ABOUT ADA AND ALFRED SALTER. Ada and Dr Alfred Salter were Quakers and social reformers in Bermondsey, south-east London, in the early 20th century. Ada was dedicated to destroying the slums and concentrated on council housing and green beautification of the area. Alfred ran a pioneering medical practice, introduced many health innovations, and campaigned for a national health service.
Ada Salter (1866-1942), a pacifist from her youth in Raunds, Northamptonshire, before she became a Quaker, was appalled by the slums of London and she devoted her life to the demolition of slum housing. She built a model housing estate at Wilson Grove, campaigned against air pollution as early as 1913, and on the LCC carried through a programme for the beautification of all of London through parks, children’s playgrounds and tree-lined streets.
Alfred Salter (1872-1945), an outstanding doctor from Greenwich, was similarly appalled by the slums but more from a medical point of view. He treated poor patients for free and imported into Bermondsey all the latest medical clinics and facilities, creating in miniature an ’NHS before the NHS’. In 1922 Alfred was elected as MP for Bermondsey, representing Labour, while Ada in the same year became the first woman mayor in London and the first Labour woman mayor in Britain.
In this 1909 photo Alfred had already established his famous medical practice in Bermondsey, where the poor were treated free, and was standing for election as an MP. He failed on that occasion but was successful in 1922. Ada, a social worker at the Bermondsey Settlement, did succeed in 1909 in being elected as Bermondsey’s first woman Councillor and one of the first in the country.
Quaker Socialist Society 