A Reassessment of the Work of the Peckham Health Centre, 1926-1951

Abstract

George Scott Williamson, a pathologist, and Innes Pearse, a general practitioner, who met while working at the London Hospital during World War I. Williamson and Pearse set up the Centre in the South London suburb of Peckham-hence, its more common designation as the Peckham Centre-as an independent research experiment to test their ideas regarding the nature of and the conditions necessary for its maintenance. The Centre was open between 1926 and 1930, 1935 and 1939 (in new premises built for the purpose), and 1945 and 1950. It functioned as a family club with two conditions for membership: each family paid a weekly subscription, and all family members subjected themselves to periodic health overhauls. The Centre provided a broad range of services for the whole family: creche facilities; fresh produce for sale from a farm in Kent which was a part of the enterprise; and, towards the end of the experiment, an elementary school for the children. It was this combination of activities, together with Williamson and Pearse's tireless propaganda efforts, that attracted attention to the Centre. The Centre worked at a number of different levels. To the exmembers we interviewed, it combined a good primary care

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