Events

12 0ctober: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the London School of Medicine for Women: 3 talks and document display

Pascal Theatre Company announces 3 talks and document display on

Saturday 12 0ctober 10-1.00pm:
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the London School of Medicine for Women:

Talks by Claire Brock, Mary Chapman and Victoria Rea at The London Archives.

Organised in collaboration with Claire Brock and The London Archives.

This romantic nursery of a great movement. 

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the London School of Medicine for Women:

The London School of Medicine for Women opened a century and a half ago as the only British institution dedicated to the training of ‘lady doctors’. How did the early generations of students negotiate their novel status, and how did the public and their patients view them? In these talks, we consider how a rich tapestry of archival sources can be used to find out more about the equally fascinating lives and careers of the first women to practise medicine officially in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

  • The Treatment of  ‘Lady Doctors’: A talk by Claire Brock

What happened when largely middle-class London School of Medicine for Women students and practitioners encountered predominantly working-class patients, of both sexes, in their clinical work at the Royal Free Hospital? This talk considers how a variety of archival materials can be used to explore this most fascinating of clinical encounters. In doing so, it will readdress propaganda spun both by supporters and detractors to show that the relationship between ‘lady doctors’ and their patients was not as simple as either side expected.

Professor Claire Brock is an historian of surgery, and holds a Chair in Health Humanities and the History of Medicine at the University of Leicester. She is currently researching a book entitled Surgery at Home, which explores the experience of the surgical patient in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

  • A Community of Medical Women: The LSMW and its Magazine: A Talk by Mary Chapman

In 1881 there were only 25 women doctors qualified in Britain, by 1911 there were 495. Yet despite gaining access to medical practice, female doctors still faced marginalisation. In the face of opposition from their male peers, early medical women formed communities of their own: through women-only schools, hospitals, and journals. This talk explores these female communities, looking in particular at the Magazine of the London School of Medicine for Women to show how the journal helped to create a sisterhood of medical women that was based not only on professional relationships, but on personal bonds, woven through the experience of sharing and reading.

Dr Mary Chapman is the William Noble Fellow at the University of Liverpool. Dr Chapman’s research focuses on the periodical press and medical practice during the Victorian period. Her work centres on women in medicine, as both practitioners and patients.

  • An Archivist’s Perspective: Reflections on archive collections relating to the London School of Medicine for Women: A Talk by Victoria Rea

Victoria Rea explores the London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW) archive collections. How can researchers use them? What are the highlights and gaps in the collections? Beyond the LSMW collection, what are the challenges finding women doctors and surgeons in UK archives?

Victoria Rea was the archivist for the LSMW and Royal Free collections for 10 years, before the collections were transferred to The London Archives in 2013. She is now the Archives Manager at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

For further information and to register: 12 0ctober: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Opening of the London School of Medicine for Women: 3 talks and document display – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)

or email: events@pascal-theatre.com

These talk form part of Pascal Theatre Company’s Lottery Heritage Funded project: Women for Women: 19th century women in Bloomsbury.

image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_London_School_of_Medicine,_Physiology_Laboratory._Wellcome_M0017523.jpg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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