Women doctors and too busy to blog!

Herstoria Summer 2009

The summer edition of HerStoria will start mailing out at the end of May – at last I have time to catch my breath and blog! This issue is  much busier than our first and we are about a week behind with our schedule (still on a steep learning curve here!) I’m holding my breath and hoping subscribers won’t mind it being a few days later than promised. (Note to self: remember next year that May contains 2 bank holidays when suppliers shut down!)

In this issue is a women’s history walk of Liverpool, which was truly fascinating to research. It was a case of going back to basics  as most of the guides available (and there are a few, some published to celebrate Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture 2008) have very little on women. I was amazed with some of the women who turned up, including the City’s first woman doctor who practised in Liverpool from 1884. Women had a very torrid time trying to access medical training and be allowed to register to practice. They were told that women doctors were improper, that women did not have the required intellect and stamina, that there would be no jobs for them anyway, and that even if there were they could only ever work with women and children. When the first group of women completed (successfully) a medical course and examinations at the University of Edinburgh in 1873, the University refused to give them their degrees . The women had had to go to court to gain admittance anyway, and had been met with protests from male medical students. In the end the women went abroad to qualify. Why was the opposition so intense? Perhaps because they were perceived as a threat to business, especially if women patients decided to leave the private  practices of male physcians in favour of those of someone of their own sex…. I am constantly amazed and humbled by the way women kept on and were not derailed by the opinions and obstacles put in their way. More walks of other cities are planned for future issues.

I’ve also had great fun putting together HerStoria’s (historical) celebrity pages – after all, even supposedly high brow newspapers have them these days, and celebrity wasn’t invented by our generation ……