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The Royal Society
for the Promotion of Health
38A St. George's Drive,
London, SW1V 4BH
 
Tel: (+44) (0) 20 7630 0121
Fax: (+44) (0) 20 7976 6847
 
rsph@rsph.org

About The Society

The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health (RSPH) - also known as the Royal Society of Health (RSH) - is a membership body founded in 1876 following the Public Health Act of 1875. more...

Since our foundation, our aim, and the shared aim of our members, has been to promote continuous improvement in human health world-wide through education, communication and the encouragement of scientific research.

The Society does this by...

For more on our activities, see our Annual Review.

The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health is a company limited by guarantee registered in the UK. Company registration number 27293. It is also a registered charity in the UK. Charity registration number 215520. VAT registration number 240 6032 10.



A very short history of the RSPH


Foundation
The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health (RSPH) - also known as the Royal Society of Health (RSH) - is membership body founded in 1876 following the Public Health Act of 1875.

Dr John Charles Lory Marsh noted that there was no single body capable of providing the unified perspective of health which the new Act invoked and placed an advertisement in The Lancet calling for like-minded reformers to join him in the formation of the first multidisciplinary health body in the country. The Sanitary Institute of Great Britain established itself as an independent champion for public health. With the involvement of eminent figures such as Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Edwin Chadwick and the Duke of Northumberland, the Government soon recognized the expertise embodied within The Institute, and has regularly consulted with the organization ever since.


The Parkes Museum
In 1883 The Institute moved to a new home in Margaret Street, London, which already housed the Parkes Museum of Hygiene - of which Florence Nightingale was a Vice-President and keen supporter. In 1888 the two bodies amalgamated and by 1926 over 12,000 people every year were visiting the Museum.


Examinations
The Institute's examinations set the standards for Inspectors of Nuisance and Medical Officers of Health as early as 1877, and, at the invitation of Government, in 1925 The Institute became the sole examining board for Health Visitors and a year later for Sanitary Inspectors.


Royal Patronage
In 1882 Queen Victoria became The Institute's first patron, and in 1904 Edward VII granted the prefix 'Royal' so that we then became known as 'The Royal Sanitary Institute'. In 1949 The Society was granted its present armorial bearings (a small version is shown in the top left of your screen)


Going Global
The Silver Jubilee year of 1926 saw the Institute with thousands of members around the world; branches in Canada, Australia and South Africa; and examinations for Public Health Officers as far afield as Mauritius. By 1933 The Institute was running an essay competition receiving 25,000 entries from schoolchildren around the world, and their health week initiative had become Empire Health Week. Though the outbreak of The Second World War curtailed these activities, the period immediately after the war was one of tremendous expansion for The Institute. The late 1940s saw the forging of the new Welfare State, and as the scope and magnitude of state health provision expanded rapidly, the work and the fortunes of The Institute expanded with it.

The World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) was formed in 1967. The Society was a founder member, and indeed provided the facilities for the secretariat during the Federation's early years.


Changing Our Name
Since the latter part of the 19th century the ordinary meaning of the word 'sanitary' had become considerably narrowed in its usage and no longer adequately described the range of our activities. Accordingly, in 1955, we adopted the name 'The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health', with the shorter 'The Royal Society of Health' being in common use.


Decline
As the British Empire was dismantled, so the overseas activities of The Society waned. Similarly the significance of The Society's extensive library declined as new technologies began to make texts on health more accessible. In 1984 The Society therefore donated its invaluable collection of Victorian and Edwardian health texts to the Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine. Recession and local authority restructuring in the 1980s saw the end of the organization's annual conference - which in the previous decade had attracted several thousand delegates each year - as The Society sought more targeted ways of promoting public health.


Rising Anew
In 1986 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opened new headquarters for The Society in Pimlico, London. Along with a programme of topical conferences over the next decade, the reinvigorated Society broke new ground by launching a Food Packaging Hygiene Accreditation Scheme.

In recent years The Society has seen its profile rise again. A long-term decline in membership numbers has been reversed, and is now climbing towards our pre-war peak. With pro-active and responsive policy work, the organization is seen as a powerful player in the field, regularly working in partnership with government and industry. Increasingly The Society has sought to work with other health-related NGOs, both in the UK and internationally, and in 2006 The National NGO Forum was integrated into The Society, and is now working with its 100 member organizations to coordinate the activities of this vast sector. The Journal of The Royal Society of Health, established in 1879 and still going strong, is no longer the sole means of communicating with membership, as the Internet has created an online community far more expansive and responsive than our founders can have imagined. Our examinations, which began with qualifications for Inspectors of Nuisance, now cover a greater range than any other accrediting body in health - from nutrition to emergency planning - and are taken by over 80,000 candidates each year.

In 2008 The Society will merge with another 19th century champion of health, The Royal Institute for Public Health, to create a body sufficiently powerful to meet the truly global challenges of 21st century public health.

To celebrate our 125th anniversary in 2001 we produced a short booklet with a detailed history of the Society.
Click here to download (pdf 3.8Mb)

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