Innes Hope Pearse

Innes Hope Pearse
Innes Pearse in 1948
[]

Innes Hope Pearse (1889–1978) was an English doctor who co-founded a health centre that became famous as part of the Peckham Experiment. This was a project rooted in Pearse's interest in studying and promoting health in a social context.

She grew up in Purley, Surrey with her parents Catherine Beardsley Pearse née Morley and George Edgar Hope Pearse, an exporter. After going to a private school in Croydon, Woodford House School, she studied at the London School of Medicine for Women where she qualified as a doctor in 1915. After a couple of years at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Women and Children, she was back in London in 1918. Her next post was at the Great Northern Hospital, and then she became a registrar at the London Hospital (one of the first women to become a hospital registrar) followed by a job at St Thomas's. For seven years she was also part-time medical adviser to the Alice Model infant welfare centre in the East End, a charitable project. She continued this alongside a thyroid research project at the Royal Free Hospital which she joined as a medical registrar in 1921, working with George Scott Williamson.

Pearse's work in infant welfare brought her to the attention of a group wanting to help working-class women access contraception. From 1924, she held discussions with that group at the Royal Free, which drew her and Williamson into the whole question of public health. Out of this the Pioneer Health Centre was born: first in a modest house in Peckham, and later in a modern architect-designed building opened in 1935. The project, presented as a "family club" with leisure activities and also health "overhauls", became known as the Peckham Experiment.

Pearse thought doctors and others needed to take a "deeper look at the natural laws governing health in human society". and that the medical profession should not be "overly focused on illness" but should also prioritise "understanding, evaluating, and cultivating health". She believed strongly in leaving responsibility with the individual and, in this spirit, doctors at the Pioneer Centre gave health checks and medical information but left people to decide what to do, whether to seek treatment etc. She did not agree with "welfare" models that meant offering piecemeal help, with no thought of self-reliance.