Sir Thomas Neill (January 1856 – 31 May 1937) was an Irish

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

executive and pioneer of National Health Insurance in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

.Obituary, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', 1 June 1937 Neill was born in Cookstown,

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...

, the son of a land agent. He first became a railway booking clerk, and then an insurance agent in Ballymena. In 1894 he became

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the London, Edinburgh and Glasgow Insurance Company and joined the board of directors of the Pearl Insurance Company when it took over the former company in 1910. When the National Health Insurance scheme came into force in 1911, Neill was appointed one of the three Insurance Commissioners. In 1915 he resigned to become chairman of the National Amalgamated Approved Society, holding the post until his retirement in 1936. He campaigned for the introduction of a Ministry of Health, which was founded in 1918, after which he became chairman of the Ministry's Consultative Council on Health Insurance Approved Societies until 1924. For this work, he was knighted in the 1920 New Year Honours. He had four children, including the paediatrician

Catherine Neill Catherine Annie Neill (3 September 1921 – 23 February 2006) was a British pediatric cardiologist who spent the majority of her career at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, where she worked alongside Helen B. Taussig. Her primar ...

(1921–2006), the judge Sir Brian Neill (1923–2017) and the barrister

Patrick Neill, Baron Neill of Bladen Francis Patrick Neill, Baron Neill of Bladen, (8 August 1926 – 28 May 2016) was a British barrister and a crossbench member of the House of Lords. Early life and education A son of Sir Thomas Neill, Patrick Neill was educated at Highgat ...

(1926–2016).

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neill, Thomas 1856 births 1937 deaths Businesspeople in insurance Irish financial businesspeople Knights Bachelor People from Cookstown