Geographies of risk: An exploration of city childhoods in early twentieth-century Britain

Paedagogica Historica

Volumn 45, Issue 1-2, 2009, Pages 215-233

  Grosvenor, Ian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Children in care; Knowledge creation and circulation; Spatial turn

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449706426     PISSN: 00309230     EISSN: 1477674X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00309230902746388     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. Birmingham City Archives (BCA), Report of the Chief Education Officer on Boarding-Out, February 1945.
2. BCA, BCC/BH/14/6/1/1 Hostels and Boarding-Out Minutes. The Hostels and Boarding-Out Sub-Committee had been established as a Sub-Committee of the Juvenile Employment and Welfare Sub-Committee on 7 May 1930 and it processed applications to be foster parents, requests for adoption, allowances paid per child and requests for additional payments and received reports from the CEO, the School Medical Officer and the Visitors of Boarded-Out children.
3. Report of the Care of Children Committee (Curtis Report). London: HMSO, Cmnd 6922, 1946. Dame Myra Curtis (1886-1971) was a civil servant and head of an Oxford college. Sir Peter Innes gave evidence before the Committee on behalf of the Association of Education Committees.
4. Report by Sir Walter Monckton on the circumstances which led to the boarding out Dennis and Terence 0'Neill at Bank Farm, Ministerley and the steps taken to supervise their welfare. London: HMSO, Cmnd 6636, May 1945. The inquiry was commissioned by the Home Office, 28 March 1945. A coroner's jury returned a verdict that Dennis's death was due to cardiac failure following violence applied to the front of the chest and back while in a state of undernourishment. The foster-parents, Reginald and Esther Gough, were charged with manslaughter and imprisoned for six years and six months respectively. Monckton's inquiry focused on the failure of supervision by Newport Authority. The public outcry about the conditions of children in care was further sharpened by press reports, and a subsequent inquiry, into how two other boys in Scotland were reduced to a pitiable condition physically and mentally through wilful assault and ill-treatment by their foster parents. The foster parents, like the Goughs, were punished with imprisonment
5. see The Journal of Education (September 1945): 444-446.
6. BCA, Report of the Chief Education Officer on Boarding-Out, 1. For discussion of Birmingham as a progressive education authority see Ian Grosvenor and Kevin Myers, Progressivism, control and correction: Local Education Authorities and Educational Policy in 20th century England, Paedagogica Historica 43, nos 1amp;11 (2006): 225-248. An indicator of Birmingham's progressive approach is indicated by statistics gathered for the Hostels and Boarding-Out Sub-Committee in 1931 that showed that only two out of 50 local authorities (Northampton and Kent) paid higher weekly maintenance and quarterly clothing allowance for boarded-out children than Birmingham, BCA, BCC/BH/14/6/1/1 Hostels and Boarding-Out Minutes, May 1930-October 1932.
7. Children and Young Persons (Boarding Out), Section 84 (2) Children and Young Persons Act, 1933.
8. John Stewart has recently argued that the Child Guidance movement in 1930s Britain pathologised the normal child; see 'The Dangerous Age of Childhood': Child Guidance in Inter-War Britain (paper presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, Norrkodie;oping, Sweden, June 27-30, 2007).
9. See, for example, Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000);
10. Amanda Gilroy, Romantic Geographies: Discourse of Travel 1775-1844 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000);
11. Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories. Photographs, Anthropology and Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2001);
12. Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005).
13. David N. Livingstone,; Text, talk and testimony: geographical reflections on scientific habits. An Afterword,; British Journal for the History of Science 38, no. 136 (2005): 94.
14. See also his Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003).
15. There is though an emerging and important literature on networks which connects with the spatial agenda, see note 80 below.
16. Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar quoted in Livingstone, Texts, 93-94.
17. See Lawrence Dritsas,; From Lake Nyassa to Philadelphia: a geography of the Zambesi Expedition, 1858-65,; British Journal for the History of Science 38, no. 136 (2005): 35-52.
