Glasgow: The Real Mean City by Archibald Malcolm

Author:Archibald, Malcolm [Archibald, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black & White Publishing

Glasgow’s Own Doctor Death

Edward Pritchard was an Englishman who came to Glasgow and set himself up as a general practitioner. He was born in 1825 and at fifteen became an apprentice naval surgeon, eventually serving at sea for four years. Although his doctoring skills may have left much to be desired, he was most definitely popular with a certain type of lady: those with low morals and a nature that was easily swayed by charm. He worked in Hunmanby in Yorkshire, but according to rumour, he had to leave when the number of angry husbands became too many for him to avoid. Even uglier rumours followed him as he came to Glasgow in 1860.

Pritchard was a tall man, with the beard that was so fashionable at the time, although he was balding on top, and seems to have been immensely vain. Indeed he paraded around the centre of Glasgow, sniffing out likely ladies and handing out postcards of himself in the full fig of a Masonic Master.

Despite his amorous pursuits, Pritchard was a married man. In 1850 he married Mary Jane Taylor of Edinburgh, with whom he had five children. It had been Mary’s parents who bought Pritchard out of the navy and financed his doctor’s practice in Yorkshire. Perhaps their money enabled him to buy the certificates of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Erlangen and Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries of London, for his qualifications were certainly more impressive than his skill. The Taylors’ money may have enabled Pritchard to better cheat on their daughter too, but possibly he used his silver tongue for that. The same tongue talked him into the Freemasons, so he became master of Lodge St Mark, and into the Glasgow Royal Arch and the Grand Lodge of the Royal Order in Edinburgh. In fact, Pritchard eased himself into any society that could help him. His fellow doctors in Glasgow, however, were less awestruck.

In 1863 Elizabeth McGirn, Pritchard’s maidservant, died at a fire at his Berkeley Street home. Despite Pritchard’s increasingly dubious reputation, a police investigation found nothing untoward. The Pritchard family moved home, first to Royal Crescent, then Sauchiehall Street, with the Taylors again footing the bill. Then, in the autumn of 1864, Mary became quite seriously sick. She left her husband to live with her parents in Edinburgh. Once in the capital she recovered quickly and returned to Glasgow, only to fall sick again. The received wisdom of the period attributed illness to unhealthy air, and the Taylors thought the industrial pollution of Glasgow was somehow to blame. But when Mary was languishing in her west coast sickbed, Dr Cowan came from Edinburgh to check on her. Despite Pritchard’s occupation, Cowan, a relation, recommended that Mrs Taylor come through to help look after her daughter.

At the same time as Mary was ill and her mother was taking on the nursing duties, Pritchard was having yet another affair, this time with Mary McLeod, a child of seventeen who was one of his maidservants.

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