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“Spreading Sanitary Enlightenment”: Race, Identity, and the Emergence of a Creole Medical Profession in British Guiana
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2012
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References
1 Collet to Churchill, confidential, 6 April 1921, Public Record Office, London (PRO), Colonial Office (CO) 111/638, 74076, enclosure, “Petition from Undersigned Government Medical Officers,” 14 October 1920. See also Clementi to Milner, 1 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/624, no. 42975, no. 274, enclosure, Conyers to Colonial Secretary, 19 May 1919, enclosure, petition from medical officers, 15 April 1919. For details about the ethnicity of the doctors in the GMS, see Collet to Churchill, confidential, 6 April 1921, PRO, CO 111/638, 74076. The relevant enclosures include the following: “List of Medical Officers in Medical Service at Date,” “Government Medical Officers in 1921 Classified according to Race,” and “Government Medical Officers of 1912 Classified according to Race.”
2 Lamming, George, foreword to A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905, by Rodney, Walter (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. xxvGoogle Scholar.
3 Cox to Elgin, Further Correspondence Relating to Disturbances in British Guiana, British Parliamentary Papers, (BPP), 1906, vol. 5, enclosure 1, Thorne and Browne to Cox, pp. 384–85.
4 Miller, R. S., “Obituary of J. Sholto Douglas,” British Guiana Medical Annual 28 (1947): 233Google Scholar; Seecharan, Clem, “Tiger in the Stars”: The Anatomy of Indian Achievement in British Guiana, 1919–29 (London, 1997), pp. 337–38, n. 117Google Scholar.
5 Miller, “Obituary of J. Sholto Douglas,” p. 234.
6 See, e.g., Sheridan, Richard, Doctors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 338–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Green, William, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830–1865 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 310–11Google Scholar.
7 See, e.g., Light to Grey, 11 January 1848, PRO, CO 111/250, no. 10, enclosure, Dr Bonyun to Light, 6 January 1848, enclosure, remarks on each plantation; Light to Stanley, 8 April 1845, no. 8, Copies of the last Census of the Population Taken in Each of the British West India Islands and in British Guiana, no. 17—British Guiana, BPP, 1845, 31:329, 461.
8 On these developments, see Laurence, K. O., A Question of Labor: Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917 (Kingston, 1994), pp. 197–98Google Scholar, see also his “The Development of Medical Services in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1841–1873,” in Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present, ed. Beckles, Hilary and Shepherd, Verene (Kingston, 1993), pp. 269–71Google Scholar.
9 Wodehouse to Bart, 21 July 1854, PRO, CO 111/301, no. 40.
10 Laurence, “The Development of Medical Services in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1841–1873,” p. 272; Report on the Blue Book for 1886, BPP, vol. 57, pp. 323, 444; Report of the Surgeon General for the Year 1897–1898, p. 5.
11 The precise number of physicians who were not employed by the GMS and who had only private practices is uncertain but apparently small. Late nineteenth-century Demerara magistrate Henry Kirke, e.g., claimed that there were about six private practitioners in the late 1890s; John Anderson, in his account of filariasis in British Guiana, noted that there were “several” private practitioners in Georgetown in the 1920s. For these observations and the numbers employed by the GMS, see the following: J. Hampton King to Amery, 12 August 1926, PRO, CO 111/661, no. C.17029, no. 389, enclosure, 30/1926, British Guiana Combined Court, Second Special Session, 1926, enclosure, P. J. Kelly, “Memorandum on the Medical Service of British Guiana,” July 1922–May 1926, p. 3; Anderson, John, Filariasis in British Guiana: Clinical, Pathological, and Therapeutic Investigations (London, 1924), p. 6Google Scholar; Kirke, Henry, Twenty-Five Years in British Guiana (1898; Westport, Conn., 1970), p. 32Google Scholar.
12 Bruce to Knutsford, 18 January 1889, PRO, CO 111/451, no. 34, enclosure, Joao Teixeira to Knutsford, September 1888.
13 Bruce to Knutsford, 7 February 1889, PRO, CO 111/451, no. 61, enclosure, M. G. Pereira to Knutsford, 21 January 1889.
14 Some evidence suggests that this pattern held for other British West Indian colonies. Patrick Bryan, e.g., has observed that most physicians in late nineteenth-century Jamaica were British. See Bryan, , The Jamaican People, 1880–1902: Race, Class and Social Control (London, 1991), pp. 167–68Google Scholar.
