Victorian era medicine was in a world of transition, from one of chance and
superstition to one of hospitals and modern science. Despite this revolution the 19th
Century was still a time when the working classes didn’t have regular access to
healthcare so street doctors stepped in to fill the gap…and fill their pockets.
Some were no more than quacks and exploited the poor and needy with dishonest
cures and worthless potions, so that those already suffering grinding poverty
and poor sanitation were tricked out of money with false hopes.
You’re going to hear the story of Victorian London’s street doctors, as told in an
account from 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith
and is narrated in the words of Smith. Thomson was a talented and influential
photographer who joined with Smith, a journalist, in a project to photograph
the street life of London's poor. The authors were careful not to varnish their words
for an audience. What they saw and heard accurately reflects their interactions with
everyday people and genuinely immerses the reader in authentic Victorian street life.
You can check the in-video cards and description for links to more interesting
videos about the Victorians. In particular we have 'Street Life in London' from the same
authors which opens a window on more genuinely wonderful characters from
Victorian London and the hard lives they led. Do check it out.
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The subject of the accompanying illustration is a vendor of cough lozenges
and healing ointment. He was originally a car-driver employed by a firm in the city,
but had to leave his situation on account of failing sight. His story, told in his own
words, is as follows :- "First of all I had to leave my place on account of bad sight.
It was brought on by exposure to the cold. Inflammation set in the right eye and soon
affected the left. The doctors called it ‘atrophy.' I went to St. Thomas's Hospital
for nine months, to St. George's Hospital, and to Moorfields Opthalmic Hospital.
From St. Thomas' Hospital I was sent to the sea-side at the expense of the Merchant
Taylors' Company. No good came of it all, and at last I was so blind that I had to be led
about like a child. At that time my wife worked with her needle and her hands to
keep things going. She used to do charing during the day and sewing at night, shirt-
making for the friend of a woman who worked for a contractor. She got twopence-
halfpenny for making a shirt, and by sitting till two or three in the morning could finish
three shirts at a stretch. I stood at a street corner in the New Cut selling fish,
and had to trust a good deal to the honesty of my customers, as I could not see.
At this time I fell in with a gentleman selling ointment, he gave me a box, which I used
for my eyes. I used the ointment about a month, and found my sight gradually
returning. The gentleman who makes the ointment offered to set me up in business
with his goods. I had no money, but he gave me everything on trust. It was a good thing
for both of us, because I was a sort of, I dunno, standing advertisement for him and
for myself. I now make a comfortable living and have a good stock. When the maker of
the ointment started he carried a tray; now he has three vans, and more than fifty
people selling for him. I find the most of my customers in the street, but I am now
making a private connexion at home of people from all parts of London. The price
of the Arabian Family Ointment, which can be used for chapped hands, lips, inflamed
eyes, cuts, scalds, and sores, are from a penny to half-a-crown a box.
Medicated cough lozenges a halfpenny and a penny a packet."
Street vendors of pills, potions, and quack nostrums are not quite so numerous as they
were in former days. The increasingly large number of free hospitals, where the poor
may consult qualified physicians, the aid received at a trifling cost from clubs and
friendly societies, and the spread of education, have all tended to sweep this
class of street-folks from the thoroughfares of London. Although of late years much has
been done by private charities to supplement the system of parochial relief,
there is still a vast field open for the extension of medical missions among the
lower orders of the community. Far from being in a position to record the extinction
of the race of ‘herbalists’ and ‘doctors for the million’ who practice upon the poor,
my investigations prove they are still about as numerous as their trade is lucrative.
It would be unjust to say that the itinerant empirics of the metropolis have advanced
with the age, as it is part of their ‘role’ to adhere to all that is old in the nomenclature
and practice of their craft. An intelligent member of the fraternity informed me that
as members of the medical profession, they are bound to use what may be called
‘crocus’ Latin. "Our profession is known, sir, as 'crocussing,' and our dodges and
decoctions as 'fakes' or rackets. Many other words make up a sort of dead language
that protects us and the public from ignorant impostors. It don't do to juggle with
drugs, leastwise to them that are ignorant of the business. I was told by a chum of
mine, a university man, that 'crocussing' is nigh as old as Adam, and that some of
our best rackets were copied from 'Egypshin' tombs." I ventured to remark
possibly they were inscribed on the tombs as a warning from the dead. "Like as not,"
was the rejoinder, "I expect the dead in this country could tell us summat about
poisoning by Act of Parliament. Pardon me, sir, you may be a licensed surgeon yourself.
But I would as soon swallow a brass knocker as some of your drugs.
A brass knocker is a safe prescription for opening a door, it's poison as a pill.
I believe it is just the same with the poisons took out of the bowels of the earth, where
they should be left to correct disorders. Herbs are the thing, they were intended for
man and they grow at his feet, for meat and medicine. You see, sir, I'm a bit of
a philosopher; when I'm not ' ‘pattering’ speaking - I'm thinking.
I have been a cough tablet 'crocus' for nine years, only in summer I go for the
Sarsaparilla' fake.' Sometimes this is a regular 'take-down' - swindle. The 'Blood
Purifier' is made up of a cheap herb called sassafras, burnt sugar, and water flavoured
with a little pine-apple or pear juice. That's what's called sarsaparilla by some
'crocusses.' If it don't lengthen the life of the buyer it lengthens the life of the seller.
