Early Twentieth-century Britain Research Articles

Middle-class Fathers, Sons, and Mental Illness in Late Victorian and Edwardian England

This article explores the impact of mental illness on the relationship between middle-class fathers and sons in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. Using sources that include autobiographies, oral histories, press reports of violence, and records of appeals against conscription, the article argues that shame was not the dominant reaction. Many mentally ill men lost masculine status and agency within the family, but both fathers and sons were much more likely to respond to illness with loving concern, attempts at negotiation and pacification, than to use their power over vulnerable relatives with attempts to confine and hide them from sight.

Taxonomizing Goblins from Folklore to Fiction

During the medieval and early modern periods, folkloric goblins were often presented as multifaceted creatures with unclear origins and as nebulous markers of the preternatural. Beginning in the 1800s, however, authors crafted new interpretations of these creatures that appropriated folkloric traditions to create a distinct kind of fictional goblin. The works of George MacDonald (d. 1905) and J. R. R. Tolkien (d. 1973) were essential to this process. MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872) fuses folklore with Darwinian evolutionary thought to present goblins as antagonistic, troglodytic schemers who devolved from humans. MacDonald’s ideas were influential on Tolkien, as he characterizes goblins as a corrupted and evil ‘race’—descriptions that utilize racialized language common in early twentieth-century England. Tolkien and MacDonald thus flattened folkloric goblins in their own works such that they became an entirely different (and specific) kind of fictional monster that reflected contemporary trends in English society.

Winston Churchill versus E. D. Morel, Dundee, 1922, and the Split in the Liberal Party

AbstractIn the November 1922 general election in the two-member seat of Dundee, Winston Churchill, Liberal member of Parliament for the city since 1908, lost his seat to Edwin Scrymgeour (Prohibitionist) and E. D. Morel (Labour). Before 1914, Morel, like Churchill, had been a member of the Liberal Party, and this article compares the political trajectory of Churchill and Morel across the war period in order to understand how their positions had diverged. While still a Liberal in party affiliation in 1922, Churchill was en route back to the Conservative Party, while Morel had become a prominent figure in the Labour Party. In examining this divergence, the aim is to shed light on one of the key issues of British politics in early twentieth-century Britain: the divisions in the Liberal party that undermined its place as one of the two leading political parties. The purpose is not to displace arguments about long-run socioeconomic change undermining the Liberals, nor of the severe impact of total war on Liberal thinking about the scope of state action; rather, it is to use this example to also stress the significance for the party of sharp divergences over war and peace, and more broadly, the conduct of foreign policy.

Police Court Rota: women’s archiving and access to legal life in early twentieth-century England

ABSTRACT The period of the early twentieth century is marked by an intense struggle on the part of women to gain access to professional careers and the public sphere. This paper contributes to a wider discourse on women’s professionalisation, by focusing specifically on women’s access to legal professions and the role archiving played in that process in the years preceding the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 in light of the Police Court Rota, run by the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH). The members of the Rota acted as observers in criminal cases, interviewers, writers and activists at the time when women were formally excluded from courtrooms and legal life. The paper draws extensively from the archives of the AMSH and National Vigilance Association and argues that observations, legal record creation and archiving gave middle-class women volunteers access to legal professions and power, despite formal exclusions. These records and collections, in part, counter law’s missing archive on women and criminal justice. This paper examines what these counter archives tell us about exclusion of women from legal history and the role archiving played within women’s professionalisation, and in turn, how class and colonial bias manifested within that process of archive creation.

