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Jerry Morris’s life and his death at 99 were noted in the November issue of BGS News. He was a friend and mentor for half a century and I am pleased to have been asked for some recollections.

Recently qualified and with ideas for research, I had asked to see him. I came one sunny day in 1961 to his MRC Social Medicine Unit at the London Hospital. He said ‘let’s talk among the people of Stepney’, and off we went to a local park, he still wearing his white coat. I warmed to this lovable, shrewd, passionate and compassionate man. And so he remained until his short illness and death last autumn.

At his suggestion I first went to learn some psychiatry (so it was largely his doing that I eventually became a psychiatrist). In 1964 I joined him as lecturer in social medicine, and there followed some life-changing, and always lively, years. On my arrival he set me a test. Waiting on my desk was that week’s Lancet, with a note attached to one paper: ‘What’s wrong with this?’ With trepidation I read – and, thank God, found the error of logic that he had spotted. He was still posing questions in his hundredth year – on politics, books, theatre and people. I in turn over the years, faced with a dilemma, would quite often ask myself a question: What might Jerry have done?

A founder of chronic disease epidemiology, and of health services research, he was to the good effects of exercise what Richard Doll was to the bad effects of smoking. Among his many studies those of London busmen became especially famous: the sedentary drivers had much more cardiovascular disease than the active conductors. Always, his research was linked to policy and action. His book ‘Uses of Epidemiology’ changed professional outlooks.

A man of the left who grew up in poverty in Glasgow, he advised governments (and declined a peerage), and sat on key bodies: the Seebohm Committee which established today’s social services, the Royal Commission on the Penal System, the Black Committee on Health Inequalities, and work with the Sports Council were just a few. Policy on ageing was a special interest: at 96 he co-authored a paper which meticulously calculated the minimum income needed for healthy living in old age. It is pleasing that the last honour he received was from our Society – our medal ‘For Relief of Suffering’.

Tom Arie
Professor emeritus of Health Care of the Elderly
Nottingham University

BGS Newsletter, February 2010
Issue 25 ISSN 1748-634000 25