Man-Midwife, Male Feminist: The Life and Times of George Macaulay, M.D., Ph.D. (1716-1766)
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Chapter One: Who was George Macaulay?
The son of a prominent Edinburgh family, George Macaulay (1716-1766) embodied in his own life and work much that was good and admirable about his era. Trained as a physician and philosopher, he spent his life in charitable works, serving as surgeon and man-midwife to the first hospital in England devoted exclusively to obstetrical services for poor women. He began his medical education at the University of Edinburgh and completed it at Padova, where he earned a double doctorate. Arguably, in the 1730s, along with Leyden in the Netherlands, these were the most advanced medical schools in Europe. Before taking those degrees he had been trained as a classicist, commanding both Greek and Latin, and was a student of literature and modern languages as well. There is evidence that he read French, Italian and Spanish.
He was deeply committed to charitable causes. His service to the British Lying-In Hospital for Married Women in Brownlow Street was performed pro bono. Not only was he a member of its medical staff, he also served as its treasurer and was a committed steward of its always slender resources. In his capacity as treasurer he was the hospital's chief executive officer and served on its board of governors. He sought out subscriptions, organized fund-raisers, and devoted his time, energy, and resources to the hospital's growth and well being. His largesse, however, was not limited to the causes of the hospital; his church, his kinsmen and his needy acquaintances enjoyed it as well. Where his purse did not extend, his influence regularly did, and he seems always to have been ready to help anyone who applied to him. Not a "great man," that is, someone who by dint of his own extraordinary gifts achieves remarkable feats alone, Macaulay was nonetheless gifted at working with organizations and committees. His achievements were typically a result of group efforts and collaboration. Perhaps most notably, in a place and time Page 2characterized by rampant misogyny, Macaulay displayed a highly unusual sympathy for and empathy with women. His capacity for intimacy and for nurturing clearly distinguished him among notable men who practiced his profession in eighteenth-century London.
The well being of women concerned him deeply both at the professional and personal level. Professionally, he worked to advance the pre- and post-natal care of his patients and helped establish a training program exclusively devoted to preparing London women as midwives. Personally he was a devoted husband and family man. The history of his first wife, Leonora Maria Bathurst, and their family is a tragic one. His wife and all his children by that marriage predeceased him. His second wife was the redoubtable historian Catharine Macaulay—the most famous and accomplished English woman of her age and the author of an eight-volume history of England as well as a number of political tracts. Clearly Macaulay encouraged Catharine in her scholarship and writing, and his psychological and material support contributed in no small degree to her stunning achievement.
Politically, his convictions seem to have placed him with Catharine at the radical left of Whig thinking. Like her he seems to have been a theoretical republican who supported social equality and colonial causes and deplored the exploitation of the American colonies by the mother country. His tact, social savoir faire, and his connections with the aristocracy and talent for cultivating friends, however, seem to have restrained him from any too outspoken assertion of his convictions on political subjects.
Through his family's kinship ties and political connections, Macaulay enjoyed cordial relations with many of the most powerful persons in the country. He names the Duke of Argyll as his first patron,[1] and he continued to enjoy the benefits of that connection throughout his life. Through his father's associations in the Netherlands and service to the House of Orange in Scotland, Macaulay seems to have occasionally enjoyed royal patronage.
His first wife, Leonora Maria Bathurst, was a niece of Allen the first Earl Bathurst. Their marriage made Macaulay a wealthy man, and he remained on friendly terms with the Bathursts following his first wife's death. His service on the Board of Governors of the lying-in hospital brought him into Page 3regular contact with members of the Bentinck family—that of the Duke of Portland. He also became a close friend of Charles Townshend—author of the infamous Townshend Acts that led directly to the American Revolution. This connection resulted in Macaulay's having received a generous grant of land in East Florida shortly before his death.
The cultural and literary interests he had acquired as a child in Edinburgh and as a student at its university during the cultural flowering sometimes called the Scottish Renaissance remained with him throughout his life. He was a bibliophile, a contributor to The Critical Review during his kinsman Tobias Smollett's editorship of that magazine, and the editor of Charles Howe's Meditations. This last editorial work he undertook as a tribute to the memory of his first wife after her death. He was also interested in theater and opera, and was well acquainted with the famous actor-producer David Garrick, with whom he worked to arrange fund-raising evenings at the theater for the benefit of his hospital. He seems as well to have had a special interest in sculpture and architecture.
