Blue Plaque for Doctors who Founded Peckham Pioneer Health Centre

Doctors Honoured for Dedication to Family Health

 Dr George Scott Williamson (1884-1953) and Dr Innes Pearse (1889-1978), are to be commemorated (26th March 2009) with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at 142 Queen’s Road, Peckham, SE15, the building where they founded the Peckham Pioneer Health Centre.  The plaque will be unveiled by Peter Frost, Chairman of the Peckham Society.  Dr Margaret Pelling of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, will also attend the unveiling.

Dr George Scott Williamson was born in Scotland and qualified at the University of Edinburgh. He went on to serve in France during the First World War and spent nine months as a prisoner of war in Germany. After the war he worked at a number of London hospitals.  Dr Innes Pearse was born in Croydon and studied medicine at the London Hospital for Women and became House Surgeon at the Great Northern Hospital in 1918. The pair first met when they worked together from 1920-25 at the Royal Free Hospital in North London and eventually married.

Recognised for their dedication to family health, Williamson and Pearse in 1926 began the project which became known as the ‘Peckham Experiment’, based around a clinic dedicated to family health which they set up and ran on a voluntary basis with donated money.  Originally located in the house at 142 Queen's Road, the clinic found a new home in 1935, when the Pioneer Health Centre opened in nearby St Mary's Road. Constructed to the designs of Owen Williams, it contained facilities such as a swimming pool and gym, a crèche, a library, and a rooftop playground. The Centre flourished in St Mary's Road, but eventually closed in 1950, shortly after the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948.

The Peckham Experiment began at a time when there were other clinics focused on child health, but Williamson and Pearse believed that the physical and mental well-being of the whole family was hugely important. The Centre was run as a club for local families: members had to pay a small annual sum, and agree to attend an annual health check and consultation as a family; other benefits included free use of the Centre's advanced facilities, and access to its medically trained staff. 

Williamson and Pearse firmly believed that health was something that could – and should – be fostered and cultivated; that prevention was better than cure; and that a doctor's responsibility extended beyond the diagnosis of illness and administration of drugs to the active encouragement of a healthy way of life. As a base for scientific investigation into the nature of health and prevention of disease the Centre was extremely progressive. Much of the work carried out by Williamson and Pearse is pertinent to current health issues in British society, with the holistic principles advocated by Williamson and Pearse used as a model both for the modern sports centre and for preventative healthcare.

The impact of the Peckham Experiment spread beyond South London. Williamson and Pearse's special study of health problems relating to the working and lower-middle classes, and Pearse's work on the link between health and nutrition – particularly for children and pregnant women – have been widely recognised.  A film about the work of the Centre was made at the request of the Foreign Office; this was used to inform viewers of Britain in social and medical fields.  Williamson and Pearse also produced influential writings including Biologists in Search of Material (1938) and The Peckham Experiment (1943).

The Peckham Health Centre was truly ahead of its time and the holistic principles advocated by Williamson and Pearse are now widely accepted. The influence of the Centre continues to be felt in the UK's Healthy Living Centres, and in the work of the World Health Organisation.