Early days

 

In 1815, the year of the battle of Waterloo, Tonbridge was a small market town. A long narrow High Street, lined by slum dwellings, led to the Big Bridge over the Medway, which was overlooked by the Norman Castle. This had been built to guard the bridge, which carried the main road running from the eastern Channel Ports across the Weald of Kent, to London.

 

On February 3rd that year William James West from St. Albans qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS). He came to live and practice from a house by the river, near the castle. Why he came to Tonbridge, we do not know. He was the first in the uninterrupted line of doctors that we can trace to what is now Warders Medical Centre.

 

John Morris, who came from Tonbridge, soon joined him. He had qualified MRCS and LSA (Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries) in 1816. These two qualifications were the usual ones for the surgeon apothecary, who was the forerunner of our general practitioner. Nothing else is known about Morris, and by 1832 he no longer appeared in the medical registers.

 

West took as an apprentice, a local boy, John Gorham. In 1832 Gorham went to Guy’s hospital to complete his medical training. By 1841 he was back in Tonbridge, in partnership with West. They both became deeply involved in town matters as well as medicine. This was very important to the practice for getting to know local worthies who hopefully might become patients. Thus West became a manager of the Tonbridge Savings Bank, was a vice-president of the Tonbridge Literary Society, and was on the committee of the National School. In 1845 they were jointly asked to advise on the best way of dealing with the potato crop, which had been hit with blight. Their results were printed in a handbill, which was circulated in the town.

 

West’s death from dropsy in 1848 was a tragedy for the town. Gorham took over the practice, which he ran single - handed with the help of numerous assistants until 1873.      

We know as little of the day-to-day work of Gorham as we do of other practitioners, for such work leaves little documentation.

 

Excitements appeared in the local newspapers from time to time. In 1868 a lady took an overdose of chloroform and Dr. Gorham assured the jury that they could not view the corpse, which was in a soldered coffin as the body was too decomposed. The same year his prompt assistance to a young man returning from a meeting of The Young Man’s Christian Association who fell down with “a very severe attack of spasms” “stopped the probability of a fatal outcome.”  In 1872 he assisted at the birth of a baby in a railway carriage. Judging by the size of the houses in which he lived, the practice must have flourished. This good publicity, for there was none that was bad, must have helped.

 

During the course of the century the size of the town had trebled, from about 4000 in 1840 to almost 12,000 in 1900. Clearly there was need for other medical aid. Throughout this time there had always been one other practice of comparable size in Tonbridge and other practitioners came and went. We know little of their practice, but they were clearly successful. However none of them had the continuing fame of West with his eponymous syndrome, nor published prolifically as Gorham did.