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Social History of Medicine 2005 18(1):63-86; doi:10.1093/sochis/hki007
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Social History of Medicine Vol. 18 No. 1 © The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all rights reserved.

Coming Up for Air: Experts, Employers, and Workers in Campaigns to Compensate Silicosis Sufferers in Britain, 1918–1939

Mark W. BuftonAF1,AF2 and Joseph MellingAF1

AF1 Silicosis Project and CWP Project, Wellcome Sponsored Centre for Medical History, SHIPSS, Amory Building, Exeter University, Exeter, Devon EX4 4RJ, UK. Email: j.l.melling{at}exeter.ac.uk, AF2 Mark Bufton now: Honorary University Fellow, Exeter University. Email: M.W.Bufton{at}exeter.ac.uk

Government regulation of dangerous trades and the compensation of those injured by their work remains a matter of considerable debate among medical historians. Trade unions have frequently been criticized for pursuing financial awards for their members rather than demanding improvements in health and safety at the workplace. This article examines the neglected subject of silicosis injuries in Britain from the time when the first legislation was passed for the compensation of those suffering from the harmful affects of silica dust in 1918 to the outbreak of war in 1939, when a major new study was under way which would transform the scientific understanding and the legal compensation of those who were diagnosed as being ill with pneumoconiosis. It is argued that in framing legislation for compensation, politicians and their civil servants sought to retain the legal framework created in 1897–1906 and developed a model of industrial insurance which depended to a large extent on a co-operative relationship with leading employers. Medical scientists identified silica as a uniquely hazardous agent in workers' lung disease, while emphasizing the specialist knowledge required for its diagnosis. One remarkable feature of the selective compensation schemes devised after 1918 was the reliance on geological rather than pathological evidence to prove compensation rights, as well as strict employment limits on those eligible to claim. Only the campaigning of labour organizations and persistent evidence of lung disease among anthracite coal miners led to a significant relaxation of compensation rules in 1934 and the fresh scientific investigation which transformed the medical understanding of respiratory illness among industrial workers.

Keywords: twentieth century


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