18. Dritsas provides the reference to Latour. For a discussion of centres of calculation
19. see Bruno Latour,; Circulating reference: sampling the soil in the Amazon forest,; in Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 24-79.
20. M. Foucault,; Nietzsche, Genealogy, History; in Language, Counter-memory, Practice, Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D. Bouchard and S. Simon (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 149.
21. See also Bernadette M. Barker and Katherine E. Heyning, eds, Dangerous Coagulations? The Uses of Foucault in the Study of Education (New York, Peter Lang 2004).
22. For a critical discussion of the use of periodicals as a historical source Mark Depaepe and others, Order in Progress: Everyday Education Practice in Primary Schools - Belgium, 1880-1970 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000), 39-45.
23. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1930 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 12.
24. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1930 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 11-12.
25. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1933 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 25-26.
26. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1935 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 30.
27. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1936 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council).
28. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1932 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council)
29. Auden (1872-1957) had moved to Birmingham in 1908 to be the City's first School Medical Officer, having previously been a physician in London and at York County Hospital. He became a lecturer in public health at Birmingham University and in 1941 Professor of public health. He also studied Child Guidance Methods in Austria and gave lectures on mental hygiene to social science students training on the University of Birmingham's Diploma in social studies; such students attended discussions and had their practical work organised and monitored by staff at the Birmingham Settlement, see BCA Parent Teacher Associations, Box 52/1 Notes made by Mrs Crosthwaite on Work Done in Birmingham, October 4-December 9th, 1933, 3;
30. George Auden,; British Medical Journal (May 18, 1957): 1187;
31. George Augustus Auden,; Lancet (May 11, 1957): 999.
32. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1934 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 28. In a long career Auden published in a range of journals including School Hygiene, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute, Journal of Mental Science and The Medical Officer.
33. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1933, 36.
34. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1934, 31.
35. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1934, 31-32.
36. Journal of Education (August 1945): 383.
37. Journal of Education (September 1945): 444.
38. Journal of Education, (December 1946): 650.
39. R.H. Crowley,; Some Health Problems at Home and Abroad,; Journal of Education (April 1946): 178-179.
40. T. Stephens, ed., Problem Families: an Experiment in Social Rehabilitation (London: Pacifist Service Units, 1945).
41. R.H. Crowley,; Some Foundations of Health,; Journal of Education (April 1946): 222-223. The full details of these three books are W.M. Burbury, W.M. Balint and B.J. Yapp, An Introduction to Child Guidance (London: Macmillan, 1945);
42. R. Winterbourn, Educating Backward Children in New Zealand (Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1944) and Health Education: Report of an Advisory Committee appointed by the Bristol Education Committee, December 1944.
43. New Era (May 1936): 117.
44. New Era (May 1936), 149.
45. It is not uncommon to find the same writer using the journal to publish a series of articles on the same theme, for example, the paediatrician Dr Margaret Lowenfeld focused on children's anti-social behaviour and had three articles published between 1930 and 1933: Behaviour problems in the Nursery, The New Era (November 1930): 137-139; Understanding the child, The New Era (May 1933): 82-84; and Destructiveness in Children, The New Era (June 1933): 137-139.
46. A.E. Chapman,; Psychology,; in The Teachers' Guide: A Practical Treatise written by Specialists (London: Gresham Publishing, 1930), 180, 221.
47. The Health of the School Child, 1935 (published 1936), quoted in Gillian Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 72.
48. Cyril Burt was one of the Council's Vice-Presidents, Beatrice Ensor of the New Education Fellowship was on the Executive Committee and Dr Ralph Crowley represented the Board of Education.
49. BCA Parent Teacher Associations, Box 52/1, Advances in understanding the Child, 1933.
50. BCA Parent Teacher Associations, Box 52/1 Notes made by Mrs Crosthwaite on Work Done in Birmingham, October 4-December 9th, 1933; Correspondence of Kathleen Wadsworth to Mrs Crosthwaite, 29 November 1933.
