Elizabeth Storie: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|ScotishScottish writer, milliner and seamstress (1818–1897)}}

| name = Elizabeth Storie

| image = {{#statements:P18}}

| captionbirth_date = July 1818

| birth_datebirth_place = {{#statements:P569}}[[Glasgow]], Scotland

| birth_placedeath_date = {{#statements:P19death year and age|1897|1818}}

| death_datedeath_place = {{#statements:P570}}[[Peebles]], Scotland

| death_place resting_place = {{#statements:P20}}

'''Elizabeth Storie''' (c.July 1818–18971818 – 1897) was a Scottish writer, [[milliner]] and [[seamstress]]. She was a [[Working class|working-class]] woman from [[Glasgow]] who, through her 1859 autobiography, gave an account of the challenges she faced within medical, legal, and ecclesiastical systems as a disabled woman in early [[Victorian era|Victorian]] Scotland.

Her work is noted for providing a rare disabled female working-class account of navigating these institutions and overcoming legal biasebias to get compensation for medical malpractice. Her hybrid autobiography is unusual in combining personal narrative with various documentation to showcasesshowcase her efforts to get justice and while challenging societal norms of the time.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Elizabeth Storie |url=https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/elizabeth-storie |access-date=2024-01-25 January 2024 |website=Scottish Women Writers on the Web |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ashplant |first=T.G |date=2022 |title=Review: Steven King, Florence Boos, Racial Woodward, K. Neil Jenkins |url=https://ejlw.eu/article/download/38649/36211/50683 |journal=European Journal of Life Writing |volume=XI |pages=7–8}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Abstracts 92.2 {{!}} English - The University of Iowa |url=https://english.uiowa.edu/abstracts-922 |access-date=2024-01-25 January 2024 |website=english.uiowa.edu |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Carleton Burgan (CP 1659), National Museum of Health and Medicine (3383372640).jpg|thumb|There are no known photographs of Elizabeth Storie, but this 1862 photograph of Carleton Burgan shows the results of similar damage to the mouth and face caused by calomel.]]Elizabeth Storie was born in [[Glasgow]] in July 1818 to "poor but ''respectable'' parents", as she writes in her autobiography:<ref name="Storie1859">{{Cite book |last=Storie |first=Elizabeth |url=https://archive.org/details/autobiographyel00storgoog/ |title=he Autobiography of Elizabeth Storie, A Native of Glasgow, Who Was Subjected to Much Injustice at the Hands of Some Members of the Medical, Legal, and Clerical Professions |publisher=Richard Stobbs |year=1859 |location=Glasgow |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|2}} a cotton weaver and a cotton winder.<ref name=":0" /> When she was four she became sick with a disease she describes as "nettle-rush", which children usually recovered from in a few days. UnfortunatelyHowever, a neighbour and friend of the family who was a surgeon, DrRobert Falconer, insisted on treating Storie with daily doses of [[calomel]],<ref name=Storie1859></ref>{{rp|4}} a common medicine at the time that contained mercury and was a frequent cause of [[mercury poisoning]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Haller |first=John S. |date=1971 |title=Samson of the Materia Medica: Medical Theory and the Use and Abuse of Calomel: In Nineteenth Century America |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41108706 |journal=Pharmacy in History |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=67–76 |jstor=41108706 |pmid=11609443 |issn=0031-7047}}</ref> Storie became increasingly ill and after three weeks her face and mouth were black and putrid. Dr Falconer then gave her [[aquafortis]], a form of nitric acid that he forced into her mouth using a syringe. Storie writes that "the agony I suffered from this cruel operation was so dreadful that I did not know what I was doing".<ref name=Storie1859></ref>{{rp|4}} When Dr Falconer repeated this a few minutes later, Storie describes her tongue falling off, her teeth falling out and part of her jaw bone giving way, which left her in chronic pain.{{cn}}<ref name=":0" />

