John Madge

John Madge was an English sociologist and younger brother of Charles Madge. His book The Tools of Social Science (1953) is a clearly presented and quite readable handbook on research methodology in Sociology and related social sciences. He also wrote The Origins of Scientific Sociology (1959), and a number of books on Urban Sociology.

Born in 1914, Madge was the son of Lieut Col. C. A. Madge and Barbara, née Hylton Foster, and like his father was educated at Winchester College and the University of Cambridge.

The two Madges were active in the Cambridge University Socialist Society. The Madge brothers were close friends with the poet Gavin Ewart; John and Ewart shared a flat on Gloucester Place and traveled to Austria together in 1938. Cyril Bibby comments with reference to them as well as Maurice Dobb, the twins Francis and Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce, Margot Heinemann and "the beautiful Eileen Wynne" that "it was noticeable how many of these extreme left-wingers came from privileged upper-class homes" (Reminiscences of a Happy Life, p. 171)

Madge published The Rehousing of Britain in 1945 about the need for housing renewal due to war damages, overcrowding, and shifts in population, describing the policies of housing from each political party. He followed this with a 1948 pamphlet, "Human Factor in Housing", which critiqued housing policies in which families were "fitted into houses, rather than the houses designed round their needs".