Tag: masculinity

The Fitzroy Report, 1904: How the poor physical condition of Boer War army recruits prompted social change

Following the end of the second Boer War in 1902, the government appointed an Inter-Departmental Committee to investigate why so many would-be recruits had been in poor physical condition. The Committee, chaired by civil servant Almeric FitzRoy, has become known as the Fitzroy Report. Second-year UoP history student Ben Hessey discusses the report, what it tells us about contemporary ideas about parenting, gender, eugenics and social provision, and its longer-term significance. This piece was originally written for the second-year Danger! module, which investigates issues of censorship and state control between 1850 and 2000 and is taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Mike Esbester.

During the early twentieth century the British government feared mediocrity in the inefficiency of its empire, reflected by the poor health of its subjects, that threatened Britain’s prosperous reputation compared to Britain’s more modernised European rivals, who had greater literacy, numeracy development and more efficient social reforms. [1]. The disastrous conditions of volunteer recruits during the Boer War left a daunting legacy and ensured a strong turn towards a more active state intervention into safeguarding the public health through domestic education.[2]

Medical examination at Capetown, 1900, Wellcome Collection no. 23699i

Sir Almeric FitzRoy (1850-1935), National Portrait Gallery NPG x67977

While Balfour’s government did not want to raise anxieties on the new looming eugenic concepts on racial degeneracy when “appointing a relatively low-ranking committee” of loyal civil servants in 1903 to investigate the physical deterioration, historians such as Gilbert and Berridge reveal the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration still remained brutally truthful in expressing the vulnerabilities of the working class health and the lack of government intervention regarding welfare.[3] The 1904 Interdepartmental Committee report under FitzRoy recognised a variety of the causes: urban overcrowding, pollution, parental neglect, and incompetence of mothers to explain such a deterioration while simultaneously claiming there was a lack of evidence of any race degeneracy being the cause.

Despite this there remained much debate on causation throughout the period with Fay and Pearson’s eugenics survey research hoping to hold weight as a public health authority with the committee.[4] FitzRoy offered simple solutions for the socially-engineered health dangers and advocated government food provision and provision and domestic education to reform the uneducated care practices of young women, to improve the quality of life of future generations.[5] Extracts from this report show how the government adapted to become a stronger welfare state and show the different debates in historiography on the responsibility and agency of the state and women when amending physical deterioration.

While this report was manufactured for the sake of positive change in the period, both in internationally competitive social reforms and in a move towards liberalisation after government neglect of its citizens, a lot of the language of this report remains traditionally sexist and time-locked regarding the expectations of women’s traditional caregiving roles in society. This report especially showed therefore that the contemporary gender norms about the women of the period were still understandable and reflected on by the middle classes. [6] Though Fitzroy blames both parents at first, stating, “the fact of ignorance and neglect on the part of parents is undisputed”, and shows the openness and honesty of the report in the shared condemnation, it is clear later from the majority of later extracts that “younger women of the present day” met the brunt of the blame, with the authors characterising them having a “carelessness and deficient sense of responsibility” for society’s future.[7] Fitzroy therefore seems to assume the role of responsibility really falls on that of the individual and not the state. This was problematic for the state as it became enthralled with an “obsession with National Efficiency”, a focus towards combating the incompetence of the British imperial race.[8] It should be argued therefore the report primarily considered the poor public health because of imperial motivations in state progression.

