ABSTRACT
Economic depression marked the decade between 1900 and 1910, with adult male unemployment ranging from 4 per cent to 13 per cent. As adult improvers were relegated to a minor and increasingly beleaguered role in Birmingham corporate life, childhood and adolescence gradually emerged as a more appropriate site for the inculcation of a particular model of educated citizenship. The years between 1900 and 1914 witnessed the erosion of ‘improvement’ as a badge of civic competence. Despite Davis’s participation in the city’s adult Sunday schools and improvement societies – long a crucible for informed citizenship – his rise to political prominence was regarded as exceptional even by his own biographer. The Midland Adult School Union developed a corps of traveling lecturers who would visit schools at great distances ‘on foot or cycle, carrying with them charts, apparatus, etc’ for talks and demonstrations. The identification of ‘reform’ with efficient municipal government was reflected in Birmingham’s debating subculture.
