Born 23 October 1870, the fourth child and second son of Henry Stanley Newman of Leominster, Herefordshire, and his wife Mary Anna Pumphrey. H S Newman edited the Quaker journal *The Friend* for many years. He was educated at Sidcot School, Winscombe, and Bootham School, York, at Edinburgh University, and at King's College, London. He won the Gunning scholarship in public health at Edinburgh in 1895 and took the Cambridge diploma in public health the same year. He was senior demonstrator of bacteriology and lecturer on infective diseases at King's College 1896-1900, and then concurrently medical officer of health to Finsbury and to Bedford county council. He was appointed the first chief medical officer to the Board of Education in 1907, under the Education Act passed by the new Liberal government. When the Ministry of Health was formed in 1919 under Dr Christopher Addison, MP, FRCS, out of the previous Local Government Board, Newman succeeded Sir Arthur Nowsholme as chief medical officer to the new Ministry also. He held both posts till his retirement in 1935. Newman did much by his administrative ability and his fluency and skill as a writer to develop and unify the new health service on wise lines. His official annual reports were inspiring and constructive documents. He also wrote a number of textbooks on bacteriology and hygiene, and in later life on the history of social medicine. From 1919 to 1939 he was a Crown nominee on the General Medical Council. He served on many special bodies, such as the Health of Munition Workers Committee (chairman 1914-18) which developed into the Industrial Health Research Board, and the Central Control Board of the Liquor Traffic; he was medical assessor to the University Grants Committee. Newman was honoured by many universities for his public work, and by the Royal College of Physicians, the Society of Apothecaries, King's College (Fellow), the Medical Society of London, and the New York Academy of Medicine. Though never having practised surgery, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1928 during the presidency of Lord Moynihan, of whom he was a close personal friend. Besides his medical and official work Newman played a leading part in the affairs of the Society of Friends. He was literary advisor and a trustee of his father's old paper *The Friend* for many years, and anonymous editor for forty years of *The Friends' Quarterly Examiner*, his regular contributions to which journal were very widely read. He took an active interest in the Westminster Adult School, and in the men's and women's clubs connected with the Westminster Meeting House in St Martin's Lane. He helped to form the Friends' Ambulance Units in the first and second world wars. Newman married in 1898 Adelaide Constance, daughter of Samuel Thorp of Alderley Edge. There were no children, and Lady Newman died in 1946. He died at Grims Wood, Harrow Weald, Middlesex on 26 May 1948, aged 77, after long illness. He was a man of forceful personality, devoted to his public duty and to the religious society of which he was a leading member.