The African American actor Ira Aldridge presented an English text version of the 1840s French play The Black Doctor, a slavery-focus performance which was quite popular. The words “black doctor” were also used, as the century aged, to describe a fishing lure, the name of a race horse, and moves in the game of draughts. There were also comic playlets, presented by black-face minstrels, generally farces. In medical terms the words were used to described dark-skinned medical men – of African or Asian descent – including those who were not qualified under the 1858 Medical Act but worked in the far from rare world of herbalism, when nostrums made up of vegetables were purchased by those who could not afford the fees of professional doctors.

In this confused world there is evidence that some “black doctors” were popular in their locality. Ethens de Tomanzie (sometimes Ethene, sometimes Tomanzi) was from Burma and his career included being elected to the council in Derry, working in Liverpool (where he died in 1886), and being accused of murder (his acquittal was cheered in the court in Chester – see Liverpool Mercury, 12 December 1885, p 7 and Derry Journal 5 February 1886, p 7).

Charles Henry Bulgo, whose death was registered in Swansea in early 1895, was a “coloured herbalist, who was formerly known as the black doctor” noted the People (11 June 1905, p 13) reporting on the suicide of his widow Bridget Bulgo, aged 46. When William Newman, a “medical herbalist” in Glasgow was selling his merchandise, he was charged with blocking the road (Motherwell Times, 28 December 1900, p 3). Further south, W. Coventry Davies and his wife Kate both worked as herbalists, and he was known in Manchester as the “black doctor” according to reports of his role in the death of a sixty-year-old labourer which had foolish comments in the court room which led to “Coroner’s Severe Comments” according to the Stockton Herald of 1 June 1907, p 6.

When the Barbados-born St Kitts resident Dr Joseph Steele Meyers Nurse was sued by Bella Mackinnon for breach of promise – she sought £1500 compensation – reports were to be found in the Drogheda Conservative (14 October 1905, p 3) but why this Irish newspaper was interested is not clear. Whereas the scandal sheet the Illustrated Police News (21 October 1905, p 13) normally carried many reports of scandals, murders and social upheavals in its weekly editions. Miss Mackinnon was awarded £500.

Doctors were generally respected, and their work took them into difficult places. David Sasun, “the ‘Black Doctor’ at Walthamstow” in London was stabbed by a baker and there were sympathetic reports in the Essex Weekly News of 16 February 1906, p 3. Three years later, now described as “a Hindoo”, Davi Dayal Sasun’s practice was in Brady Street, Bethnal Green. The Eastern Post reported he was bankrupt, due to the costs of his involvement in a divorce, when he had been cited as a co-respondent (20 March 1909, p 2).

The professional medical men (and a slowly expanding number of women) who had qualified after years of study (Dr Alcindor in Edinburgh; Dr Brown in London; Dr Risien Russell in several reputable hospitals; Dr Belfield Clarke in Cambridge; Dr Robert Cole in Newcastle; Dr Harold Moody in London – all have pages or mentions elsewhere in this website) distanced themselves from herbalists. Yet there were numbers of black herbalists tending to the British sick, a group which cries out for investigation.