Looking Back - Updated 21st January 2010
Each week local history enthusiast and amateur archaeologist John Burnett, of South Kirkby, takes a look at a topic of local interest from past times.
South Kirkby's first recorded doctor appears to be Dr Cole in 1851, and then nothing more is known until an inquest in 1866 into the death of farmer John Beamont who fell downstairs. The inquest was held at the Chequers Inn at South Elmsall and Dr Thomson from Moorthorpe gave evidence.
Medicine was in its infancy before the Victorian Age and most doctors who were poor relied on herbalist remedies and folk cure to treat ill people. Hygiene was something to be desired, but towards the end of the 1800s medicine had flourished so much that a doctor was one of the most respected people in society and somewhat richer.
Around 1893 one respected practitioner called Dr E J H Sullivan had a surgery in South Kirkby and another at South Elmsall in a stone cottage in Lowgate next to the railway station.
I remember my family lodging in one of those now demolished cottages. We had an attic bedroom and during the night when it rained all we heard was the dripping of water into buckets placed at various points around the room – ah, happy days!
It is said that it was usual for Dr Sullivan, as a member of Badsworth Hunt, to call on patients still dressed in his hunting attire riding his horse – now there's a real character.
When he retired in 1940 his son, Dr F W P Sullivan, and associate partner, Dr E H Nooney, continued at the premises.
Dr Nooney had been demobbed from the forces in 1918 and helped Dr Sullivan relieve many sufferers in the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed 20 million worldwide.
After Dr Sullivan died in 1951, many readers will remember Dr Price and Dr Wetherall taking over the practice.
Two surgeries were set up in South Elmsall's Barnsley Road by Dr R B Radcliffe and partner Dr H N Horton around the early 1900s.
Dr Pounds and Dr L C Grahame practised on the other side of the road; Dr Marshall took over in 1976.
Our family practitioner was Dr Lishman who, with Warde Aldam hospital surgeon Dr Hemsley, opened a practice near the bottom of Westfield Lane later joined by Dr Willkinson, I think.
At the reception you were given a number and then had to sit and wait until a red light and buzzer over the doorway told you it was your turn. After the examination and prescription you left by the back door – ah, more happy days!
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Friday 25 May 2012
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