NEWMAN, Sir George
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23rd October 1870 to 26th May 1948
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Biographical Text
Newman was the first Chief Medical Officer appointed by the Ministry of Health in Britain. He drew links between public health issues on the one hand and poverty and lack of education on the other, and called for social reform.
Newman was born in Leominster, Herefordshire on 23 October 1870, the son of a Quaker missionary and the editor of the Quaker journal, The Friend. He was educated at Sidcot School in Somerset and Bootham School in York, both Quaker establishments. At Bootham he almost certainly met Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the two men being close contemporaries in age. Newman went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and then King’s College, London. After taking his MD degree at Edinburgh he began teaching at King’s in 1896 while simultaneously carrying out research into bacteriology.
Newman was also devoutly religious, and from 1890 served as a secretary to the Medical Students’ Christian Association. Sturdy (2004) suggests that at times Newman’s devotion to Christian causes interfered with his medical studies. His faith also led Newman to see medicine as a form of service, and he became acutely interested in problems of public health, especially epidemiology and infant mortality. In 1897 he became a part-time public medical officer in Holborn. He married artist and fellow Quaker Adelaide Thorp in 1898. In 1899 he took up the editorship of the periodical The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, and continued in this post for forty years.
In 1900 Newman was appointed medical officer of health for Finsbury in London, and resigned his academic post at King’s to take up his new duties. He was also appointed medical officer of health for the county of Bedfordshire. A variety of problems, including a smallpox epidemic in 1901, high death rates from tuberculosis in Finsbury and high infant mortality rates in both jurisdictions led Newman to undertake a series of studies of public health problems and led to his first major publication on infant mortality in 1906. He also lectured at the Royal Sanitary Institute and the medical school of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and became a council member of the Society of Medical Officers of Health.
In 1906 Newman met Beatrice Webb, then a member of the royal commission on the poor laws and also a campaigner for a state medical service. Webb introduced Newman to Sir Robert Morant, permanent secretary to the Board of Education, who offered Newman the post of Chief Medical Officer to the board with responsibility for setting up a school health service nationwide. Despite opposition from many quarters, Newman succeeded in establishing the new service. He was knighted KB in 1911.
Following the outbreak of the First World War Newman was appointed medical officer to the Central Control Board for Liquor Traffic, whose purpose was to control the supply of alcohol to prevent labour shortages and accidents. In 1915 he was appointed chairman of the Health of Munition Workers Committee at the Ministry of Munitions, a post that brought him back into contact with Rowntree. Newman’s committee carried out research into a number of health problems in munitions factories, including industrial fatigue. In 1916, following the introduction of conscription, Newman helped to negotiate exemptions for Quakers who volunteered to serve with ambulance units.
From 1916-19 Newman was closely involved, along with Morant and Christopher Addison, the minister for reconstruction, in the planning and establishment of the new Ministry of Health. In 1919 he was appointed chief medical officer to the new department. He remained in this post until his retirement in 1935.
Newman received much recognition for his work. He received two further knighthoods, the KCB in 1918 and the GBE in 1935, and honorary degrees from the Universities of London, Durham, Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and McGill University in Toronto. He died in York on 26 May 1948.
Newman was a prolific writer and speaker. As well as the books below, a sample of his output, he gave many speeches and addresses and wrote for many scientific periodicals. Most of his works were on public health, but he also wrote a biography of George Fox and other more spiritual works. A running theme through much of his work on public health is the need to improve living conditions and for more and better public education. In works like The Health of the State, arguably his most important book, and Health and Social Evolution, Newman drew a strong correlation between lack of education and issues such as infant mortality. By education he meant not just health education, important though that was, but broader education to open the mind and release the spirit. He argued, not always on logical grounds, that physical health was highly dependent on mental and spiritual health, and encouraged the principle of ‘healthy mind, healthy body.’
Like his friend Beatrice Webb, Newman was a passionate believer in a state healthcare system and campaigned for this in both his writings – for example, in The Building of a Nation’s Health in 1939, but also in his earlier speeches – and also in his capacity as a chief medical officer. His advocacy did not always win him friends in high places; indeed, it sometimes provoked powerful opposition within both the civil service and the medical establishment.
Newman begins his lecture with the proposition that ‘the physical condition of the worker is the primary asset in the production of wealth.’ In other words, the prosperity not just of individual firms but of the nation as a whole depends on having a healthy, fit workforce. Newman lays out his ideas for a government-backed national health service, but then tells his audience that they too have a role to play. Businesses need to look after the health of their people, and Newman lays out some statistics that illustrate starkly what happens if they do not: for example, sickness and accidents rob the country of approximately 14 million working weeks, or 270,000 working years, of labour every year. What more could be achieved, he asks, if the workers had been fit and able to work those missing hours? Newman goes on to suggest that sickness is also one of the causes of labour unrest.
What can businesses do to improve health? Newman say that four areas need attention: hours of employment, the workplace environment, the effect of occupation on health and the personal fitness and health of the workers. More attention also needs to be paid to preventing workplace accidents, and there needs to be more and better education about health. Finally, the whole problem need more and better study, to understand the causes of ill-health more fully so that they can be eradicated. Doing this, Newman tells his audience, is not just a matter of economic necessity; it is also a moral and religious duty.
Major works
Infant Mortality: A Social Problem, 1906.
The Health of the State, 1907.
Memorandum on the Prevention of Influenza, 1919.
George Fox, the Founder of Quakerism, 1924.
Citizenship and the Survival of Civilization, 1928.
Some Notes on Adult Education in England, 1930.
Health and Social Evolution, 1931.
The Rise of Preventive Medicine, 1932.
The Building of a Nation’s Health, 1939.
English Social Services, 1941.
Bibliography
Obituary notice, The Times, 27 May 1948.
Sturdy, S., ‘Newman, Sir George’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Original Source
‘The health of the workers’, 23 September 1921, Balliol College