Family life

Orkney Library and Archive. D156/0239

The Thomsons of South Ness compose themselves ready for a picture in which they will all keep very still for the camera. But Dr Garvie takes another picture too, of the preceding moments, when they are almost all in motion. I love to look at the hands in this picture, what they reveal of character and relationship.

My Dad is the baby on the left, the children are his siblings, cousins and lifelong friends.

What of Dr Garvie's family life?

We know she was born in 1872, in Perth, one of six children, and that her family were supportive of her intention to study medicine. They were stalwarts of the church, which also supported her training and subsequent appointment to work as 'medical missionary' in the Zenana, a hospital for women and children in what is now Rajasthan. This was early in her medical career. By then she had completed a probationary period as house surgeon in Glasgow. 

Her sixteen years on North Ronaldsay came at the end of her career. Throughout that time she lived in a bungalow that had been built originally as a Manse. It was the only house on the island that had pumped water. One of the front rooms was her surgery. 

Her housekeeper through those years, Charlotte Tulloch, was from North Ronaldsay. On Dr Garvie's retirement, they left the island together.

I have been told that it was known that they were a couple.

Image from private collection, used with permission

Beatrice Garvie and Charlotte Tulloch, with David Corse

Although they never met her, two of her great nieces, Fenella and Fiona, knew of their 'Auntie Bea' as a doctor. I found Fenella and Fiona living by the sea, in the south of England, and we have come to know each other quite well. They are sharply intelligent, and funny, and love dogs. When I visited them, I could see Fenella's drawings and paintings had the same skilled composition that is apparent in Dr Garvie's photographs.

But these current Garvies didn't know that their Great Aunt had taken photographs, nor indeed that she had ever worked in Orkney. I was delighted when they came up to Orkney to see her legacy of more than five hundred photographs, kept in the Orkney Archive, and to meet Beatrice Thomson, who as a baby was delivered by Dr Garvie, and named for her. 

More of that in a different post.