Sir George Newman, 1870–1948
Physician, Chief Medical Officer
George Newman was the son of Henry Stanley Newman. He qualified in Medicine and became a public health physician, and the first Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health.
He wrote an important report on the social problems causing infant mortality.
George Newman was born in Leominster, the fourth of six children of Henry Stanley Newman and Mary Anna Pumphrey. He was educated at two Quaker schools, Sidcot School in North Somerset and Bootham School in York. He initially planned to become a missionary, but then decided to study medicine, starting at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and continuing at King’s College London.
After qualifying he studied for his M.D. at Edinburgh, receiving the gold medal for his year, before winning a scholarship to study public health and gaining his Diploma in Public Health in 1895 from the University of Cambridge.
After a period teaching he became Medical Officer to the Borough of Finsbury in inner London and the rural county of Bedfordshire. His experiences in these posts led him to publish Infant Mortality: a Social Problem in 1906. This has remained a medical classic.
And in 1907 he was appointed as Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education, and in 1919 Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health. His work in both these posts are widely acclaimed as important and influential.
In August 1898 he married Adelaide Constance Thorp, who was an artist. They had no children. The following year he took over as the (anonymous) editor of the Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, a Quaker journal formerly edited by his father.
He was knighted in 1911.
In autumn 1914 he was involved in the establishment of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, which provided medical care for soldiers and civilians in the war zone. Following the introduction of conscription in 1916 he helped to negotiate exemptions for Quakers already serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit.
