William Augustus Burke, MD (d. 1836) and Colonial India's Lock Hospitals
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William Augustus Burke, MD (d. 1836) and Colonial India's Lock Hospitals
William Augustus Burke, MD, is commemorated by a memorial in the North Nave Aisle. Burke was Inspector General of Army Hospitals including those in Colonial India.
This post features in our Colonial and Military series available through the Heritage page. For an introduction to the series see Rochester Cathedral and the British Empire.
Inscription reads:
Sacred to the Memory of
William Augustus Burke M.D.
Inspector General of Army Hospitals.
This eminent distinguished officer
After serving his country 41 years
in Gibraltar, Barbary, Sicily,
The West Indies, The Mauritius and in India.
Died in Calcutta
Universally regretted and mourned
on 23rd May 1836
This memorial is erected by his
nephew and niece.
Dr. William Burke began his army career in November 1797 as Regimental Surgeon to the 37th (North Hampshire) Regiment of Foot. On 23rd August 1807 he was promoted Deputy Inspector of Hospitals and posted to the Windward and Leeward Islands in the West Indies at a salary of £456.5.0 per annum. He obtained The brevet of Inspector in 1817 and was promoted to Inspector General on 20th January 1825.
The following details of Burke's career are taken from "Medical Officers in the British Army 1660-1960"
Hospital Mate (1,0 Surgeon's assistant on hospital staff, not attached to a regiment)
18 Sep - 23 Oct 1195: Surgeon en Second 37th Foot.
24 Oct 1795: Surgeon 37th Foot
15 Nov 1797: Apothecary to the Forces
7 Sep 1801: Surgeon, Garrison of Barbadoes
5 May 1803: Deputy Inspector of Hospitals
23 Aug 1807: Brevet Inspector of Hospitals
17 July 1817: Put on half pay
25 Sep 1822: Restored to full pay
23 Dec 1824: Inspector of Hospitals (designation changed to Inspector General of Hospitals under Royal Warrant of 29 July 1830)
20 Jan 1825: Administrative Medical Officers of the British Service were first appointed to the Staff of the C. in C. India in 1825. Burke was the first Inspector General and was appointed 19 Dec. 1825.
Inspector General of Army Hospitals in India
Burke is remembered today particulary for his contributions to the early nineteenth-century debate on the efficacy of Lock Hospitals, establishments specialising in treating sexually transmitted diseases operating in Britain, its colonies and territories from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Comments by Burke feature in Douglas M. Peers’ medical history Soldiers, Surgeons and the Campaigns to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Colonial India, 1805-1860 (1998).
Peers’ study also highlights the prevailing attitudes of the British colonisers towards gender, the perception of manliness and its effects on the decisions of the colonial administration. Often the percieved manliness of the British infantryman was contrasted with a perception of the indigenous fighters as effeminate, within the racialised framework of the caste system. One extreme manifestation of this perception was the belief that the seeking of prostitutes by British soldiers was inevitable. Subsequently, lock hospitals in Colonial India the early nineteenth century detained prostitutes with the aim of curbing the spread of syphilis within the British forces.
Jacob Scott
Heritage Officer
Further Reading
The relationship between masculinity and imperialism in India is the subject of Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial masculinity: the 'manly Englishman' and the 'effeminate Bengali' in the late nineteenth century, Manchester University Press, 1995.
Changing perceptions of manliness in the British Empire is discussed in Dean of Rochester Philip Hesketh’s introduction to Dean Reynolds Hole (1819-1904). Reynolds Hole was the exemplification of nineteenth-century ‘muscle christianity’, being both a keen sportsman and a celebrated gardener notable for his expertise with roses.
The medieval tombs of the Presbytery and Quire Transept have had a tortured history which many effigies apparently moved and several defaced along with the medieval memorials and brasses over the Early Modern period.
Rochester Cathedral features an exceptionally large collection of Colonial-era military memorials and artefacts. This series has begun to highlight the stories behind these collections and their place in our global heritage.
