Probing Deaths, Saving Lives
Associate Fellow Dr Angela Coulter (Doll Research Fellow in Preventive Medicine and Social Studies, 1987) has published a new biography of a pioneering figure in Victorian medicine, John Birt Davies.
Probing Deaths, Saving Lives (Troubador, 2024) tells the story of his life from the political and social turmoil of early nineteenth century Britain. It describes how a young Welsh doctor emerged in Birmingham to play a leading role in the transformation of the town as physician, political activist, medical reformer, and the borough’s first and most distinctive coroner.
Fearless campaigner, socially aware, driven, and fiercely independent, John Birt Davies had unique access to the lives and deaths of ordinary citizens during this turbulent time. He looked after the health of all classes of people, from the families of Lunar Society celebrities to those of the poor and vulnerable living in slums and workhouses. And he played a major role in establishing Birmingham’s first medical school and its teaching hospital.
As coroner, Birt Davies was committed to ensuring that all, especially the humblest, received impartial justice, without fear or favour. During his long and at times turbulent career he presided over an astonishing thirty thousand inquests. Accounts of these give unparalleled insight into how his contemporaries dealt with sudden, unexplained and violent deaths, including suicides, murders and massive fatalities in arms factories, revealing a great deal about popular attitudes and beliefs in the Victorian era.
Angela explains: ‘John Birt Davies, the subject of this biography, was my great-great-grandfather. The only facts I knew about him before I began the research that led to this book were that his family came from Wales and he lived most of his life in Birmingham. On delving a bit deeper, I was thrilled to discover that he had been a significant public health pioneer and major figure in Birmingham at a fascinating time in its history.
‘Having worked as a public health researcher for many years, I understood his passion for social and medical reform and could empathise with his desire to improve the lot of his fellow citizens. Venerated by civic admirers in his day but now largely forgotten, most of the thousands of people who drive past his prominent memorial clock every day will be unaware of his fascinating life, so I felt it was high time his story was told.’
More information and buy the book
Dr Angela Coulter is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. She has had a long career in health services research and health policy analysis, with special interests in patient and public involvement.
A social scientist by training, she has higher degrees in health services research from the University of London and the University of Oxford. Now freelance, she chairs Picker Institute Europe’s board of trustees and is past chair of the public advisory board of Health Data Research UK, the Birmingham, Rand and Cambridge Evaluation Centre (BRACE) steering group and the COMPAR-EU advisory board.
