Growing well : dirt and health in the home and garden in Britain, 1930-1970

This thesis examines portrayals of homes and gardens in magazines, advice books, public health discourse and government propaganda in mid-twentieth-century Britain, analysing representations of healthy domesticity inside and outside the home, and in transition between the two. Taking an environmental perspective, it explores the implications of the association of housewives with hygiene and care for choices in shopping, the home and the garden. Vegetables were regarded as essential to health yet might still have soil on them. Waste, when converted into compost, was seen as a component of healthy soil, yet whilst in the process of decay had associations with risk to health. This thesis explores the tensions between two different understandings relating to health, namely that fresh vegetables grown in soil were nutritious, and that germs might hide unseen in dirty soil and might pose a risk if ingested. It attends to alternative voices advocating a cyclical and local approach to waste management and vegetable production but argues that they did not significantly impact the dominant cultural association between housewives, the indoors, and hygiene. Chapter one demonstrates how considering soil in the domestic space connects perspectives from multiple disciplines. Chapter two explores the construction of boundaries in the domestic space, between the indoors and the outdoors, the clean and the dirty. Chapter three focuses on the procurement of vegetables, analysing choices that were made between different purchasing options, and domestic growing in the garden or on the allotment, assessing how far concepts of protection from germs influenced these choices. Chapter four explores waste, both as rubbish and as sewage, and the ways in which practices were influenced by the construct of the ideal hygienic home. This thesis thus makes a significant contribution to histories of domesticity, gender and the environment that can inform current debates relating to climate breakdown