Doctor Hubert Montague Murray was the first significant medical professional to identify a link between asbestos and death.
Before the Departmental Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases in 1906, Murray, senior physician at Charing Cross Hospital, related the story of a patient who presented in 1899, dying a year later.
The man was 33 and employed for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory, 10 of them inside the very dusty carding room. The patient claimed to have worked beside 10 others, and was the last survivor. He said all his colleagues had died in their thirties.