By Helen Barrell / Ellie Curzon
One night, I dreamt that I was somewhere in the early twentieth century, and I was working as a veterinary surgeon. And as I tried to work, a furious man in tweed, who I realised was my boss, was telling me that I didn’t know what I was doing. And in my dream, I felt very annoyed, and decided, “Oh, really? Well, I’ll show you!”
When I woke up, I lay there for a while thinking over the dream. At first, I couldn’t work out why I was dreaming about being a vet, but at the time, a friend of mine was training to be a veterinary surgeon in Australia. Her experiences, which she was sharing on social media, had evidently sunk into my subconscious.
And as I lay there, something else occurred to me – had I just dreamt the kernel of an idea for an Ellie Curzon saga?
Nowadays, when I take my cat for his annual check-ups and jabs, it doesn’t surprise me if the vet standing behind the examination table is a woman. But it was only just over a century ago that the first woman in the British Isles qualified to become a vet, when Aleen Cust, a woman from Tipperary, joined the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) register. It had taken the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 to open the door for her. However, Aleen was one of those undaunted women who had started working as a vet before the act was passed. Having looked after horses in Ireland, during WW1 she had gone to the front to care for the many horses who had ended up embroiled in the fight. She was a great lover of horses, and stipulated in her will that she wanted only horse-drawn vehicles at her funeral.
Even though the way was now cleared for women to train as veterinary surgeons, prejudices remained, and can be seen in British newspapers of the time. In 1934, the Daily News published an article about training to be a vet, but it was mainly aimed at men. At the end of the article, they wrote, “Since this profession was opened to women in 1919 about 30 women have qualified. It is an extraordinarily strenuous career for women, who are advised to confine their attention in this work to the care of the smaller animals, the treatment of domestic pets and canine surgery. There is room, too, for a development of present work in relation to poultry diseases.”
In 1938, the British government’s Ministry of Labour published a pamphlet called “Veterinary Surgery as a Career” which once again told young women keen to work as vets that “the best opportunities for women are thought to be in the treatment of smaller animals rather than in a general country practice where prejudices and certain difficulties are encountered.”
Yet not all voices were negative. In 1931, the Dudley Chronicle published a short piece, saying that “Women are finding the profession of veterinary surgeon increasingly attractive.” It even states that in Ireland, women vets do particularly well, “doubtless because women trainers, of and dealers in, horses have been a commonplace for more than a generation.” One woman vet apparently said that it’s “easier for a woman to make a reasonable living as a vet than as a doctor.”
Any determined young woman would still try to break into the profession, and Laura Fellgate, the heroine of The Wartime Vet, is just such a person. She grew up on a farm and followed the vet around when he visited to treat their livestock, and from there her ambition grew. She would have read articles like those mentioned above, discouraging her from her dream job, and yet Lottie wasn’t put off. On qualifying, her first job was at a small animal practice in Coventry, but after surviving the dreadful Coventry Blitz that remorselessly bombarded the city in November 1940, she decided the time had come to do her bit for the war effort. She transferred to a countryside practice in Bramble Heath, where The Ration Book Baby and The Spitfire Girl are also set, where she would treat livestock as well as pets. By supporting the farms, she was part of the machinery that was trying to keep the nation fed as German U-boats torpedoed supply ships crossing the Atlantic.
Something I hadn’t known about before researching The Wartime Vet was that Air Raid Precautions (ARP) had animal guards among their number. While the ARP was set up to ensure everyone was observing the blackout rules at night, and that everyone safely got to a shelter when the sirens went off, they were ensuring that our animal friends were looked after too. As early as November 1939, veterinary surgeons were giving lectures to the animal guards, who would be trained on how to triage any hurt animals found after an air raid and report them to local animal wardens. It’s comforting to know that although some decisions made around pets at that time were heartbreaking (too heartbreaking to write about here), there were people who wanted to ensure that even domestic animals wouldn’t come to harm during an incredibly dangerous and stressful time for their owners.
Veterinary surgeons weren’t conscripted during WW2, but some transferred to the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Although horses weren’t used as much as they had been during WW1, sniffer dogs searching for land mines needed to be cared for by someone, and that’s where the Royal Army Veterinary Corps came in. Despite being in a reserved occupation, some veterinary surgeons volunteered for the services. Perhaps the most famous British vet is Alf Wight, also known as James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small, and he and his colleague Donald Sinclair (aka Siegfried Farnon) both served in the RAF during the war.
While these men went off to serve, someone needed to fill the breech, and it was especially important with the pressures of keeping Britain fed. Just as in other occupations, women could step into men’s shoes. In The Wartime Vet, Laura joins the Bramble Heath practice because the owner’s son has gone into the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Unfortunately, her boss really wasn’t keen on hiring a woman and even has a low opinion of the Land Girls, working on the farms as part of the Women’s Land Army, filling in for the male farm labourers who’d gone off to fight. But Laura is determined to show him what she’s made of.
Add into the mix a traitor who’s determined to disrupt life on Bramble Heath’s farms, and the quietly heroic Commander Seaton from the Ministry to sort things out, and you have the latest Ellie Curzon novel, The Wartime Vet!
By Helen Barrell
Ellie Curzon is the penname of Catherine Curzon and Helen Barrell, writing heartwarming, unputdownable WW2 sagas for Bookouture. The Wartime Vet is out now!
The Wartime Vet on Amazon: https://geni.us/B0CLYN5DQXsocial
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