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Youth Sexuality, Responsibility, and the Opening of the Brook Advisory Centres in London and Birmingham in the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2022

Abstract

This article takes the opening of the Brook Advisory Centres in London (1964) and Birmingham (1966) as a comparative case study for exploring the public debate on youth sexuality. The two centers were the first in postwar Britain specifically dedicated to the provision of advice on birth control and emotional problems to unmarried and young people. By focusing on an initiative that launched amid rising concerns over illegitimacy and promiscuity, the article engages with the debate over social change in the 1960s and the so-called permissive society. The author argues that the notion of responsibility became a key paradigm for supporters of a new sexual culture. Combining archival material, media analysis, and oral history interviews, the author shows that in constructing the need for a service for unmarried people, the Brook Advisory Centres faced accusations of encouraging promiscuity. Their main line of defense was the production of a narrative that stressed the notion of responsibility and moral guidance for unmarried people in avoiding unwanted babies. And in the debate around youth sexuality, locality mattered. In Birmingham, the prospect of formal contraceptive advice for unmarried girls was violently opposed by church members and family-planning doctors, whereas London witnessed the creation of a viable discourse with an emphasis on sexual responsibility.

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Copyright © The Author(s), published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the North American Conference on British Studies

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References

1 “The Marie Stopes Advice Centre for Young People,” Family Planning 13, no. 2 (1964): 31–32, at 31.

2 “Brook Advisory Centre, Aims and Principles, July 1964,” SA/FPA/A13/13 Brook Advisory Centres, Wellcome Library, London.

3 Audrey Leathard, in her book on family planning, covered the opening of the Brook Advisory Centre, but only very briefly: see Audrey Leathard, The Fight for Family Planning: The Development of Family Planning in Britain, 1921–74 (London, 1980), 139–42. Similarly, Lesley Hall argues that the opening of the Brook Advisory Centre was more a reflection of the rise in teenage sexual activity than its cause: see Lesley Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 2013), 150–52. However, neither of these authors closely analyzes the history of the Brook Advisory Centre.

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7 Jeffrey Weeks, The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life (London, 2007), 57–87; Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 148–64.

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11 For London, see Mort, Capital Affairs. For Birmingham, see Lawrence Black, “There Was Something about Mary: The National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association and Social Movement History,” in NGOs in Contemporary Britain: Non-state Actors in Society and Politics since 1945, ed. Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton, and James McKay (Basingstoke, 2009), 182–200; Prestidge, Jessica, “Housewives Having a Go: Margaret Thatcher, Mary Whitehouse and the Appeal of the Right Wing Woman in Late Twentieth-Century Britain,” Women's History Review 28, no. 2 (2019): 277–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 David Paintin, Abortion Law Reform in Britain, 1964–2003: A Personal Account (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2015), chap. 7.

13 Madeleine Arnot, Miriam David, and Gaby Weiner, Closing the Gender Gap: Postwar Education and Social Change (Cambridge, 1999); Carol Dyhouse, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women (London, 2013); Selina Todd and Hilary Young, “Baby-Boomers to ‘Beanstalkers’: Making the Modern Teenager in Post-war Britain,” Cultural and Social History 9, no. 3 (2012): 451–67.

14 Abrams, Lynn, “Liberating the Female Self: Epiphanies, Conflict and Coherence in the Life Stories of Post-war British Women,” Social History 39, no. 1 (2014): 14–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 18.

15 Dyhouse, Girl Trouble, chaps. 4, 5.

16 Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 152.

17 See in particular Michael Schofield, The Sexual Behaviour of Young People (London, 1965). See also his follow-up study: Michael Schofield, The Sexual Behaviour of Young Adults: A Follow-Up Study to “The Sexual Behaviour of Young People” (London, 1973). Other studies include the following: Geoffrey Gorer, Sex and Marriage in England Today: A Study of the Views and Experience of the Under-45s (London, 1971); Christine Farrell, My Mother Said . . . : The Way Young People Learned about Sex and Birth Control (London, 1978).

18 Angela Davis, ‘“Oh No, Nothing, We Didn't Learn Anything’: Sex Education and the Preparation of Girls for Motherhood, c.1930–1970,” History of Education 37, no. 5 (2008): 661–77; Lesley Hall, “Birds, Bees and General Embarrassment: Sex Education in Britain, from Social Purity to Section 28,” in Public or Private Education? Lessons from History, ed. Richard Aldrich (London, 2004); James Hampshire and Jane Lewis, ‘“The Ravages of Permissiveness’: Sex Education and the Permissive Society,” Twentieth Century British History 15, no. 3 (2004): 290–312; Lutz D. H. Sauerteig and Roger Davidson, eds., Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe (London, 2009).

