Alfred Salter
Alfred Salter (16 June 1873 – 24 August 1945) was a British medical practitioner and Labour Party politician. Early life Salter was born in Greenwich in 1873, the son of Walter Hookway Salter and Elizabeth Tester. Following education at The John Roan School, Greenwich, he went on to study medicine at Guy's Hospital, London. He qualified in 1896 and in the following year was awarded the Golding-Bird gold medal and scholarship in public health, and the Gull research scholarship in pathology. He was made house physician and resident obstetric physician at Guy's and was appointed as bacteriologist to what later became the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. In 1898 he became a resident at the Methodist Settlement in Bermondsey, an area of south-east London alongside the River Thames, then an area of "poverty that is stark and staring" and some of the most appalling slums in London. In the 19th century Bermondsey specialised in leather but in the 20th century the major sources of employment were the food factories, employing mostly women, and the docks, employing men. Most of the men working in the docks were employed on a contingent daily basis; the casual nature of this work made it