Arlidge , John Thomas , 1822-1899 , physician

John Thomas Arlidge was born in Chatham, Kent, in 1822. He was an apprenticed to a general practitioner in Rochdale, and then studied at Kings College London, where he graduated in 1846. Also in 1846 he was elected as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He worked as Physician at the West of London Hospital and Chelsea, Brompton and Belgravia Dispensary; Physician at the Surrey and Farringdon General Dispensary, and Resident Medical Superintendant at St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. He published his paper On the state of lunacy and the legal provision for the insane, with observations on the construction and organization of asylums. in 1859. Arlidge was appointed a consultant physician to the North Staffordshire Infirmary in 1862, and was the first person to look systematically at life-expectancy in the pottery industry. He made important investigations into the disease known as potter's phthisis and the effects of lead poisoning. Arlidge published Hygiene, Diseases and Mortality of Occupations in 1892, which became his chief work. He was then appointed a member of the Royal Commission in 1893 on conditions of employment in the Potteries. He was elected Mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1878. He died in 1899.