Kay Titmuss - Infinite Women

Born: 1903, United Kingdom
Died: 1987
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Kathleen Miller

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.

KAY TITMUSS (1903-1987)

Kay grew up in a middle-class household in South London and worked as a social worker for unemployed people. She met Richard Titmuss in 1934 while on a walking tour of North Wales and they married in 1937. Richard had left school at 14 with no qualifications and was at the time working as an insurance agent at the County Fire Office. He was also passionately involved in Liberal party politics and wrote extensively about health and welfare issues. The publications secured him the very first Chair of Social Administration at the London School of Economics in 1950.

Kay’s contribution to Richard’s work has been a source of debate, especially in the later years of Richard’s career. In the early years at least, they discussed the ideas that went into Richard’s work. Kay had hands on experience of social welfare and knowledge that would have informed Richard’s perspectives. She helped to run a centre for unemployed men in Fulham, London until 1940, while Richard worked from documentary evidence. Certainly, Kay’s cultural resources and confidence assisted Richard in his career socially, supporting his academic and policy connections, and thus enabling his achievements and helping him to fulfil his career ambitions (Oakley 1997).

Richard and Kay began writing political books, pamphlets and articles in Kay’s back bedroom in her family home, with Kay typing up and editing his work as the more literate of the two. In 1943 a book exploring the consequences of population health and falling birth rates: Parents Revolt. A Study of the Declining Birth-rate in Acquisitive Societies, was published (unusually) as jointly authored. Kay subsequently conducted research for Richard, which involved sampling 3000 record cards from Mother and Child Welfare Clinics, and an interview with the couple published in the Vancouver Sun in 1966 attributed Richard’s interest in social welfare to Kay’s enthusiasm. Ultimately though, Oakley feels that Kay was frustrated by an inability to contribute her own experience of social welfare work and play an intellectual role in Richard’s work (2014).