(Biographical notes compiled from notes by Lesley Hall, Welcome Library, and Alison Stallibrass's book, "Being Me and Also Us")

Dr Scott Wlliamson

George Scott Williamson was born in 1884, the eldest of seven children. He entered the Edinburgh School of Medicine in 1904, where he continued to think about natural immunity and insuspectibility, interests that had begun when he had nursed a younger brother through diphtheria. As a student he had also volunteered to help on a smallpox isolation ship where he saw a perfectly healthy baby delivered by caesarian section, to a woman dying of smallpox. He decided that the study of pathology could lead to understanding why some people succumbed to a deadly insult while others were able to live in harmony with it. He received his MB and ChB in 1906.

From 1908 to 1910 he worked at the Research Laboratory of the West Riding Asylum Board, moving to the Department of Pathology, University of Bristol, from 1910 to 1919. However, from 1914 to 1918 he served in the RAMC. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of field ambulances, was mentioned in Despatches, was awarded the Military Cross, and spent 9 months as a prisoner-of-war in Germany.

He was awarded his MD with the Gold Medal in 1918 and from 1920 to 1926 he was Pathologist and Director of Pathological Studies at the Royal Free Hospital in London. During this time he was engaged in thyroid and goitre research (assisted by Innes Pearse). From then, until the opening of the Pioneer Health Centre in 1935, he was pathologist at the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. He also continued his research on the thyroid gland at St Bartholomew's Hospital with a grant from the Royal College of Surgeons, of which he was a member. From 1935 until 1939, and from 1946 to 1950 he ran the Pioneer Health Centre and conducted his research into the nature of human health. He married Innes Pearse in 1950. He died in 1953.

Dr Innes H. Pearse

Innes Pearse was born in 1889, the only child of well-to-do parents. She loved art, craft and dress designing but became a doctor thinking it would give her the freedom and effectiveness she wanted. Her fellow students nicknamed her "Peter Rabbit", and she adopted the name "Pete" for the rest of her life.

She qualified as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in 1916. She then worked at the Bristol Hospital for Children and Women, and the Great Northern Hospital before applying for a house appointment at the London Hospital in 1919, becoming the hospital's first woman medical registrar. In 1920 she became a demonstrator in the anatomical department at St Thomas's Hospital. Later she held the post of surgical registrar at the Royal Free Hospital where she met Scott Williamson. She became his assistant in his research and teaching work, unable to pursue her ambition to be a surgeon through illness. By the 1920s she had also spent seven years at the Alice Model Infant Welfare Centre in Stepney.

In the mid 1920s she was approached by some women philanthropists who were interested in spreading information about birth control to all and not just the rich. As a result of this meeting, at which Scott Williamson had also met the women, both she and Scott Williamson were invited to meet a larger group. Eventually this group supported both doctors in an experiment to find out if people would welcome the opportunity to obtain information on the state of their physical fitness and to receive help to assume responsibility for their own health and that of their children. This was the forerunner of the Peckham Experiment.

She worked with Scott Williamson on the Peckham Experiment throughout. In 1950 she married him and died in 1978.