19 See Szreter and Fisher, Sex before the Sexual Revolution.

20 Jones, Katherine, “‘Men Too’: Masculinities and Contraceptive Politics in Late Twentieth Century Britain,” Contemporary British History 34, no. 1 (2020): 44–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 55.

21 Jones, “‘Men Too,’” 56.

22 Charnock, Hannah, “Teenage Girls, Female Friendship and the Making of the Sexual Revolution in England, 1950–1980,” Historical Journal 63, no. 4 (2020): 1032–53Google Scholar.

23 Jane O'Neill, “‘Education Not Fornication?’ Sexual Morality among Students in Scotland, 1955–1975,” in Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, ed. Jodi Burkett (London, 2018), 77–100, at 91.

24 O'Neill, “‘Education Not Fornication?,’” 91.

25 All these papers except for the Birmingham Post are London based with national publication.

26 Stopes's Married Love sold half a million copies in its first seven years and was translated into fifteen languages; her Wise Parenthood was published in 1918; Nick Hopwood et al., “Introduction: Communicating Reproduction,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89, no. 3 (2015): 379–405, at 386.

27 Cohen, Deborah A., “Private Lives in Public Spaces: Marie Stopes, the Mothers’ Clinics and the Practice of Contraception,” History Workshop Journal 35, no. 1 (1993): 95–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Caroline Rusterholz, Women's Medicine: Sex, Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 192070 (Manchester, 2020), chaps. 1, 2. An extensive literature on family planning and birth control in Britain includes Clare Debenham, Birth Control and the Rights of Women: Post-suffrage Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century (London, 2014); Davey, Clare, “Birth Control in Britain during the Interwar Years: Evidence from the Stopes Correspondence,” Journal of Family History 13, no. 3 (1988): 329–45Google ScholarPubMed; Lesley A. Hall, “Marie Stopes and Her Correspondents: Personalising Population Decline in an Era of Demographic Change,” in Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the English Birth-Control Movement, ed. Robert A. Peel (London, 1997), 27–34.

29 On the history of the Marriage Guidance Council, see Jane Lewis, David Clark, and David H. J. Morgan, “Whom God Hath Joined Together”: The Work of Marriage Guidance (London, 1992).

30 On the history of sexual counseling, see Teri Chettiar, “Treating Marriage as ‘the Sick Entity’: Gender, Emotional Life, and the Psychology of Marriage Improvement in Postwar Britain,” History of Psychology 18, no. 3 (2015): 270–82, at 275; Alana Harris, “Love Divine and Love Sublime: The Catholic Marriage Advisory Council, the Marriage Guidance Movement and the State,” in Love and Romance in Britain, 19181970, ed. Alana Harris and Timothy Willem Jones (London, 2015), 188–225; Caroline Rusterholz, “‘You Can't Dismiss That as Being Less Happy, You See It Is Different’: Sexual Counselling in 1950s England,” Twentieth Century British History 30, no. 3 (September 2019): 375–98.

31 “Premarital Advice,” Wellcome Library, Family Planning Association, SA/FPA/A3/14/14.

32 Leathard, Fight for Family Planning, 67–68.

33 For a detailed analysis of the public debate on youth sexuality, see, for instance, Cate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain; World War I to the Present (London, 1992), chap. 7; Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution.

34 Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 152.

35 Pat Thane, Happy Families? History and Family Policy (London, 2011).

36 Eustace Chesser, “Is Chastity Outmoded? Outdated? Out?,” in Getting Married,” special issue, Family Doctor, Annual Supplement (1959): 38–42, at 38.

37 Chesser, “Is Chastity Outmoded?,” 41.

38 Capper, W. M., “Getting Married,” letter, British Medical Journal 1, no. 5124 (1959): 784CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 George Carstairs, “Lecture 3: Vicissitudes of Adolescence,” BBC Reith Lectures 1962: The Island Now, 25 November 1962, transcript, p. 4, http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1962_reith3.pdf.

40 Alex Comfort, as quoted in Marjorie Proops, “TV Talk on Sex Starts Storm,” Daily Mirror, 15 July 1963, 24. See also Alex Comfort, Sexual Behaviour in Society (London, 1950); Alex Comfort, Sex in Society (London, 1963).

41 British Medical Association, Venereal Diseases and Young People (London, 1964), 9. The report by a committee of the British Medical Association discussed the problem of venereal disease, particularly among young people.