51. BCA Parent Teacher Associations, Box 52/1 Notes made by Mrs Crosthwaite on Work Done in Birmingham, October 4-December 9th, 1933.;
52. Report by Sir Walter Monckton, Schedule Rule 11, Children and Young Persons Act 1933, 21.
53. This moral role was also central to the decision to approve the registration of a foster parent, so, for example, the Sub-Committee referred an application in 1930: to make an application when man lodger left, BCA, BCC/BH/14/6/1/1 October 1930.
54. BCA, BCC/BH/14/6/1/1 October 1931.
55. For procedures, see BCA, BCC/BH/14/16/1 April 1, 1931.
56. These male officers of the local state had been instrumental at the end of the nineteenth century in Birmingham in providing detailed data on families to support slum clearance schemes and similarly Charles Booth in his London surveys observed: the classification of the people rests in effect upon what the School Board attendance officers have told us of the homes and parents of the children in elementary schools, Charles Booth, ed., London Life and Labour, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1902), 195. For a detailed account of their role
57. see Ian Grosvenor,; ;All the Names': LEAs and the making of pupil and community identities,; Oxford Review of Education XVIII (2002): 299-310.
58. Annual Report of School Medical Office 1935, 30.
59. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1928 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 9. 30;
60. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1932, 9.
61. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1941 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 9.
62. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1935, 8.
63. BCA Parent Teacher Associations, Box 52/1, Notes made by Mrs Crosthwaite on Work Done in Birmingham, October 4-December 9th, 1933, 8, 11, Appendix Lectures, Appendix Schools.
64. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1932, 37. While this report describes as a psychologist Burns was medically trained holding the qualifications of MRCS, LRCP (St Thomas' Hospital, London). He also served as Physician to the Children's Department of the Tavistock Square Clinic for Functional Nervous Disorders, and prior to this appointment he served as House Physician at St Thomas' Hospital and also at the Victoria Hospital for Children, London. Thanks to John Stewart for this information.
65. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1937 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 30;
66. Annual Report of the School Medical Officer 1938, (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 41. These figures relate to Head Teacher referrals. The Special Schools Department made separate referrals, so the education based referrals could be presented as even higher.
67. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1934, 28-33.
68. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1935, 25-26.
69. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1932, 38.
70. Health Visitors were viewed alongside Home Helps as critical for supplying valuable data and finding out at first hand what happens in the homes in the early days and what are the relations between parents and children, Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1937, 22.
71. See Grosvenor and Myers Progressivism, 239-242.
72. See also Kevin Myers and Anna Brown,; Mental Deficiency: The Diagnosis and After-Care of Special School Leavers in early Twentieth Century Birmingham,; Journal of Sociology XVIII (2005): 72-98.
73. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1936, 7;
74. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1946 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council), 29.
75. See Grosvenor; ;All the Names';, 299-310.
76. See Grosvenor; ;All the Names';, 299-310.
77. Grosvenor and Myers,; Progressivism, Control and Correction; 225-247
78. See, for example, W.E. Marsden,; Charles Booth and the Social Geography of Education in late nineteenth century London,; in Retrieved Riches 1840-1914, ed. David Englander and Rosemary O'Day (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), 241-264;
79. W.E. Marsden,; Social stratification and nineteenth-century English urban education,; and David Coulby, Approaches to urban education in the USA and the UK, in The City and Education in Four Nations, ed. Ronald K. Goodenow and W.E. Marsden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 111-128, 205-220. The index of the book includes spatial factors.
80. This is not to say that a consideration of spatial factors would not generate interesting data. For example, it would be possible using the evidence in the Hostel and Boarding Sub-Committee Minute Books to map across the city both geographies of desire and geographies of disappointment, with regard to the location of applications to be foster parents. This was something which certainly began to interest the city officials in the years after the Second World War; see The First Four Years: A Report of the Children's Officer of the City of Birmingham 1949-53 (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council, 1953), 86. Data usually included the prospective foster mother's name, status (single, married, widow), religion, address, age and religion.
