Alice Vickery

Alice Vickery (also known as A. Vickery Drysdale and A. Drysdale Vickery;

Alice Vickery
1844 – 12 January 1929) was an English physician, campaigner for women's
rights, and the first British woman to qualify as a chemist and pharmacist. She
and her life partner, Charles Robert Drysdale, also a physician, actively
supported a number of causes, including free love, birth control, and
destigmatisation of illegitimacy.

Contents
Education and marriage
Activism
Later years
Family
Photograph of Vickery given by
References
Rosika Schwimmer to the New York
External links
Public Library
Born 1844
Education and marriage Devon, England
Died 12 January 1929
Vickery was born in Devon in 1844 to a piano maker and organ builder.[2] By
(aged 84)
1861, she had moved to South London.[3] Vickery began her medical career at
Brighton, England
the Ladies' Medical College in 1869. There she met the lecturer Charles Robert
Drysdale and started a relationship with him. They never married,[2][3] as they Nationality British
both agreed with his brother George (also a neo-Malthusian physician) that Alma mater London School of
marriage was "legal prostitution".[2] The society, however, generally presumed Medicine for Women
that the pair were married; had their contemporaries known that they were in a Occupation Physician
free union, their careers likely would have suffered. Vickery sometimes added
Known for Civil rights activism
Drysdale's name to her own, referring to herself both as "Dr. Vickery Drysdale"
and as "Dr. Drysdale Vickery".[2]
Movement Malthusian League
Partner(s) Charles Robert
In 1873, Vickery obtained a midwife's degree from the Obstetrical Society.[2] On Drysdale
18 June the same year, she passed the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's exam and
Children Charles Vickery
became the first qualified female chemist and druggist.[3] Afterward, Vickers
Drysdale (1874)
went to study medicine at the University of Paris, as women were not allowed to
George Vickery
attend any British medical school.[2][3] There she gave birth to her first child,
Drysdale (1881) [1]
Charles Vickery Drysdale.[2] The UK Medical Act 1876 allowed women to
obtain medical degrees, and Vickery returned to England in 1877.[2][3] In 1880, she became one of five women who qualified as
physicians in the kingdom, obtaining her degree from the London School of Medicine for Women, and started practising
medicine.[2] In August 1881 her second son, George Vickery Drysdale was born.[1]
Activism
Vickery became a member of the Malthusian League and an outspoken supporter of birth control after the trial of Annie Besant
and Charles Bradlaugh, who were arrested for publishing a book about contraception in 1877. When she was called to testify at
the trial, she spoke about the dangers of too frequent childbirths and of using over-lactation as a contraception method.[2] She had
to temporarily withdraw from the League, however, because the London Medical School for Women did not approve of her
activities. She resumed membership in 1880, when she obtained her degree, and spent the following decade lecturing about birth
control as a key element to the emancipation of women. At the same time, she actively opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts.[3]

Both Vickery and Drysdale joined the Legitimation League, set up in 1893, and campaigned for equal rights for children born out
of wedlock.[2][3] Vickery felt that the organisation "did not go far enough" until it started advocating free love.[2] She was
successively a member of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, the Women's Social and Political Union, and the Women's
Freedom League.[3] After Drysdale's death in 1907, Vickery continued practising as a physician and succeeded him as president
of the Malthusian League, while their elder son Charles and daughter-in-law Bessie became the new editors of the journal
Malthusian. Soon afterward, she became one of the first members of the Eugenics Education Society.[2]

Later years
Vickery moved to Brighton in 1923 to be near her elder son. She regularly
addressed meetings of the local branch of the Women's Freedom League. She
died of pneumonia on 12 January 1929, a few days after delivering an address
that became her final public presentation.[3] She was buried with Charles Robert
Drysdale in Brookwood Cemetery.

Family
The grave of Alice Vickery in
Her life-partner was Dr Charles Robert Drysdale. Their sons were Charles Brookwood Cemetery
Vickery Drysdale FRSE (1874-1961)[4] and George Vickery Drysdale (1881).

References
1. "Descendants of William Vickery" (https://web.archive.org/web/20150930230736/http://lrvickery.home.comcast.ne
t/~lrvickery/williamuk.htm). Vickery Family Page. 2008. Archived from the original (http://lrvickery.home.comcast.n
et/~lrvickery/williamuk.htm) on 30 September 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
2. Bland, Lucy (2002). Banishing the Beast: Feminism, Sex and Morality. Tauris Parke Paperbacks. pp. 202, 207.
ISBN 1860646816.
3. "Alice Vickery" (http://www.rpharms.com/women-pharmacists-before-the-20th-century/alice-vickery.asp),
www.rpharms.com, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, retrieved 25 July 2013
4. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (https://www.royalsoced.org.
uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf) (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006.
ISBN 0 902 198 84 X.

External links
Works by Alice Vickery (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Vickery,+Alice+Drysdale) at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Alice Vickery (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3A%22Vickery%2C%2
0Alice%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Alice%20Vickery%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Vickery%2C%20Alic
e%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Alice%20Vickery%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Vickery%2C%20A%2E%2
2%20OR%20title%3A%22Alice%20Vickery%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Vickery%2C%20Alice%22%20O
 R%20description%3A%22Alice%20Vickery%22%29%20OR%20%28%221844-1929%22%20AND%20Vickery%
29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive

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