Horsham’s Women of History – town’s first woman GP

For our latest Women’s History Month subject we have Horsham’s first woman doctor who worked up to the age of 75!

Dr Alice Owen’s career, however, did not begin in the medical profession and she was not local to Sussex.

She was a schoolteacher who came to Horsham in 1913 to, as she put it, ‘escape the rigours of Pennines winters’!

Dr Owen arrived in the town and taught science at the London Road Methodist Church, using the science laboratory at Collyer’s School.

After three years she made the decision to study medicine, despite many of her peers thinking she was ‘quite mad’, and moved away to complete her studies.

However, following her rather demanding qualifying exams, she was advised to rest up for a while. As she had enjoyed her time in Horsham she moved back to the area and lived near Mannings Heath golf course, but often strolled into town.

The decision to invite her mother to come south resulted in her buying a house at the Brighton Road end of Bedford Road.

She chose the house because on one of the window blinds were the words ‘Consulting Room’ which inspired her to put her nameplate on the building and set up her own practice.

On December 13, 1922 she opened her surgery doors for the first time at No 2 Bedford Road and was later joined in 1939 by Dr Gwenda Francis.

Later, she recalled the initial meeting with the other doctors in the town – Drs Dew, Sparrow, Morgan, Vernon, Kinnear and Jewkes – who, she said, thought she was ‘mad’!

Her first patient sadly died within ten minutes of coming into the consulting room, but this did not put her off!

Over the next few decades Dr Owen treated many patients and also worked at antenatal clinics and was Chairman of the Horsham Branch of the United Nations Association, and a founder member of the Hurst Road Boys’ Club.

She also organised the annual collection for the National Society for Cancer Relief for several years, was a trustee of the Nursing Association and a member of the Advisory Council of Medical Practices Committee.

During and after World War II she was a medical officer for the local Red Cross.

When she retired in 1950 Dr Owen lived in a new house built at the bottom of the garden of her surgery (12 Bedford Road). However, she continued her infant welfare clinic work until 1962.

In an interview on her 86th birthday (two years before she died in 1976) Dr Owen recalled some of the famous people she had met. These included the famous writer and politician Hilaire Belloc who lived at Shipley.

One of the many tributes to her was: “Her gentle manner and devotion to duty as a science mistress, and later a doctor, was an example to everyone.”