Who Were His Peers? The Social and Professional Milieu of the Provincial Surgeon-Apothecary in the Late-Eighteenth Century

The social standing of the surgeon-apothecary cannot be determined by reference to professional life alone, yet few such men left social documents. The lower middling sort was typically reticent about evaluations of their own social position in any source genre. This article uses a unique archive, and the concept of community connectedness, to investigate the status of Thomas Higgins, surgeon-apothecary and man-midwife of north Shropshire. Higgins embodied the traditional practitioner who relied on local knowledge and his 'friends' for advancement, in contrast to alternative modes of rising professionalism. He was demonstrably a trusted man at the heart of his home town, but his reliance on the 'partiality' of his neighbors brought him into conflict with his colleagues.