubback. He was undoubtedly in favour of the creation of the Emergency Committee, telling Ursula Grant-Duff in mid-September that there was an overriding need to ‘see that the work of the Eugenics Society is kept alive’.