For almost 200 years there had been a doctor resident in Bow. I was the twenty-ninth
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THE MEDICAL GENTLEMEN OF BOW
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William John Chichele Nourse
William John Chichele Nourse was born 1855 in the Isle of Wight and attended Tonbridge School. He lived on his own in Bow for a short while after he qualified from St Mary’s Hospital in London in 1879. (His father was at that time a surgeon in Exeter who in 1850 had travelled to Norway to study at the Leprosy Hospital in Bergen where Dr Gerhard Hansen was to identify the Leprosy Bacterium in 1873.)
When Dr Worsley “disappeared” in July 1880, William Nourse offered his services to the Crediton Union and was appointed Medical Officer for Bow and Colebrooke districts.
In July 1881 William married Emily, daughter of Charles Snape, formerly a surgeon in Morchard Bishop. They moved from Bow to live in Morchard Bishop where their daughter Margaret was born. He also took on the Morchard Bishop district for the Union. He resigned as Medical Officer on the grounds of ill health in 1887, when he was presented with a clock by the villagers. He then went back to London where he later became a consultant ear nose and throat surgeon. He died in 1937 aged 81.
His wife Emily was involved with the suffragette movement in 1908
