HOW WE BECAME A ROYAL COLLEGE

By Ross McGregor, Deputy Head of Heritage

The College’s name has been the subject of debate and has changed several times since its foundation in 1599. In its first decades it was referred to as simply the ‘Facultie’ and then from 1657 ‘Facultie of Chirurgeons and Physitians’. This is the only time in its history that surgeons have been named before physicians. In around 1700 the name changed to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeon of Glasgow. Even although the College was granted its royal charter from King James VI of Scotland in 1599, it wasn’t officially named ‘Royal’ until 1909. Finally, in 1962 the name changed to its current title of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

The process of changing name from Royal Faculty to Royal College began in earnest in 1960 with the then-president Arthur Jacobs, who believed the name ‘Faculty’ was disadvantageous when all other UK medical and surgical corporations were known as Colleges. When Joseph Wright took over as president in late 1960, he ensured the name change was one of his main priorities. However, the name change in 1962 reflects broader changes in the College during the previous decade. This was when the College began to significantly modernise, with future presidents Arthur Jacobs, Charles Illingworth, and Gavin Shaw (as well as Honorary Librarian Archibald Goodall) central tothis modernisation.

Education And Modernisation

Prior to the mid-1950s the College’s education offer was mainly traditional lecture series. During the 1950s there was a new, younger generation of leaders in the College, particularly Shaw and Goodall, whose development of new courses for hospital specialists in training began to revolutionise the College’s role in postgraduate medical education. In 1956 they also established a new conference series – the first of its kind by any of the UK medical corporations. The series was focused on latest developments in specialties, aimed at registrars and young consultants (the first was on cardiology). This established the College as a centre for advanced postgraduate education.

The College’s ambition was for postgraduate education to be complete training for the College fellowship. The link between education provision and fellowship was key. By 1957 these changes were showing tangible benefits. As well as improvements to education provision, fellowship numbers were increasing, and College finances were revived. Progress continued, and in 1959 the Maurice Block Lecture Theatre was opened to meet the College’s new educational needs.

Therefore by 1960, the College had significantly changed what it offered the medical profession. A change of name to ensure it operated on a level playing field with the other UK colleges was clearly part of this strategy.

A SIMPLE NAME CHANGE?

Changing the name from ‘Faculty’ to ‘College’ wasn’t straightforward. A ‘Change of Name Committee’ was established to progress this work, and during 1960, the College sought legal advice on the process. In the Amalgamated Minutes of December 1960 there are documents recording the substantial legal advice required to instigate the change. This includes a point that the College should “enquire as to the correct procedure for obtaining Her Majesty’s Approval as to the use of the word ‘Royal’ as part of the title of proposed Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.”

Much of the background work on how to change the name fell to future president Gavin Shaw, whose recollections of the process shed interesting light on how business was done in the mid-20th century!

Joe [then president Joseph Wright] had the idea and it was left to me and one or two others to find out how you did it. Went to see the College lawyer and he said that under Scots Law it was not necessary to get an Act of Parliament… we got it through the Faculty, and we then went to the General Medical Council, and, boy, did we run into trouble. First of all they said we’d taken the wrong route in Parliament, there was no way that we could get this through without a full Act of Parliament. Secondly, they said, this question of the names is a nonsense, we can’t have this. We were very downhearted at that stage, we almost failed. So Joe and his friend Lord Fraser went down to London, and they invited a whole lot of senior GMC people out to a lunch party. They got a little further then, and Joe said I think I see the light at the end of it. The obstacle was the Registrar, who was an English lawyer, and very careful. So then, very fortunately, the then president of the GMC was the Professor of Materia Medica at Aberdeen, Sir David Campbell, a Glasgow graduate and FRFPS, and one of our Fellows. He was a friend of Joe’s, and Joe got him and said, look this has got to be put right, our clerk is absolutely certain that we can do it by this route, which is a quick route, provided we’ve got everyone agreed. One wintry day we were all invited to his house in Aberdeen, so we all went up on the train, plus the lawyer. So Joe started off, and the President [of the GMC] made the case for them. Our lawyer was a silent man… so he sat and not a word was said while this Registrar put his case, and destroyed our case. Then the President [of the GMC] said, well now what does your man have to say, and he said, ‘You may be a very good English lawyer, but you don’t know Scot’s Law!’, and that silenced him completely.

Shaw and Goodall then had to make changes to the ‘provisional order’ before it went to Parliament. However, they also introduced constitutional changes that modernised the College’s governance. These changes allowed all UK Fellows and Members equal voting rights for the election of Council and office bearers, making the Glasgow College the most democratic of all UK Royal Colleges. Shaw recollects that eventually the order passed through the parliamentary processes and "… the next thing we got a letter saying that the Queen was about to sign it, and that was that. It formally put before Parliament. There were no objectors. It took a lot of time, but Joe was the prime mover.” (1)

This process lasted two years, until the very end of Joseph Wright’s presidency, when he was succeeded in December 1962 by Charles Illingworth (who was Honorary Surgeon to the Queen in Scotland from 1961 to 1965).

In the College minutes of 28th December 1962 a letter was read, from the Parliamentary agents, “intimating that Royal Assent had been given to the bill to provide the name of the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow be changed to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow as from 6th December 1962.”

While it may seem like a simple name change, this period can also be viewed as a key period of modernisation of the College and consolidation of its position in the medical landscape. To mark the 60th anniversary of this moment, the portraits of Joseph Wright and Charles Illingworth have been installed in College Hall.