81. See Michel Foucault; On Governmentality; in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (University of Chicago Press, 1999). The concept is also explored in other works, see M. Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collegrave;ge de France 1974-1975 (London: Verso, 2003).
82. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), xxix, 287, 302.
83. See Cathy Unwin and Elaine Sharland,; From Bodies to Minds in Childcare Literature: Advice to parents in inter-war Britain,; in In the Name of the Child. Health and Welfare 1880-1940, ed. R. Cooter (London: Routledge, 1992), 174-199.
84. James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: Chicago University Press), 2001.
85. Livingstone, Texts, 97.
86. For example, in November 1935 H.P. Newsholme, Birmingham's Medical Officer for Health, who was involved in the Home and School Council of Great Britain lecture series in 1933, gave a public lecture in Manchester on The Illegitimate Child: A Challenge to Society, which was later published by the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, BCA Ms 603/18.
87. Victor Bailey, Delinquency and Citizenship. Reclaiming the Young Offender, 1914-1948 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 126.
88. For a case study of citationary structure related to race-thinking see M. Green and I. Grosvenor Making Subjects: History-Writing, Education and 'Race' Categorisation, Paedagogica Historica 33, no. 3 (1997), 883-908.
89. Sutherland, Ability, 84-85.
90. Sutherland, Ability, 274.
91. BCA Adams, M.G.R.,; History of Education in Birmingham 1902-1951;, unpublished manuscript, 390.
92. M.B. Davies, Hygiene and Health (London: Longman Green amp; Co, 1932). There were five editions over 20 years.
93. Annual Report of School Medical Officer 1937, 32.
94. Both archives are held by the Modern Records Centre, Warwick University.
95. John Stevenson and J.H. Capes, Handbook for School Attendance Officers (London: Pitman, 1939).
96. Harry Ferguson, Protecting Children in Time: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2004).
97. See Sybil Clement Brown; Family case work and mental health,; Charity Organization Quarterly 13 (1939): 40-50 and The methods of social care workers, in The Study of Society, ed. F.C. Bartlett and others (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1939), 34-62.
98. See, for example, Doreen Massey,; Imagining Globalisation: power-geometries of time-space,; in Global Futures. Migration, Environment and Globalization, ed. A. Brah (London: Macmillan, 1999) and Networks and the History of Education, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs, Daniel Lindmark and Christoph Ludie;th, Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2007).
99. Deborah Thom has written about how the Commonwealth Fund in America paid for the Anglo-American exchange of Child Guidance staff in the 1930s, Wishes, anxieties, play and gestures: child guidance in inter-war England, in Cooter, In the Name of the Child, 200-219.
100. Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin,; Networks after Bourdieu: Women, Education and Public Politics from the 1890s to the 1920s,; History of Education Researcher, 80 (2007): 65-75.
101. Gillian Swanson,; Serenity, Self-Regard and the Genetic Sequence: Social Psychiatry and Preventive Eugenics in Britain, 1930s-1950s,; New Formations 60 (Spring 2007): 50-65.
102. Roy Lowe, Schooling and Social Change, 1964-1990 (London: Routledge, 1997), ch. 6. A connection between Lowe's argument regarding eugenics and race can be found in a recent essay by Veacute;ronique Mottier and Natalia Gerodetti, Eugenics and Social Democracy: or, How the European Left tried to eliminate the 'Weeds' from its National Gardens, New Formations 60 (Spring 2007): 35-49, where they document the forced removal in Switzerland of gypsy children from their biological parents between 1926 and 1973.
103. Swanson, Serenity, 50.
104. H. Laming, The Victoria Climbieacute; Inquiry (London: HMSO, 2003).
105. See Sonia Jackson,; Looking after children away from home: past and present,; in In Care and After: A Positive Perspective, ed. Elaine Chase, Antonia Simon and Sonia Jackson (London: Routledge, 2006), 9-25.
106. Georges Perec, Species of Space and Other Places (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 6, 12.