Fatal Places? Contextual Effects on Infant and Child Mortality in Early Twentieth Century England and Wales

AbstractThis paper takes, as its starting point, Preston and Haines’ observation in Fatal Years that social class was the most important influence on infant and child mortality in England and Wales in the early twentieth century. A subsequent study suggested that this could in part be due to the spatial distribution of the different classes across different types of place, and that some of the mortality differences by social class might actually reflect the contextual effects of healthy and unhealthy places. Although this line of argument has received a considerable amount of attention in health geography literature, it has rarely been examined for a specific historic period, and then only within particular urban areas. In this paper, we apply multi-level models to a complete count individual-level dataset of the 1911 census of England and Wales, comparing influences on infant and child mortality at the level of the individual couple and for two spatial levels. We find that although most variation in infant and child mortality operates at the individual level, there is also important variation at the two spatial levels and part of the mortality differences between social classes is better explained by the areas in which people lived rather than by their social class. A consideration of independent variables at all three levels suggests that different spatial scales capture different sorts of influences on early age mortality.

"English Rose" for the masses: Gladys Cooper, beauty ideals and popular visual culture in early twentieth-century Britain

"English Rose" for the masses: Gladys Cooper, beauty ideals and popular visual culture in early twentieth-century Britain

Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith. Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 274. $99.99 (cloth).

Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith. Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 274. $99.99 (cloth). - Volume 62 Issue 1

Manning the British Empire: Gender, Identity and Emotions in Early Twentieth Century Britain

This article analyses the thought processes of Ralph Furse, a senior civil servant tasked with selecting and training senior colonial officials during the early twentieth century. It makes use of his desk diaries between 1910 and 1914, which he used to record his impressions of candidates for the colonial service, and his autobiography, published after his retirement in the 1960s. Furse based his assessments on masculine qualities of the candidates, as he saw them, and on their emotional styles. Those who projected authority as men, were physically imposing and could manage their emotions effectively were generally deemed suitable, whilst the more gregarious candidates lacking these masculine qualities were rejected. Furse was a gatekeeper to elite male status and his job helped shape his own sense of identity as a landed gentry man.

Criminality and the Common Law Imagination in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Erin Sheley, and: White-Collar Crime in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain by John Benson (review)

Criminality and the Common Law Imagination in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Erin Sheley, and: White-Collar Crime in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain by John Benson (review)

Criminality and the Common Law Imagination in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Erin Sheley, and: White-Collar Crime in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain by John Benson (review)

Criminality and the Common Law Imagination in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Erin Sheley, and: White-Collar Crime in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Britain by John Benson (review)

The German Trade Shock and the Rise of the Neo-Welfare State in Early Twentieth-Century Britain

We study the international origins of the neo-welfare state in Britain during the era of globalization before World War I. We introduce a new mechanism linking trade to the expansion of the state. In addition to increasing assessments of the volatility of employment in a market economy, trade shocks changed beliefs about the deservingness of the poor. Employing a shift-share measure of local exposure to German imports, we show that rising imports caused worse labor market outcomes from 1880 to 1910. Import competition led to a decrease in support for the Conservative Party in national elections after 1900, when the Liberal Party supported welfare state reforms. We further show that rising imports increased the use in local newspapers of scientific terms like “unemployment” relative to pejorative terms like “vagrancy” to describe the poor. Political responses to globalization helped shape voter support for the modern British welfare state at its inception.

Citizen Strike Breakers: Volunteers, Strikes, and the State in Britain, 1911–1926

This article provides the first systematic historical study of volunteer strike-breaking across a relatively broad time frame, focusing specifically on the period between 1911 and 1926. These years bore witness to the largest industrial conflict in British history, encompassing the Great Labour Unrest of 1911-14, the post-war strike wave of 1919-23, and the General Strike of 1926. The sheer size and scale of these strikes, which involved millions of workers and engulfed entire cities, towns, and communities, instigated a shift away from traditional strikebreaking agencies and actors and towards civilian volunteers. This article challenges prevailing interpretations of the General Strike, interwar political culture, and the implications of voluntary activism in early twentieth-century Britain. It sheds light on the hitherto unexplored role of volunteers during the Great Labour Unrest and highlights how this activity often provoked considerable violence on the part of strikers. Contrary to dominant interpretations centred on the General Strike, which often highlight the good spirits of the volunteers, this article pays more attention to the hostility, arrogance, and sense of social hierarchy that underpinned the volunteer world view.

