Category: Women Of Bristol 1850-1950

Diptheria, Frances Helen Prideaux, medicine, Noel Fitzpatrick, obstetrices, Paddington Green Hospital, University of London, Women Of Bristol 1850-1950

The Good Old, Bad Old Days…

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It’s easy to imagine that all Victorian women did was needlepoint until either consumption or childbirth carried them off. That’s not true. Frances Prideaux is an example to us all, as I discovered during research for the Pen and Sword book Women’s Lives in Bristol, 1850-1950, which is due for publication next year. 

Frances Helen Prideaux, M.B, B.S. Lond. and Licentiate of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians is a fantastic role model for all women. When she was at the height of her powers in 1885, she was a phenomenon. 

At a time when schooling for girls was often seen as a waste of money, Frances had the best possible start in life. She was born into a family living in Clifton, which is an affluent part of Bristol. Bright and inquisitive, her potential was spotted straight away. In an age when women were treated like children and seen as chattels, Frances had the twin benefits of high intelligence and a support network few other women could boast, even today. She sailed through her education getting top grades, and took medical school in her stride. 

Frances had the work ethic of Noel Fitzpatrick, TV’s Supervet. She was always busy, and in the rare moments she wasn’t working, she was thinking about work. No job was too difficult for her. As a student, and then Professor Scholar at Queen’s College between 1869-73, she was respected and liked by everyone. In 1884, she gained honours in obstetric medicine, and was placed third in the list of candidates at the examination for Bachelor of Medicine.  There’s no doubt she would have gone on to even greater things, but she died at a tragically early age.

Photo by Frederick Hollyer,
by courtesy Wellcome Library

In October 1885 she was elected House Surgeon to the Paddington Green Hospital, and started work on November 2nd. On Saturday 21st, she woke up with what she thought was only a sore throat. She went into work and insisted on carrying out all her duties as normal, but she obviously wasn’t well. By Monday 23rd, exactly four weeks after she’d started her new job, her condition made one of the senior surgeons at the hospital think she might have diptheria. 

Despite her protests, Frances was sent home from work. Where she could have contracted the disease was a mystery, as there were no known cases in the Paddington Green area at the time. These days, vaccination programmes reduce the incidence of diptheria to a few thousand cases per year worldwide, but in 1885 it was widespread. The glands in your neck swell up to a massive size, while a thick grey membrane blocks your throat, making breathing and swallowing almost impossible. Today, sufferers are put in isolation,  then given the miracle cures of antibiotics and anti-toxins. In the nineteenth century, those vital drugs didn’t exist. 

A team of medical experts did everything they could to save Frances, including a laryngotomy to enable her to breathe. Despite their best care, she died within a week, “after terrible suffering”. It was Advent Sunday, and the day before her final medical exams.  

The doctors who tended Frances were devastated, especially as she was fully aware of what was happening almost to the end. Despite barbaric-sounding treatments such applying corrosive lotions to her already inflamed throat, she stayed calm and brave. A glowing obituary was published in the British Medical Journal on 8th December, 1885, and a scholarship in connection with the London School of Medicine founded in her memory.

This is part of a longer piece on Frances which appears in Women’s Lives in Bristol, 1850-1950, to be published in 2018. To find out more, follow this blog using the button above.

apricots, Dead Woman Walking, gardening, holidays, Women Of Bristol 1850-1950

A Rest Is As Good As A Change…

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By Henriette Browne
For the last four months, I’ve been putting in hours of extra work a week while trying to write two books at the same time. 

My first job each day is to collate the research I’ve done so far for my major non-fiction project, Women Of Bristol, and add to it. All that work is done on the computer. When I need a break from the screen, I curl up with a pencil and a big refill pad of lined paper. It’s the way I like to write fiction, so that’s how the next book in my Brackenridge Series, Dead Woman Walking, is taking shape.

Last week, OH had a week’s holiday. He was going to spend it doing repairs and maintenance around Tottering Towers, but I led him astray. Apart from rain over the Bank Holiday weekend, the weather was fine and dry. It seemed such a shame to stay indoors working, so the two of us spent seven days roaming the countryside. 

Bees hard at work
As a result, I didn’t write a word all week. I can’t remember the last time that happened! Not only did I do nothing, I was guilty of doing what my old English teacher used to call doing less than nothing by distracting OH, too. I took him out to lunch a couple of times,  and persuaded him to visit the open day at Jekka McVicar’s Herb Farm with me. We visited a garden centre, which meant another lunch out for him, and some retail therapy for me. 

Delicious, and good for you, too!
I ended last week with a total word count of zero, but a dozen new plants. Our apricot crop set the seal on the week by ripening all at once. It’s just a little tree, so there were only three fruits. I sneakily ate them all myself. Call it gardener’s perks! 

Today it’s back to writing work, but I love it so much there’s no danger of the post-holiday blues. I feel tons better for my break, and can’t wait to get writing again.

