state intervention |

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

By Fiona McCall on April 30, 2021 in Learning in Focus

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 […]

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Fantine from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, by Margaret Bernadine Hall (1863-1910)

The morality of state intervention in sexually-transmitted disease

By Fiona McCall on April 28, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Is it appropriate for governments to restrict personal liberty in an effort to control disease? This issue has come very much to the fore in the wake of the current worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. In this post, Darcy Mckinlay, a second year history student, writes about nineteenth-century arguments against forcible methods of controlling venereal diseases. During the nineteenth century there was an increase in state intervention, marking a transformation from a previous ‘non-interference’ government approach.[1] In 1864, the first of three Contagious Diseases Acts was passed, permitting the compulsory medical inspection and detention of prostitutes with venereal diseases.[2] This law was specifically aimed at working-women in military-based towns because the government […]

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