42 A. G. S. Grimble, “Venereal Disease and Young People,” letter, British Medical Journal 1, no. 905 (1964): 576.

43 British Medical Association, Venereal Diseases and Young People, 20.

44 “A Doctor Made a Speech Yesterday and He Forecast the Headline The Mirror Would Put on It. This Is It[:] Doc Backs Teenage Sex, but We Think This Headline Is Better . . . You Can't Ban Teenage Sex Says Doctor,” Daily Mirror, 28 September 1963, 3.

45 See “Chastity a Serious Ideal,” Guardian, 10 October 1963, 4; “The Morality Report,” Times (London), 25 October 1966, 5.

46 Schofield, Sexual Behaviour of Young People, 7.

47 Schofield, 88–89, 226.

48 “Birth Control for the Unmarried,” Times, 8 December 1964, 5.

49 The Second Minute of the Board of Management, 16 June 1960, Wellcome Library, Marie Stopes Memorial Clinic Board Meeting and AGM Minutes, SA/EUG/K/38/39.

50 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, British Library.

51 Patricia Ashdown-Sharp, “A Singular Lady: Helen Brook,” Guardian, 19 June 1974, 9.

52 Ashdown-Sharp, “A Singular Lady.”

53 Amendments to the Memorandum of the Marie Stopes Foundation Limited, 25 January 1960, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K37.

54 Minutes of the Clinic Committee, 14 November 1962, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K4/79.

55 On the progressive role of social workers, see Selina Todd, “Family Welfare and Social Work in Post-war England, c.1948–c.1970,” English Historical Review 129, no. 537 (2014): 362–87.

56 Helen Brook, “Interview in the Club TV Series,” 1987–88, Television History Workshop transcript, Wellcome Library, GC/105/4, 14.

57 Minutes of the Clinic Committee, 20 March 1963, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K42/79.

58 On access to secondary and higher education see Arnot, David, and Weiner, Closing the Gender Gap; Dyhouse, Girl Trouble.

59 Minutes of the Tenth Meeting of the Board of the Marie Stopes Memorial Foundation Limited, 11 December 1963, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K39.

60 They were the British zoologist and general secretary of the Eugenics Society, Dr. Colin Bertram; the physician and geneticist, former general secretary of the Eugenics Society, and member of the Medical Research Council's Clinical Genetics Unit (of which he became the director in 1964), Dr. Cedric Carter; the pediatrician and psychiatrist, member of the Eugenics Society, medical advisor of the Children's Society, and executive member of the Standing Conference of Societies Registered for Adoption, Lady Hilda Lewis; and Margaret Pyke, a founding member of the Family Planning Association.

61 Minutes of the Clinic Committee, 20 March 1963, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K42/79.

62 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, British Library.

63 The Tenth Meeting of the Board of the Marie Stopes Memorial Foundation Limited, 11 December 1963, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K39.

64 Colin Bertram, “Consultation Sessions for Young People, 16th January 1964,” Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K/38/45.

65 A Special Meeting of the Board of the Marie Stopes Memorial Foundation Limited, Called for the Purpose of Considering the Clinic's Consultation Session for Young People, 16 January 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K39.

66 Dyhouse, Girl Trouble, 162.

67 Robert Anderson, “University Fees in Historical Perspective,” History and Policy (February 2016), http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/university-fees-in-historical-perspective.

68 “A Maureen Cleave Interview,” Evening Standard, 16 January 1967, 7.

69 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, British Library.

70 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, British Library.

71 The Eleventh Meeting of the Board, 18 March 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/EUG/K39.

72 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, British Library.

73 North Kensington Women Welfare Centre, “Unmarried,” Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/SR7.

74 North Kensington Women Welfare Centre, “Unmarried,” Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/SR7.

75 Leah Manning to John McEwan, 16 January 1963, Wellcome Library, PP/MEW/C/2/1.

76 Agnes Bowman, “Family Planning for the Unmarried?,” letter, Family Planning 12, no. 4 (1964): 105.

77 Walter Hague and Katherine Hague, “Sexual Morality and the Young,” Family Planning 13, no. 1 (April 1964): 20–21, at 20.

78 Mrs. B. L. Lustig, “Family Planning for the Unmarried?,” letter, Family Planning 13, no. 1 (1964): 23.

79 Resolution 11, the Family Planning Association, Minutes of Annual General Meeting and Conference, 3 and 4 June, 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/A2/13, p. 12.

80 John Prince, “Birth Control for the Unmarried Approved,” Daily Telegraph, 5 June 1964, 25.

81 Family Planning Association, Minutes, 3 and 4 June 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/A2/13, p. 15.