15 Of those who were not, two were Portuguese-Guianese and two were Afro-Creoles. (It is uncertain whether they were born in British Guiana.) Collet to Churchill, confidential, 6 April 1921, PRO, CO 111/638, no. 74076, enclosures, “List of Medical Officers in the Medical Service on 1st January, 1912” and “Government Medical Officers of 1912 Classified according to Race.”
16 See, e.g., Powers, Helen, “The Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine: Institutionalizing Medical Research in the Periphery,” Medical History 40 (1996): 197–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Hoefte, Rosemarijn, In Place of Slavery: A Social History of British Indian and Javanese Laborers in Suriname (Gainesville, Fla., 1998), p. 151Google Scholar; Guerra, Francisco, “Medical Colonization of the New World,” Medical History 7 (1963): 151, 153CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
18 Bryan, The Jamaican People, pp. 167–68.
19 For a discussion of this process, see Peterson, M. Jeanne, The Medical Profession in Mid-Victorian London (Berkeley, 1978), chap. 1Google Scholar.
20 Bruce to Knutsford, 18 January 1889, PRO, CO 111/451, no. 34, enclosure, “Particulars of Office and Conditions for Employment in the Government Medical Service of British Guiana”; Knutsford to Gormanston, 7 December 1889, PRO, CO 111/453, no. 382; Gormanston to Knutsford, 8 November 1889, PRO, CO 111/453, no. 382. So far, I have been unable to determine whether this policy was directed toward other British Caribbean colonies.
21 Knutsford to Gormanston, 7 December 1889, PRO, CO 111/453, no. 382.
22 Lord Knutsford to Gormanston, 16 April 1890, PRO, CO 111/455, no. 70; Gormanston to Knutsford, 8 October 1890, PRO, CO 111/457, no. 317; “An Ordinance to Enable Dr. John Monteith Rohlehr to Be Registered as a Medical Practitioner in This Colony (No. 7 of 1890),” in The Laws of British Guiana, vol. 3, 1884–1891 (Oxford, 1895)Google Scholar. See also Minute to Mr. Wingfield, 21 July 1890, PRO, CO 111/457, no. 215; Bruce to Knutsford, 7 February 1889, PRO, CO 111/451, no. 61, enclosure, M. G. Pereira to Knutsford, 21 January 1889; Bruce to Knutsford, 18 January 1889, PRO, CO 111/451, no. 34; Gormanston to Knutsford, 8 November 1889, PRO, CO 111/453, no. 382.
23 Richard Sheridan has noted the presence of many Scottish-trained doctors in the eighteenth-century British Caribbean. See his “Mortality and the Medical Treatment of Slaves in the British West Indies,” in Beckles, and Shepherd, , eds., Carribean Freedom pp. 197–208Google Scholar. The Caribbean was not unique in this regard. David Hamilton has observed that many physicians who worked in the colonial medical services trained in Scotland; See The Healers: A History of Medicine in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1981)Google Scholar.
24 Bradley, James, Crowther, Anne, and Dupree, Marguerite, “Mobility and Selection in Scottish University Medical Education, 1858–1886,” Medical History 40 (1996): 4, 18–19CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
25 Their number included Douglas, L. R. Sharples, Francis E. Fields, William Elliot Lewis, Joshua S. Nedd, David Lawrence Luckhoo, James Edwin Rampersaud Ramdeholl, Archibald Bissember, Jung Bahadur Singh, Cecil Ramdeholl, G. M. Kerry, and W. Hewley Wharton, who opened a private practice in British Guiana. For details on the medical education of these individuals, see the following: Seecharan, Tiger in the Stars, pp. 284, 287–88, 337–38, n. 117; Miller, “Obituary of J. Sholto Douglas,” pp. 233–34; Egerton to Harcourt, confidential, 11 March 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11890; Collet to Milner, 8 March 1920, PRO, CO 111/629, no. 17621, 126, enclosure, “Application for Promotion in the Colonial Service of Francis Edwin Field,” 7 January 1920; Collet to Milner, 15 March 1920, PRO, CO 111/629, no. 18160, 136, and enclosed “Application for Colonial Employment.”
26 Collet to Long, confidential, 12 September 1918, PRO, CO 111/618, no. 49142, enclosure, particulars of the office of an assistant medical officer in the Colony of British Guiana. See also Seecharan, Tiger in the Stars, p. 288.
