The scandal of underpaid governesses practically disappears from Punch's pages in this period. The evil was not extinct, but "superfluous women" were beginning to find other occupations, and the growing popularity of girls' schools undoubtedly diminished the demand for governesses.
| 1846 | 1886 |
OUR MEDICAL STUDENTS
In regard to inequalities of remuneration, Punch proved himself a sturdy champion of the medical profession. A lecture by Mr. Richard Davy at the Westminster Hospital in the autumn of 1875 took a decidedly pessimistic view of the professional prospects of medical students:—
Their salaries were simply miserable; hospital physicians and surgeons were, for the most part, unpaid. Poor Law Officers most piteously; surgeons in the services very badly, and young practitioners not at all. For seven years' hard work in the Marylebone Dispensary he had received one guinea, and a very distinguished London assistant physician had found that his salary equalled that of the man who put the skid on the omnibus wheels at Holborn Hill.
He advised every one to resign at once any and every thought of becoming a medical man unless he possessed three qualifications:—First, independence; second, an aptitude and love for the profession; third, the readiness to pay a heavy premium in this world for his prospects of reward in the next.
Punch expressed righteous indignation at the "generosity" with which an appreciative Government and a grateful Public were accustomed to requite the services of medical men. But the disparities of which Mr. Davy legitimately complained were nothing to those which have been common of late years. In 1920 the demonstrators in science at Oxford were getting just about the same pay as the Oxford road-sweepers. Attempts to disparage the social status of doctors were invariably resented by Punch, and when, in November, 1880, the Bishop of Liverpool, in a speech to medical men, observed "I am not ashamed to say I have a son a doctor," Punch promptly retorted in the following epigram:—
How kind of the Bishop, and how patronizing,
And yet to his Punch 'tis a little surprising,
That speaking to medical men there in session,
He dared speak of shame and a noble profession.