The Varrier - Jones Foundation
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Sir Pendrill Varrier-Jones
Pendrill was born the child of Dr Charles Morgan and Margaret Jones of Glantaff House, Troedyrhiw, just south of Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, in 1883. His father, Dr Charles Morgan Jones, was a physician of substance and some style, who went about his general practice through the area’s mining villages in a smartly painted trap driven by a man in livery. The background is a significant one that lends some understanding to his son’s later understanding both of the working-man and his easy mingling with the aristocracy.
Pendrill was educated mainly at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, Glos., where he made his mark fulfilling the responsible duty of meteorological secretary (the College being until 1992 an official Meteorological Station) and as an effective debater, each significant in view of his future work respectively in mensuration of temperatures in TB and advocacy of the disabled. From there he went up to St John’s College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences, graduating in 1906. Thereafter, as was common with Cambridge graduates seeking a career in medicine, he entered the medical school of St Bartholomew’s Hospital for clinical study, qualifying MRCS and LRCP in 1910.
After a year as house physician at Bart’s he returned to Cambridge as a research worker to Professor (later Sir) German Sims Woodhead, one of the foremost pathologists of his time, who had played a major part in the recent reorganisation of the Cambridge Medical School. At this period Woodhead was at the forefront of English research into tuberculosis, the biggest medical problem of the age and had established a field station for carrying out investigations for the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis. In 1907 Woodhead’s researches had confirmed the significance of bovine TB as a source of infection in children, through milk. Varrier-Jones now continued his work, in particular investigating comparative temperature change in healthy and infected animals using recording methods pioneered by an older Cambridge man, Sir Clifford Allbutt, professor of physic, and equipment adapted from industrial use by the Cambridge Scientific Instruments Company.
The Cambridgeshire Tuberculosis Colony
Funding for Woodhead’s assistant was probably precarious, but an opening that would allow him to expand and concentrate on this work came unexpectedly from the departure on military service of the County Tuberculosis Officer, a post that had only just been created in line with requirements of the National Insurance Act of 1911. At this time the administrative county of Cambridge, compared to others, was small, underdeveloped and poor, and the county council, chary of constructing an expensive sanatorium, had obtained government approval for the most basic of provision for the support of the tuberculous in the form of a dispensary with a single nurse and a part-time TB officer. Varrier-Jones took up the post of Tuberculosis Officer energetically, within a few months persuading the Consultative Committee to which he was responsible (a sub-committee of the County Council Public Health Committee with representatives of the local Insurance Committee established under the National Insurance Act) to allow him to experiment with placing at first a single patient, a discharged soldier, then several, in shelters in the garden of house in the village of Bourn, eight miles west of Cambridge. Here they were subjected to a regime of continuous fresh air and regular meals, alternately resting in shelters and participating in light carpentry and horticulture, the patients’ temperatures being regularly monitored from the house. The experiment was a remarkable success, Varrier-Jones being able to demonstrate that the majority of his patients recovered sufficiently to recommence employment. He was thus able to persuade his committee (one of whose parent committees had initially been concerned most about the implications of funeral expenses) to put the experiment on a formally recognised basis as the Cambridgeshire Tuberculosis Colony and to launch a public subscription beginning with their own generous contributions.
The Colony at Bourn attracted national sympathy and gathered support. Varrier-Jones’ institution was particularly assisted by this university mentors Allbutt and Woodhead, who were well-placed from their work for government and in particular Woodhead’s for the War Office (TB being a massive problem within the Armed Forces, as well as eating away at its recruiting base), and by the chairman of the County Council, Sir George Fordham, the first lady member of the Borough Council, Mrs Florence Ada (‘Fanny’) Keynes and Elsbeth (Mrs Marcus) Dimsdale.
The Papworth Village Settlement
The Colony was soon outgrowing available space at Bourn. Varrier-Jones was particularly keen to extend the range of work his patients could do while they recuperated. Herein, he argued, lay an answer to the weakness in the common sanatorium system where the beneficial effects were quickly lost when discharged patients were returned to their jobs in a normal environment and were unable to cope with the physical demands and long hours, so consequently lost employment and means to live a healthy life, slipping into a downward spiral of unemployment, abysmal housing conditions, inadequate diet and depression. No wonder then if their tuberculosis reasserted itself.