27 Campbell, Carl, The Young Colonials: A Social History of Education in Trinidad and Tobago, 1834–1939 (Barbados, 1996), p. 167Google Scholar.
28 See, e.g., Brereton, Bridget, A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783–1962 (Kingston, 1981), pp. 125–26Google Scholar.
29 de Freitas, Q. B., “Obituary of Dr. F. G. Rose,” British Guiana Medical Annual 27 (1943): 201–2Google Scholar.
30 Rohlehr is one example. See Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, p. 116.
31 de Freitas, Q. B., “Obituary of Dr. Frederick Telemachus Wills,” British Guiana Medical Annual 27 (1943): 204Google Scholar.
32 David Lawrence Luckhoo and Douglas, e.g., fall into this category. See Miller, “Obituary of J. Sholto Douglas,” pp. 233–34; British Guiana Directory and Almanack for 1888 (Georgetown, Guyana, 1888), p. 253Google Scholar; British Guiana Directory and Almanack for 1890 (Georgetown, Guyana, 1890), p. 255Google Scholar; Seecharan, Tiger in the Stars, p. 284.
33 Harrison, Mark, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine, 1859–1914 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 33Google Scholar; see also Power, Helen, “The Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine: Institutionalizing Medical Research on the Periphery,” Medical History 40 (1996): 212CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
34 Collet to Churchill, confidential, 6 April 1921, PRO, CO 111/638, no. 20586.
35 See, e.g., Stepan, Nancy Leys and Gilman, Sander, “Appropriating the Idioms of Science: The Rejection of Scientific Racism,” in The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance, ed. LaCapra, Dominick (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), p. 72Google Scholar.
36 Collet to Milner, confidential, 16 December, 1919, PRO, CO 111/425, 3111.
37 Clementi to Bonar Law, 15 July 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809, no. 242, enclosure, Wise to Government Secretary, 23 June 1916.
38 Egerton to Harcourt, 11 March 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11884, no. 75.
39 Egerton to Harcourt, confidential, 11 March 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11890.
40 Collet to Milner, confidential, 16 September 1919, National Archives of Guyana (NAG), Governor's Dispatches (GD).
41 E. R. D., 4 April 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11890.
42 G. G., 4 April 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11890.
43 7 April 1914, PRO, CO 111/593, no. 11890. A similar rationale underlay official reluctance to promote Afro-Creoles to a “commissioned rank” in the colonial police force. Clementi believed that British Guiana's heterogeneous population made it impractical and downright dangerous to promote Afro-Guianese police constables. See Clementi to Churchill, confidential, 15 September 1921, NAG, Governor's Dispatches.
44 Kirke, Twenty-Five Years in British Guiana, p. 263.
45 Bronkhurst, H. V. P., Among the Hindus and Creoles of British Guiana (London, 1888), p. 22Google Scholar; see also Jenkins, Edward, The Coolie, His Rights and Wrongs (London, 1871)Google Scholar.
46 Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 31 October 1916, NAG, GD.
47 Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 31 October 1916, enclosure, confidential memorandum by the Rev. J. B. Cropper, 7 November 1916.
48 Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 31 October 1916, NAG, GD.
49 Collet to Long, confidential, 12 September 1918, PRO, CO 111/618, no. 49142.
50 Clementi to Bonar Law, 11 August 1916, PRO, CO 111/607, no. 43361, no. 275; Clementi to Bonar Law, 11 August 1916, PRO, CO 111/607, no. 43361, no. 275, enclosure, Wise to Government Secretary, 9 August 1916.
51 Clementi to Long, confidential, 8 February 1917, PRO, CO 111/610, no. 15949, enclosure, memorandum by Wise to the Government Secretary, 25 January 1917; see also A. C. to Mr. Darnley, 24 December 1919, PRO, CO 111/425, no. 68176.
52 Clementi to Long, confidential, 8 February 1917, PRO, CO 111/610, no. 15949, enclosure, memorandum by Wise to the Government Secretary, 25 January 1917; Collet to Long, 26 August 1918, PRO, CO 111/618, no. 48692, no. 313, enclosure, memorandum concerning the Government Medical Staff; Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 15 July 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809. See also A. C. to Mr. Darnley, 24 December 1919, PRO, CO 111/425, no. 68176.
53 Milner to Collet, 13 September 1920, PRO, CO 111/629, no. 17625; Milner to Clementi, 17 September 1919, PRO, CO 111/624, no. 42975; Clementi to Milner, 1 August 1919, PRO, CO 111/624, no. 49944, no. 326; A. C. to W.I. Department, 2 October 1919, PRO, CO 111/624, no. 52372.
