Occupational Therapy in The United Kingdom - History of Occupational Therapy in The UK

History of Occupational Therapy in The UK

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the establishment of public health measures to control infectious diseases included the building of fever hospitals. Patients with tuberculosis were recommended to have a regime of prolonged bed rest followed by a gradual increase in exercise. Dr Philip, a Scottish physician, prescribed graded activity from complete rest through to gentle exercise and eventually to activities such as digging, sawing, carpentry and window cleaning. During this period a farm colony near Edinburgh and a village settlement near Papworth in Cambridgeshire were established, both of which aimed to employ people in appropriate long-term work prior to their return to open employment.

During and after the First World War, casualties amongst young men resulted in an acute shortage of manpower in the workforce. The need to re-establish these men in open employment facilitated the growth of OT in the treatment of those with physical disabilities. Curative workshops were opened within military hospitals, based on similar workshops already established in the United States, and were equipped with tools and machinery to exercise joints and muscles. Based on these workshops the first occupational therapy department in Scotland was opened in 1936 at the Astley Ainslie Institution in Edinburgh, where at the same time the first Occupational Therapy Training Centre was opened.

Margaret Barr Fulton MBE 1900-1989 or Peg Fulton, as she was known, became the first occupational therapist to work in the United Kingdom in 1925. She qualified at the Philadelphia School in the United States and was appointed to the Aberdeen Royal Hospital for mental patients where she worked until her retirement in 1963. During that time, she gained an international reputation for her department and for her part in the development of both the Scottish Association (SAOT) and the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT). OT was introduced into England by Dr Elizabeth Casson who had visited similar establishments in America. In 1929 she established her own residential clinic in Bristol, Dorset House, for ‘women with mental disorders’, and worked as its medical director. It was here in 1930 that she founded the first school of occupational therapy in the UK, Dorset House, The Promenade, Clifton. Its first Principal was Constance Tebbit (later Owens) who returned from training as an occupational therapist in Philadelphia to take up her post. She later went on to set up the Liverpool School of Occupational Therapy. She opened Dorset House School of Occupational Therapy in Bristol in 1930. Her interest in occupational therapy continued with involvement in the Association of Occupational Therapists (AOT), established in 1936. The Second World War added impetus to the development of occupational therapy as the profession played a vital role in the rehabilitation and re-establishment of wounded soldiers into the workforce.