Features / history
The pioneering medical practice where women could be treated by women
Originally opened in 1874, a pioneering establishment in Bristol enabled women to be treated by doctors of their own sex.
The first location of the Read Dispensary was at 74 St George’s Road almost opposite where the Three Tuns pub stands today, before in 1906 it moved to new purpose-built premises on the corner of St George’s Road and Anchor Road.
The Read Dispensary is closely associated with the professionalisation of women in the field of medicine and is a rare surviving example of a purpose-built dispensary for the specific treatment of women by women.
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The name of the Read Dispensary is still on the side of the building – photo: Martin Booth
From the mid-19th century, women-run dispensaries provided female doctors with the training and employment denied to them in male-dominated universities and hospitals.
The Read Dispensary was founded for the treatment of both women and children by Dr Eliza Walker Dunbar, one of the first female doctors in Britain; and her friend Lucy Read, after who the dispensary was named.
Because she was a woman, Walker Dunbar was unable to attend medical school, and received private tuition and clinical training at St Mary’s Dispensary in London and later graduated from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
In 1873, she was appointed house surgeon at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children on St Michael’s Hill but all of the male doctors resigned in protest at her appointment leaving her in sole charge and forcing her in turn to resign.
Walker Dunbar then became an unregistered medical practitioner in Clifton before establishing the Read Dispensary.
The Read Dispensary is a distinctive building on Anchor Road – photo: Martin Booth
Decades before the foundation of free healthcare thanks to the NHS, the Read Dispensary was funded by charitable contributions and payment from its patients.
On land purchased from the Corporation of Bristol, architect Percival Hartland Thomas designed the new purpose-built dispensary.
Its foundation stone – whose writing has now mostly been lost in the last few years – was laid by the Duchess of Beaufort on October 25 1905, and the completed dispensary was opened by the lady mayoress of Bristol on October 22 1906.
The total project cost £2,800 with £13 contributed by “the poor women themselves who attended the dispensary”, which has now been turned into offices.
The Read Dispensary’s foundation stone on the Anchor Road side of the building is now almost unable to be read – photo: Martin Booth
Join Martin Booth on a walking tour of the Old City and Castle Park. For more information, visit www.yuup.co/experiences/explore-bristol-s-quirkiest-corners
Main photo: Martin Booth
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