As a Scottish doctor in London, Macaulay represented a class of practitioner discriminated against by the Royal College of Physicians, which admitted as full members only those whose degrees had been taken at Oxford and Cambridge—even though neither of those universities had medical schools at the time. His tactful but assertive, adamant, and ultimately successful refusal to endure the Royal College's more objectionable impositions on non-Oxbridgeans resulted in one of the most amusing and least professional episodes in the history of that august organization. Partly as a result of that episode but more because of his competence and humanity, Macaulay enjoyed the respect, admiration and friendship of colleagues better remembered in the annals of medicine, like the notable physicians Drs. John Hunter and William Smellie.
In her book The Republican Virago,[2] Catharine Macaulay's biographer, Bridget Hill, remarks: "of George Macaulay, all too little is known," and she is right to think so. Discovering more about his life brings into sharper focus much about eighteenth-century British medical practice and organization, about the institution and governance of charities and the motives and attitudes of the people who ran them, and about the recipients of that charity Page 4and their treatment. One also learns about primary, secondary, and higher education, about the web of acquaintance and patronage that greased the wheels of government, turned the cogs of commerce, and opened the doors of opportunity to personal ambition. One observes, too, the dislocations that arose and the debate that ensued when an enterprise traditionally the province of women—midwifery—was invaded and exploited by men, and about Macaulay's efforts to alleviate a portion of that dislocation for some of the women affected. All this is implicit in George Macaulay's story—the story of a man admired for his intellect, generosity, character, and sweetness of temper, a man who avoided being credited with his acts of generosity and who conducted his life in the shadows of persons perhaps greater and more famous, but who, because of the way his life elucidates his times, deserves to be brought into fuller light himself.
Roots and Relations: Inveresk to Garelock
The River Esk rises in Midlothian's Pentland Hills and pursues its course northeastward, first rushing down through the high ground, then meandering across riverain marshlands until, after flowing through the city of Musselburgh, it empties into the Firth of Forth at Inveresk. Now incorporated into Musselburgh itself, Inveresk was a separate community in the eighteenth century. There Archibald Macaulay served as bailiff, although he and his family maintained their residence in Edinburgh where, staunch supporters of the Church of Scotland, they attended services at the church variously called the North Kirk, the New North Kirk, or the North East Parish.
In Edinburgh on 23 September 1716, George Macaulay was born to Archibald and Carola Young Macaulay. The fourth of Archibald and Carola's children, George had an older sister, Carola, born 29 November 1712, and an unnamed sibling, born 17 September 1714, who likely did not long survive. George also had an older brother, Archibald—later mentioned among the enrollees at the University of Edinburgh—born 31 August 1715. A younger sister, Jean, was baptized 14 January 1718, followed by a brother, Alexander, christened 7 May 1719, at Inveresk, where on 1 January 1721, he was followed in turn by a sister, Mary, and by another, Anne, baptized 5 May 1723. Of this fruitful sequence, by the time of Archibald senior's death in 1760, it seems that only George and Anne still survived. [3]
Page 5Carola, Archibald, and their brood constituted a cadet branch of the ancient Clan Macaulay whose laird had his hereditary seat northwest of Glasgow at Ardincaple Castle on the banks of Gareloch in and around what is now Row Parish, Cardross, Dumbartonshire. The clan traced its origins as an independent entity to the fifteenth century, when the original name of the clan was "Ardincaple of that Ilk," the surname of the first laird, Duncan. He was succeeded, first by Alexander, second son of the Earl of Lennox (mentioned in documents of 1473 and 93), then by John (mentioned in a charter of 1512), next by Aulay de Ardincaple, and then by Aulay's son, Walter, who was the first to style himself "M'Aulay," and by Walter's brother Aulay, whose posterity carried on the line as Macaulays. The entire known genealogy of the Lairds of the clan appears in Joseph Irving's The Book of Dumbartonshire.[4] Only a few other details from it, however, are important to this story.
On 17 August 1614, Irving tells us, "Sir Aulay M'Aulay of Ardincaple...obtained a new investiture of his estate" (Irving, vol. 2, 289). This investiture named other closely related Macaulays as having a collateral interest in Ardincaple Castle and its lands and provided that these relatives or their descendants had both to be consulted and to concur before the estate could be divided or sold off. This meant that when the last Lairds of Clan Macaulay, Alexander and his son Aulay, found it necessary to sell off the castle and its ancillary farms (first in 1718 and later in 1752) first Archibald and later George (by then a London physician and socialite) had a say in the disposition of the estates. The present city of Helensburgh is situated on one of the properties. [5]
Another relevant genealogical detail establishes the well-known relationship between George Macaulay and the writer Tobias Smollett. In the 1670s, one James Smollett, also a writer, after failing to establish himself in Edinburgh, returned to Dumbartonshire and married Jane M'Aulay of Ardincaple. Their son, Archibald, married Barbara Cunningham 30 Apr 1715 (IGI, fiche C 0450). Tobias Smollett was the product of this union, and thus a distant cousin of George Macaulay—a connection that, as we shall see, was to mean much to the ever-struggling Smollett.
