The doctor's house

ALTHOUGH WITHOUT architectural pretension, No 40 North Road, Bourne, does have a place in our history because it was the home of our most famous family doctor who became a legend in his own lifetime. Once a town house and a landmark in the district, recent renovation and now a large addition which is being built at the rear has institutionalised the property out of all recognition to fulfil its new role as a modern medical clinic.

The house was originally owned by Dr John Galletly who came to Bourne from Scotland in the late 19th century by way of Cumberland and Rippingale and in 1906 he bought four acres of land for £4,000 from one of his patients, farmer William Sewards, and although this was more than he needed or could afford, he embarked on building a family home with room for him to carry on his profession as a general practitioner.

He called it The Gables and apart from the very spacious living quarters, the section containing the medical practice consisted of a waiting room, lobby, surgery with teak shelving, hot and cold water, a deep basin and a beautiful large teak desk with deep drawers underneath. The house and garden only occupied two of the four acres but fortunately he was able to sell off the surplus land some years later for more than he gave for the lot, thus enabling him to pay off a large part of his mortgage.

During the bitter winter of 1927, his son, also John, who had been studying medicine in London, returned to Bourne to help his father, swapping the routine of hospital life for a daily round of births and deaths, fractures and bruises, extracting teeth and tonsils and dealing with diseases and infections. From then on, his professional life was spent in the town and when his father died in 1937, he also succeeded him as Medical Officer of Health for South Kesteven, continuing to live in the house and run the practice.

During that time, the house was practically unchanged, a large forbidding property hidden behind a fence and dense shrubbery, the surgery remaining much the same as it had been in his father’s time with a side door for patients, a Bunsen burner attached to the wall and a sink with hot and cold taps fitted into his workbench. On the shelves were bottles of acids and other chemicals, all neatly labelled in Latin and it was these ingredients that he used in mixing his own medicines, often using a pestle and mortar.

“People used to bring their own bottles that I would fill with my medicines, a lot of which came from herbs“, he remembered in later years. “Foxgloves for instance, were used as a heart medicine. I used tannic acid for nose bleeds, eucalyptus for curing coughs, colds and congestion, zinc for making up ointments and magnesium sulphate for bowel problems. I used to charge about 3s. 6d (17½p in decimal currency) for a bottle of medicine and 5s. (25p) for a medical check-up but it was always double for night jobs although that was usually to deliver a baby. I must have delivered between 50 and 60 babies a year and if I got a call to deliver a baby while patients were outside in the waiting room, I used to tell them all to go home and come back next day. I would charge £2 for a rush job like that but everyone got treated in the end. I really loved my work.”

Dr Galletly, who was also a member and later chairman of Bourne Urban District Council, combined his professional and public work with a love of gardening and a keen knowledge of local history, becoming an inveterate letter writer to newspapers and magazines on a wide variety of topics but most were usually reminders of times past. He was also socially gregarious and numbered the comedian and actor Sir George Robey (1869-1954), dubbed "The Prime Minister of Mirth", among his friends after he had been invited to open a garden fete in the grounds of No 40 in 1936 to help raise funds for the Butterfield Hospital. Robey, then plain Mister, was appearing at the Embassy Theatre in Peterborough and after an amusing and entertaining speech, he signed photographs for a small fee which went towards the appeal and then toured the hospital.

Dr Galletly retired in 1969, having been working in Bourne for 41 years, and the practice was moved to the new clinic in St Gilbert's Road but his interests in medicine, people and the community continued until the end of his life and he maintained a wide circle of loyal friends until his death on 4th April 1993 at the age of 94. Ironically, the house was sold and refurbished for use as the Galletly Group Practice after his death although some of the old medical instruments that he and his father had used were preserved in a small museum.

Dr Galletly was a man who disliked change and it is doubtful if he would have approved of what is happening to his old home, certainly not the loss of his beloved rose garden where he spent many hours and which he delighted in showing visitors but now swept away as part of the current £400,000 extension scheme to make room for more consulting rooms, an extra waiting room and a training suite, thus enabling the practice treat more patients.

In his retirement years, he admitted that he missed what he called, the old days, and discussed the role of the doctor in today's modern practices. Shortly before his death, he wrote: "The burden of the general practitioner has been lightened very much but is he still as much a member of the community as he used to be? Does he still have to wonder what is meant by 'the vapours' or dissuade a patient from the use of bread as a poultice or even goose grease? And will he find a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake waiting for him after attending a confinement?"