While the report does recognise “traditions of helplessness and despair” in society, historians such as Searle, Berridge and Boyer further argue a case of a detached state responsibility in welfare, that can be seen within the report’s outlook and recommendations on citizens.[9 ] Searle suggests the government “fostered a view of men and women as resources”, viewing them just as failing assets that needed not practical aid but advisory aid to heal Britain like the report encouraged.[10] Berridge reiterates this point when she states the report encouraged the “instruction for motherhood” rather than the provision of material aid” that was needed.[11] Searle explains it is easy to be cynical on the lack of state responsibility as it seemed likely they were cutting corners with the report’s ideas, as “doing something fundamental about the disadvantages suffered by working-class mothers would have been very expensive” but “good advice came cheap”, which shows the government lacked responsibility when duty proved costly.[12] The language of the report even represents an understatement on poverty stating that it is the “wants of the young” but not the needs of the young that are a concern thereby inferring a “maternal mismanagement” in care and expenditure from women.[13] Boyer reveals the report failed to deal “with the relationship between low household income and health” thereby showing the irresponsible reluctant agency of government solutions.[14] This shows some criticism can be made of the report as it held a misguided attitude that no English housewife could be so “deplorably destitute of the necessary equipment”, when poverty was in truth a deeper complication, as emphasised by reformers like Rowntree.[15]

Photographs of school groups contained in the Fitzroy report

However other historians understand the value of the report, since its purpose symbolised a progression in government action. FitzRoy primarily served to inform the public, but Zweiniger-Bargielowska and Pope show more significantly that the report inspired progressive reforms that grew from the report’s ideas, like supporting the provision of meals for children and standing against “evils”, in the 1906 Education Act.[16] Lowe also confirms that the focus on female domestic education was less controversial to headmistresses in the Edwardian era in contrast to the nineteenth century, though again mentioning the factors of eugenics and superior race in 1911 still as underlying influences.[17] This shows the report may have failed to quell fears of racial degeneracy, but that government responsibility did grow and popularise from the report’s segregated gender education recommendations.

As an army officer reads out the oath, four young men hold Bibles and confirm their allegiance at a recruitment office. Probably taken in 1917, Imperial War Museum, Q 30071

To conclude, FitzRoy’s report managed to emphasize an easy conclusion regarding what needed to change concerning the physical deterioration. Though his argument tends to blame the individual more than the state quite harshly in his writing it is, as historians point out, an easier, low-costing solution he provides. He uses language which intensely plays on received gender role traditions; under such attitudes, social policy led to an intensified domestic learning and passing of responsibility onto women from government. These attitudes were, nevertheless, surprisingly uncontroversial for headmistresses of the decade. The report also successfully managed to inspire positive social reforms enacted by the subsequent Liberal government of 1906-14, and the closer development of a welfare state, motivating decisive government action. Overall, in defining the domestic problems on physical health, this report shows a limited sense of governmental responsibility in welfare but provides progressive considerations that improved the agency of government in social reform.

Graphs of children’s heights from the Fitzroy report.

[1] John O’Farrell, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, Or, 2000 Years of Upper-class Idiots in Charge.(London, Transworld Publishers, 2007), 419; Geoffrey R. Searle, A New England? : Peace and War 1886-1918. (Oxford University Press, 2004), 372.

[2] O’Farrell, Impartial History, 419.

[3] Bentley Gilbert, “Health and Politics: The British Physical Deterioration Report of 1904,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 39, No. 2 (March- April 1965): 113-114; Virginia Berridge, et al, Public Health in History. (New York City, McGraw-Hill Education, 2011), 164.

[4] George Boyer, The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain. (Princeton University Press, 2018), 179; Theodore Porter, Genetics in the Madhouse the Unknown History of Human Heredity. (Princeton University Press, 2018), 234.

[5] Almeric FitzRoy, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (Parliamentary Papers, 1904).

[6] FitzRoy, Report; Searle, New England?, 372; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain : Social, Cultural and Political Change (Taylor & Francis Group, 2001), 37.

[7] FitzRoy, Report.

[8] Searle, New England?, 305; Berridge, Public Health, 164-165.

[9] FitzRoy, Report.

[10] Searle, New England?, 305.

[11] Berridge, Public Health, 165.

[12] Searle, New England?, 379.

[13] FitzRoy, Report; Searle, New England?, 379.

[14] Boyer, Winding Road, 179.

[15] FitzRoy, Report; Boyer, Winding Road, 179.

