Innes Pearse

Innes Hope Pearse (1889–1978) was an English medical 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.

Education and early career

Innes Pearse was born in March 1889 and 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. 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.

Health and welfare work

Pearse's work in infant welfare brought her to the attention of a group wanting to help working-class women access contraception. where organic food was grown for members of the Health Centre. When she and Williamson were in Kent they lived at the farm as a couple. A few families from Peckham did go to live at Oakley Farm during the war until it was requisitioned by the RAF. The Peckham Experiment came to an end in 1950, when it proved to be incompatible with the new National Health Service which was more concerned with treating illness than with nurturing good health, and which had less interest in community and self-reliance. 1931 The Case for Action: a survey of everyday life under modern industrial conditions, with special reference to the question of health, with G.S. Williamson 1942 The Peckham experiment: a study in the living structure of society, with Lucy Crocker 1944 Observations on the population question: a memorandum presented to the Royal Commission on population by Innes H. Pearse 1947 Biologists in Search of Material, with G.S. Williamson 1951 The Passing of Peckham, with G.S. Williamson 1979 The Quality of Life: the Peckham Approach to Human Ethology Pearse prepared Williamson's theoretical Science, Synthesis and Sanity for publication in 1965 and worked on her own "reflective" The Pioneer Health Foundation (also known as the Pioneer Health Centre Ltd.) also took some of Pearse's and Williamson's ideas forward.

In 2009, a blue plaque was erected on the building where Pearse and Williamson founded the Pioneer Health Centre.

Personal life Pearse married Williamson on 20 February 1950 in Bromley. They lived together at the Mill House, Argos Hill, Rotherfield, Sussex until Williamson's death three years later. Pearse died at the Mill House on 25 December 1978.