Dr Peter Bartrip

Associate Research Fellow

Bibliographical

Dr Bartrip is a historian with degrees from University College Swansea, the University of Saskatchewan and University College Cardiff. He has been an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of Socio-Legal Studies since 1987. Previously, he was, successively, Research Officer and Senior Research Officer at the Centre. After writing commissioned histories of the British Medical Journal and British Medical Association, between 1987 and 1993, he joined the University of Northampton, as it now is, in 1993. He was Reader in History there until January 2008. He has recently participated in the large-scale European Legal Development Project at the University of Cambridge. This participation will yield two essays in the volumes that will emerge from the project. Dr Bartrip’s research has been funded by a number of agencies, including the ESRC, Health and Safety Executive and Wellcome Trust. He has written widely on historical subjects. He has published eight books and many essays in journals and edited volumes. He has presented papers at many institutions in Britain and Europe and contributed extensively to the New Dictionary of National Biography and Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism He reviews grant and publishing proposals for publishers, journals and funding bodies, and is a regular book reviewer. He has disseminated research findings in popular magazines and contributed to several BBC radio programmes.

Main Research Interests

1. History of occupational health, safety and compensation.
2. History of regulation.
3. History of medicine.

Publications (all books and selected recent papers)

Books:

(with S.B. Burman), The Wounded Soldiers of Industry. Industrial Compensation Policy, 1833-1897  (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983)
Workmen's Compensation in Twentieth Century Britain (Aldershot: Gower, 1987)
Mirror of Medicine. The British Medical Journal, 1840-1965 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
Themselves Writ Large. The British Medical Association, 1832-1966 (London: BMJ Books, 1996)
The Way from Dusty Death. Turner & Newall and the Regulation of Occupational Health in the British Asbestos Industry, 1890s-1970 (London: Athlone Press, 2001)
The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (London & New York: Wellcome/Rodopi, 2002)
Beyond the Factory Gates: Asbestos and Health in Twentieth Century America (London: Continuum, 2006)
Myxomatosis. A History of Pest Control and the Rabbit (London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies, forthcoming in 2008)

Articles:

“Myxomatosis in 1950s Britain”, Twentieth Century British History 18(4) (2008)
“The identification and regulation of asbestos as a hazard of insulation work in the USA” in M.C. Nelson (ed.), Occupational Health and Public Health. Lessons from the Past Challenges for the Future (Stockholm: Arbetslivsinstitutet, 2006) Based on a paper presented at the Occupational Health and Public Health. Lessons from the Past Challenges for the Future Conference, Norrköpping, Sweden, September 2001
“History of asbestos-related disease”, Postgraduate Medical Journal 80 (2004) 72-6
“Around the world in nine years. A medical education re-visited”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59 (2004) 35-54
“Irving John Selikoff and the strange case of the missing medical degrees”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences vol. 58 (January 2003) 3-33