The redoubtable Norman Dennis has a letter in the Daily Telegraph today that is worth many long but less well-informed articles. The most fascinating part of it is that he cites Charles Booth as his source. Booth is usually used by those who defend mass government welfare. But Dennis is one of the rare people who have actually read his work and finds that it is not all quite what we had been led to expect:

Sir - We seem to want to take comfort in the belief that child abuse was just as common in the past.

Child abuse to the death is many times more common where the mother was not married to the father and the present boyfriend is not the child's father. Those household arrangements are many times more common than in the past.

We need not depend on theory. The great empirical study of slum life in Victorian England was Charles Booth's survey of the East End of London. Of child abuse he wrote: "I can only speak as I have found: wholesome, pleasant family life … affectionate relationships of husbands and wives, mothers and sons, elders and children."

From 13 volumes of observations, he concluded that this "agreeable picture" applied to 98.75 per cent of the population of East End slums - chosen by him as the worst in England. The "dangerous class" accounted for 1.25 per cent, and these few "fouled the reputation of the poor".

Would that it were 1.25 per cent today. Yet Booth is often quoted as the authority on the social disorder and moral squalor that the welfare state removed.

Norman Dennis, Director of Community Studies, Civitas, London SW1

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Parenting

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