Don’t Ask for a Divorce in Victorian England

Friday, May 28, 2010

Traveling Companions, by Augustus Leopold Egg, 1862

In 1858, one of the most brilliant surgeons of his day opened a clinic. Isaac Baker Brown named it, officially, “The London Surgical Home for the Reception of Gentlewomen and Females of Respectability suffering from Curable Surgical Diseases.”

[Females of Non-Respectability need not apply.]

Brown made his reputation doing ovariotomies for cysts, an operation that was, at the time, very, very dangerous. Graham reports that, in the 150 years between 1701 and 1851, the procedure was attempted 222 times. In 57 cases, the surgery was stopped before they got anything done. When the surgery continued, there were 76 deaths. [NB--the first successful ovariotomy was in 1809, by a talented American surgeon named Ephraim McDowell, on Jane Crawford, the cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. He also performed a successful lithotomy (removal of bladder or kidney stones) on future president James K. Polk.]

Anyway, Brown was one of the best. He performed the procedure on his own sister (who survived!); he coined the term “ovarian cyst,” instead of the usual term at the time, dropsy. His clinic treated women’s diseases of all kinds. In ten years, he cared for 1200 women.

Around the same time, Britain passed the Matrimonial Act of 1857.

In a nutshell, the Act removed divorce from the province of the church’s courts, where it was monopolized and therefore massively expensive (not to mention required that certain, um, religious requirements be met that often had a couple’s sex life hotly debated, in public), and placed it under the auspices of the civil courts.

In 1856, there had been three divorces in England. In 1858, there were three hundred. It’s easy to see why the locals were a bit frantic.

Into the fray marched brave Dr. Brown, who had a solution. He, personally, claimed to be able to cure women of this whole divorce thing.

He did it by performing clitoridectomies.

Victorian gynecology was convinced that female masturbation put a terrible strain on the woman’s nervous system, leading to everything from mania to urinary incontinence. Factory workers were especially vulnerable, as there was great concern that the treadle action of the sewing machine led to dangerous levels of pubic stimulation.

And don’t even get us started on those hussies who rode bicycles. Wanton whores.

Brown performed clitoridectomies on many, many women. He wrote up his experience in “On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy and Hysteria in Females,” in which he argued that the operation was both safe and effective, and did not “unsex” the woman, as there was at least one patient who later got pregnant. The “mental illness” of seeking a divorce was an especially important indication, for which Dr. Brown found excellent results. He claimed several patients gave up on their motions, returned to their husbands, and thereafter led the lives of exceptional wives and mothers.

Unfortunately for Dr. Brown, there was a technicality. The Home was not licensed to treat psychiatric diseases. Plus, there was the minor detail that Dr. Brown failed to get permission to do said procedures–from the husbands.

The Obstetrical Society of London had had it. They had had it with Dr. Brown’s flamboyancy (including advertising!) and his grandstanding. They took Brown to task.

Brown defended himself vigorously. He claimed that the operation had been promoted by Hippocrates. We will try not to think about why anyone cared what Hippocrates thought, two hundred years after the Enlightenment. And as Helen King points out, the passage he used to defend himself was really about the removal of a genital wart. (While medical examinations were still in Latin, most med school grads, sons of tradesmen rather than gentlemen, used the Cliff notes).

He swore that the women had asked him to perform the procedure, and he failed to inform the husbands because he was asked not to do so. He asked the medical community to look at the “evidence,” accusing THEM of ungentlemanly behavior.

On April 3, 1867, the Obstetrical Society of London expelled Isaac Baker Brown, ruining his career and shutting down the Home. Not because he was performing a terrible, unwarranted procedure with absolutely no solid scientific evidence behind it, but because of the implicit understanding that women’s bodies belonged to their husbands, and therefore the procedures had been done without consent.

Score one for Victorian paternalism.

[For more tips for time travelers on when not to seek medical care (or a divorce), see the full Nefarious History of Motherhood series here. Or, if you're in the mood for a few thousand hours of light reading, the Bibliography. I'm really not making this stuff up. Promise.]

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Tags: clitoridectomy, divorce, gynecology, history, humor, motherhood, obstetrics, Parenting

10 Comments

Wendy

Friday, 28th May 2010 at 7:34 am

There’s so much wrong with all this it’s hard to know where to start. Wow. At least they got the cutting stopped, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

The divorce rate jumping from 3 to 300 amused me a great deal. I’m guessing all that really happened is a lot of separations were given a legal status. I’m sure people didn’t sit around waiting for the government to catch up – particularly the lower classes. Just guessing.

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