Abstract
A flyer issued by the Department of Occupational Health at Manchester University to publicise a conference held in 1951 on ‘The Role of Industrial Medicine in the Welfare State’ claimed that training for industrial medical officers had become caught in a time warp, governed by a concept of industrial medicine which had crystallised by 1942 at the height of the wartime expansion of industrial medical services within factories.1 The purpose of the conference was to ascertain the purpose of industrial medicine now that the NHS had been established and it raised a number of questions about the purpose of industrial medicine and the role of the medical practitioner within the factory.
Did many of us become aware of those disturbing questions “Am I really necessary?” “Am I doing a job which no other professional worker can do as well or better?” “Why am I here, an industrial medical officer or nurse, in a factory?”
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Notes
J. T. Carter, ‘Fifty Years of Medicine in the Workplace: The Contribution of the Society of Occupational Medicine to Health Practice 1935–85’, Journal of the Society of Occupational Medicine, 35 (1985), 4–22; 12.
Ministry of Health, A National Health Service (1944), Cmd 6502.
PRO, PREM 8/1487, joint memorandum by the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland, ‘Socialisation of Industries Committee: Co-ordination of Health Services’ S.I. (M) (49) 5, 12 January 1949.
See R. Dingwell, A. M. Rafferty and C. Webster, An Introduction to the Social History of Nursing (London, 1988) pp. 98–105: 116–118.
TUC Archive, MSS.292/142/1, interdepartmental TUC memorandum from E. P. Harries to C. R. Dale, ‘Medical Occupational Committee of the BMA’, 23 July 1948.
In 1943, the Factory Inspectorate noted that 8,395 nurses were employed in factories, of which around half were state registered: Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for the Year 1943, p. 53. The 1947 figures are those quoted in the report issued by the IHSC: Report of a Committee of Enquiry on Industrial Health Services (1951), Cmd 8170, p. 7.
Nevil Johnson, ‘Vickers, Sir (Charles) Geoffrey (1894–1982)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31787, accessed 25 June 2008. Given Vickers’ approach it is worth noting that the National Coal Board had a well-developed industrial medical service in place, although did little to bring levels of dust down below approved levels: see A. McIvor and R. Johnston, Miners’ Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 105–111; 145–183.
BEC Archive, MSS.202/B/C1024 pt 1, Ministry of Labour and National Service, ‘Industrial Health Services Committee: Factories with Special Industrial Hazards’, 1949.
C. R. Dale, ‘Viewpoints on an Occupational Health Service’, Transactions of the Association of Industrial Medical Officers, 2 (1953), 164–167; 164.
Home Office and Scottish Home Department, Health, Welfare, and Safety in Non-Industrial Employment: Hours of Employment of Juveniles (1949), Cmd 7664. The Committee was also instructed to investigate current provisions of the Shops Acts as regards closing hours and to inquire into the statutory regulation of hours of employment of young persons.
A. Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890), footnote 124; Oxford English Dictionary, (2nd edition, 1989), consulted online at http://dictionary.oed.com/ on 4 February 2008.
Jean Bunce has explored how greater use of machinery and chemicals within agriculture increased the range of occupational accidents and diseases to which British farmers were exposed in the twentieth century. Her study also considered the specific occupational factors which produce stress and mental health problems amongst agricultural workers. See J. Bunce, ‘The “Healthiest of Occupations” or One of the Most Dangerous? The Health Hazards of Agriculture in Britain 1934–2004’ (MA thesis, University of Warwick, 2004).
Although not explored within this monograph, the ways in which concern with industrial disease evolved in America into environmental health science, a discipline which explored the impact of industrial production on the environment more generally, formed the focus for Chris Sellers’ 1997 monograph: C. Sellers, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill, 1997).
TUC Archive, MSS.292/142/1, ‘Medical Occupational Committee of the BMA’, interdepartmental memorandum from E. P. Harries to C. R. Dale, 23 July 1948. Sir George Schuster chaired the panel on human factors, an offshoot of the Committee on Industrial Productivity established in 1947. See N. Tiratsoo and J. Tomlinson, Industrial Efficiency and State Intervention: Labour 1939–51 (London, 1993), pp. 92–93.
See C. Gordon, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 2003).
R. Johnston and A. McIvor, ‘Whatever Happened to the Occupational Health Service? The NHS, the OHS and the asbestos tragedy on Clydeside’, in C. Nottingham (ed.), The NHS in Scotland: The Legacy of the Past and the Prospect of the Future (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 79–105;
R. Johnston and A. McIvor, ‘Marginalising the Body at Work? Employers’ Occupational Health Strategies and Occupational Medicine in Scotland c. 1930–1974’, Social History of Medicine, 21 (2008), 127–144.
C. Webster, The Health Services Since the War Volume 1: Problems of Health Care — The National Health Service Before 1957 (London, 1988), p. 133.
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© 2011 Vicky Long
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Long, V. (2011). The Fall of the Healthy Factory. In: The Rise and Fall of the Healthy Factory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230303836_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230303836_7
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