[Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, Salisbury & Wilton R.D.C.

  • Salisbury and Wilton (England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, Salisbury & Wilton R.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/76 (page 2)
    Furthermore, after experiencing and enjoying the egalitatarian, almost classless Canadian Society, in which at a party it v/ould be normal to meet the mechanic who serviced one's car, or the woman who helped clean one's clinic on equal, first-name terms, (largely due to the almost universal use by all work and income-groups of the same sort of day-school for their children, giving virtually equal opportunity in education) it was a severe shock to leturn to the 'upper, middle and working class' grading of English, - if not so much Scottish, society. Probably this archaic system is more marked in England than anywhere else on earth. Even now, after nineteen years back in the old country, it is dist¬ asteful to me to be addressed as 'Sir' (except by a boy) in conversation or as 'Esquire' (Esq.) on an envelope, when I have no right to either title (or even if I had the right). Let us hope that our entry into Europe will reduce these traditional and sociologically disruptive gradings, that the term 'working' class will disappear, and that all men and women will be thought of as 'workers' whether manual or otherwise. There was a compensation in the beauty and near-luxury which British earth, and its fields, trees (with sorts other than conifers), and gardens, with its variable climate which enables a keen gardener to follow his hobby all the year round, provides, I included Scottish in 'British' because my first six months working in the Local Government Public Health Service after return from Canada uere spent in Sutherland, as Deputy to the Medical Officer of Health, that great and charming man, the late Dr. A. Macrae. I am glad to say that in spite of the inexorable encrc^hment of the town into the countryside, these compensations still largely apply, - but I am thanlcful to have been appointed to an area that is mainly rural rather than urban in character. The ancient beautiful little Borough of v/ilton is small enough, and sufficiently integrated with the surrounding countryside, to be included in my conception of 'rural'. So are the large villages of Mere, Tisbury and Downton in the South Wilts, area, and Amesbury, and Fevxsey and the Borough of Marlborough, in the East Wilts. M.O.H. area, for which I was Acting M.O.H. for I5 months between the resignation of Dr. Mackay and the appointment of Dr. Lockitt, and five months betv/een Dr. Lockitt and Dr. Steede. Before going to Canada in 1950, I had worked only with large Local Authorities, which had very exalted lawyer Clerks, (ultimately as Deputy County M.O.H. and Deputy Principal School Medical Officer for Hampshire) and my work had concerned mainly the more medical and nursing aspects of Public Health, rather than the more Environmental aspects vdiich concern District M.O's.H. Therefore a particular feature which seemed so odd in my new British work was that a highly professionally qualified medical practitioner, with additional specialist and medico-legal diplomas, ms fitted into the local government set-up in a position in which he was to a greater or less extent subject to the control, ostensibly as mouthpiece of the Councils, to Clerks without (in the case of two of the Authorities) equivalent professional legal qualifications. This situation was made even more anomalous ra the fact that in British Columbia, as well as being Medical Director of the South Central Health Unit (seiaring an area of 17,000 square miles) I was its Clerk to the Board of Health, with repres¬ entatives of six local authorities and five Education Boards, prepared my own agendas for their meetings, kept the minutes, and was the undisputed leader of the team. Situations inevitably developed now and tnen when frictions between two of the Clerks and myself might have developed but were just averted by my learning, gradually, of the personal qualities of