66. Crabbe's Practice (1884/1922)

Conan Doyle outside Bush Villas c. 1882

This month, we join a young doctor struggling to recruit patients for his medical practice in ‘Crabbe’s Practice’ from 1884, a story that Conan Doyle rewrote in its entirety in 1922. 

You can read the two versions of the story here.

Or listen to an audiobook version of the 1922 version here.

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Synopsis

When they were fellow medical students at Edinburgh University, Robert Hudson had foreseen a successful and rewarding career for the eccentric but brilliant John Waterhouse Crabbe. His prophecy appears to have been fulfilled when Crabbe invites Hudson to stay at his impressive and well-appointed residence-cum-practice at Bridport. All, however, is not as it seems: Crabbe is the area’s least regarded doctor, despite his local family connections, and he is desperate need of a plan to attract patients and stave off bankruptcy. Hudson provides an answer: he will play the role of a well-heeled gentleman who is suddenly taken ill on Crabbe’s doorstep and then cured within. Crabbe then further dramatises the plot to involve Hudson’s miraculous recovery from a staged drowning. What could possibly go wrong? 

Writing and publication history

‘Crabbe’s Practice’ draws heavily on the association between Conan Doyle and fellow Edinburgh medical school graduate George Turnavine Budd. Conan Doyle and Budd first met in 1880. Shortly after, Budd inherited his father’s practice in Bristol, which Conan Doyle visited twice before joining the S. S. Mayumba as ship’s surgeon. 

On his return from West Africa, Conan Doyle discovered Budd had relocated to Plymouth and was doing a roaring trade, so much so that he needed help. Despite warnings from his mother and medics Bryan Charles Waller and Reginald Ratcliff Hoare, Conan Doyle took up the position. But two months later, he had fallen out with Budd. Budd offered Conan Doyle a small sum to set up elsewhere, which never materialised. This incident was dramatised by Conan Doyle in The Stark Munro Letters (1895), which we discussed in the last episode.

George Turnavine Budd (circled) playing for Clifton RFC in 1874/75

The short story was most likely written in the autumn of 1884 by which time Conan Doyle was writing fairly prolifically to supplement his income. The story was first published in the Christmas edition of The Boy's Own Paper in December 1884. Conan Doyle had written the previous year’s Christmas story – ‘An Exciting Christmas Eve’, which we covered in episode 9 – and he would go on to write for the next two Christmas annuals, contributing ‘The Fate of the Evangeline’ in 1885 and ‘A Literary Mosaic’ in 1886, which we covered in ep 35.

The two versions: 1884 and 1922

Very unusually, Conan Doyle rewrote the story entirely for inclusion in the 1922 John Murray anthology Tales of Adventure and Medical Life. Aside from demonstrating how far Conan Doyle had come as a writer, there are some notable differences between the two. There are several name changes – Hudson becomes Barton, Bridport becomes Brisport, and John Waterhouse Crabbe becomes Tom, the name still retaining the same cadence as ‘George Turnavine Budd’.

The 1884 version was written while Budd was alive (he died in 1889, probably of neuro-syphilis). By 1922, Conan Doyle could look back on his association with Budd with fondness but also something of a sad melancholy. It was also around 1922 that Conan Doyle was beginning preparations for his autobiography. 

The second version is notably more negative about the medical profession. Conan Doyle had, by then, long since left general practice and had become a confirmed spiritualist. The 1922 version reflects something of Conan Doyle’s opposition to scientific materialism, while also poking fun at medical ethics and orthodoxy.

The Bulgarian Atrocities

This comic story starts with a reference to the Bulgarian atrocities, the massacre of Bulgarians within the Ottoman empire in 1876 which sparked a public outcry. Thanks to two American journalists, J. A. MacGahan and Eugene Schuyler, it came to the attention of the West. Gladstone swifty condemned the atrocities and Ottoman rule more broadly in his pamphlet Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East which sold 200,000 copies in a few weeks.

The atrocities provided a pretext for the Russians to invade, leading to the Russo-Turkish War. British opinion – eyeing the threat to British possessions in the Mediterranean and fickle as ever – shifted behind the Ottomans.

In Memories and Adventures, Conan Doyle recounts being eyed up by the recruiting sergeants at Trafalgar Square in the lead up to the Russo-Turkish war. He eventually enlisted as a field medic but the war ended before he could be sent overseas.

Brisport/Bridport

William Budd

A fusion of Bristol, Portsmouth, Southsea and Plymouth at the very least. Brisport also appears in ‘John Huxford’s Hiatus’, while Dr Miles in ‘The Curse of Eve’ lives in Bridport Place. 