It was hardly surprising then that Varrier-Jones looked ambitiously at the minor stately home, Papworth Hall, sitting empty in the neighbouring parish of Papworth Everard, due to the fraudulent financial affairs of its former owner, Terah Hooley. It offered a building for headquarters, hospital and staff accommodation, was moderately accessible from the railways, had adaptable out-buildings, and had extensive grounds for shelters and expansion. The philanthropist Sir Ernest Cassel, who had already munificently endowed Midhurst Sanatorium, was approached and contributed £3,000, and that sum was almost matched by central government and local subscription. In 1917 Papworth Hall was purchased and in February 1918 the colony transferred there.
Occupying the premises was just the start. Initially conditions were primitive, and it took half a decade to provide adequate drainage and sewerage, and efficient electrical plant and water supply. By that time however there was already established not just a carpentry shop (as at Bourn, but now also with modern machinery) but also, a piggery, poultry and fruit farms, a building department (that was responsible for much of the Colony’s construction, save the heaviest labour) and workshops for boot repair, upholstery, printing and luggage manufacture.
Varrier-Jones’ object was to provide after-care for those suffering from tuberculosis once their condition had been stabilised with hospital treatment and to re-establish, with re-training and modified work regimes, productive lives in the sheltered environment of a range of economic light industries. Patients were given paid work, strictly limited, progressively increased and carried out under medical supervision while they lived in shelters. When they reached a level of fitness where they could manage a full working day an assessment was made upon particular circumstances and the offer made to be ‘colonised’ into the permanent workforce. They would by then usually be living in hostels, but increasingly, as resources allowed, houses (‘cottages’ in the usual parlance of the time) were built and provided a means of families being reunited at Papworth instead of in the slums where they had come from.
That the Colony was able to expand in this extraordinary way was due to establishing a remarkably high profile, something that was assisted by good friends in high places, such as Sir Frederick Milner, M.P., who had dedicated himself to improving the lot of the war heroes disabled alike by illnesses such as TB as well as more obtrusive physical wounds, and had the ear of the royal family. Remarkably Queen Mary visited as early as 1918, and sent a cheque for £1,000 the next day. She returned twice more, as separately did her husband, George V (it must have helped that Allbutt’s successor as the Colony’s president was his surgeon, Sir Humphrey Rolleston), and their sons, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) and Duke of York (later George VI). Royal visits indeed became something of a procession over the following years, attracting newspaper attention and helping at least a little to suppress the notion of the tuberculous as a pariah class. Other celebrities, such as the novelists Alexander Irvine and Warwick Deeping, the popular travel writer H.V. Morton and economist J.M. Keynes (son of Fanny Keynes) were also drawn lending their support, by endorsing the settlement’s activities, writing on its behalf or allowing their glowing praise to be quoted.
In 1927 the Colony was renamed the Papworth Village Settlement. The old name had indeed long been outgrown as it now represented much the greater proportion of the village, not just with hostels but by now with 78 colonist’s houses. The commercial side of the operation now traded under the name of Papworth Industries, declaring its intention to operate at a profit like any company, though one that was ploughed back entirely into the organisation. Government contracts, like attaché cases for civil servants, were important, but so too was the retail trade, for which showrooms were opened in London as well as Cambridge. Development continued in the 1930s, with bigger and better factories, and was not halted even by war in 1939 as significant government contracts for war-work came its way, effectively releasing industrial labour elsewhere for active service.
Remarkably some industries that might earlier have been regarded as ‘too heavy’ with the introduction of more machine tools, feasible for workers weakened by TB. This included coach-building, in which in the 1940s and 1950s gave the Settlement some fame as one site for the production of the ‘green goddess’ fire engines for the National Fire Service as well as for some thousands of Austin shooting brakes in the early 1950s.
The post-war decline of tuberculosis, a product of better hygiene and housing, BCG vaccination, and the discovery of streptomycin, produced a different profile in the settlers. From 1946 persons without tuberculosis were accepted into the Settlement and within two decades they had come to outnumber the former TB patients. It was necessary for industries to adapt to the changing clientele, and in particular for the proportion of employees who were confined to wheelchairs. Some industries were closed down, while others, such as computer services, were newly developed. The essential of ethos of rehabilitation as advocated by the founder, Varrier-Jones nevertheless remained essentially the same.