Men, Misfits, and Martyrs

Homosexuality has historically been constructed as an issue within Ireland and the Irish diaspora for centuries. However, the academic investigation of homosexuality and, consequently, homophobia’s roles in Irish history have been sparsely studied. This essay seeks to examine homosexuality in the Irish diaspora. Specifically, it investigates how heterosexuality necessarily came to be closely associated with the growing Irish nationalist movement in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England. Through the analysis of Oscar Wilde’s court cases as well as the impact of the publishing of Roger Casement’s personal diary entries, it is evident that homosexuality was constructed as a controversial issue in the Irish diaspora during times of instability in Ireland. Because homosexuality threatened the sanctity of Irish nationhood by existing outside of outlined social norms, instances of publicized homosexuality amid elite Irish men living within the Irish diaspora were largely looked down upon in order to preserve traditional notions of ‘Irishness’. This investigation concluded that familism’s rise in Ireland and throughout the Irish diaspora in response to Britain’s encroaching colonial intervention in the country determined that homosexuality served no purpose to the nationalistic cause, thus leading to its construction as an inherently anti-Irish characteristic among Irish men.

Petitions to the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes: A New Methodological Approach to the History of Divorce, 1857–1923

ABSTRACT Although the subject of divorce and the development of divorce legislation in nineteenth-century England and Wales have received some academic attention, much work remains to be done. Existing studies have examined either a small number of cases from a limited period of the newly formed Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes’ history; answered a specific question over a longer period; or conducted detailed micro-studies of individual and high-profile cases. None have examined the surviving petitions made to the court (held at The National Archives under J 77) holistically over an extended period. This article seeks to revive the field by suggesting a new interdisciplinary methodological approach that will combine historical and legal studies with digital humanities to offer the first panoptic view of J 77 petitions. Far from being dry legal documents, this article argues that they hold a wealth of rich detail about petitioners, respondents, co-respondents, witnesses, children, solicitors, barristers, clerks, and judges, and stand at an exciting intersection of several fields of enquiry. Adopting such an approach will generate important new insights about gender, class, property ownership, intimacy, religion, childhood, and sexuality in nineteenth and early twentieth century England and Wales.

'A remedy for this dread disease': Achille Sclavo, anthrax and serum therapy in early twentieth-century Britain.

In the years around 1900 one of the most significant practical consequences of new styles of bacteriological thought and practice was the development of preventive vaccines and therapeutic sera. Historical scholarship has highlighted how approaches rooted in the laboratory methods of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur and their collaborators were transformed in local contexts and applied in diverse ways to enable more effective disease identification, prevention and treatment. Amongst these, the anti-anthrax serum developed by the Italian physician Achille Sclavo (1861-1930) has received little to no attention from historians. This article positions Sclavo's serum as a neglected but significant presence in British microbiology, which achieved widespread uptake amidst a wave of optimism, despite prolonged uncertainty about its mechanism of action and dosage. After being introduced to Britain in 1904 by the enterprising first medical inspector of factories Thomas Morison Legge, within a matter of months the serum became regarded by medical practitioners as an effective treatment of cutaneous anthrax, though access to 'fresh' serum and the necessary speedy diagnosis remained problematic. Like the disease anthrax itself, discussion of 'Sclavo's serum' was out of all proportion to the relatively low number of cases, reflecting a deep-seated fascination with the wider possibilities afforded by effective serum therapy.

Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876–1914 by Rob Boddice

In this book, Boddice explores how medical scientists developed their defense of scientific experimentation on animals in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Britain and United States, thereby causing drastic changes to the idea of medical humanity. In addition, the book analyzes the difficulties that both countries confronted and the strategies that they deployed against the anti-vivisection movement. The book argues that when scientific communities faced accusations of immorality from anti-vivisectionists, they not only acquired support from domestic and overseas scientific allies but also merged the scientific spirit with discourses of culture, rhetoric, politics, and gender to develop their own version of medical humanity.Boddice constructs his argument in five chronological chapters in the context of a longue durée (8). Building on his previous work, which focused on medical science as a sympathetic practice in nineteenth-century Britain (3), he analyzes old British and American official archives, medical records, and personal letters from the perspective of cultural, intellectual, medical, public, and gender history. He applies the tools of cultural anthropology to argue that scientific communities took moral economy into consideration when they planned their strategies to justify vivisection for medical research (7). In addition, the book uses the sociology of emotions and actor-network theory to explain how British and American medical authorities manipulated public opinion and sought transnational cooperation and interaction to counteract the protests of anti-vivisectionists (144–148, 151).The controversy surrounding animal vivisection dates back at least to the Enlightenment, extending into the nineteenth century in Western scientific medicine (55–56). The moral condemnation from anti-vivisectionists negatively impacted the governmental and public funding and support of British and U.S. medical scientists—all of whom accepted both Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution and the experimental medicine that had emerged in Germany (69–70, 78). To counter this growing opposition, Stephen Paget, leader of the British Research Defence Society, worked to translate professional medical knowledge and practice into an accessible language and to spread popularized scientific information to all classes of British society through publications, speeches, and media (114). Likewise, Walter Cannon, the leading figure of the American Defense of Medical Research, exploited publications and the media to portray medical practitioners as scientific pioneers and vivisection as a powerful tool for medical advancement (163).Both organizations used emotional messaging to win broad support. By 1914, they had transformed the image of experimental medicine, a male-dominated realm, from cold-blooded and inhumane to salutary, rational, civilized, humanitarian, and self-sacrificing. At the same time, they labeled the anti-vivisectionists as irrational, uncivilized, unpatriotic, ignorant, and emotional women (135–136, 171).Boddice closely and systematically reconstructs how the information network of British and American scientists was ultimately able to shift public opinion, not through dry academic research and statistics but through “emotional labor”—the use of personal stories and sentimental experiences (150). Although most previous studies of the history of animal experimentation have focused on the voices of anti-vivisectionists, this book also presents the conflict from medical scientists’ point of view, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of how the controversies originated.

Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England by Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith

Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England by Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith

Corporatism in Early Twentieth-Century Britain: Three Alternatives for a Post-Liberal Order

This article engages with the most recent literature on the global circulation of corporatist projects, discussing three reform schemes elaborated in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century – G.D.H. Cole's guild socialism, Dudley Docker's technocratic business parliament and Harold Macmillan's conservative industrial self-government. Overcoming the often too rigid equivalences between corporatism and fascism, this article seeks to ascertain to what extent and with what nuances corporatist ideas circulated among non-fascist political circles in Britain. It is argued that the schemes analysed shared a similar corporatist matrix, which nonetheless served as the core idea of different political strategies. In the conclusions, it is claimed that these dissimilarities are consequential to the degree of adherence to the principles of capitalism, i.e. the profit-earning motive and the private ownership of the means of production, as well as to the democratic level of the institutions proposed.

Physical Culture Supplements in Early Twentieth Century Britain

Physical Culture Supplements in Early Twentieth Century Britain

The Unsung Activists: UK Shareholder Investigation Committees, 1888–1940

As companies became larger and shareholders more numerous in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain, the conventional wisdom is that the free-rider problem inhibited active shareholder participation. Discontented shareholders could sell in the market, but it was long before the takeover bid mechanism facilitated the removal of underperforming incumbent boards. We show, using a sample of fifty cases in the period from 1888 to 1940, that UK shareholders overcame the free-rider problem by using committees of investigation on a sufficiently large scale to present a credible threat to board malfeasance. Although there was more to corporate performance than corporate governance, this aspect of good governance plausibly contributed to London's precocity in divorcing ownership from control in domestic companies up to World War II.