Pioneering Health in London, 1935-2000

The so-called Peckham Experiment, conducted between 1935 and 1950 in the London Pioneer Health Centre (PHC), was one of the most important social experiments of the modern era.
Combining a micro-historical perspective with approaches from the history of science - as well as analysing historical photographs from the Centre itself - this book shows how bio-medical theories on social organization informed research on social life in the 1930s and 1940s. The outcome was a kind of social laboratory, where new insights into the power of social groups to self-organize were generated - insights which were soon discussed around the world and which still haunt British political debates today.

David Kuchenbuch is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany.

Contents;List of figures ;Acknowledgments ;List of abbreviations ; 1. Introduction;A laboratory of the present?;"Peckham" as a social generator of knowledge ;Structure of the book ; 2. From C3 to A1 - reforming the working class family (1925-1931) ;On Queen's Road;Pioneers?;Helping with self-help;Biographical aspects;Plans for expansion;Responsibility as a biological function: the first book ;Internal supremacy ; 3. St Mary's Road, S. E. 15 - new premises, initial routines? (1931-1935) ;Observation platforms and niches for congregation ;Success stories ; 4. "Living Structure of Society" - the magnum opus and its scientific context ;The social environment as growth medium;The ideal life;Culture and cultivation;Interwar holisms;Eugenics, evolution and community ; 5. Looking through the bioscope - research and social interaction in the prewar centre (1935-1939) ;Data collection;Chaos and order;Mary Langman's recollections;Revisions: "socialized science";Genius and autocrat;The biologist as the summit of creation ; 6. Interim findings ; 7. The centre in photographs - visual stimulation and participant observation ;Holistic perspectives and visual contagions;Moving images: The Centre; A winter evening ;8. Guinea pigs? The members between participation and social control;Members' memoirs;"Bouquets & Brickbats";An experiment in education ; 9. Missed opportunities - the centre and the welfare state (1939-1949);War, agriculture and family;"Physician, heal thyself";Reviews and an enforced reopening;Visitors and lecture tours;"Peckham" in the world's press ; 10. "The Passing of Peckham" (1949-1959);Criticisms from within and without;The directors' fall from power;The money trail;From guinea pigs to citizens' group;Proof of the pudding ; 11."Peckham" after the Pioneer Health Centre and the changing discourse of health (1959);(Post-)modernization;From social engineer to social entrepreneur ;12. Preliminary conclusion: the Pioneer Health Centre as liberal missing link? ;13. The promise of Peckham. Hidden legacies ;Anarchist appropriations;The Peckham experiment as seen by city planners and architects;Brave new worlds;A "strange laboratory"?;Northfield, Hawkspur & Hawthorne;Experiments in self-organization;Therapeutic experiments;The experimental animal; 14. Epilogue ; References; Archives