Doctor, Female Medical Officer to the Post Office.

1848 – 16 November 1929

A Tribute to Dr Edith Shove, First Female Medical Officer to the Post Office, by Holly Marley

Edith Shove, a first-generation “lady doctor” and Senior Female Medical Officer to the Post Office, was born in Lewisham Kent in 1849. She was the sixth child of John Shove (1806-1872), a corn and coal merchant, and Mary Holder Cobbett (1809-1887). At the beginning of her career, she lived in North West London at 25 St Mark’s Crescent where she remained until around 1910 when she moved to York Street, Marylebone. She lived in a residence for professional women, which was established by the Ladies’ Dwelling Company in 1892. Like many other first generation medical women, she did not marry, as it would have interfered with her studies and career aspirations. She was also interested in ancient languages and anthropology and belonged to the Society or Psychical Research, the Hellenic Society, and the Society for Roman Studies.

Details of her initial education are unknown, however before starting her formal medical education, she undertook a five-year apprenticeship with Dr Prior Purvis, a respected liberal supporter of women’s admission into the medical profession, who trained her in surgery and the arts of the apothecary. She joined the renowned Sophia Jex-Blake in extra mural classes at Surgeon’s Hall Edinburgh in the early 1870s, although her time there was short due to the University of Edinburgh’s dismissal of the undergraduate female medical students. 

Shove then moved to London and continued her formal medical education in Bloomsbury at the newly established London School of Medicine for Women in 1874. She was among the first women to register and enrolled in the course of medicine on the School’s first day of operation. That same year she excelled in the Apothecary Hall’s preliminary examination and was placed at the head of all the candidates, which consisted of 50 men and 5 other women. Her professors and peers recognised that she was a talented anatomist and, in addition to excelling in her anatomy and comparative anatomy classes, she earned the distinction of being the school’s demonstrator, which afforded her the opportunity of supervising and guiding the dissections. Shove was dedicated to her studies and she undertook additional private study and tutored young students at the school. In September 1876, she travelled to Dublin alongside fellow student Edith Pechey, to appeal to the Irish colleges for women’s right to take the licensing exam. This ended in a successful negotiation with the King and Queen’s College of Physicians (KQCPI), which Sophia Jex Blake believed to be ‘the turning point of the whole struggle.’ Shove, and her peer Mary Scharlieb, were the first women to sit the University of London MB examinations with Shove passing the first examination in the first division in August 1880. In 1881 she became a licentiate in medicine and midwifery from the KQCPI, after around thirteen years of study in total. In the final MB examination, she earned the distinction of achieving second class honours in obstetric medicine and third-class honours in medicine. 

Upon the completion of her medical training, she engaged in research with the French physician Dr Charles Remy which was published in the Comptes rendus des séances et mémoires de la Société de biologie in 1882. The research focused on experiences of pancreatic lesions in diabetics and involved microscopic investigation and vivisection. Shove held a short-term position as resident medical officer to the New Hospital for Women, before being appointed by the Postmaster General, Henry Fawcett, as Female Medical Officer to the Post Office in March 1883. This marked an important moment in medical women’s history, as Shove was the first female practitioner to be employed by the Civil Service. Her appointment generated a salary initially of £300 per annum, which would rise annually by £20 until reaching a maximum salary of £450. This was a significant income for a newly graduated female practitioner, who was frequently obliged to offer their services gratis.

News of her appointment was circulated in the medical and lay press, which generated a mixed reaction. A small notice published in The Lancet criticised the Postmaster General’s decision, asserting that he had stretched his power to make an appointment that would not be agreeable to the postal employees. The British comedy periodical Funny Folks also made light of the Shove’s appointment, remarking that it was regarded as a ‘Shove – in the right direction’ but that ‘public confidence may desert the Postmaster General who is apparently thinking of the females when his foremost duty is to look after the “mails!”

In her role as Female Medical Officer, Shove was responsible for the medical attendance of all established female postal workers in London’s Chief Office. She would provide treatments for sick workers, inspect and report upon the working conditions of the women under her care, investigate suspected cases of malingering and would generally contribute her knowledge and expertise of women’s health when it was requested. In 1891 she was asked to give her opinion on women’s sickness absence as part of a conference on women’s postal roles. She reported that the majority of women employed by the Post Office were able to fulfil their duties without injury to their health and that less favourable views of their working capacities from other medical officers are likely due to their forgetting that most women who were frequently unwell were from a ‘feeble minority of the whole’ and that the stronger women only come under their notice when suffering from an ailment. She also rejected the idea from another postal medical officer that the female staff should be dismissed from service at the age of 35, as her experience at the Central Telegraph Office, where the vast majority of women were employed, showed that female staff members above the ages of 40 and 50 were still physiologically capable of fulfilling their duties. 

Shove was also responsible for medically examining all female candidates for postal appointments in the London headquarters and for performing a second probationary examination after two years. Her experience with examining candidates over the course of her career allowed her to develop a specialist knowledge of women’s postal roles and their possible health consequences. In 1895, she reported to the Civil Service Commissioners that it would be beneficial to have clearer regulations drawn up with regards to standards of eye-sight in postal candidates. She observed that Post Office work was especially trying for short-sighted workers and could lead to further eye strain. She also requested that regulations be put in place for colour-blind applicants, so that there was a clear indication of which posts they were able to fulfil. 

Shove held her position as Female Medical Officer for 25 years, although her title was altered in 1895 to Senior Female Medical Officer following to the employment of her assistant Dr Minnie Madgshon. She retired from the Post Office at 60, the required retirement age for her role, in 1907 before her death in November 1929 at the age of 82. There is little documentation of the patient-doctor relationship that Shove had with the female staff of the Post Office, however her contributed to reports and inquiries suggest she took a supportive stance towards the staff and defended them against accusations of excessive sick-leave and malingering. For example she reported to the Chief Medical Officer in 1899 that allegations of unnecessary sick leave amongst the female staff   ‘do great injustice to a hardworking and conscientious body of women.’

Throughout her long career with the Post Office Medical Service, she held her appointment ‘with much satisfaction to everyone concerned’ and was generally regarded as a modest and intelligent women, and an all-round good practitioner. 

Holly Marley is a PhD student working with the Addressing Health project, which explores morbidity, mortality and occupation health in the Victorian and Edwardian Post Office. Her research concentrates on the Post Office Medical Officers who were employed across Britain from the mid nineteenth-century. 

Holly Marley
PhD Student, University College London
Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health
https://addressinghealth.org.uk/