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Asbestosis and its first recorded victim Nellie Kershaw
The UK's first recorded case of asbestosis was a woman called Nellie Kershaw, who died in 1924 at the age of 33 after heavy exposure to asbestos fibres.
She joined a Rochdale asbestos company in 1917 and was put to work in the spinning room. Here she was exposed to dust from the machines that were used, at levels that could hasten the disease's progress significantly. But, as this preceded the contemporary understanding of health and safety, this was not considered to be a problem.
Cotton dust was known to produce the lung disease byssinosis, also known as 'mill fever', a form of industrial asthma, but the diseases that were to be recognised following Nellie's death - including mesothelioma and asbestos-related lung cancer - would prove to be more serious, and potentially more secretive in their slow workings.
Although the company was proud to boast that its dust management system had been "repeatedly congratulated by the Home Office", the fibres were thick enough in the air for workers to develop 'asbestos corns', benign growths in the skin where the substance had worked its way in. Those that were breathed in were about to have a ruinous effect on Nellie Kershaw.
She herself found she was too ill to work in 1922 and left the factory. For the remaining two years of her life, it was very difficult for her to claim compensation from the factory, who felt the state should pay, or from the state, who believed it was the factory's responsibility. This was because her diagnosis of "asbestos poisoning" was too new to the medical profession to feature in the government's list of industrial diseases that were compensable.
It was, then, the accuracy of Nellie's diagnosis that kept her impoverished at this time. Eventually she wrote to her employer that "I have been at home nine weeks now and not received a penny... I am needing nourishments." Despite this plaintive plea, her employer paid nothing, and it was only for the last half year or so of her life that the local Friendly Society would help her.
Even before Kershaw's death, there had been government awareness of the "easily demonstrated danger to the health of the worker" of asbestos exposure. The inquest on her death, however, was the first on an asbestos worker and resulted in the coining of a new phrase, "pulmonary asbestosis", by the pathologist Dr William Cooke.
Much of the developments in worker protection, asbestos compensation, and patient care in the years between then and now owe their beginnings to Nellie Kershaw's inquest. To mark this, Rochdale became home to a memorial to all who have died from asbestosis, mesothelioma, and other related diseases, in the home of this first recorded victim. It was unveiled by a relative in 2006.
This memorial becomes part of Nellie's legacy, along with the world's growing knowledge of the fibrous material's effects, the swelling ranks of countries who have banned the use of the material, and the continuing development of palliative measures - and maybe, one day, a cure. We may guess that this would have seemed little compensation to a woman who was forced to plead for nourishment, but it is a legacy that anyone touched by asbestosis is grateful for.