[16] FitzRoy, Report; Rex Pope, et al. Social Welfare in Britain 1885-1985. (Taylor & Francis Group, 1986), 90-91; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain, 337.

[17] Roy Lowe, “Education, 1900- 1939,” in A Companion to Early Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Chris Wrigley. (Wiley-Blackwell; 1st edition, New Jersey, 2008), 431.

April 30, 2021
Using Visual Sources: Photographs as historical documents

Hannah Moase, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on a photograph of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage headquarters for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Hannah uses the photograph to discuss the benefits – and limitations – of these visual historical documents in helping us understand past societies. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (hereafter NAOWS) was founded in 1911 and was a key organisation in America that fought against the women’s suffrage campaign. [1] With so much history focused on the women’s suffrage movement, it is important for historians to look at the other side of the argument and to look at those who were trying to stop women from being granted the right to vote. This blog will focus on a picture taken in 1911 of the outside of the NAOWS headquarters in New York and will argue how, when put into context, photographs such as this one can add to historians’ understanding of a topic. [2] This blog will also look at how this photograph adds to historians’ knowledge of the anti-suffrage movement as well as how it conveys ideas of masculinity and femininity during the early twentieth century.

NAOWS headquarters, 1911. Courtesy of Routledge Historical Resources

One of the ways that this photograph can be considered useful to historians is that it displays, through clothing, ideas of masculinity and femininity during this period. In the photograph, all the men are dressed very similarly. [3] They all appear to be wearing suit trousers under their long coats and are wearing similar styles of hat and shoes. [4] Interestingly, the coats that the men are wearing can be contrasted with the coat that the woman on the periphery of the photograph is wearing. [5] Leora Auslander argues that during this period clothing was designed to “obscure male sexual attributes” and to “highlight the feminine” attributes on a woman. [6] This can be seen in the photograph through the woman’s coat fitting closely around her waist – her feminine body shape can still be made out from under her coat. [7] In comparison, the coats that the men are wearing are baggier, straighter, and hide the male physique. [8] This shows how the photograph is useful to historians as it displays a direct contrast between how ideas of masculinity and femininity were displayed through clothing during this period.

Another interesting aspect of this photograph is that all the people looking directly into the window of the building are all male. [9] Although the NAOWS was an all-female organisation, this photograph shows that the organisation still attracted male interest and support. Susan E. Marshall explains how many all-female anti-suffrage campaigns received male support, but that many men preferred to assist these campaigns from “behind the scenes through donations” rather than being actively involved. [10] The men appear to be reading information that had been placed in the window for passers-by to read and learn more about the anti-suffrage campaign. [11] Kirsty Maddux explains how the NAOWS used many ways to advertise the anti-suffrage campaign, even publishing their own official paper called Woman’s Protest. [12] This photograph can be used as evidence to show how the NAOWS’s use of advertising in the headquarters’ window was successful in attracting attention and potential support from passers-by. [13] It can be argued that this image is a good example of how photographs can give historians a different representation of a topic that they may not get from another type of source. Being able to see the men crowded around the headquarters’ window, all trying to read the information on display, allows historians to see for themselves an exact moment in the past where NAOWS’s use of advertising was successful. As Derek Sayer argues, this level of understanding, and being able to see an exact moment in the past, is something that is unique to photographic sources. [14]

However, without context, what a photograph is representing can be misleading – as seen with this source. This photograph could be used to argue that there was a high level of interest and support for anti-suffrage among men. [15] However, when looking at the historiography of anti-suffrage campaigns in America it becomes clear that the anti-suffrage movement was highly supported by women and men. Many anti-suffrage campaigns, including the NAOWS, were run entirely by women. [16] Susan Goodier explains the NAOWS was set up to bring together other pre-existing female anti-suffrage campaigns from all over America. [17] Joe C. Miller argues that a common misconception about the suffrage movement is that it was a “fight of women against men”. [18] This was far from the truth. Many women were involved in the anti-suffrage movement, and at its peak in 1919 the NAOWS had 500,000 all-female members. [19] This shows that although the photograph suggests to the viewer that the anti-suffrage campaign was heavily supported by men, the historiography shows that many women also supported the movement. This photograph, then, could be potentially misleading as to who were the types of people supporting the campaign. Sayer highlights how historians need to be careful when using photographs as primary sources because without them being put into the correct context, they can be misinterpreted. [20]

