- Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, of Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6LL
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This article re-visits contemporary surveys of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s to explore the implications that the cinema’s role as an “emotional frontier” between everyday life and the imagination had on the emotional lives of boys... more
This article re-visits contemporary surveys of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s to explore the implications that the cinema’s role as an “emotional frontier” between everyday life and the imagination had on the emotional lives of boys and young men. It makes a novel contribution to the history of youth and emotions, arguing that for boys and young men who were disconnected from social life, the cinema was an “emotional refuge,” a space of heightened emotional encounter, in which conventional assumptions about masculinity could be fractured and “feminine” sensibilities otherwise difficult to express publicly could receive cathartic release.
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Research Interests: Sociology and Criminology
First published in the United States 2000 by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey First published in Great Britain 1999 by Manchester University Press, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK This collection copyright © 1999 by... more
First published in the United States 2000 by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey First published in Great Britain 1999 by Manchester University Press, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK This collection copyright © 1999 by Manchester University Press Individual ...
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widespread social, economic and moral reform as legislators hoped, these changes in policy and practice relating to commercial sex seem to have left London prostitutes significantly more at risk of a variety of dangers including arrest,... more
widespread social, economic and moral reform as legislators hoped, these changes in policy and practice relating to commercial sex seem to have left London prostitutes significantly more at risk of a variety of dangers including arrest, imprisonment, eviction, extortion, rape and murder than they had been in the past. As one prostitute interviewed in the 1950s by the sociologist Rosalind Wilkinson pointed out, ‘It’s no use making reforms if you do not understand the people you are making them for’ (p. 189). Laite is careful not to assume that London provides a representative case study, given its atypical character, and emphasises its regional specificities throughout the book. She observes that there is a pressing need for further investigations into the history of sex work in other regions of the UK during the twentieth century and that the related subjects of male prostitution and the commonplace and often taken-for-granted assumptions about links between sex work and drug addiction (not just historically but in the present day) both deserve book-length studies in their own right. Scholars interested in writing these much-needed histories would do well to use Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens as a model. This is a well-written, informative and engaging book that will be of great interest and relevance to all historians working on sexuality and gender in twentieth-century Britain. It will make an invaluable addition to both undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists. It is to be hoped that a paperback version will appear shortly, helping it gain the audience it deserves.
Research Interests: History, Cultural History, Sociology, Psychology, Gender Studies, and 14 moreYouth Studies, Gender History, Recreation & Leisure Studies, History of Childhood and Youth, History of Childhood, Masculinities, Social History, Diaries, Britishness, Sport history, Manchester Metropolitan University, Contemporary British History, Historical Studies, and Music Teacher Identity
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Unlicensed drinking clubs, or shebeens, played an important part in in the leisure and musical life of Manchester's black communities from the late 1940s. The arrival of black American servicemen at the Bamber Bridge and Burtonwood... more
Unlicensed drinking clubs, or shebeens, played an important part in in the leisure and musical life of Manchester's black communities from the late 1940s. The arrival of black American servicemen at the Bamber Bridge and Burtonwood air force bases in this decade was a critical moment in the emergence of the city's black club culture. Often excluded from public leisure activity as a result of the US military's policy of racial segregation, black servicemen stimulated a distinctive night-time economy through their wages, supplies of alcohol, records and, in some cases, musical skills. In the 1950s, shebeens became a key social focus for the city's growing West Indian (particularly Jamaican) population, seeking to escape racism and the rigours of work. This article argues that shebeens played a critical role in the consumption and performance of black American and Jamaican musical genres in Manchester in the postwar period and also contributed significantly to the popul...
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In 1938, the Reverend Digby Bliss Kittermaster, who became chaplain at Rochester Borstal after retiring as a housemaster at Harrow public school, started a diary in which he recorded everyday interactions with inmates and staff. The... more
In 1938, the Reverend Digby Bliss Kittermaster, who became chaplain at Rochester Borstal after retiring as a housemaster at Harrow public school, started a diary in which he recorded everyday interactions with inmates and staff. The reputation of the borstal system was at its height in the 1930s owing to Alexander Paterson's reforms, based on the structures and character-building ethos of British public schools. Young people's voices were rarely heard in this progressive discourse of borstal reform and Kittermaster is unusual for articulating them, recording what he heard, teasing out the contradictions of Paterson's reforming aspirations and the reality of humiliation and intimidation that borstal boys often experienced. Kittermaster's public school background made him well placed to question the rhetoric of the public school reform model. His complex personal perspective suggests how humane emphasis on individual potential was subverted at Rochester by coercive str...
