Norman Shanks Kerr (17 May 1834 – 30 May 1899) was a Scottish physician and social reformer who is remembered for his work in the British temperance movement. He originated the Total Abstinence Society and was founder and first president of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety which was founded in 1884.Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement Vol 3, pages 60–61 edited by Sidney Lee (1901)
In his writings he insisted on regarding inebriety as a disease and not a vice: "a disease of the nervous system allied to insanity", an "abnormal condition, in which morbid cravings and impulses to intoxication are apt to be developed in such force as to overpower the moral resistance and control."
His influential textbook on "Inebriety or Narcomania" was first published in 1888 and went through three editions. In the first edition he coined the term "narcomania" to refer to the disease of inebriety. Note that while 'inebriate' originally described a person intoxicated with alcohol, it later came to include other intoxicating drugs, especially narcotics, such as opium, chlorodyne, ether, chloral, chloroform or cocaine.
He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1873 and was also a member of the Obstetrical and Medical Societies of London, the Harveian Society and British Medical Association, being elected to the General Council for the Metropolitan branch.
Early life and education
Norman Shanks Kerr was born at Morrison's Court, Argyle Street, Glasgow, Scotland on 17 May 1834, the eldest son of Alexander Kerr (1800–1855) and Helen ( Shanks) Kerr (1813–1848). His father, Alexander, was a merchant and ship owner who lived at Florentine Bank House, Hillhead.
Norman Kerr studied at the Western Academy and the High School, then worked as a journalist on the Glasgow Mail before entering University, graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1861 as Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) and Master of Surgery (C.M.).The Medical Register for 1899. Page 903
Even from these student days he was interested in the study of alcoholism; he was a member of the temperance Coffee Tavern Company of Glasgow and organised the first Total Abstinence Society for students in 1857. In 1853 he attended the inaugural meeting of the United Kingdom Alliance at Manchester and he was the first secretary of the Glasgow Abstainers' Union.Scottish Guardian, Glasgow, 22 February 1853 p3"Glasgow University Abstainers' Society", Scottish Guardian, Glasgow, 26 April 1853 p4 In 1858 he was secretary for the non-political "The Independent Union" of students."New Election Club in the University", Glasgow Sentinel, 18 December 1858 p2
Career After graduation he was resident surgeon at the Lock Hospital, Glasgow, and then employed as a surgeon on the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company for about nine years.The London and Provincial Medical Directory 1865. Registered Practitioners Resident Abroad, page 930 In 1863 he gave an account of a tour in America, including Portland, New York, and other large towns, "and referred at some length to the great question of slavery". He is reported to have travelled in Canada and the United States in this time and to have visited Portland in 1864.
Dr Crothers notes in the first Norman Kerr lecture, "As a surgeon on shipboard he was known as a temperance doctor, and while not obtrusive or dogmatic in his views, he discouraged the use of spirits as a beverage."
He was then in practice in Markyate, Hertfordshire, being appointed Markyate Medical Officer in 1871,"Local and District News", Luton Times and Advertiser, 1 July 1871, p. 2 until he resigned in 1875. He took part in a local meeting in 1872 by the United Kingdom Alliance supporting Sir Wilfred Lawson's Permissive Prohibitory Bill.
He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1873 with an interest in botany. In 1872 he wrote supporting the case for Eozoon canadense being recognised as a fossil.
Marylebone From 1874, he was employed as the Medical Officer of Health for Marylebone (Christ Church District) by the Board of guardians. The Christ Church District included Lisson Grove, an area of slum housing with single room tenements. In 1881 the outbreak of Typhus prompted Dr Norman Kerr to write a letter to the Vestry of St Marylebone.
