Genius Fan

Some months ago I discovered there was a collection of books from the Eighteenth century tucked away in the library at Lanark. I made arrangements to view it and spent two hours handling and leafing through books that had been collected more than 270 years ago. This is the library of William Smellie (1697-1763) known, at the end of his life, as the Master of British Midwifery. It’s a little adventure to spend time like that, a bit of time-travel, aided by a wonderfully-written biography from Robert W Johnstone. And then to spend the past week or so writing and illustrating my posts for Genius Fan…it’s been a William Smellie binge. Very enjoyable.

Let’s have a Smellie plaque in Lanark

William Smellie’s personal library is a legacy now cared for by Lanark Library. But if you wanna mooch around the town, and look a bit deeper, you’ll find traces of Smellie here (a street name) and there (an orphanage, now demolished).

There’s no plaque, that I know of, remembering him to the local population. Wouldn’t that be great to have one on the wall of his former home and practice in the Bloomgate, Lanark. Was it the site of the Bank of Scotland building? (An ‘artist’s’ impression below. lol!) It could read: “Dr William Smellie (1697-1763). Father of British Obstetrics. Had clinic in Bloomgate 1736-1739.” There’s a suggestion.

The old William Smellie Maternity Hospital

The town’s maternity hospital, was named the William Smellie Maternity Hospital, until it was shut down in 1992 (and eventually turned into flats). See the pic below. The architecture is pure country hospital. Magical.

Mother and Child remembers William Smellie

A statue of a young mother suckling her infant, which used to stand in the grounds of the old William Smellie Maternity Hospital, was moved to a location in front of the town’s Woodstock Medical Practice.

Finally, Smellie’s tomb. He was buried in the graveyard of St Kentigern’s church in Lanark in 1763, and his wife Eupham followed him in 1769. His biographer RW Johnstone tells us a pilgrimage to Smellie’s gravesite, by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Obstetrical Societies in 1929, found the grave in a state of disrepair “through the neglect of man [and] through the action of the elements.” The societies funded a tomb with a “stout oaken door” to be built over the gravestones and two years later, after it was in place, they returned for a commemoration service in 1931.

I visited the tomb a couple of weeks ago and found it in a terrible state. The roof – there’s maybe only 20 per cent of slates in place, though the roof felt is in good nick. The ‘oaken door’ has been protected with a wooden cover, which itself is covered in grafitti. The door is locked fast, which is good, but the iron grill over the window has been removed and thrown to the side, allowing people to enter and…do whatever people do in those circumstances: shelter from the rain, do their homework, prepare plans for a tech start up. There’s a park bench in there (I clambered through the window space to examine close up) and it sits on a gravestone laying flat and up against the other gravestone standing with its back to St Kentigern’s church wall. The whole tomb looks awful. Let’s see the local authority secure that and give William Smellie the respect he deserves.

Notes
William Smellie, The Master of British Midwifery, RW Johnstone (1952)
I’ve used this book for details throughout these Smellie posts. It’s such an enjoyable story. But it. Read it.