What’s your favourite remedy for working too hard?
Archives, Bristol, Women Of Bristol 1850-1950

Making A Start

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Balloon Fiesta Flights Over Bristol

I love writing, and for the past few years I’ve been working in the soft and seductive landscape of romance. It’s been a lovely and productive time for me, and you can see a full list of my published books (together with their cover art) here.

Much as I love fiction, my career started with non-fiction and to be honest, there are times when I’ve missed it. So when I was offered the chance to write the Bristol edition of Pen and Sword Books’ Women’s Lives, 1850-1950, I jumped at it. I was born in what used to be little more than a village half-way between Bristol and Bath, so this was an opportunity to go back to my roots in more ways than one.

The first thing I did toward my new project was to open a spreadsheet and start a timeline. The top row is national events. For example, I’ve included the censuses from March 1851 onwards, to the publication of George Orwell’s 1984 in 1949. The second row of my database shows milestones in the history of Bristol between 1850-1950. The third row is notable details in the lives of Bristolian women.

Then I had a brainstorming session, listing the seven major areas of interest: education, home life, health, entertainment, working outside the home, entertainment, and finally politics and protest. The Women’s Lives, 1850-1950 series will be published in 2018, to coincide with the centenary of the first women being given the vote in England.

Once I had this organised, I slotted all the information I mined from the Bristol Archives under one heading or another, cross-referenceing as I went. It’s saving me a lot of time. As I was working, I met some female family historians who were kind enough to give me some anecdotes for my book. It all added up to an invaluable start to my project.

Now I have to collate all this information, and work it up into a text worthy of all these remarkable local women. Given that the years 1850-1950 was a century filled with innovation, bravery and self-sacrifice, shot through with the down-to-earth humour of Bristolians, that shouldn’t be too hard.

My only problem will be what to leave out. I’ve got enough material for half a dozen books—not just one!

research, Scrivener, Women Of Bristol 1850-1950, Women's Lives

Setting Up With Scrivener

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I wrote here about my new non-fiction project for Pen And Sword Books, Women’s Lives: Women Of Bristol 1850-1950. This will involve a lot of research and will stretch out over several months, so it’s vital that my work should be well-organized. 

Some people are methodical by nature. I’m not, but working with the dedicated writing package Scrivener developed by Literature and Latte makes it easy to keep track of things. Instead of having box files, ring binders filled with notes and jottings on odd bits of paper, I collect everything together in one Scrivener project. Each chapter is given its own file within this Scrivener document, and so far I’ve created other files within it with the main headings of Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Contacts, interviews and Images.  Each of these is further sub-divided so in theory, nothing can get lost—unlike notes scribbled on the back of envelopes. 

Each time I come across a useful website or find a quote, I can store it in the appropriate information file. Although the manuscript pages of my Scrivener project will only accept text, video and audio links can be stored in other parts of the 

Bristol Docks


I’ve already got general headings for my chapters such as; Education, Work, Family Life, Health, Leisure, and Active Citizens, and I’ll sub-divide these as work progresses. The big advantages of working with Scrivener is that I can summarise each chapter as a synopsis of my ideas. These can then be displayed in Scrivener’s ‘Corkboard’ mode, in the style of index cards. There’s a facility to colour-code each of these, so I can see at a glance where I am—not yet started, notes, first draft, revised draft, completed and so on. 

Scrivener has a useful split-screen mode, which comes into its own for cataloguing. While I’m writing or editing a document displayed on the top half of my computer screen, I can add sources or create an index entry on the lower half of the screen. 

You can read my top tips for working with Scrivener here. 

Finally, if you’ve got any gossip about a woman’s life in pre-1950’s Bristol, I’d love to hear from you! Add a comment below…

Bristol, non-fiction, Representation of the People Act 1918, research, Women Of Bristol 1850-1950, Women's Lives

What Do You Know…about Bristol?

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Clifton Suspension Bridge

I’m starting an exciting new non-fiction project. Women’s Lives is a series of books to be published by Pen And Sword Books  in 2018, to coincide with the centenary of women over the age of thirty being given the vote in the Representation Of The People Act.

One volume of Women’s Lives will be devoted to a single city in the United Kingdom. My family have strong ties with the city of Bristol, which go back hundreds of years. I was born a few miles away in a village which was then in the Somerset countryside but is now on the outskirts of the city. My first full-time job was in the Bristol offices of a life-assurance company, and after I married I  went to work for Rolls-Royce Aero in Filton

Ancient And Modern…

When I heard about the Pen And Sword project I was keen to get involved. I’ve been writing romance for a long time, but I started my writing career contributing non-fiction articles to newspapers and magazines. This was too good a chance to miss, so I’ve now started work on the Bristol edition of the series.

In writing Women’s Lives: Women of Bristol 1850-1950 I’ll be going back to my roots in a big way. It will mean spending a lot of time combing through the archives, but nothing beats a real-life anecdote.

Do you have any stories to share about life in the City of Bristol in the years before 1950?