Bodies, Sexuality and the “Modernization” of the British Working Classes, 1920s to 1960s

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 69, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 104-122

  Brooke, Stephen ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749383227     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0147547906000068     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. Anthony Fletcher, The Family and Marriage (Harmondsworth, 1962), 128, 127.
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4. See also Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (Harmondsworth, 1958)
5. Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society (London, 1961)
6. John Goldthorpe et alia, The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour (Cambridge, 1968).
7. See, for example, Michael Shanks, The Stagnant Society (Harmondsworth, 1962,1972), Chapters 3 and 4.
8. See, for example, James Cronin, “Politics, Class Structure and the Enduring Weakness of British Social Democracy,” Journal of Social History 16 (1982–1983), 123–40
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11. On this, see, for example, Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, 2004)
12. Peter Gurney, “‘Intersex’ and ‘Dirty Girls’: Mass-Observation and Working-Class Sexuality in England in the 1930s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8 (1997), 256–90
13. Liz Stanley, Sex Surveyed (London, 1995).
14. See Wally Seecombe, “Starting to Stop: Working-Class Fertility Decline in Britain,” Past and Present 126 (1990), 151–88
15. Kate Fisher, ‘“She Was Quite Satisfied With the Arrangements I Made”: Gender and Birth Control in Britain 1920–1950,” Past and Present 169 (2001), 161–193.
16. J.B. Priestley, English Journey (London, 1934), 400.
17. See Miriam Glucksmann, Women Assemble (London, 1990)
18. Michael Savage, “Trade Unionism, Sex Segregation and the State: Women's Employment in ‘New Industries’ in Inter-War Britain,” Social History 13 (1988), 209–28
19. Sally Alexander, “Becoming a Woman in the 1920s and 1930s,” in Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (London, 1994), 203–224.
20. See Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (Cambridge, 1982).
21. See also Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments (Chicago, 1988)
22. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York, 1995).
23. Jill L. Matus, Unstable Bodies (Manchester, 1995), 58.
24. See Women's Cooperative Guild, Maternity: Letters from Working Women (New York, 1915)
25. Maud Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London, 1913, 1979)
26. Sally Alexander, “The Fabian Women's Group: 1908–52,” in Becoming a Woman (London, 1994), 149–158.
27. Ruth Hall, ed., Dear Dr Stopes: Sex in the 1920s (London, 1978), 17,18,19, 23.
28. See also Sally Alexander, “The Mysteries and Secrets of Women's Bodies: Sexual Knowledge in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” in Mica Nava and Alan O'Shea, eds., Modern Times (London, 1996), 161–74
29. Claire Davey, “Birth Control in Britain During the Interwar Years: Evidence from the Stopes Correspondence,” Journal of Family History 13 (1988), 329–345.
30. See Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 900–39 (London, 1980), Chapters 4 and 5.
31. See, for example, Margery Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives (London, 1939,1981), 52.
32. G.C.M. M'Conicle and J. Kirby, Poverty and Public Health (London, 1936), 128–9, 33.
33. Spring Rice, Working Class Wives, 49–50.
34. See, for example, Deborah Cohen, “Private Lives in Public Spaces: Marie Stopes, the Mothers' Clinics and the Practice of Contraception,” History Workshop Journal 35 (1993), 95–116.
35. See, for example, Pamela Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1994).
36. Koven, Slumming, 195.
37. WBCG, Memorandum by Deputation to Ministry of Health, 9 May 1924 (London, 1924), 3, 12.
38. Lella Secor Florence, Birth Control on Trial (London, 1930), 51.
39. Florence, Birth Control on Trial, 64–65.
40. Florence, Birth Control on Trial, 104.
41. Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception 1800–1975 (Oxford, 2004), 110–111.
42. Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution, 205.
43. See, for example, Lesley Hall, “Feminist Reconfigurations of Heterosexuality in the 1920s”, in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, eds., Sexology in Culture (Chicago, 1998), 135–49
44. Marcus Collins, Modern Love (London, 2004).
45. On Stella Browne, see Lesley Hall, “‘I Have Never Met the Normal Woman’: Stella Browne and the Politics of Womanhood,” Women's History Review 6 (1997)
46. on Dora Russell, see Stephen Brooke, “The Body and Socialism: Dora Russell in the 1920s,” Past and Present 189 (2005), 147–177.