Storie's autobiography does not include a photograph or drawing of her face, but scholars Dana Graham Lai and Holly Faith Nelson argue that the disfigurement was probably similar to the well-documented case of Carleton Burgan, who suffered a similar case of mercury poisoning when he was given calomel to treat an infection in 1862.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |lastlast1=Graham Lai |firstfirst1=Dana |last2=Nelson |first2=Holly Faith |date=2024 |title=“There"There Was Death in the Powder and He Knew It”It": Dis/ability and Tactics of Resistance in the Autobiography of Elizabeth Storie |url=http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/4925 |journal=Études écossaises |issue=23 |doi=10.4000/etudesecossaises.4925 |issn=1240-1439|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Storie's father sued Dr Falconer, but although the court ordered the doctor to pay £1000 in compensation, he refused to pay.<ref name=":0" /> Storie's father died soon after.{{cn}}<ref name=":2" />

Storie was frequently ill and in pain, and had more than twenty surgeries during her lifetime. She and her family fought extended legal battles but never succeeded in receiving compensation for the damages done to her by Dr Falconer.{{cn}}<ref name=":0" />

Storie died in [[Peebles]] in 1897 from influenza and pneumonia.<ref name=":0" /> She left what money she had - £39 - to the [[Royal Edinburgh Association for Incurables|Royal Association of Incurables]] in Edinburgh.<ref name=":0" />

Storie published her autobiography in 1859, when she was forty-one. The title demonstrates the main purpose of the book: to explain the injustice done to her: ''The Autobiography of Elizabeth Storie, A Native of Glasgow, Who Was Subjected to Much Injustice at the Hands of Some Members of the Medical, Legal, and Clerical Professions.'' The novel was published by subscription, meaning that money was collected from subscribers to pay for the printing of the book.<ref>{{Citation |last=Boos |first=Florence S. |title=Writing across the Class Divide |date=2018 |work=The History of British Women’sWomen's Writing, 1830–1880 |pages=282–302 |editor-last=Hartley |editor-first=Lucy |url=https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58465-6_17 |access-date=1 May 2024-05-01 |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |language=en |doi=10.1057/978-1-137-58465-6_17 |isbn=978-1-137-58465-6}}</ref>

It was very unusual for working-class women to publish their autobiographyautobiographies in the mid-nineteenth century, and those that were published were, like Storie's, mostly tales of ill treatment that had attracted the support of middle-class patrons.<ref name=":2">{{Citation |last=Boos |first=Florence S. |title=Under Physical Siege: The Early Victorian Autobiographies of Elizabeth Storie and Mary Prince |date=2017 |work=Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women: The Hard Way Up |series=Palgrave Studies in Life Writing |pages=63–84 |editor-last=Boos |editor-first=Florence s. |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64215-4_3 |access-date=1 May 2024-05-01 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-64215-4_3 |isbn=978-3-319-64215-4}}</ref> [[Mary Prince]]'s dictated autobiography about her life living as a slave is another example, but in general, most working-class writers were men.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Boos |first=Florence |date=2013 |title=Under physical siege: Early victorian autobiographies of working-class women |url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/under-physical-siege-early-victorian/docview/1548716257/se-2 |journal=Philological Quarterly |volume=92 |issue=2|id={{ProQuest|1548716257}} }}</ref> Storie and Prince's autobiographies fall into the category of "appeal memoirs", a genre also used by middle-class and upper-class women who had been ill-treated.<ref name=":1" /> The appeal is clear from the first paragraph of Storie's book:<blockquote>Having a strong impression that injustice is often done to the poor, and more especially to the women of that class, who are more defenceless, both from their sex, and from the difficulty which poverty combined with it exposes them to, in obtaining the help of those who are their natural protectors, I have been induced to publish a statement of the wrongs and trials I have been subjected to, in the hope of encouraging those who may be similarly afflicted to put their trust in God, as they too often will find that "vain is the help of man".

*[[autobiographyAutobiography]]

*[[working classProletarian literature]]

*[[disabilityDisability studies]]

[[Category:19th-century Scottish autobiographers]]