Born: 1927, United Kingdom
Died: 2011
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Ruth Pearce
This biography is shared with permission from the Academics’ Wives project, created by Rosalind Edward and Val Gillies and supported by the British Academy / Leverhulme.
RUTH TOWNSEND (1927-2011)
Ruth grew up in a well-to-do household in Hampstead, North London where she met Peter Townsend. They married in 1949, while both were studying at Cambridge University. Peter took up a visiting studentship at the Free University in West Berlin and Ruth accompanied him. They returned to London when Ruth became pregnant with their first child and rented a small flat in Westminster where Peter took a job as a researcher at the Political and Economic Planning think tank (PEP). When Ruth became pregnant again in 1952 they moved to a house in Hampstead. Peter continued his academic career, while Ruth looked after the children and also did extensive caring work for sick and elderly neighbours. Her conversations with the diverse range people in the local area almost certainly fed into Peter’s political and sociological work.
While at PEP Peter met Michael Young who asked him join the newly founded Institute for Community Studies to research old age. During this period Ruth organised regular gatherings and semi formal dinner parties attended by influential politicians, journalist and academics and is described by Peter as having engaged passionately in the debates and discussions. These social events were crucial in building Peter’s career.
In 1957 Peter took up a 3 year post at LSE to work on a Nuffield funded study of old age. Ruth became involved with the fieldwork, conducting detailed interviews with residents and staff in care homes for the elderly, both in London and Liverpool, contributing to what would eventually become Peter’s ground-breaking study The Last Refuge. The book is dedicated ‘to Ruth’, and in the acknowledgements she is referred to as one of four people without whom the book would not have been possible. However, while the others are named Ruth is described only as ‘my wife’. Ruth is also credited in The Personal, Family and Social Circumstances of Old People published by Peter Townsend and Brian Rees. Ruth went on to conduct interviews for Peter’s subsequent project, a pilot study for what was to become a large cross-national study of the elderly, involving collaborators in Denmark, Britain and North America. The work Ruth contributed was intended to be part of a book to be co-written by Peter Townsend and Sheila Benson (Old People in Hospital). But although Sheila Benson wrote up a full draft, Townsend did not allow it to be published.
Ruth and Peter had 4 four children while living at Hampstead. The marriage ended when Peter left in 1974. While Peter remarried soon after, Ruth took a Land Rover and their youngest son (11 years old at the time) travelling through Europe and the Middle East to Afghanistan, Tibet and China for a year. On their return she became involved with design work and even helped to run a floating restaurant on Regent’s Canal, before moving to Ireland.
A more detailed biography of Ruth, written by her eldest son, Matthew Townsend can be found here.
See also, Chris Renwick, The Family Life of Peter and Ruth Townsend: Social Science and Methods in 1950s and Early 1960s Britain, Twentieth Century British History, Volume 34, Issue 4, December 2023, Pages 634–656
Papers relating to the studies Ruth worked on can be found in the Peter Townsend Collection at the University of Essex Special Collections