A prosopographical analysis of Scottish-qualified medical practitioners in London, c1861-c1921

The 1858 Medical Act removed geographical boundary restrictions on medical qualifications conferred in the United Kingdom, yet historians have hitherto overlooked this aspect of the legislation. This thesis uses practitioners working in London who held a Scottish qualification between 1861 and 1921 as a case study to consider the implications of this feature of the Act. It uses a database constructed using the Medical Directory and follows a prosopographical approach to examine the careers of these practitioners and identifies several defining characteristics that were a consequence of their training and qualifications. The central argument is that Scottish degrees and licences conferred certain opportunities and restrictions on their holders, which could assist practitioners in their careers or limit the work they undertook in the capital. However, these characteristics were not uniform across the entire group. There were differences between those who held a corporation's licence and a university degree, and the increasing number of women in the medical profession revealed a gender divide that diminished the relevance of holding specific qualifications for women. Furthermore, the introduction of panel practice under the 1911 National Health Insurance Act added an extra dimension to these distinctions. Panel doctors could acquire a practice from the government regardless of their qualifications, meaning they were less reliant on their own connections and networks. Additionally, the ongoing tensions between panel and non-panel doctors introduced new divisions into the profession that, in some respects, overshadowed previous boundaries.