"Now that the outbreak of typhus fever in the parish, which in all probability we have transferred to the East of London (where in an aggravated form is now raging), it is apparently abating in Marylebone (after, for the second time, laying aside a relieving and a medical officer), permit me to ask your attention to the pressing need for prompt and effectual measures to render such an outbreak impossible for the future. I do not mean to lull you into false security by saying that the epidemic has entirely ceased. It has not, but I trust that it is dying out. Typhus can be prevented, and it can be suppressed, it being one of the most contagious and the most easily prevented of diseases. Let me entreat you, first, to reorganise your sanitary system, so that, if unhappily any future outbreak should occur, that it may be speedily arrested. To be in a position to accomplish this you can put into force your legal powers to secure the proper isolation, and, if necessary, removal of non-pauper cases. You can also exert your legal powers to see that there is proper disinfection, and, where that is needed, to carry out the disinfection by your own disinfector. To prevent another outbreak, which may injure the health, trade, and reputation of the locality even more than the epidemic, now, let us hope, fading away, you can in a considerable degree remove the insanitary conditions which have hitherto fostered the disease. To condemn five houses reported in the press as Nos. 1,2,3,4 and 12 Charles-street, is a measure totally inadequate to meet the necessities of the case. In the same street is a room built over a privy, which latter ventilates into the apartment above. In yet another house three typhus cases were removed from the kitchen. The sewage, too, is defective. In many other streets there is a call for a thorough-going sanitary revolution. I know how your efforts are impeded by halting legislation, and by the lack of compulsory notificationof infectious diseases; and I cannot help expressing a hope that the recent epidemic will yet prove to have been a blessing in disguise, by inciting your honourable board to rise to the dignity of the occasion, and institute a searching inquiry into your sanitary system and into the sanitary state of the whole parish, with a view to the safety of the inhabitants and the future immunity of St. Marylebone from the recurrence of so insidious and dangerous an epidemic. The urgency of the case must be my excuse for thus trespassing on your courtesy and forbearance.""Typhus Fever in London", Morning Post, 10 November 1881 p6
In a letter to the local paper he wrote "The Sanitary authority, typhus being at once the most contagious and the most preventable of diseases, ought to have suppressed the epidemic more than a month ago, and thus saved several lives. Had I not stepped in, at some detriment to health and private practice (keeping up only with the aid of professional assistance, constant Turkish baths, extra diet, and the non-use of stimulants) and discharged the duty the Vestry neglected, the cases would have numbered hundreds, and the deaths at least twenties.""The Fever Dens – Extraordinary Revelations", Borough of Marylebone, Mercury, 5 November 1881 p3
The Victorian Turkish bath he visited is probably the one at 5 Bell Street, on the corner with Lisson Grove, established in 1860, the first in London. His other health precaution was a good square meal before going where infectious disease existed. Dr Kerr also believed that "smoke being retained in the mouth has … a kind of disinfecting filter through which the germs have to pass, and some of them are certainly destroyed, or at least deprived of their vitality". "There might be exceptions, he said. If a person could not stand smoking well, then it might depress his heart's action, and so lessen the resisting power to throw off the infectious germs. On broad, general grounds, however, he was decidedly of opinion that tobacco smoking, other things being equal, did give anyone exposed to infection a considerable amount of immunity. Dr. Kerr himself in attending cases of cholera always made a point of smoking." He wrote on the subject of cholera and having had cholera himself.
Dr Kerr's health concerns were well founded since infectious diseases were common and in a previous outbreak nineteen years earlier the Relieving Officer and District Medical Officer both caught typhus and died. In this case he was able to joke about it, as reported by the Marylebone Mercury.
Dr Norman Kerr in Charles StreetA free entertainment, comprising songs, choruses, recitations, and addresses, was given in Perseverance Hall, Charles street, Lisson Grove, on Thursday evening, by J.M.R. Todd, Esq., and the Holy Trinity (Kilburn) Church Temperance Choir. A young lady from the same church kindly presided at the pianoforte. The programme was enthusiastically received by the crowded audience.
Dr. Norman Kerr, who occupied the chair, said that to escape an attack of the recent fashionable complaint of the neighbourhood (laughter) he had been ordered away at an hour's notice, and it was not till he got to France that the breezes of the English Channel had blown away all the threatening and suspicious symptoms. But he was delighted at again finding himself in Charles-street, where he had spent so much of his time of late (laughter); for he found the atmosphere greatly improved by the energetic and thoroughgoing exertions of the Sanitary Authority and their staff (hear). He was thankful to find that during his absence the Vestry of Marylebone had resolved to institute a searching inquiry into the sanitary state of the parish and he had great hope that such measures would be adopted as would prevent any alarming epidemics for the future, and thus bring back to the neighbourhood the people and the trade that had been of late kept away by fear of contagion. He did not think there was any risk now, and he was satisfied they night all enjoy the excellent entertainment of their good friends from Kilburn without any alloy of doubt or timidity (applause). There was an evil, however, which had existed there far longer than had the epidemics of physical disease – the prevailing evil of drinking (hear). Yet no notice was taken of this deadly plague which, to his personal knowledge, had killed many of the inhabitants, and which still held down as many innocent helpless little children in the slough of starvation and misery."Dr Norman Kerr in Charles Street", Borough of Marylebone, Mercury, 19 November 1881 p2
He went on to be one of the founders in 1892 of the Church Sanitary Association with the aims of ensuring to everyone pure air, pure water, a wholesome dwelling, and surroundings safeguarded from preventable diseases.Birmingham Daily Post, 15 December 1892 p5
Temperance movement He promoted the temperance movement as a speaker and through his writings. After moving to London he joined the Church of England Temperance Society, speaking at their annual conference,"Church of England Temperance Society", Reading Mercury, 11 October 1884 p6 and supported the British Women's Temperance Association.