The Family Life of Peter and Ruth Townsend: Social Science and Methods in 1950s and Early 1960s Britain

• Published in: Twentieth Century British History 2023-11, Vol.34 (4), p.634-656
• Main Author: Renwick, Chris
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0955-2359; 1477-4674; 1477-4674
• DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwad040

Abstract Peter Townsend (1928–2009) was one of the most important British social scientists of the twentieth century, best known for pioneering and innovative research on poverty, as well as his political campaigning, most notably for the Child Poverty Action Group. This article returns to Townsend’s influential work on ageing, for which he first became widely known, during the 1950s and early 1960s. It does so to recover the ways in which his research, first in Bethnal Green at the Institute of Community Studies (ICS), and then at the London School of Economics, as well as the professional and political networks he built during this period, were rooted in and shaped by his home life in Hampstead. As will be shown, the most important figure in the interconnecting spheres of Townsend’s career was his wife, Ruth (1927–2011), who not only was central to the construction of a way of life in which the boundaries between research, the domestic sphere, and politics were often so blurred as to be non-existent, but also made significant and underappreciated contributions to her husband’s research.