Looking back at Foot Health Week from 70 years ago

Decades before the College began the Foot Health Week we now recognise, the Foot Health Educational Bureau put on a series of regional week-long foot health events, aimed at informing the public about the importance of looking aft er their feet. The bureau was overseen by the government’s Central Council for Health Education, which ran from 1927 to 1969. Its elected members provided advice to local authorities in England and Wales to educate people about health issues.

Set up in 1942, the bureau initially published literature aimed at medical professionals and the commercial shoe sector, before getting involved in public health. Top of their panel of expert advisers at the time was John Hanby, the first president of the Society of Chiropodists (pictured). In 1953, Hanby received a letter formally inviting him to attend the bureau’s Birmingham Foot Health Week.

Taking place across a week in October with a programme of lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions and fi lm screenings, the events were aimed at the public – particularly parents. It was arranged, according to Dr John Burton, director of the bureau, ‘to help you understand how that beautiful, hard-working and modest part of your body, the foot, can be looked aft er so that it will last a lifetime without complaining’.

The opening event was a celebrity panel discussion. On stage were guests including West Bromwich Albion star midfi elder Ray Barlow (pictured); decorated ballerina Beryl Grey (pictured), who would, four years later, become the first English dancer to appear as a guest with the Bolshoi Ballet; and an unnamed member of the Mount Everest expedition team, who had successfully helped Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain in May that year.

Later in the week there were shoe-fitting demonstrations, a public meeting for parents about children’s footwear, and a presentation on foot health in industry. An original programme from the event has been preserved in the College’s archive.

In 1954 the bureau wrote to Hanby again, asking for his help to set up a Foot Health Week in Gloucestershire. This would be run from a van, visiting locations around the county. ‘We feel sure you will be interested in an idea which is designed to take the exhibition to the areas from which it is diffi cult to attract people,’ the bureau wrote.

Strong start

One speaker at the 1953 Foot Health Week was a representative of James Southall & Co, a shoemaking business established in Norwich in 1792. Founder James Smith was a cordwainer - a specialist who makes shoes by hand with new leather, unlike a cobbler, who repairs existing shoes. James Southall & Co was the first in the country to sell affordable ready-made footwear. From 1921 the company began to make specially designed children's footwear under the brand name Start-Rite.