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Obituary

WILLIAM HENRY BRADLEYD.M.Oxon., F.R.C.P.

Dr W. H. Bradley, formerly principal medicalofficer at the Ministry of Health, died on Sept. 17.He graduated B.M. from the University of Oxford in

1924 and D.M. in 1931, being awarded the university’sRadcliffe prize in medical research in the same year. In1936 he was an Arthur Durham travelling student and aRockefeller fellow. Most of his professional life was spentat the Ministry of Health, where his work in epidemiologymade a large contribution to the development of thespecialty and to the recognition of its importance in publichealth. He was particularly interested in the epidemiologyof rheumatic fever, but he also published studies on

smallpox and influenza. He was visiting professor ofepidemiology at Cornell University Medical College, NewYork, and president of the Section of Epidemiology andState Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine. He alsoserved as medical officer to Downside School.

A former colleague at the Ministry of Healthwrites:

" Civil Servants are sometimes regarded as rather ’ coldfish’; no-one could think of Bill Bradley as coming withinthat category. A warm, outgoing personality with a

robustness-even sometimes a robustiousness-ofcharacter, which occasionally got him into difficulties anddelayed the honours he deserved, made him well loved byhis colleagues. His deep knowledge and wide experienceof epidemiology brought him the respect of many medicalofficers of health, and he particularly enjoyed his Americancontacts, which included not only Cornell University but atornado in the West Indies. He had been an invalid forsome time before his death."

Diary of the Week

SEPT. 28 TO OCT. 4

Tuesday, 30thROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON, 11 St. Andrew’s Place,

Regent’s Park, London NW1 4LE5.35 P.M. Dr A. G. W. Whitfield: Ankylosing Spondylitis-Some

New Facts and Hypotheses. (Lumleian lecture.)

Wednesday, 1stINSTITUTE OF ORTHOPEDICS, 234 Great Portland Street, London WIN

6AD11 A.M. Dr J. M. Faccini: Bone Structure.6 P.M. Prof. Keith Simpson: Medico-legal Complications of Ortho-

paedics.NORTHWICK PARK HOSPITAL, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex HAl

3UJ1 P.M. Mr L. W. Lowe: The Present Status of Total Hip Replacement

-Indications, Complications, and Future Trends.MANCHESTER MEDICAL SOCIETY

5 P.M. (New Medical School.) Medicine. Dr R. L. Ward: The Evalua-tion of Proptosis with Reference to Ophthalmic Graves’Disease.

Thursday, 2ndUNIVERSITY OF LONDON

5 P.M. (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, KeppelStreet, London W.C.1.) Prof. H. Seeliger (Wiirzburg):Opportunistic Fungal Infections, with Particular Referenceto Candida albicans.

Friday, 3rdINSTITUTE OF LARYNGOLOGY AND OTOLOGY, 330 332 Gray’s Inn Road,

London WC1X SEE4.30 P.M. Sir Brian Windeyer: A Centenary Milestone and Beyond.

Notes and News

BATTERED WIVES

CASES of child-battering have in recent years arousedmuch public concern, and seem also to have directedattention to the wider subject of domestic violence of allsorts. Earlier this year a select committee of Members ofParliament was appointed to consider the extent, nature,and causes of violence in marriage, and in their first 5months they concentrated on the problem of batteredwives, which is the subject of their first report.1 In theirconclusion to this the committee state their firm beliefthat violence between marriage partners should, like child-battering, be a matter of public concern, and that, despitethe complex nature of the problem and the virtual non-existence of information on the subject, measures can andshould be taken to reduce the incidence of wife-batteringand to alleviate its consequences. As far as prevention goes,the committee suggest that more attention should be givenwithin the school and further education system to the

problems of domestic conflict, that the Government shouldlaunch a vigorous campaign against the excessive con-

sumption of alcohol (which is frequently a factor in domesticviolence), and that as much as possible should be done tomeet the special needs of the vulnerable children in thesefamilies, in order to break the cycle of violence. Thecommittee’s recommendations for immediate action to

alleviate the effects of violence in marriage include theopening of 24-hour family crisis centres providing round-the-clock help for wives, husbands, and children; a largeincrease in the number of refuges for battered wives,provided either by local authorities or voluntary organisa-tions (the initial target being 1 family place per 10,000 ofthe population), and more acceptance by local authoritiesof their duty to provide temporary accommodation forbattered women; and greater willingness on the part of thepolice to intervene in cases of domestic violence, evenwhere ultimate conviction of the husband is unlikely, sincein these cases it must be acknowledged that the expected con-viction rate should not be a justification of the initial action.Among the committee’s suggestions covering the legalaspects of matrimonial violence are the proposals that

injunctions should be fortified by the power of arrest ifthe judge concerned is satisfied that the wife is in continuingdanger of assault, and that magistrates should be given thepower in matrimonial proceedings to make an injunctionrestraining the husband from assaulting the wife and,when necessary, temporarily excluding him from thematrimonial home. A referral list of solicitors willing todeal with cases of wife-battering should be held by thepolice and other agencies, and more law centres should beprepared to deal with the emergency situation caused bydomestic violence. As far as research goes, the committee

hope that domestic violence will get consideration fromuniversity departments and ’grant-giving bodies, and theymake the specific suggestion that one or two crisis centresshould be set up as action research projects, in order toprovide some much-needed information on the practical pro-blems of helping battered wives. More evidence exists on theproblem of battered children, to which the committeepropose next to turn their attention before producinganother report on violence in marriage as a whole. In themeantime, they hope that some of the measures theyrecommend can be implemented immediately, even wherethese involve spending public money, for they believe that

1. Report from the Select Committee on Violence in Marriage, Session1974-75. Vol. 1 Report. House of Commons Paper 553-i. H.M.Stationery Office. 65p.