54 Clementi to Bonar Law, 11 August 1916, PRO, CO 111/607, no. 43361, no. 275, enclosure, Dr. Wise to Government Secretary, 9 August 1916.
55 Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 14 November 1916, PRO, CO 111/608, no. 60197.
56 Minute, G. P. to Mr Grindle, 18 December 1916, PRO, CO 111/608, no. 60197.
57 Minute, G. G., PRO, CO 111/608, no. 54363, 14 November 1916; draft minute, Bonar Law to Clementi, 28 November 1916, PRO, CO 111/608, no. 54363.
58 J. F. N. G. to Mr Grindle, 1 November 1916, PRO, CO 111/607, no. 43361.
59 Minute, G. P. to Mr Grindle, 18 December 1916, PRO, CO 111/608, no. 60197.
60 [Unknown correspondent] to Mr. Fiddian, 16 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056; H. F., 17 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056.
61 F. L. S. to Milner, 18 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056.
62 Collet to Milner, 26 November 1919, PRO, CO 111/425, 298, no. 518; F. L. S. to Milner, 18 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056.
63 Report of the Surgeon General for the Year 1920, p. 1. There is some uncertainty as to whether Bissember was Afro- or Indo-Guianese. Seecharan refers to an Indo-Guianese doctor named Archibald Bissember who returned to British Guiana to practice medicine in 1919, but Colonial Office correspondence describes the Bissember hired in 1920 as “coloured” See Seecharan, Tiger in the Stars, p. 287; see also A. C. to W.I. Department, 2 October 1919, PRO, CO 111/624, no. 52372; [Unknown correspondent] to Mr. Fiddian, 16 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056; H. F., 17 July 1919, PRO, CO 111/623, no. 37056.
64 G. G. to Bonar Law, 16 September 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809.
65 G. P., 13 September 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809.
66 Clementi to Long, confidential, 8 February 1917, PRO, CO 111/610, no. 15949.
67 Ibid.
68 Long to Clementi, 13 April 1917, PRO, CO 111/610, no. 15949.
69 J. M. to Giddes, 30 March 1917, PRO, CO 111/610, no. 15949.
70 Clementi to Bonar Law, 15 July 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809, no. 242; Bonar Law to O. A. G., B. G., 19 September 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809.
71 Clementi to Bonar Law, confidential, 15 July 1916, PRO, CO 111/606, no. 39809.
72 Brereton, A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783–1962, pp. 128–29. See also Smith, Raymond T., British Guiana (London, 1962), p. 116Google Scholar. On the political role of the middle class, see the following: Bryan, The Jamaican People; Beckles, Hilary, A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State (Cambridge, 1900)Google Scholar; Rodney, History of the Guyanese Working People.
73 See Drakes, Francis, “The People's Association, 1903–1921,” History Gazette 36 (September 1991): 2–4Google Scholar; and Rodney, History of the Guyanese Working People.
74 Bryan, The Jamaican People, pp. 241–42, 245, 248, 252; Beckles, A History of Barbados, pp. 156–59.
75 See Rodney, History of the Guyanese Working People, p. 204. For Nedd's background, see Collet to Milner, 15 March 1920, PRO, CO 111/629, no. 18160, no. 136, and enclosed “Application for Colonial Employment.”
76 See Daily Chronicle (23 April 1922), p. 7; see also the discussion in Daily Chronicle (28 April 1922).
77 Daily Chronicle (23 April 1922), p. 7.
78 See Thomas, Nicholas, “Sanitation and Seeing: The Creation of State Power in Early Colonial Fiji,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (1990): 153, 156–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, Mark, “Towards a Sanitary Utopia? Professional Visions and Public Health in India, 1880–1914,” South Asia Research 10, no. 1 (1990): 19, 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
79 See De Barros, Juanita, Order and Place in a Colonial City: Patterns of Struggle and Resistance in Georgetown, British Guiana, 1889–1924 (Montreal, 2002), chap. 3Google Scholar.
80 Poor Portuguese immigrants were invariably described in official and popular sources as separate from “Europeans.” Historians have suggested numerous explanations, but it is likely that the distinction rested largely on class grounds: the Portuguese were imported to work on the sugar estates, and, although some of them had entered the professional and entrepreneurial middle class, many remained very poor.
