Other Professions

Extract from ‘The Rayner Family of Great Wakering” by Albert Rayner Bsc (Econ) FCA [page 79]

The medical profession was represented in 1871 by Dr George Willing, LRCP, MRCS, LM. He was aged 50 and born in Devon in 1821. He had one assistant aged 22 and two servants, a girl aged 18 and a boy aged 17.

In 1881, the village doctor was William Raper, MD (University of London). He was 65 and his wife 32. They had five children ranging in age from 1 to 9. They employed a cook and a nursemaid.

There was no pharmacist in the village, the nearest being in Shoebury, and the doctor would make up his own prescriptions.

A veterinary surgeon lived in the High Street in 1871; he was Thomas Pierce aged 55. By 1881 he had died and his widow is described as a shopkeeper and it would appear there was no vet living in the village at that time. Indeed, it was almost 100 years before another veterinary surgeon resided in Great Wakering.