Peter Burke argues that another issue with using photographs as primary sources, one that can also be seen with this photograph, is that the identity of the photographer “is so often unknown”. [21] It is unclear who took this photograph and that leads to the question of why this photograph was taken and its intended purpose. [22] Both Burke and Penny Tinkler argue that photographers select what aspects of the world they want to portray. [23] Although it may appear that photographs are showing a true reflection of the past, this is not always the case, because photographs can easily be staged. These ideas can be applied to this photograph, and it must be considered why the photographer chose to capture the outside of the NAOWS headquarters. It is also interesting why the photographer chose to take the photograph when five men were looking into the window of the building. [24] The photographer could have potentially been trying to gain more support for the NAOWS by showing it was already receiving a high level of interest.

In conclusion, many different aspects that can be argued to be useful to historians can be drawn from this photograph. The image shows, through clothing, a direct contrast in how ideas of masculinity and femininity were displayed during this period. It also gives an insight into how the NAOWS successfully used advertising to promote the anti-suffrage campaign in its headquarters’ window. Finally, the photograph shows how, by drawing in an audience, an all-female anti-suffrage organisation like the NAOWS could succeed in gaining male support. However, this photograph is also a good example to show that historians need to be careful when using photographs as primary sources. Without context, what a photograph is displaying and what that represents can be misleading and misinterpreted.

NOTES

[1] Susan Goodier, No Votes for Women: The York State Anti- Suffrage Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 64.

[2] Routledge Historical Resources: History of Feminism “Men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911,” https://www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism/gallery/men-looking-in-the-window-of-the-national-anti-suffrage-association-headquarters-national-association-opposed-to-woman-suffrage-was-active-at-the-state-and-national, last accessed 11 February 2019.

[3] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Leora Auslander, “Deploying material culture to write the history of gender and sexuality: the example of clothing and textiles,” Clio. Women, Gender, History 40 (2014): 168.

[7] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 72.

[11] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[12] Kirsty Maddux, “When Patriots Protest: The Anti- Suffrage Discursive Transformation of 1917,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 284.

[13] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[14] Derek Sayer, “The Photograph: the still image”, in History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources ed. Sarah Barber and Corinna M. Peniston-Bird (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2009), 55.

[15] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[16] Goodier, No Votes, 40.

[17] Ibid., 64.

[18] Joe C. Miller, “Never A Fight of Woman Against Man: What Textbooks Don’t Say about Women‘s Suffrage,” The History Teacher 48, no. 3 (2015): 437.

[19] Ibid., 440.

[20] Sayer, “The Photograph,” 59.

[21] Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 22.

[22] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

[23] Burke, Eyewitnessing, 23; Penny Tinkler, Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research (London: Sage, 2014), 12.

[24] Photograph of men looking into the National Anti-Suffrage Association headquarters 1911.

May 21, 2019
“There comes a time when you’ve just gotta’ be a man”: An analysis of shifting on-screen representations of British masculinity in the post-Thatcher period

“Sam’s dissertation was an outstandingly researched piece of work. It synthesised contextual and historiographical issues regarding masculinity and film in the post-Thatcher era in a conceptually interesting way, and made great use of visual sources as a cultural lens from which to understand anxieties surrounding changing concepts of masculinity in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Sam demonstrated an excellent understanding of film culture, not just in the period studied, but across the twentieth century, and the way in which he revealed how certain masculine filmic archetypes were shaped and modified in response to the shifting contemporary climate was nothing less than compelling.” – Dr Rob James, Sam’s dissertation supervisor.

Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006)

For me, writing a dissertation on film was a natural choice, as it has always occupied a central role in my life. I first became interested in analysing the longer-term consequences of Thatcherism on British masculinity after reading an article by Nichola Poulton, who wrote about masculinity in football hooligan films. Whilst reading her article, I noted the links between the football hooligan archetype and the ‘Angry Young Man’ archetype of the 1960s, and so decided that there was great potential in a study of masculine archetypes in British film and how they have evolved since Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

I began my reading trying to identify the areas of British film and the masculine archetypes in which my study would be able to turn up original research. A problem I encountered during this stage was the disparate wealth of historiography focusing on American cinema. However, I found a key text which ended up heavily shaping and influencing my dissertation, which was Andrew Spicer’s study of representations of British masculinity throughout the twentieth century. From thereon, my dissertation was built upon analysis of Spicer’s archetypes. By examining how his archetypes have changed, I believed I could highlight just how dramatically and quickly masculine representations in British cinema had shifted under Thatcherism, doing so to represent the new social milieu, or address contemporary questions surrounding gender.

Still from The Football Factory (2004)

After reading Poulton’s work, the football hooligan became the obvious first archetype for my study, and I wanted to demonstrate that his hyper-masculinity was reactionary to the damage wrought upon British football by Thatcherism during the 1980s, drawing attention to key policies, and government responses to such events as the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989. For me, this was my easiest chapter, as the consequences of Thatcherism were glaringly explicit. My second archetype was that of the contemporary ‘New Man’. In Spicer’s work, he identified Hugh Grant as the embodiment of this archetype during the 1990s. Fortunately for me, since the publication of Spicer’s work, Grant had departed the British film industry and thus left room for research on a New Man. I quickly found my New Man in the form of Simon Pegg. It became evident that his antithetical representations of masculine archetypes in Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) were both tasked with navigating contemporary gender issues raised by Thatcherism. Pegg was attempting to locate a new central position on the gender spectrum; a hybridised New Man, between two models of masculinity unable of social integration in the post-Thatcher period. I quickly decided upon using James Bond as my final archetype, and this was another easy choice as my dissertation would have been lacking had I not chosen to do so, considering his cinematic omnipresence since his introduction in the 1960s. With Pierce Brosnan’s Bond already being well-covered, Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006) was the obvious choice. At first, I had great difficulty in trying to pin-point just where Thatcherism was impacting upon his masculinity, and my reading of the film became too parochial and focused on his relationship with Vesper Lynd. However, I realised that my study was diverting from its original aim due to this distraction. So, I re-read the film and noticed the contradictory nature of Bond’s body in Casino Royale, which was caught between consumerism and hyper-violence, and so located his body as the site of Thatcherism’s long-term impact on the ideal representation of gender, traditionally personified through Bond.

Stlll from Hot Fuzz (2007)

I was presented with no real difficulties during my search for secondary sources, other than the original problem of texts being predominantly focused on American cinema. Whilst texts principally concerned with British masculinity in the post-Thatcher period were lacking somewhat, there was an abundance of texts concerned with British genres in the twenty-first century and I was able to easily use these to explore the masculine archetypes I had chosen. Primary sources were of no difficulty to find either, with most of these being archived interviews with actors and directors, from a selection of newspapers. However, I also used databases and government reports to my advantage, which were also easily accessed online.

Overall, I can positively say that I loved working on my dissertation and found it to be a satisfying and rewarding experience, which for me incorporated everything I had learned in my three years at Portsmouth university, and felt like a natural conclusion to my degree. I had great fun combining my History degree with my love for film and it motivated me to explore areas of history that I had never been concerned with before my time at Portsmouth, such as gender. Since finishing it too, I have found my overall experience of watching films to have been enhanced, after my dissertation had me reading films with different lenses and focuses.

Sam Tugwell is a BA (Hons) History student at the University of Portsmouth. His dissertation was winner of the Josephine Butler Memorial Prize, which is awarded for an outstanding piece of work on women’s or gender history.

July 10, 2018