In 1944, Crofton joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. She was made a captain and posted in County Down, Northern Ireland. Between 1946 and 1949, Crofton worked at Brompton Hospital in London as a part-time clinical assistant.[2]
Crofton and her husband helped found ASH Scotland, an anti-smoking charity, in 1973, and she became the first medical director of the charity.[3] Between 1975 and 1987, she also worked on the World Health Organization's expert committee on smoking.[1] Crofton's campaigns were worldwide and focused on increasing regulations for tobacco and educating people on the harm that smoking can cause.[4] She also campaigned for smoking bans in public places.[3] Crofton was awarded an MBE for services in public health in 1984.[4]
After her retirement in 1984, Crofton's anti-smoking campaigns continued. During her campaign work, Crofton attended an international medical conference at Royaumont, a former Cistercian abbey in France, where she found a plaque commemorating a Scottish women's hospital which operated out of the Abbey during the First World War. Realising that the story and background of this hospital was relatively unknown, Crofton researched and published a book on the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont called, Angels of Mercy: A Woman's Hospital on the Western Front 1914-1918.[5]
She met her husband, John Crofton, when she was working in County Down.[2] They married in 1945 and had five children, three daughters and two sons.[1]
In recognition of their campaigning and charity work, Crofton and her husband had an award named after them in 2009 by the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland in collaboration with ASH Scotland. It is awarded to young people who work to reduce the harm caused by tobacco and smoking.[6]