47. Dora Russell, Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge (London, 1925), 128, 131
48. Dora Russell, The Right To Be Happy (London, 1927), 294–295.
49. Stella Browne, “The Right to Abortion” in F.W. Stella Browne, A.M. Ludovici and Harry Roberts, Abortion (London, 1935), 40, 45.
50. Janet Chance, The Romance of Reality (London, 1934), 80.
51. Janet Chance, Intellectual Crime (London, 1933), 99.
52. See Michael Anton Budd, The Sculpture Machine: Physical Culture and Body Politics in the Age of Empire (New York, 1997)
53. Harold Segel, Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative (Baltimore, 1998).
54. Dora Russell, In Defence of Children (London, 1932), 77.
55. Comments by Dr. Maitland Radford from Report of the Conference on the Giving of Information on Birth Control by Public Health Authorities (London, 1930), 10.
56. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York, 1937, 1958), 18
57. see also George Orwell, 1984 (Harmondsworth, 1949, 1954), 174–5 for a similar description.
58. Naomi Mitchison, Comments on Birth Control (London, 1930), 9.
59. Report of the Conference on the Giving of Information on Birth Control by Public Health Authorities, 14.
60. In Norman Haire, ed., Some More Medical Views of Birth Control (London, 1928), 88.
61. See Hall, “‘I Have Never Met the Normal Women’”
62. Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree (London, 1975)
63. Jill Benton, Naomi Mitchison (London, 1990).
64. See Daniel Ritschel, The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford, 1997)
65. Elizabeth Durbin, New Jerusalems (London, 1985)
66. Stephen Brooke, Labour's War (Oxford, 1992).
67. Julian Huxley, “Health For All”, Picture Post (London), January 4, 1941, 33–35.
68. Kathleen Woodward, Jipping Street: Childhood in a London Slum (London, 1928), 2,4.
69. See Elizabeth Roberts, A Woman's Place (Oxford, 1984), 84, 97.
70. See also Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960 (London, 1994), chapter 2.
71. Seecombe, “Starting to Stop: Working-Class Fertility in Britain”
72. Fisher, “‘She Was Quite Satisfied With the Arrangements I Made.’”
73. See combe, “Starting to Stop: Working-Class Fertility Decline in Britain,” 153.
74. See Judy Giles, “‘Playing Hard to Get’: Working Class Women, Sexuality and Respectability in Britain 1918–40,” and Penny Summerfield and Nicole Crockett, “‘You Weren't Taught That With the Welding’: Lessons in Sexuality in the Second World War,” Women's History Review 1 (1992), 239–55, 435–54.
75. Public Record Office, Kew, MH 71/25, Interdepartmental Committee on Abortion, Oral Evidence of EMWWA (1937).
76. Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society: Family Life and Industry (London, 1961), 69.
77. Irvine Loudon, “Maternal Mortality in the past and its relevance to developing countries today,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72/1 (July 2000), 241–246.
78. On this, see Stanley, Sex Surveyed.
79. See Mass-Observation, Britain and Her Birth-Rate (London, 1945), 54–62.
80. See also Sally Alexander, “Becoming a Woman in the 1920s and 1930s” and “Memory, Generation and History: Two Women's Lives in the Inter-War years,” in Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History (London, 1994), 203–24, 231–42
81. Lara Marks, Metropolitan Maternity: Maternal and Infant Welfare Services in early twentieth century London (Amsterdam, 1996)
82. Eliot Slater and Maya Woodside, Patterns of Marriage: A Study of Marriage Relationships in the Urban Working-Classes (London, 1951), 151
83. Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, The Peckham Experiment: A Study in the Living Structure of Society (London, 1943)
84. Ferdynand Zweig, Women's Life and Labour (London, 1952).
85. Eva M. Hubback, The Population of Britain (Harmondsworth, 1947), 57.
86. See Richard Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England 18771930 (Chapel Hill, 1982)
87. Wally Seccombe, “Starting to Stop: Working-Class Fertility Decline in Britain”; Cmd. 7695, Royal Commission on Population (London, June 1949)
88. M. Bone, Family Planning Services in England and Wales (London, 1973).
89. Denise Riley, War in the Nursery (London, 1985).
90. Cmd. 7695, Royal Commission on Population (London, June 1949), paragraph 160.
91. See Sonya Rose, “Sex, Citizenship and the Nation in World War II Britain,’ American Historical Review 103 (1998), 1147–1176
92. Marilyn Lake, “Female Desires: The Meaning of World War 2,” Australian Historical Studies 21/95 (October 1990), 267–284.
