A Horse or a Ford Fiesta: GP Transport Past and Present

I’ve only ever ridden a donkey at the beach as a child, but if I’d been an apothecary surgeon two hundred years ago I would have needed to be able to ride a horse to carry out my visits, an essential part of the job. Instead, as a GP in our modern era, I had my trusty Ford Fiesta.

Horses were expensive. The country doctor might also have had a carriage or two, which was a sign of status, wealth and success, but in winter the lanes would be impassable with mud. My car was also my most expensive piece of medical equipment. When I qualified as a doctor I went to the bank, arranged a loan and bought it second-hand. I knew nothing about cars so asked a friend to inspect it for me. He approved and it did turn out to be a good buy apart from the choke, which I never worked out how to use properly. I either gave not enough and it wouldn’t start or too much and it flooded. Which is how I came to be stuck in a blizzard on the way to my first job as a junior doctor.

Snow was falling heavily, thick fat flakes settling on the ground. My wipers were swishing frantically back and forth on the highest setting. I was hardly able to see. Despite having the heating on full I was freezing. My car stalled. I told myself to stay calm and tried to start it. The engine turned over but didn’t catch. I pulled the choke out and was rewarded with sputtering but nothing more sustained. I tried everything: choke, in, choke out, different amounts. Traffic hooted behind me. I knew I had to stop trying or I’d flatten the battery. I sat there feeling panicky and nearly cried.

I had to get there. After a few minutes I pulled out the choke and tried again. The car miraculously started and I crawled through the blizzard and arrived at Bedford very late at night. I stayed in hospital accommodation in the week or if I was on call, but I spent a lot of time driving back and forth from Bedford to Cambridge in the dark, hardly able to see, playing mix tapes on the cassette player, which often chewed them up. Erasure or Ultravox blared out at full volume and I sang along.

Once I became a GP trainee my car was essential for visits. In my first GP practice I spent hours driving round estates looking for house numbers, trying to park, walking down dark alleyways and dodging vicious dogs. Whoever numbered the houses has never tried to find them in the dark. My second GP stint was in the Fens. I wasn’t enamoured by the flat brown landscape, the frozen chip factory, the level crossing gates that always swung down when I was late for work. It was spooky driving at night in writhing mist along narrow roads with dykes either side, scared of skidding into them, being unable to escape and drowning. There was a prison not that far away and I feared escaped convicts. Yet I came to see that the fens have a beauty all their own: endless vistas, drifting clouds, radiant sunsets and sunrises.

Trying to find houses or remote cottages was a challenge as this was in the days before google maps. When I was on call I carried a clunky mobile phone the size of eight bricks and had to jab my home phone over and over to transfer the calls to it. But coming into a house to see a wheezing child the welcome was worth it, using the nebuliser to ease their breathing, accepting a cup of tea at three am, seeing the parents less worried. I then drove home and crawled into bed before the next call out.

I needed my Ford Fiesta and an apothecary surgeon needed a horse. The horse would have needed feeding, shelter, grooming, a saddle and bridle, new shoes, the vet when it was sick. My Ford Fiesta needed servicing, an MOT, new tyres and fixing when it broke down. It was very stressful being without transport. Having to buy a new car was a major headache financially and practically. The same would be true for Thomas Hammond and his horse. If my car had had an accident I could have been hurt. A fall from a horse might also have caused serious injuries. I carried my bag in the car. They used large saddle bags for their equipment.

The apprentice was often left to take care of the horse. John Keats’s father was an ostler (I had to look that up–it’s one who takes care of horses). Keats would have grown up around horses at his grandfather’s coaching inn, the Swan and Hoop, in Moorgate. There is a story that John Keats was once left in the snow outside his old school holding the reins of the horse and carriage of his master Thomas Hammond. A boy threw a snowball at him then ran away as Keats had a reputation as a boxer.

All I had to do was fill my car with petrol and service it. The horse had to be groomed and fed regularly, but I suppose it would have been company on those long, lonely nights. Perhaps something has been lost over the years.