Have you ever gone to hospital for an operation and wondered whether your surgeon had any kind of training? Ever wondered whether your baby’s food is poisonous? Ever wondered whether coroners actually know anything about the causes of the causes of death, or whether they just make something up? No?? Say thank you to Thomas Wakley – boxer, surgeon, editor, coroner, MP, and one of the nineteenth century’s greatest heroes!!
The young Thomas Wakley
Thomas Wakley was born in Devon in 1795. As a teenager he was apprenticed to a local apothecary, but earned a bit extra by bare-knuckle boxing in prize fights at local pubs. He moved to London to continue his medical training, qualified as a surgeon, married a wealthy woman, and his father-in-law set him up in a fashionable west-end medical practice. He looked all set to put his pugilistic youth behind him and live a conventional and successful life. But a strange turn of events changed all that.
Wakley was stabbed and beaten and had his house burned down by a mysterious gang. The attack and was catastrophic for his reputation and finances. Rumour spread that it was a revenge attack for dissecting a criminal. His insurance company accused him of staring the fire himself.
Wakley took on the insurers and eventually won compensation. But now he wanted to fight the establishment that had caused him so much suffering. He gave up surgery and founded The Lancet, one of the world’s first medical journals. It informed, educated and supported ordinary medics, while shining the harsh glare of negative publicity on the incompetence, nepotism and greed of the medical elite. The Royal College of Surgeons were “an antediluvian relic of all that is most despotic and revolting, iniquitous and insulting, on the face of the Earth”. The homoeopaths were “noodles and knaves, the noodles forming the majority, and the knaves using them as tools”.
The Lancet
One of The Lancet’s most shocking exposes was of inept surgeon Bransby Cooper, who got into medicine thanks to his uncle, the famous and capable Sir Astley Cooper. Bransby was asked to remove a bladder stone from a healthy young man. In the days when operating theatres actually had an audience, and before anaesthesia, the operation was both excruciating and humiliating. A fast and effective surgeon was the best you could hope for. But Bransby poked around in his poor patients’ exposed nether regions for hours before getting the stone out. The patient died. The Lancet reporters described the whole tragedy in agonising detail and Bransby sued The Lancet. Wakley lost the case but won the moral high-ground. Donations flooded in to cover his legal costs, and he donated the money to the widow of Bransby’s patient.
Removal of a bladder stone, late eighteenth century
As he grew older, Wakley’s methods grew subtler. In 1835 he became a radical MP for Finsbury, north London. He was now a member of the establishment himself, ready to do battle from within. Wakley was largely responsible for creating the Medical Act 1858 that introduced the General Medical Council and the regulation and registration of medics – the same Act that still protects you and me from incompetent or unethical practitioners.
Wakley was also directly responsible for laws protecting the public against the adulteration of food. He set up The Lancet Analytical and Sanitary Commission, to microscopically and chemically analyse everyday foodstuffs. Coffee, tea, bread, sugar and water were all investigated. Wakley published the results in The Lancet, telling the public which brands were safe and genuine, and which were not. This led to the Adulteration Act in 1860, and several other later acts controlling the sale of food and drugs.
An inquest chaired by Wakley
In 1839 Wakley was elected as the coroner for West Middlesex, while continuing to work as an MP and run The Lancet. He now routinely worked 16 hours a day. Coroner’s had traditionally been lawyers, and Wakley was the first medically qualified man to hold the office. He promised his constituents to investigate every suspicious death in the district, and publicly expose crime wherever he found it. Unlike most politicians he did exactly that. He investigated all the accidental and violent deaths in workhouses and police custody exposing many as the result of abuse and neglect, and published the scandals in The Lancet. He also investigated industrial accidents, and discovered an ancient legal loophole that allowed him to fine employers guilty of causing injury or death through lack of concern for the health and safety of their workers. He also held inquests on soldiers who had been flogged to death as a military punishment, and campaigned to outlaw this barbaric practice.
A ballad about a flogging case investigated by Wakley
The older Wakley with a copy of The Lancet
Wakley died of Tuberculosis on 11th May 1862.
I don’t think I’d invite Wakley to one of those favourite historical character dinner parties. He was petty, undiplomatic, self-righteous and probably not very good at small-talk. He wasn’t always right – he extolled the virtues of the ludicrous pseudo-science of phrenology, and poured scorn on the useful aspects of mesmerism. Nonetheless, he did more than perhaps anyone else in the nineteenth century to make life safer and fairer for everyone. He believed in the dignity and equality of all people and dedicated his life to fighting to protect all of us – right down to the poorest members of society – from those who would abuse us for a profit. Wakley’s reforms continue to make life far safer for you and me today. So thank you, Thomas. We appreciate it.