93. See Gillian Swanson, “‘So Much money and So Little to Spend It On’: Morale, Consumption and Sexuality” from Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson, eds., Nationalising Femininity (Manchester, 1996), 70–86.
94. See Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution; Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society (London, 1989)
95. Birmingham Feminist History Group, “Feminism as Femininity in the 1950s,” Feminist Review 3 (1979), 48–65.
96. National Marriage Guidance Council, Sex in Marriage (London, 1947), 1.
97. Eustace Chesser, The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman (London, 1956), 421.
98. See, for example, Joan Malleson writing as “Dr. Joan Graham” aka “Medica,” Any Wife or Any Husband (London, 1951, 1955), 30.
99. Leonard England, “A British Sex Survey,” International Journal of Sexology 2 (February 1950), 152.
100. Chesser, The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman, 421.
101. Eustace Chesser, Marriage and Freedom (London, 1946), 55.
102. Chesser, The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman, 423.
103. The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman, 432.
104. The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman, 408.
105. The Sexual, Marital and Family Relationships of the English Woman, 433.
106. Mark W. Hodges and Cyril S. Smith, “The Sheffield Estate” in Department of Social Science, University of Liverpool, Neighbourhood and Community: An Enquiry into Social Relationships on Housing Estates in Liverpool and Sheffield (Liverpool, 1954), 87–88.
107. Social Science Department, London School of Economics, Woman, Wife and Worker (London, 1960), 6.
108. Zweig, Women's Life and Labour, 56.
109. See Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women's Two Roles: Home and Work (London, 1956, 1968).
110. Young and Wilmott, Family and Class in A London Suburb (London, 1960, 1967), 24–25.
111. Lella Secor Florence, Progress Report on Birth Control (London, 1956), 41.
112. Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society: Family Life and Industry, 173.
113. Peter Willmott and Michael Young, Family and Class in A London Suburb, 24.
114. Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (Harmondsworth, 1957, 1962), 30.
115. Michael Young and Peter Wilmott, The Symmetrical Family (London, 1973).
116. Pearl Jepthcott, with Nancy Seear and J.H. Smith, Married Women Working (London, 1962), 91.
117. Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society: Family Life and Industry, 207.
118. Zweig, Worker in an Affluent Society, 135.
119. Norman Dennis, Fernando Henriques, and Clifford Slaughter, Coal is Our Life (London, 1956, 1969), 9.
120. Dennis, Henriques, and Slaughter, Coal is Our Life, 228, 230.
121. Dennis, Henriques, and Slaughter, Coal is Our Life, 232.
122. Madeleine Kerr, The People of Ship Street (London, 1958), 84.
123. See Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution.
124. See Stephen Brooke, “Abortion Law Reform, 1929–68” in Michael Kandiah and Gillian Staerck, eds., The Abortion Act 1967: ICBH Witness Seminar (London, 2002), 15–20, 22–5.
125. Florence, Report on Birth Control, 50.
126. Florence, Report on Birth Control, 136.
127. Florence, Report on Birth Control, 215.
128. B. Seebohm Rowntree and G.R. Lavers, English Life and Leisure: A Social Study (London, 1951), 76, 4, 15.
129. See, for example, Pearl Jephcott, Rising Twenty: Notes on Some Ordinary Girls (London, 1948), Chapter 4.
130. See, for example, Chris Waters, “‘Dark Strangers in Our Midst’: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–63,” Journal of British Studies 36 (1997), 207–238.
131. Stephen Brooke, “Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain during the 1950s,” Journal of Social History 34 (Summer 2001), 773–795.
132. See, for example, Liz Heron, ed., Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing Up in the Fifties (London, 1985).
133. For earlier periods, see Regenia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832 -1920 (New York, 1991)
134. Kate Fisher, “‘She Was Quite Satisfied With the Arrangements I Made.’”