Thomas Southwood Smith

(Thomas) Southwood Smith (21 December 1788 – 10 December 1861) was an English physician and sanitary reformer.

Smith's life up to 1812 remains poorly documented. He was born at , Somerset, into a Baptist family, his parents being William Smith and Caroline Southwood. In 1802 he was sent to the Baptist Academy in Bristol; but he left and broke with his family. He married in 1808, but his wife Anne died in 1812, leaving him two daughters. In this period Smith's contact with William Blake at Crewkerne was significant: Blake put him in touch with John Prior Estlin at Lewin's Mead. Another friend, and Unitarian convert from Baptism who became a physician, was Benjamin Spencer.

Smith entered the University of Edinburgh in October 1812, and in November took over the Unitarian congregation meeting in Skinners' Hall, Canongate, which had stayed together without a minister since the death in 1795 of James Purves; he raised the attendance sharply. In June 1813 he began a course of fortnightly evening lectures on universal restoration; these were published in 1816 and made him a literary reputation. Also in 1813 he founded the Scottish Unitarian Association, with James Yates.

In 1816 he took his M.D. degree, and began to practice at Yeovil, Somerset, also becoming minister at a chapel in that town, but moved in 1820 to London, devoting himself mainly to medicine.

In 1824 Smith was appointed physician to the London Fever Hospital. The following year he began to write papers on public health. His post gave him the opportunity to study diseases of poverty. In the late 1830s, with Neil Arnott and James Phillips Kay, he was one of the first doctors brought in to report to the Poor Law Commission. In 1842 he was one of the founders of an early housing association, the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes.

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