The first and most crucial point is that the Department Richard Titmuss took over in 1950 really belonged to Eileen Younghusband. By far the most prominent of the LSE social work staff, she already had a very considerable reputation outside LSE. She was the daughter of a well-known explorer and colonial services officer, Sir Francis Younghusband, who had won Tibet for the British Empire, and his aristocratic wife, Helen Magniac, and was said to look like a cross between Virginia Woolf and Captain Hook. Her colourfully elitist family once had a parlour maid called Gladys Aylward, who left their employ in 1932 to go on a mission to China, thus unintentionally giving rise to the film ‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’, starring Ingrid Bergman. Aylward led an extraordinary life in North China for more than 20 years, becoming a Chinese citizen and leading campaigns against female foot-binding and trafficking. Eileen herself had suffered from the usual disadvantages attendant on being an upper-class daughter at the time. A debutante who had been ‘presented’ at Buckingham Palace with ostrich feathers in her hair, she had no formal school education, only the expectation of a life devoted to home and family. Like other women in her situation, Eileen had to labour hard to overcome these obstacles. Immersing herself in voluntary work in London Settlements, she then became a student at LSE, taking the Certificate Course in Social Studies, followed by the Diploma in Sociology. In 1929 she discussed with Beatrice Webb what to do with her life; Beatrice was of the opinion that she should become a ‘woman relieving officer’ and help to change the old poor law from the inside. Instead of taking her advice, Eileen joined the LSE staff as a tutor in social studies, where she occupied Clement Attlee’s old room, occasionally taking advantage of the House of Commons stationery he’d left behind. In 1947, she carried out an important survey of social work training for the Carnegie UK Trust. This stressed the need for expansion, greater consistency, and improvements in standards of training. Her report recommended the provision to would-be social workers of generic courses which would precede any professional specialisation by equipping them with a basic set of skills.