82 Family Planning Association, Minutes, 3 and 4 June 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/A2/13, p. 17.

83 Family Planning Association, Minutes, 3 and 4 June 1964, Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/A2/13, p. 17.

84 Audrey Court and Cynthia Walton, Birmingham Made a Difference: The Birmingham Women's Welfare Centre, the Family Planning Association in Birmingham, 19261991 (Birmingham, 2001), 53.

85 “Clinic to Advise Older Teenagers,” Birmingham Post, 9 August 1965, 1.

86 Gillian Statham, “The Clinic Controversy,” Birmingham Post, 27 November 1965, 10.

87 Paintin, Abortion Law, chap. 7.

88 “Teenagers’ Clinic Is Proposed,” Guardian, 7 June 1965, 3.

89 Mrs. E. Clewes, “Plea for Girls in Love,” Daily Mail, 5 June 1964, 3.

90 Mrs. Joyce Child, “Teenage Sex Problems,” Birmingham Post, 29 June 1964, 8.

91 Anthony Hancox, “Dr Cole's Sex Clinic: A Moral Confrontation,” Birmingham Sunday Mercury, 22 August 1965, 11.

92 The Reverend John Good lamented the suggestion that a Brook Advisory Centre should open in Birmingham: “We are in favour of planned families but this is not right at all. This clinic will encourage a completely free attitude towards sex. I can only describe it as a revolutionary step backward.” Anthony Hancox “Millionaire Backs New Clinic: Birth Control Tuition for All Comers,” Birmingham Sunday Mercury, 6 June 1965, 3.

93 “Doctors Opposed Contraceptive Clinic Plan,” Birmingham Post, 16 October 1965, 1.

94 Statham, “The Clinic Controversy”; “The Sex Clinic Controversy: Matter of Sour Grapes,” Birmingham Post, 30 November 1965, 7.

95 Court and Walton, Birmingham Made a Difference, 54.

96 “Committee Will Not Help Brook,” Birmingham Post, 12 November 1966, 1.

97 “3rd Annual Report, Birmingham Brook, 1969,” Wellcome Library, SA/BRO/D3/1/1.

98 “Conflict over Free Family Planning Scheme,” Birmingham Post, 29 September 1972, 18.

99 Brook Advisory Centre, “Aims and Principles, July 1964,” Wellcome Library, SA/FPA/A13/13.

100 Faith Spicer, “The Marie Stopes Advice Centre for Young People,” Family Planning, no. 13 (1964): 31–32, at 31.

101 Spicer, “The Marie Stopes Advice Centre,” 31.

102 Spicer, 31.

103 Faith Spicer, “Annual Report of the Brook Advisory Centre,” Family Planning, no. 15 (1966): 47–50, at 48.

104 Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life and the British Popular Press, 19181978 (Oxford, 2009), 53.

105 Audrey Whiting, “Would You Let Your Teenage Daughter Go to a Birth Control Clinic?,” Daily Mirror, 8 November 1963, 9.

106 Whiting, “Would You Let Your Teenage Daughter Go,” 9.

107 José Shelley, “Giving Advice about Contraceptives,” Guardian, 12 December 1963, 8.

108 “Schoolgirl Quiz on Birth Control,” Evening Standard, 1 July 1964, 3.

109 “Woman's Wave: This Clinic Brings a Breath of Fresh Air,” Southern Weekly News, 10 July 1964, 3.

110 In particular, the conservative Daily Telegraph, the liberal Guardian, the conservative Daily Express, the conservative Daily Mail, and the Evening Express all published neutral articles. See John Prince, “Birth Control Aid to Single Girls Urged,” Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1964, 17; John Prince, “Birth Control for the Unmarried Approved,” Daily Telegraph, 5 June 1964, 25; “FPA Favours Advice for Unmarried,” Guardian, 5 June 1964, 5; John Redfern, “Family Planners Speak Up for the Unwed,” Daily Express, 5 June 1964, 9; “Plea for Girls in Love,” Daily Mail, 5 June 1964, 3; Kevin Rowntree, “Sex-before-Marriage: Split over Advice to Young People,” Evening Express, 4 June 1964, 3; John Prince, “Unmarried Get Second Birth Control Clinic,” Daily Telegraph, 17 December 1964, 19.

