Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

town’s surgeons, chemists and druggists, the term ‘apothecary’ now becoming outmoded
along with the barber-surgeons and peruke-makers of yesteryear. 301
The herald’s visitations of 1682 describe Dr Jackson as a physician and
clergyman, 302 while diocesan records reveal various surgeons and midwives from the
Restoration through to the end of the eighteenth century. 303
business via newspaper advertisements in the 1750s, 304
Two midwives compete for
while Sarah Moore was
described as a ‘midwoman’. 305
The UBD’s ‘physic’ section listed a druggist cum
apothecary and two surgeons, one of whom was also a ‘man midwife’. 306
The role of
many women who nursed children or the sick and elderly goes largely unnoticed in the
archives. 307
In Restoration Alcester many other professionals were simply referred to as
‘gentlemen’, so attorneys, land-agents and the like are not always easy to find amongst
the archives. 308
However, members of the presbyterian Bridges family had fought for
301 Among the chemists who advertised in the nineteenth century we find (in West’s Warwickshire
Directory 1830) Charles Wilson, dealer in patent medicines and agent to the Atlas Fire Office. In probate
the number of barber-surgeons were as follows: Period A: 1, Period B: 3. Surgeons in probate in Period C:
1 and in Period D: 2. Barbers in probate in Period C: 2 and in Period D: 1. In the 1841 census 6 were
involved in medical practice (all male) and 4 barbers or hairdressers (all male). Apothecaries or chemists
in probate: Period A: 2, Period B: 3, Period C:1 and Period D: 2. There were 3 chemists/druggists in the
1841 census (all male).
302 P. Styles, Studies in Seventeenth Century West Midlands History, (Kineton, Roundwood Press, 1978), p.
120. Dr Jackson of Kings Coughton, Alcester, mentioned in herald’s visitations, 1682.
303 For example, WoRO, BA2951 (ii), Worcester diocesan visitation book 1679, mentions Benjamin
Jennings, surgeon, and Mrs J. Jones, ‘obstetrix’. WoRO, BA2697, ref. 716:051, diocesan subscription
book, lists the midwives Rebecca Ewins (in 1719) and Elizabeth Aspree (in 1722). Both were illiterate.
The latter may have been related to the barber-surgeons, Thomas and William Aspree.
304 Berrow’s Worcester Journal 25 Oct. 1750. Margaret, wife of Clement Hall, Alcester, surgeon, informs
the public that she has ‘lately gone through a course of lectures on midwifery’ in London. Berrow’s
Worcester Journal 8 Nov. 1750: John Lardner, Alcester, surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife ‘will
deliver any poor woman for half a guinea’.
305 WaRO, MI163, Coughton RC burials 1783. She was widow of Bradford Moore, maltster and tallow
chandler.
306 UBD 1792. One surgeon also features in the jurors’ lists, (WaRO, QS76/3).
307 WaRO, Alcester 1841 census lists 2 female nurses.
308 Although Alcester was served by various attorneys, (also known from the late eighteenth century as
solicitors), only 1 is described as such in Probate. He died in Period D.
130