"A Potential Citizen, a Fighting Man or a Mother of Fighting Men": Public Health, Mothercraft, and Biopower in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England

Abstract

From the late nineteenth century to the end of the Great War, Britain underwent a profound transition in the way the State conceptualized and approached the related issues of infant mortality, maternal welfare, and public health. For much of the nineteenth century, the State’s liberal, laissez-faire tradition dictated an anti-interventionist approach to public health which emphasized the notion of personal responsibility and respected individual liberties. Complementing this, the fragmented, localized and disciplinary governance methods this engendered were reflective of the Foucauldian power technology of anatomo-power. However, armed with knowledge of the conditions of the slums and the military consequences such conditions reaped shortly after the turn of the century, Britain’s legislative and governance approach to infant and maternal welfare, and public health more generally, evolved as the State began to take greater control over these issues in a manner reflective of a turn towards the welfare state and biopolitics. However, it was only upon the declaration of War in 1914, and in response to the cataclysmic threats this conflict presented, that the conditions occurred which allowed the State to exert an unprecedented authority over the population. This implicitly challenged the traditions of laissez faire-liberalism and anatomo-power, and reflected a pivotal turn towards the welfare state and the implementation of biopolitical governance techniques. Using Foucault’s theory of biopolitics, this thesis assesses this transition with a view to emphasizing the experiences of working-class women, their children, and how their health and welfare improved as a result of these complementary and parallel transitions.