Thackrah

Until 1974, an architect was considered in law to be a quasi-arbitrator, and his valuation was final. However, the case of Sutclijfe v. Thackrah (1974) saw an end to this role. In that case, the architect overvalued the work that had been carried out, and because the client ordered the contractor off the job, he suffered loss, because of which he successfully sued the architects for damages. Architects and engineers suddenly had a greater interest in professional indemnity insurance. 

Despite the numerous reported cases of arsenic poisoning in the medical record, it does not appear that systematic investigations of occupational exposure to arsenic were ever undertaken. The historical silence about workplace exposure to arsenic was unprecedented. None of the pioneers of occupational medicine (including Paracelsus, George Agricola, Bernardino Ramazzani, Charles Thackrah,... 

Leeds doctor Charles Turner Thackrah published first English book on occupational diseases... 

Thackrah s (1832) account of morbidity and mortality among mine workers was, as Rosen (1943) stated, not very far removed factually from that of Ramazzini. Thackrah conceived that his own observations in practice were avowedly imperfect. When he wrote The pulmonic diseases, however, chiefly prevail among the miners of coal, which is loaded with pyrites, and which produces consequently considerable dust , we can now say that the dust contained the Fenton catalyst by itself to produce most pathogenic reactive oxygen intermediates. 

Fig. 36. Portrait of Charles Turner Thackrah (1795-1833) in the Medical Library of the University of Leeds...

During this time Charles Turner Thackrah, a doctor from Leeds, wrote a book about occupational diseases in his native city which was the first such work to be published in this country. But this was 1832 and his work raised little interest, but did influence the House of Commons on future factory legislation. 

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