Just as Crabbe’s practice was that of his father, Budd has inherited his father’s practice in Bristol in 1881. William Budd was a pioneer in the field of public health and the treatment of typhoid in particular. Conan Doyle was aware of the family connection as he mentions it in Memories and Adventures. Dr Turner in The Narrative of John Smith may similarly be a nod to William Budd. 

In Stark Munro, Cullingworth tries in vain to rescue his father’s large practice, located in that case in the West of Scotland rather than the West of England.

Assessing the competition

In the 1880s, general practitioners had to compete for patients and were prohibited from advertising (this was long before the NHS list system). The result was often cut-throat competition. Before Southsea, Conan Doyle had himself thought about setting up in Tavistock but found seven or eight GPs already touting for business on the same street. 

Crabbe’s door plate, in the 1922 version, is a reminder of Conan Doyle’s own door plate, which he polished so assiduously, and which was sold at the Christies auction in 2004. 

Conan Doyle's doorplate, as pictured in the Christie's catalogue 2004

The 1922 version is notably more scathing about the knowledge and experience of Crabbe’s competitors. Conan Doyle also makes a few digs at scientific journals. 

For all there is an obvious connection to Budd’s Bristol practice, the story also draws on Conan Doyle’s own struggles to get patients in Southsea. Geoffrey Stavert in A Study in Southsea revealed how Conan Doyle capitalised on an incident where a man was thrown from his horse to create a news story which he duly submitted to the local Evening News. There is also something of an echo of ACD’s struggles in the reference to the well-appointed consulting room – which ACD furnished with money from his mother and family prints – and the lack of patients. 

Hudson/Barton’s suggestion he could perform an epileptic fit has a couple of sad echoes. In October 1884, Conan Doyle’s future wife, Louise Hawkins, and her mother and brother arrived in Southsea. John Hawkins suffered from epileptic fits and died in March 1885 from cerebral meningitis. Similarly, Conan Doyle’s father suffered from epilepsy, brought on by alcohol.

The plan

Hudson’s suggestion is initially a joke but then expands under Crabbe’s influence. The initial plan is to have Hudson almost drown, then be brought to shore and Crabbe to pretend to administer a small needle to the heart. In 1922, he is to have a fit and be given brandy, which expands to become the drowning and the use of the battery. The set-up is better explained in the 1922 version, where Conan Doyle recounts the efforts made by the pair to create a convincing incident. The same version also has more obviously farcical visuals.

Punch, 17 September 1881

The use of the Galvanic battery probably brings Frankenstein to mind. Galvani’s battery was first demonstrated in 1780, where he showed how electricity could move the legs of a deceased frog. His son was rather more of a showman and took the battery and its various tricks on tour. The galvanic battery sits at the border between scientific discovery and quack medicine. By the mid-19thC, galvanic batteries were used as home remedies, and advertisements can be readily found in periodicals in 1881/2 when Conan Doyle visited Budd. 

A Punch cartoon from September 1881, when Conan Doyle was in Bristol with Budd, shows a Mummy representing ‘Imperial Protectionism’ being revived by a battery representing ‘Free Trade’. Had Conan Doyle seen the illustration – he had a family interest in Punch and was very energised on the subject of tariffs – he may well have been reminded of Poe’s ‘Some Words with a Mummy’ (1845) in which a Mummy is revived using a galvanic battery.

Medical ethics

The most notable difference between the two variants comes in their final paragraphs. In the 1884 version, Crabbe has effectively learned his lesson and is said to have turned his back on these cheap tricks, which he has lived to regret. In the 1922 version, Crabbe has no such qualms, and he offers to repeat the trick for the benefit of his friend Barton.

The two endings reflect Conan Doyle’s change in circumstances and perspectives: in 1884, as a member of the medical profession, he had to uphold the reputation of his colleagues, while in 1922 he felt no compunction to do so. 

The lasting influence of George Turnavine Budd

Arthur Budd c 1887

Budd was evidently an extraordinary, larger-then-life personality who had a profound influence on Conan Doyle’s early life in medicine and made his way into his fiction several times. In addition to Cullingworth in Stark Munro and Crabbe in ‘Crabbe’s Practice’, he may well have influenced aspects of Challenger and even Sherlock Holmes.

Another Budd may have influenced Conan Doyle – George’s younger brother, Arthur. Like George – and Dr John H. Watson – Arthur played rugby for Blackheath, becoming Captain in 1887/88. He also studied medicine at Barts. In one surviving photograph, Arthur looks remarkably like Watson…

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We look at one of the last stories penned by Conan Doyle, his Regency short story ‘The End of Devil Hawker' (1930). You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

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Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 

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