111 Marjorie Proops, “Full Mark[s] to This Sex-Help Clinic for the Teenage Lovers,” Daily Mirror, 2 June 1964, 7.

112 On Proops and her role in advising readers about sex, see Bingham, Family Newspapers, 75–95.

113 Proops, “Full Mark[s] to This Sex-Help Clinic.”

114 “Sin Today,” Observer, 7 June 1964, 10.

115 Lewis Chester, “Birth Control Clinic for Unwed,” Sunday Times, 31 May 1964, 1.

116 “Advice on Sex to the Unmarried, the Teenage View, and Shotgun Weddings by an Ex-MP,” Evening News, 5 June 1964, 3.

117 Ken Gardner, “Sweden Today: The Land Where Anything Goes,” The People, 28 June 1964, 2–3; Ken Gardner, “A Land of Youngsters Ruined by Easy Living . . . Sweden Today Is a Warning to the World. They've Got Everything . . . but Love,” The People, 5 July 1964, 2–3; Ken Gardner, “Sex Lessons at the Age of Seven,” The People, 12 July 1964, 2–3.

118 “Sex Lessons at the Age of Seven,” 3.

119 Paula Davies, “Teenagers: What the Family Planning Association Should Tell Them,” Sunday Telegraph, 7 June 1964, 17; Paula Davies, “Teenage Morals: Is There a Revolution Going On or Not?,” Sunday Telegraph, 14 June 1964, 16.

120 Wendy Cooper, “Prevention—Not Ethics,” Birmingham Post, 25 June 1964, 8, Wendy Cooper, “A New Kind of Three Rs,” Birmingham Post, 26 June 1964, 8.

121 Anthony Hancox, “Man behind the Teenage Sex Clinic,” Sunday Mercury, 15 August 1965, 10.

122 Hancox, “Man behind the Teenage Sex Clinic,” 10.

123 Anthony Hancox, “Dr Cole Sex Clinic: A Moral Confrontation,” Sunday Mercury, 22 August 1965, 10.

124 Hancox, “Dr Cole Sex Clinic,” 10.

125 Hancox, 10.

126 “Doctors Oppose Contraceptive Clinic Plan,” Birmingham Post, 16 October 1965, 1.

127 Anthony Hancox, “Dr Cole's Sex Clinic: A Moral Confrontation,” Sunday Mercury, 22 August 1965, 10.

128 “To the Editor: Support for Church's Views on Chastity,” letter, Birmingham Post, 31 August 1965, 6.

129 “Sex Clinic Controversy: The Big Debate,” Birmingham Post, 30 November 1965, 7.

130 Anthony Hancox, “Morals and the Young: The Great Debate,” Sunday Mercury, 5 December 1965, 10.

131 Hancox, “Morals and the Young,” 27.

132 “Sex Clinic Controversy,” 7.

133 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge, 1998); Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London, 1999), 244–58.

134 Anthony Hancox, “The Woman behind a Revolutionary Idea Talks to the Mercury,” Sunday Mercury, 18 September 1966, 11.

135 Helen Brook, interview by Rebecca Abrams, 1990, British Library, C408/014, transcript, National Life Stories, p. 67.

136 Lord Brain, quoted in Madeleine Simms, “Brook: The First 25 Years,” leaflet, Wellcome Library, SA/BRO/J1/6.

137 “Brook Advisory Centres,” Family Planning 17, no. 2 (1968): 40.

138 “Annual Report, 1971,” Wellcome Library, Birmingham Annual Reports, SA/BRO/D3/1/1.

139 Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 163–66.

140 Patricia Ashdown-Sharp, “The Brook Centre,” Birmingham Post, 5 September 1967, 8.

141 Ashdown-Sharp, “Brook Centre.”

142 “Brook Advisory Centre, Helpful People with Helpful Answers,” Wellcome Library, SA/BRO/C1/1.

143 Jones, “Men Too.”

144 “Brook Advisory Annual Report, 1967,” Wellcome Library, SA/ALR/F.1/93.

145 Ashdown-Sharp, “Brook Centre,” 8.

146 Numbers collected from the annual reports for the London and Birmingham centers. See Wellcome Library, SA/BRO/D/10/2/1 and SA/BRO/D3/1/1.

147 Dyhouse, Girl Trouble, 124,

148 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke, 2007), 88.

149 Mort, Frank, “The Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture 2010: The Permissive Society Revisited,” Twentieth Century British History 22, no. 2 (2011): 269–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

150 On responsible citizens and self-management, see Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 163–68; Rose, Governing the Soul, 103–19, 244–58; Teri Chettiar, “The Psychiatric Family: Citizenship, Private Life, and Emotional Health in Welfare-State Britain, 1945–1979” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2013).