The concepts that lie behind my thesis are one of perception and reality – the perception of nineteenth century observers and the reality of the census returns. The perceptions drawn will relate to many aspects of the underclass. The aspects will include the ethnic background, the morality, the habitation and the danger posed by the underclass to the society in which they lived. I will also consider the perceived forces that lay behind the creation of such a class. In the first section, I will consider perceptions that have been drawn from a wide authorship. The authorship will include social novelists such as Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, visitors to the north west of England - Kohl, de Tocqueville, Cook Taylor etc. I will also consider the perceptions of both newspaper reporters and professional enquirers. These works will cover a wide time scale - 1830s to 1890s. In this way we will be able to test whether the perceptions of the underclass changed, not only through authorship, but over time. The second section - the reality section - will be based primarily on the information contained within the census enumerators' handbooks for Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Rochdale for 1861 and 1871. Use will also be made of the 1851 return. Every designated cellar dwelling and its inhabitants on the 1861 and 1871 returns has been listed and analysed. The analysis has then been compared with the perceptions, in every aspect, that have been drawn out in the first section. In this way, I hope to test, firstly, whether an underclass did exist and, secondly, whether it lived in the worst housing conditions to be found in some of the industrial towns of the mid-Victorian north west of England.

This is a study of military psychiatry in the Second World War. Focusing on the British Army, it recounts how the military came to employ psychiatrists to revise recruitment procedures and to treat psychiatric casualties. The research has shown that psychiatry was a valued specialty and that psychiatrists were given considerable power and independence. For example, psychiatrists reformed personnel selection and placed intelligence testing at the centre of the military selection of personnel. Psychiatrists argued that by eliminating the 'dull and backward' the tests would help improve efficiency, hygiene, discipline and morale, reduce psychiatric casualties and establish that the Army was run in a meritocratic way. However, it is probable that intelligence testing made it less likely that working-class men would receive commissions. Still, the Army had no consistent military doctrine about what the psychiatrists should be aiming for -to return as many psychiatric casualties to combatant duties as was possible or to discharge men who had found it impossible to adapt to military life. In the initial stages of the war, the majority of casualties were treated in civilian hospitals in Britain, where most were discharged. This was partly because the majority were regarded as constitutional neurotics. When psychiatrists treated soldiers near the front line most were retained in some capacity. The decision on whether to evacuate patients was influenced by multiple factors including the patients' military experience and the doctors' commitment to treatment or selection. Back in Britain, service patients were increasingly more likely to be treated in military hospitals such as Northfield -famous for the 'Northfield experiments'. These provided an alternative model of military psychiatry in which psychiatric intervention refocused away from individuals and their histories and onto social relationships, and where the psychiatrists' values were realigned with the military rather than with civilian general medicine.

This thesis will argue that from early in the Cold War Britain developed a propaganda apparatus designed to fight the Cold War on an ideological front, and that in the period from 1945 to 1951 the role of propaganda grew from being an adjunct to foreign policy to become an integral part of British Cold War strategy. Britain was the first country to formulate a coordinated response to communist propaganda. In January 1948, the Government launched a new propaganda policy designed to 'oppose the inroads of Communism, by taking the offensive against it. ' The development of this anti-communist propaganda policy will be the main focus of this thesis. It will also be shown that from the earliest stages in the development of Britain's response to communist propaganda, the degree to which such activities could be coordinated with United States Government was a primary consideration. It will be shown that cooperation and eventually coordination of propaganda activities with the United States Government became a defining feature of Britain's anticommunist propaganda policy. This was particularly the case following the launch of the American 'Campaign of Truth' in 1950. Faced with a formidable and highly organised communist propaganda machine officials in both Britain and America came to realise the value of a unified response. As both nations developed their own policies for offensive anti-communist propaganda, cooperation became an increasingly important element, as Britain and America sought to 'shoot at the same target from different angles. ' The thesis is comprised of an introduction and conclusion and four chapters covering: the origins of British and American anticommunist propaganda policies, 1945-1947; launching Britain's new propaganda policy, 1948; building a concerted counter-offensive, cooperation with other powers, 1948-1950; 'Close and continuous liaison. ' British and American cooperation, 1950-1951.