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Research Interests: Sociology and Criminology
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ABSTRACT
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This article explores how walking in a particular type of terrain, the moorland area of north Derbyshire known as the Dark Peak, contributed to a localized sense of place which was framed by regional and national discourses and also... more
This article explores how walking in a particular type of terrain, the moorland area of north Derbyshire known as the Dark Peak, contributed to a localized sense of place which was framed by regional and national discourses and also testified to broader social and cultural uncertainties strongly shaped by gender and class. The punishing physical values of such wild upland areas offered challenges of stoicism, hardiness and endurance which were central to late-nineteenth century ideals of manliness, as masculinity was increasingly defined by forms of sporting activity which encouraged character-building battles against nature. Sensibility is not readily associated with this robust discourse of adventure. The ‘wild’ outdoors, so easily seen as an extension of the public, masculine world was, however, of far greater complexity. More than a focus for physical activity and trespass ‘battles’, it was a place where emotion and the elating intimacy of open space gave expression to needs whi...
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Melanie Tebbutt’s essay traces some of the changes which transformed working-class culture after the Second World War through an analysis of the personal advice pages of teenage magazines, an important expression of girls’ culture between... more
Melanie Tebbutt’s essay traces some of the changes which transformed working-class culture after the Second World War through an analysis of the personal advice pages of teenage magazines, an important expression of girls’ culture between the mid-1950s and late-1970s. Tebbutt takes as her subject Mirabelle magazine, widely read by girls in this period, although its popularity has been largely over-shadowed by the most popular teenage magazine of the time, which was Jackie. Advice pages in teenage magazines from the 1950s and 1960s have received less attention that those of the later decades of the twentieth-century and Tebbutt traces the changes which took place in queries and answers, from the time of Mirabelle’s publication, in 1956, when its advice column was identified with a marriage bureau in central Manchester, to ceasing production in 1977, by which time discussion of sexual matters, including pregnancy outside marriage, had become more open. Magazines aimed at the teenage m...
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This article explores the largely neglected history of BBC youth broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly from the mid 1930s, when a broad youth movement drew together many voluntary youth organizations in humanitarian and... more
This article explores the largely neglected history of BBC youth broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly from the mid 1930s, when a broad youth movement drew together many voluntary youth organizations in humanitarian and political projects. A novel youth consciousness embraced a radical younger generation of middle-class literary intellectuals and artists who, disconcerted by the popular appeal of fascism in Europe, wanted to know more about the everyday lives and views of ‘ordinary’ working-class people. During the same period, the introduction of BBC audience research stimulated greater receptiveness to the idea of capturing ‘different’ voices, including those of youth and encouraged progressive programme producers to give young people a voice in the new public sphere of broadcasting, unusual in a period when children’s education and the workplace were dominated by adult-centred approaches and assumptions. These programmes, despite their limitations, recognized young people as protagonists with valid voices and stressed the importance of youth developing critical understanding in order to play an active and participatory role in society. Their emphases on audience participation and interactivity and their efforts to listen to young people and shape a public space in which they could express their own views and passions as critical and autonomous thinkers are part of the archaeology of youth programming. They also connect with our globalized world, in which the skills of critical thinking, debate and participation are so vital and where the importance of asking young people about what they think, what they feel, and actively listening to what they have to say is still so often ignored.
This chapter focuses on the personal advice pages of teenage magazines as an important expression of girls' culture between the mid-1950s and late-1970s. Its subject is Mirabelle, widely read by girls in this period, although its... more
This chapter focuses on the personal advice pages of teenage magazines as an important expression of girls' culture between the mid-1950s and late-1970s. Its subject is Mirabelle, widely read by girls in this period, although its popularity has been largely overshadowed by Jackie, the most popular teenage magazine of the time. Advice pages in teenage magazines from the 1950s and 1960s have received less attention that those of the later decades of the twentieth-century, overshadowed by Angela McRobbie's pioneering research into the advice pages of British teenage magazines in her analysis of Jackie's 'Cathy and Claire' page (1983). This chapter traces the changes which took place in queries and answers from the time of Mirabelle's inception in 1956 to its closure 1977, by which time discussion of sexual matters, including pregnancy outside marriage, had become more open. Magazines aimed at the teenage market tended to lag behind the more explicit advice of women's magazines and the popular press, but eventually became an important source of sexual information for young people. Teen magazines perpetuated dominant ideological views of girls and young women but this chapter argues that analysis of Mirabelle's advice pages suggests a more nuanced discourse and that there is considerable scope for comparing the content of such pages across similar publications