It's about the same thing in the end. A very shady 'racket' is the India root for destroying
all sorts of vermin including rats. It's put among clothes like camphor.
Any root will answer if it's scented, but this racket requires sailor's togs; for the 'crocus'
must just have come off the ship from foreign parts. It also requires a couple of
tame rats to fight shy of the root. The silver paste is a fatal ‘fake.' The paste is made of
whiting and red ochre. The 'crocus' has a solution of bichloride of mercury which he
mixes with the paste, and rubbing it over a farthing silvers it. He sells it for plating
brass candlesticks and such like, but it's the mercury that does the business,
he don't sell that. The mercury in time gets into his blood and finishes him.
I have known two killed this way. There are many different dodges in ‘crocussing.'
One man I know, togged like a military swell, scares the people into buying his pills.
He has half-a-dozen bottles filled with different fluids he works with, turnin' one
into t'other. He turns a clear fluid black, and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what
happens to your blood when exposed to the fogs of London. Without blood there is no
life!" You seem bloodless, my friends; look at each other.” They look, and almost
believe him. “Next to no blood is impure blood! This is your condition,
I can describe your symptoms; I offer you the only safe, certain, and infallible remedy."
"This style of 'patter' makes the pills fly, but it's not everyone can come it to perfection.”
"As to myself, my 'patter' is on the scholarly tack; reason and persuasion. I uphold
the medical profession for most things, and tell all I know, and more so, about Materia
Medica, for I don't know much. Once a learned cove, a student, I think, tried to take
a rise out of me. Says he, 'What's Materia Medica?' Says I, “If you've descended from
Balaam's ass, you've browsed on it in the fields!' I never saw him again.
I am not agoin' to give you my ‘patter,' I can't turn it on like steam. You should hear me at
my best, it's well worth publishing. On a fair night, in a good 'pitch,' with a crowd round
me, my tongue seems aflame. Some of our best ‘patterers' lush heavily. One used to
say: "Demosthenes when he studied oratory, went to the sea-shore and filled his mouth
with pebbles. I know a trick worth two of that, I go to the nearest public and fill my
mouth with a glass of the best Scotch whisky." He went there once too often.
The fact is, most of us come to the gutter through boozing, and if a racket is
dishonest, you may be certain the 'crocus ' drinks hard. The corn 'fake' pays with a
fellow who can 'patter.' His stock costs next to nothing. It should be sulphur and rosin
to drop on the corn red hot. But rosin does alone at a pinch. I find a good honest
‘racket' pays best in the end, people buy and come again. I have had my regular
customers for years, and now I make a tidy living both summer and winter,
and I need all I earn, for I have my old mother depending on me."
My informant has the reputation of being an honest, hard-working fellow. His cough
tablets, if they do not possess all the virtues he ascribes to them, are certainly pleasant
to the taste. On the occasion of my last visit to my informant I had an opportunity
of seeing one or two of his patients. One, a blacksmith, who had burned his arm
severely, stoutly testified to the wonderful healing properties of the ointment.
Another, also a worker in iron, came in to purchase a box: "It has been the saving of
my wife," he said; "she has a bad leg, but this salve keeps the wound open, and this
wound do act as a safety-valve to her heart; were it allowed to close she would die of
heart disease. Me and my wife discovered this, and it's worth knowing. It draws off the
bad humour, and, bless you, sir, there's a deal of bad humour about my wife!
I'm a temperance son of the Phoenix. My wife ain't. She would not be a Phoenix if she
could. She pulls one way, I pull t’other. She was a teetotal for five years before me,
but when I became a Phoenix she took the bottle, so she did. The Phoenix is a benefit
and burial society. I pay three pence a week into it, and would be decently buried if I
died. It is the interest of the Phoenixes to get us to live long, and for that reason it is a
teetotal brotherhood." This man was subscribing twopence halfpenny weekly to a
club which secured for him and his family the attendance of a surgeon in the
neighbourhood. For all that, he had sought the aid of this dispenser of quack
compounds, and expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the result of his
treatment. I found in the course of my inquiries that the poor, many of them, prefer
either resorting to quack remedies or employing their own paid surgeon,
to placing themselves in the hands of the parish doctor, or under hospital treatment.
This is accounted for in two ways. An honourable feeling of independence deters
the poorer orders of the labouring classes from seeking parish relief in any shape.
Others, who would gladly avail themselves of free medical advice, cannot find time to
obtain a certificate from the relieving officer, and to present the certificate in the proper
quarter. When all the forms have been duly complied with, grievous delays frequently
occur in obtaining advice, and the necessary prescriptions; the latter have, in
some instances, to be taken to the dispensary at the other end of the parish.
Some of the aged, infirm, and friendless poor, who receive regular out-door relief,
have under ordinary circumstances to pay a messenger a shilling for collecting their
weekly pittance of half-a-crown. In time of sickness, when they cannot crawl from
their door, they too are fain to avail themselves
of the remedies of itinerant doctors.