Image: The physician A.H. Evans. He is seen here wearing the mayoral chain. Reproduced with the permission of Sutton Coldfield Library.
By the end of the nineteenth century the most prominent inhabitants of Sutton Coldfield had come to believe that they lived in the healthiest town in the Midlands. When there were outbreaks of scarlet fever, measles and smallpox in Birmingham in the 1890s, Sutton was barely touched. Indeed, the death rate in the town generally remained low. Significant steps were being taken to improve public health by laying new sewers and regularly flushing them. The annual reports of the medical officer of health which set out this good news were always published in the Birmingham newspapers. By doing this, the town council hoped to encourage more prosperous Birmingham families to settle in the town.
The majority of the population of Sutton worked on farms. When these men and their families fell ill, they resorted initially to home remedies. They did not have the money for private consultations with the physicians and surgeons who lived in the town, but after 1889, if they earned no more than 30s a week, they were able to become subscribers to the Dispensary, which stood on the corner of Coleshill Street and Rectory Road. The building and equipping of the Dispensary was met from the profits of the celebrations to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in July 1887 and subsequent musical performances in the town hall. Football matches were later arranged to support the Dispensary and there were also regular collections at church services. The Dispensary was the idea of local doctor Alfred Henry Evans, and enthusiastically supported by the first mayor, John Benjamin Stone. For a small annual subscription local people had access to advice and medicines. Small operations were also performed at the Dispensary. Local medical men acted as consulting physicians and surgeons, and there was a nurse. In 1891 there were 1,332 subscribers and in 1896 1,784. Miss Cadbury dispensed prescriptions, 6,633 of them in 1892.
The physicians and surgeons of Sutton attended to the needs of the middle- class residents. The physicians saw their patients in their surgeries or on visits to their homes. They checked pulses, listened to coughs, checked urine and stitched wounds. For example, in August 1894, the nose of a young boy from Roughley was stitched after he had been bitten by a dog – though he was to remain disfigured for life. The surgeons – such as James Fraser and Abraham Hoskins – attended to broken bones.
James Henry Lakin had a practice in High Street. We find him being called out when the clerk to the magistrates in Erdington was ‘taken seriously ill’ on his way to court in November 1864 and also caring for a young man who tragically drowned himself in one of the pools in Sutton Park in January 1869. Lakin died in September 1877 after his gig was involved in a collision.
Thomas Chavasse was much-loved by his patients. It was said that his ‘courteous, gentle manners and kindly sympathy towards those who were sick and needy universally led him to be regarded as a personal friend as well as a medical advisor.’ He informed another physician who enquired about his success that paying attention to each patient was vital. Chavasse came from a long line of physicians in Burford in Oxfordshire, but was born in Walsall in 1800 where his father was in practice. He trained at the General Hospital in Birmingham and at St. Bartholomew’s in London. Returning to Birmingham, Chavasse ‘soon acquired what is generally believed to have been the largest general practice ever attained in the provinces.’ He settled in Sutton in 1853, residing at Wylde Green House. Two days a week he gave over to assisting patients in Birmingham, but spent the rest of his time as a family doctor in Sutton. Chavasse died in October 1884.
The busiest physicians in the town at the turn of the century were Evans, Fraser & Chavasse. They were described as ‘the best doctors in the district … excellent men.’ A.H. Evans was born in West Hallam in Derbyshire in 1847 and was the half-nephew of the novelist George Eliot. He was educated at local grammar schools before being apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a surgeon in Nottingham. He moved on to the General Hospital in Nottingham before entering Guy’s Hospital in October 1867 to complete his training. Evans now held a diploma as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and was a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. He formed a partnership with J.H. Lakin in 1871, and eventually established the new partnership of Evans, Fraser and Chavasse. He was recruited as the medical consultant for the Catholic institutions Oscott College and Maryvale. From 1881 he began to play a part in the affairs of Sutton, becoming mayor in 1890-1. He died in December 1938.
James Fraser was Evans’ assistant. He lived in Coleshill Street but died suddenly in August 1906. Evans also brought his nephew into the practice. Howard Sydney Chavasse was a general practitioner in Sutton for forty years, retiring to Romwell in Sussex in 1938; he died there six months later.
Let us conclude with a brief portrait of Thomas Chavasse’s sixth son. Thomas Frederick Chavasse had followed his father into medicine. He was trained at the General Hospital and Queen’s College in Birmingham and then at the University of Edinburgh, where he encountered the famous physician Joseph Lister. For the rest of his life Chavasse was prominently associated with Lister’s use of antiseptics to prevent infections in operations. Having qualified in 1876 Chavasse studied in Vienna and Berlin and was then appointed consulting surgeon at the General Hospital in Birmingham and also served as consulting surgeon at the Dispensary in Sutton. He died in February 1913 after a hunting accident.
Both A.H. Evans and T.F. Chavasse were knighted for their services to medicine.
Stephen Roberts, September 2021
Stephen Roberts holds honorary positions as Associate Professor at the Australian National University and Senior Fellow at the University of Birmingham