Dr. Catharine Corbett M.B. Ch.B. D.P.H...... another story from Tony Goulding

As promised, this is a follow up story featuring the woman who but for her surname being marginally higher alphabetically would have been the first to receive a medical degree at Manchester University.

Graduates of Manchester Medical School –July 1904

Catharine Louisa Corbett was born on 2nd December 1877 in Handforth, Cheshire. She was the second of the two children of Manchester-based architect (1) and surveyor Christopher George Bentham Corbett and his wife Sarah (née Woodhead). 

She had an older brother, John Rooke. (2) In the 1881 census, the family are recorded at 9, Silverwell Yard, Bolton, Lancashire where, very unusually for the time Catharine’s mother was, despite the fact she had two young children, recorded as a “school headmistress”

Both her parents were from established quaker families and as such Catharine benefited from that tradition’s valuing of the education of girls. Her mother, also being a beneficiary of this principle had the distinction of being one of the first three women to pass the Tripos at Cambridge University in 1873; being the very first to do so in Mathematics. These three ladies became known as the Girton Pioneers (3) with their names being celebrated in the that College’s song.

 The 1891 census records Catharine as a pupil of “The Hollies”, Epsom, Surrey, a High School for Girls run by her aunt Caroline Woodhead, who ten years earlier had been her family’s housekeeper.

 Both “Catharine” and “Catherine” qualified as doctors on 28th July 1904 and as opportunities for newly qualified female doctors at the time were very limited the two often found themselves as colleagues and occasionally rivals for the same post. The “Westminster & Pimlico News” reported that on Wednesday 3rd January 1906, whilst both were employed at The Clapham Maternity Home, they attended an interview for a post at the Chelsea Infirmary. On this occasion Dr. Corbett was selected by the appointments board by a vote of eight to three.

 After eighteen months in Chelsea, Dr Corbett was appointed by the West Ham Board of Guardians on Thursday 27th June 1907 to a similar post at the Whipps Cross Infirmary.

The census of 1911 shows she had left London and was living at 35, Wilkinson Street, Sheffield again with her, by then retired aunt, Caroline Woodhead. She had also left hospital work and entered the field of public health, which would be the focus of the rest of her career: working as a school health inspector.

Manchester Babies Hospital, Burnage Lane, Burnage (28/4/1924)

Catharine had returned to Manchester to take on a similar rôle with Lancashire County Council Education Department and assist her friend Catherine Chisholm in the foundation of the Manchester Babies Hospital  when, in February 1915 she volunteered to join a medical unit formed by Scottish members of The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies which went to serve in a hospital at Kraguievatz on the Serbian front. At this time, her home address was 12, Birch Polygon, Rusholme, Manchester. In January 1916 she was reported as a prisoner of war. Released after a couple of months of captivity she returned to England and gave a series of lectures trying to raise much needed funds for the hospital. From 30th August 1916 until 24th November 1917, she again served on the Eastern Front treating sick and wounded in Russia and Rumania. Finally finishing the War, working as a surgeon at the County of Middlesex War Hospital. (The former County Asylum and now Napsbury Hospital, London Colney, Nr. St. Albans, Hertfordshire.)

 Following her war service, back in civilian life Dr. Corbett returned to her work for Lancashire County Council and Burnley, Lancashire (4) where she spent the remainder of her career before moving to Bristol, Gloucestershire in her retirement. In Bristol she once again resided with her brother at 1, Falcondale Road, Westbury-on-Trym. Dr. Corbett died there on 22nd June 1960.

   Outside of her medical career Catharine showed her adventurous spirit by being a keen climber and a liking for fast cars. On at least one occasion, she was convicted of speeding. Later while in Bristol she was involved in another traffic incident; that time only as a witness to an accident. She was also a Socialist and a Feminist being a member of both the Fabian Society and the National Society of Women.

In the immediate aftermath of World War 1 she privately published her diary of her time in Serbia and gave several lectures based on it 

Pictures: - Medical graduates Manchester University, 1904, Dr. Corbett is the left one of the two women on the front Row, with the kind permission of The Manchester High School for Girls Archives. Manchester Babies Hospital, Burnage Lane, Burnage Manchester City Council’s City Engineers Department m 52817 images courtesy of Manchester Libraries. Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY 4.0) licence

Notes:-

1) One of Catharine’s father’s projects was the Barton Arcade between Deansgate and St. Ann’s Square, Manchester.

2) Her brother John Rooke was named after his uncle who had died aged 19 in a drowning accident in the River Irwell at Clifton, Nr. Salford, Lancashire on Monday19th April 1869. He was in a rowing boat with Catharine’s father when it capsized in rough water.

3) One of these “Girton Pioneers”, Rachel Susan Cook later married Mr. C.P. Scott the editor of the Manchester Guardian.

4) The 1921 census record shows Dr. Corbett at 395, Padiham Road, Burnley, Lancashire and again living with her aunt and two servants. By 1939 the family home had moved to 31, Ightenhill Park Lane, Burnley where Catharine’s brother John Rooke, who was a district valuer for the Inland Revenue, joined her and her aunt.