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This article examines masculinity in an area suffering from sustained high unemployment and unremitting hardship during the 1930s: the South Wales coalfield had some of the highest rates of male unemployment and the lowest participation rates of married women in paid employment in Britain. Particular attention is drawn to power relations between husband and wife by looking at the domestic division of labour and whether male unemployment affected the split in domestic responsibilities. Personal testimonies are used to assess how men filled their time whilst unemployed and the meanings they attached to their activities and relationships. It will be shown that some unemployed men engaged more in the home and that many men were able to maintain existing power relations with their wives by finding or creating alternative manual work and maintaining an elastic relationship with the home by continuing to spend the majority of their time in the company of other men.

During 2008, rumours about revolting incestuous encounters between sons and their mothers circulated in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the South African lowveld. This article views these rumours as expressing moral panic, paying particular attention to the historical contexts of their emergence and circulation, and to their temporal orientation. I locate these rumours in the periphery of South Africa's de-industrialising economy, marked by increased unemployment and criminality among men and by a growing prominence of women-headed households. They express a regressive temporalisation and pessimistic vision, not of development, progress and civilisation, but rather of deterioration and de-civilisation. Through the alleged act of incest, sons who engage in crime usurp the authority of fathers who once produced value in strategic industries and mines. As such the rumours envision a dystopia marked by the 'death of the father' and chaotic disorder without morality and law.

The recent revival of interest in the potential of preventive medicine, reflected in its re-emergence as a medical specialism and in monitoring and campaigning activity at the local level, has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of public health. In particular, the work of the Medical Officers of Health (MOsH), the doctors appointed by many local authorities after 1850, has come under closer scrutiny. However, whereas historians have acknowledged that the MOsH played a key role in tackling environmental health and infectious disease in the second half of the nineteenth century, judgements have been less favourable for the period since 1900. It is alleged that the MOsH produced repetitive and complacent reports, delayed the introduction of immunization, and were seduced away from public health by hospital administration. Both they and their counterparts in the School Medical Service ignored wider threats to health such as malnutrition and unemployment, and campaigning on these issues was left to other individuals and pressure groups. Furthermore, it is argued that after the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948, MOsH failed to exploit the potential of health education, lagged behind thinking on social work, and were slow to develop services for 'community care'. According to this analysis, the demise of the MOH in the 1974 health service reorganization represented the logical culmination of trends in the previous 75 years. This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of this interpretation, partly through a case-study based on the Midlands city of Leicester. It argues that, although some MOsH were complacent, all operated within the limitations of important local and national constraints, and that, given these restrictions on their room for manoeuvre, many were remarkably innovative and imaginative. The paper concludes that, until further research is undertaken, the charges levelled against these doctors remain largely unproven.