81 Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS), London, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into and Report upon the General and Infantile Mortality 1906 (Georgetown, Guyana, 1906), p. 8Google Scholar. (hereafter, Report of the Mortality Commission).
82 See, e.g., Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Harmondsworth, 1976), pp. 129, 288Google Scholar.
83 See De Barros, chap. 7.
84 British Guiana Combined Court, “Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Conditions of Employment and Rates of Wages Paid to Stevedores, Wharfmen, and Labourers,” NAG, Minutes of the Combined Court (MCC), 15/1924, pp. 9, 15, 21.
85 Report of the Inspector General of Police for the Year 1885, pp. 297–99.
86 Jones, Outcast London, pp. 288–89, 303–5. See also Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (New York, 1991), pp. 122, 125–26Google Scholar.
87 W. De W. Wishart, Annual Report of the Public Health Department of the City of Georgetown for the Year 1923, pp. 6, 7, Municipal Storage Building (MSB), Georgetown, Guyana. See also “Report of the Chief Sanitary Inspector, January 1923,” Minutes of the Georgetown (Guyana) Town Council, 1923, p. 313, MSB.
88 The Baby Saving League, The Second Annual Report of the Baby Saving League of British Guiana, 1915, p. 7, London School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), London.
89 Conrad J. Arthur, Report of the Medical Officer, St. Vincent, for the Year, 1912–13, LSTM.
90 Stepan, Nancy, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 125–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Jones, Outcast London, p. 333. Soloway, Richard, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990), pp. 147–48, 152Google Scholar.
91 Nye, Robert A., “Sociology and Degeneration: The Irony of Progress,” in Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, ed. Chamberlain, J. Edward and Gilman, Sander L. (New York, 1985), p. 65Google Scholar.
92 Soloway, Demography and Degeneration, pp. 39, 41, 139.
93 See “Report on the Distribution of Free Meals to Destitute Children Attending Schools in Georgetown, 1906,” NAG, MCC, no. 353.
94 Report of the Surgeon General for the Year 1909–1910, p. 452, MSB; see also Wishart, Annual Report of the Public Health Department of the City of Georgetown for 1923, 1915, pp. 3, 6; see also Baby Saving League of British Guiana, The Second Annual Report of the Baby Saving League of British Guiana, 1915, p. 11, and The Fifth Annual Report of the Baby Saving Leagure of British Guiana, 1918, p. 8, LSTM; Report of the Surgeon General for the Year 1916, p. 548. See also Daily Chronicle (7 July 1921), p. 7.
95 See Reports of the Baby Saving League for 1916, 1917, 1919, 1921, and 1923, LSTM.
96 Wishart, , “Infant Welfare Work in Georgetown—Past, Present, and Future,” in Report of the Proceedings of the West Indian Medical Conference, 1921 (Georgetown, 1921), p. 53Google Scholar, ICS; see also Daily Chronicle (7 July 1921) p. 7.
97 See, e.g., Porter, Dorothy, Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient to Modern Times (London, 1999), p. 179Google Scholar.
98 Report of the Mortality Commission, p. i.
99 Ibid., pp. ii, 14 – 15.
100 Only one witness described local women as good mothers. Rev. Father Victorine noted that “mothers [were] pretty careful about the food of the children.” See Ibid., p. iv.
101 Wishart, “Infant Welfare Work in Georgetown—Past, Present, and Future,” p. 53.
102 Report of the Mortality Commission, p. iv.
103 Dr.Minett, , “Infant Mortality,” in Report of the Proceedings of the West Indian Medical Conference, 1921 (Georgetown, 1921), p. 58, ICSGoogle Scholar. The sources neglect to include Dr. Minett's initials or first name, referring to her only by her married name, Mrs. E. P. Minett (she was married to E. P. Minett, British Guiana's medical officer of health).
104 Minett, E. P., “The Progress of Village Sanitation,” British Guiana Medical Annual 20 (1913–14): 93–95Google Scholar.
105 Rose, F. G., “The Progress of Sanitation in British Guiana,” Timehri, 3d ser., 17, no. 24 (1921): 61–62Google Scholar.
106 See, e.g., “Transactions of the British Guiana Branch,” British Guiana Medical Annual for 1925 24 (1925): 135, 137Google Scholar; see also “Transactions of the BG Branch of the British Medical Association for 1907, 1908, 1909,” British Guiana Medical Annual for 1908 16 (1908): ii–ivGoogle Scholar.
107 Rose, “The Progress of Sanitation in British Guiana,” pp. 61–62.
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