Page 6Laird Aulay's grandfather—also an Aulay—had married Isobel Hume in 1644 (IGI, C 0450). Isobel was apparently a relation—perhaps a great-aunt—of the famous British historian David Hume (1711-76), and it is likely that George Macaulay and Hume had met as boys in Dumbartonshire. In any case, the connection was sufficiently close that George would eventually feel justified in writing Hume for his opinion of the first volume of the history written by George's second wife, the remarkable Catharine Macaulay (1731-91). George's mother Carola was a kinswoman of Edward Young (d. 1765), the melancholy genius and author of Night Thoughts, and George was sometimes in contact with this cousin on literary matters as well. Clearly, family and clan connections ran deep, and many of the clansmen and their relations by marriage took pains to maintain mutually beneficial links based on kinship.
Clan Aulay is one of the seven clans designated as "Sioul Alpin," clans descended from Kenneth Alpin, founder of the Scottish monarchy: the MacGregors, Grants, MacKinnons, MacNabs, Macfies, MacQuarries, and Macaulays. The name "Aulay" itself is probably traceable to Norse roots and seems identical with Olla, Olaus, or Olaf—all of which mean Olive. According to Joseph Babbington Macaulay, "the Macaulays considered themselves a sept of the clan Gregor, their chief being designed 'of Ardincaple' from his residence in Dumbartonshire."[6] [See Plate 1: Macaulay coat of arms and motto.] In support of this assertion, J. B. Macaulay cites deeds of clanship between the Macaulays and the MacGregors of Glenstrae (17 May 1591) and later with Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinleck (1694) in both of which the Macaulays pay a calf and acknowledge their cadet status as MacGregors. The connection did not always prove advantageous to the Macaulays as they sometimes found themselves "embroiled in the feuds of the MacGregors" (J. B. Macaulay 4). Offsetting these difficulties, however, because Alexander, the second laird, was also the second son of the Earl of Lennox, it seems that subsequent Earls sometimes intervened to protect the Macaulays from some of the more severe consequences of MacGregor behavior (J. B. Macaulay 4).
Page 7The Macaulays of Ardincaple and, later, their cadet branch at Inveresk had regularly chosen to support of the Hanoverian succession against the claims of the Stuart dynasty. In 1689, Archibald, the 9th Laird, had even raised a company of fencibles (soldiers liable only for defensive duty at home) in support of William and Mary.[7] The favor that accrued to the Macaulay family as a result of the their staunch loyalty to the House of Orange and the Church of England apparently spanned several generations. Patronage came from members of the Scottish nobility as well as from the House of Orange itself.
This favor will become especially apparent in the later discussion of the ways in which Archibald Macaulay, George's father, moved through a series of successively responsible appointments. First an alderman of Dumbartonshire and later of Inveresk, Archibald subsequently exercised the offices of Dean of Guild of Edinburgh and later became Lord Conservator of the Scots Privileges at Campvere in the Netherlands—an office he continued to hold throughout his lifetime—and finally served thrice as Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
Though he had himself been born at Inveresk (c.1686), Archibald Macaulay's career as a public servant apparently began in Dumbartonshire where he served as bailie (alderman), evidently a post quasi-hereditary in the family as his father Alexander had occupied it before him (Welles, 134). Through the good offices of a nobleman—likely the 2nd Duke of Argyll—he returned to Inveresk as an alderman there and subsequently established his family in Edinburgh. Except for the holiday time young George may occasionally have spent at the family seat on shores of a pristine Gareloch, it was in that crowded city of tall, stone houses, commerce, piety, idiosyncratic sanitary arrangements, hard drinking, intellectual ferment, cultural aspiration, and often superior public governance that the Macaulays' fourth child grew and flourished.
[notes]
1. In a letter to Charles Townshend, dated at London, 17 June 1760, Townshend Papers MS 296/4/1, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
2. The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1994, p.13).
3. All birth dates are recorded in the Edinburgh Parish Registers under the following entry numbers: George, FR 4413; Carola, FR 4279; Unnamed, FR 9339 and 9533; Archibald, FR 4383; Anne, FR 4590. The International Genealogical Index, Fiche C 0450 confirms all of these except Archibald Jr. and lists Mary and Jean as well.
4. Vol. 2, "Parishes" (Edinburgh: W. and A. K. Johnstone, 1879) 228 ff.
5. Edward Randolph Welles, Ardincaple Castle and its Lairds (Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie and Co., 1930), 137-38.
6. Joseph Babbington Macaulay, Memoirs of the Clan Aulay (Carmarthon: William James Morgan) 1881, 4.
7. See Welles 133-34.