ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to locate aspects of British occupational health in historical context and explore the processes by which occupational diseases are identified, compensated for and defined. It looks at how occupational health problems were recognized, raised but infrequently solved, by workers and employers in the gas industry. The gas industry cannot be assumed to be typical of all UK industry during the period in question. The gas industry, with its white, male, manual engineering workers in the period in question, would not represent a typical group of workers taking action on hazards in the 1990s. The gas employers, represented by the Incorporated Gas Institute, maintained in this same period that their industry was a healthy and safe one where, because directors of gas companies knew fit old gas workers, there was no need to produce and collate health statistics for the industry.
