Pioneers of general practice

The College’s online exhibition Women at the heart of general practice celebrates the achievements of some of the women who helped make general practice what it is today.

However, several generations of women GPs had practised before the College was founded – most of whose stories are not in the College archives.

One was Octavia Wilberforce (1888–1963), great-granddaughter of the abolitionist. In 1913, when, very much against the wishes of her family, she was looking to enrol at the London School of Medicine for Women, it was suggested to her that medically qualified British women generally ‘did not have private practices’. The first women practising in Harley Street (like Mary Scharlieb, 1845–1930) usually had portfolio careers.

Octavia Wilberforce

The 1911 England census includes seven women identifying as General Medical Practitioners who had qualified between 1891 and 1910. Agatha Porter (1852–1934) who had already been listed as a GP in the 1901 census, was in Notting Hill. Nena Beatrice Levers (c.1883–1957) was an Assistant in Willesden. Margaret Sophia Sharp (1871–1963) was in Bradford. Margaret Scott-Dickson (c.1880–1952) who subsequently practised in Dundee, was in Redditch. Ada Jackson (1869–1956) was in Hull. Martha Beatrice Webb (1863–1951) was in Edgbaston, and Rhoda May Murdoch (1886–1972), who subsequently practised in Preston, was in Rotherhithe.

When Octavia set herself up in general practice in Brighton in 1923, she was taking a gamble. She purchased premises with loans from friends and set up her brass plate rather than taking on an existing list, noting that ‘it’s not generally considered wise to buy a man’s practice’. She supplemented her income at first with hospital work, which also led indirectly to introductions to new patients (‘the mistresses of the maids I helped in Outpatients’). She earned a respectable £308 in her first year.

Image from RCGP Women at the heart of general practice exhibition

Octavia was typical of most of these medical women from the point of view that she never married, although Grace Harwood Stewart (1872–1957) continued her career after marrying a Cheltenham builder. He described her as Doctor of Medicine, rather than a GP, in the 1911 census, but altered the windows in the front room of their new home to let more daylight into her surgery.

Octavia enjoyed what she termed “over forty years of close association” with the actress, writer and suffrage campaigner Elizabeth Robins, who provided moral and financial support for Octavia’s career in medicine, and whom Octavia viewed as her adopted mother. The subsequent lack of descendants to unmarried GPs like Octavia has perhaps been a factor in their pioneering contributions being overlooked.

It was said that “women could do remarkably well in an ordinary family practice” since treating a mother and her children would usually lead to treating the husband and father. By the mid-1920s, Octavia was able to boast of a friend’s success, possibly Kathleen Field (1886–1970): “In three months she doubled her practice, and now has more men than women patients. The other day she received a deputation from Great Western railwaymen asking that 250 of them should be transferred to her panel.” 

Image from RCGP Women at the heart of general practice exhibition

A MESSAGE FROM THE RCGP PRESIDENT

The RCGP celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2022 – and we want your ideas for how to mark this special time in our history.

We envisage that the majority of events will run for six months between Easter 2022 and the November AGM. We plan to have an online exhibition on the history of the College, as well as running webinars and other Membership and Fellowship events.

The work we are doing on collecting stories of our experiences as GPs of the COVID era will feed into this, and we’ll give you details of how you can contribute shortly.

We’ll also be hosting the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) European Regional Conference alongside our RCGP conference from June 27–30th, which will give us a chance to share our history with international delegates though talks, displays, and visits to practices.

We hope that College members will use their own networks to mark the occasion. Some groups have already suggested aligning their own Faculty and other planned educational events with themes that celebrate the anniversary.

We plan to have online resources that you can easily draw down for presentations or group discussions. You may want to make your own podcasts and webinars or consider other ways to celebrate general practice and the contribution the College has made. The College is its members – and we want you all to be part of our Platinum anniversary! Please contact RCGPat70@rcgp.org.uk with any ideas you would like to share.

Professor Amanda Howe, RCGP President