George Godber

Early life and education

Godber was born on 4 August 1908, the son of Bessie Maud (née Chapman) and Isaac Godber, a nurseryman in Willington, Bedfordshire; he was the third of seven children, 5 boys and 2 girls. When he was eleven, he lost sight in one eye due to an accident.

Godber was educated at Bedford Modern School between 1917 and 1920, at Bedford School between 1920 and 1927, and at New College, Oxford, where he read medicine, gained a rowing blue and took part in two losing boat races.

Another mentor was a young New College don, Richard Crossman, who was later to become Godber's Secretary of State for Health and Social Security.

Career After completing his clinical training, Godber was employed in a variety of junior posts that gave him an insight into the state of the nation's health. At a casualty ward in a municipal hospital in London's Docklands, he found that many of his patients were people with serious diseases who were too poor to go to their GP and too proud to ask for a free service, convincing him that a state-funded health service based on need was required.

Limited by the lack of medical specialties afforded to him with the loss of his eye and due to his aversion to taking fees from patients, he decided to specialise in public health medicine and attended the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, earning a diploma in public health in 1936. He was instrumental in persuading the Royal College of Physicians to form a committee on smoking and lung cancer in 1958. Joseph Godber, British Conservative party politician and cabinet minister; Rowland John Godber, owner of a rubber plantation in Malaya and later a prisoner of war. The diary of his experiences as a prisoner of war are extant and held by the Imperial War Museum; and Geoffrey Chapman Godber, CBE DL, Chief executive of West Sussex County Council.

Personal life

Godber did not drink alcohol or smoke. He continued to drive until the age of 97.