The Life of Aleen Cust
In all things there must be a first, and pioneers often have to be exceptional in some way. Looking to the future of veterinary medicine and its role in One Health it seems to me that there will have to be a great many firsts and some exceptional people if significant progress is going to be made; and for inspiration on this I have looked to the pioneers of the past.
One such pioneer in veterinary medicine is Aleen Cust, the first female member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) of the UK. Aleen, born in 1868 in Tipperary, Ireland, had a love of animals evident from childhood, as so many vets do (Cust, 1934). She claimed that her love for and affinity with animals was inherited from her grandmother, an important though absent figure in her life, who was the first to write on the Diseases of Cats and who Aleen believed would have been a vet herself if she had been born later (Cust, 1934). Sadly, her grandmother’s interests had not outlived her to create an environment supportive of Aleen’s ambitions. She originally started training to become a nurse but then decided to train as a veterinarian instead, despite disapproval from her aristocratic family (Hall, 2004). It was a decision that would estrange her from them for the rest of her life (Jones, 2018).
In 1894, Aleen matriculated at the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, a now non-existent institution and distinct from the Edinburgh Veterinary College that would become today’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies (Hall, 2004). At the time, all other veterinary students in the UK were male, so it is unknown exactly how Aleen gained admission (AVMA, 2020) but the founder of the school, William Williams, became a great supporter of hers (Jones, 2018).
Despite being a top student and winning several scholastic awards (New York Times, 1937), Aleen finished her studies in 1900 without being granted membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS). Their justification for this was that they felt they “did not have the power to admit women to their examinations” (Hall, 2004, p.1). They had therefore not allowed her to sit her professional exams (Jones, 2018), though her achievements during the course suggest she would have had no trouble passing them (Hall, 2004).
Although she had been denied the right to call herself a veterinary surgeon, Aleen went on to have a substantive career. A personal letter of recommendation by Williams got her a position as a veterinary assistant at a practice in Ireland, where she won the respect of the local community (Hall, 2004). In 1905 she was appointed veterinary inspector by Galway council under the Diseases of Animals Act – a post she had to reapply for when the RCVS objected on the basis that she was not a registered veterinarian, at which point the council dropped ‘veterinary’ from the title so it was simply ‘inspector’ (Hall, 2004).
In 1910, she took over the practice that she had worked in (Hall, 2004). She left this behind in 1915, however, when she drove her own car to France to volunteer her services during the First World War. Here she applied her veterinary knowledge and extensive equine experience in an unofficial capacity (Hall, 2004). Little is known about her work at the Front, but during her time there she became attached to a veterinary hospital laboratory (New York Times, 1937). Although she initially returned to Ireland the disruption of the independence movement then led her to retire to England (New York Times, 1937).
The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act allowed women to be legally registered as vets, among other professions, but it wasn’t until 1922 that Aleen Cust became the first woman to be officially recognised by the RCVS (AVMA, 2020; Martins, 2019). She was granted membership after an oral exam, 22 years after she had left vet school (Hall, 2004).
She died in Jamaica in 1937, having arrived for the winter in the hope of improving her health with the warm weather (Hall, 2004).
Beyond her on-paper achievements, it is clear that Aleen was an extremely interesting person. She was a distinctive character, often riding side-saddle to home visits on an Arab stallion before returning home to change into formal clothes for dinner (Hall, 2004). She has been described both as having great poise (Hall, 2004) and great integrity, with high standards and competency (Jones, 2018). The trait she identified as most crucial in herself as a clinician was resourcefulness, especially in the rural large animal practice she worked in (Cust, 1934). What is clear from her own account is that it was her ambitions for herself and a determination to live the kind of life she wanted that drove her, and that being a ‘first’ was not the core of her motivation (Cust, 1934).
The Edinburgh Seven
Aleen was not the first to experience opposition to her own ambition, and although I have never seen them compared her story strikes some remarkable similarities to that of the Edinburgh Seven. The Edinburgh Seven – Sophia Jex-Blake, Mary Anderson, Emily Bovel, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Edith Pechey and Isabel Thorne – had started their medical degrees at the University of Edinburgh a quarter of a century earlier, in 1869, as Britain’s first matriculated female medical students (The University of Edinburgh, 2018a). Given their training in the same city, Aleen was quite literally walking in their footsteps.
Taking medical classes was no easy task, with the Seven charged higher fees than their male counterparts, required to organise their own teaching (separate from male students), graded differently and harassed by hundreds of male staff and students, including having mud thrown at them when entering an exam (Ferguson, 2019; The University of Edinburgh, 2018b). Like Aleen Cust, the Seven were denied their studies and graduation on the basis of their gender despite a national campaign (The University of Edinburgh, 2018a). Instead, they were forced to turn to medical schools abroad or to set up their own in order to qualify (The University of Edinburgh, 2018b). Although it did not win them their degrees, their campaign is considered in large part responsible for the 1877 legislation that safeguarded the entitlement of women to study at university (The University of Edinburgh, 2018a).
The University of Edinburgh (2018a) then allowed women to graduate in 1894 – the year that Aleen Cust started her veterinary training – and the first female medics qualified in 1896. Here, the absence of One Health-type thinking at this point in history is evident. While the first female medics qualified, admittedly after a long struggle, a young woman was training to become a vet who would not be permitted to qualify until almost 25 years after these medics. Medicine and veterinary medicine were considered so separate that, in matters of equality, veterinary medicine was allowed to fall far behind.
Legacy
The situation is much changed now. Concepts such as One Health take a very different stance on the commonalities between medicine and veterinary medicine to those of the 19th and early 20th centuries. While they are still distinct entities, the two disciplines have much to inform each other on – just as the Edinburgh Seven’s push to allow women to qualify as doctors could have informed the RCVS’s decision on women qualifying as vets.
Both sets of these pioneers were honoured last year, 2019. In July, the University of Edinburgh granted the Seven posthumous degrees (Ferguson, 2019) and the anniversary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was marked in December by the British Veterinary Association in a visit to the Parliamentary Archives to view the original act (Martins, 2019).
Their legacy undoubtedly lives on, as both professions are now training many more women than men (McKinstry and Dacre, 2008; Waters, 2017) – a topic sometimes hotly debated in itself (McKinstry and Dacre, 2008). For these, Aleen Cust left a message:
“My Dear Women Colleagues,
It is not my intention to write a clinical article, but rather a friendly letter in which I hope you may find a few useful tips, some learnt by bitter experience, others passed on to me by many kind men who have helped me along my stony road. I have had the inestimable privilege of attaining my life’s ambition. I have known the world at its best…I have also known the world at its worst, alas!… I take a great interest in all of you and in your careers and your successes, and my wish for you is that you, my Women Colleagues, may all feel as I do after a lifetime — that the profession you have chosen is the Best Profession in the World. Goodbye now; success and happiness to you all, and may you have “the lucky hand.”
Yours sincerely,
Aleen Cust M.R.C.V.S.”
(Cust, 1934; emphasis in the original).
May we all find their courage.
References
- AVMA (2020) UK Celebrates 100 Years of Women Veterinarians [online]. Available at: https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2020-03-15/uk-celebrates-100-years-women-veterinarians [Accessed 8 July 2020].
- Cust, A. (1934) Memories and Memos. The Veterinary Record, 14, pp.363-365.
- Ferguson, B. (2019) ‘Edinburgh Seven’ to finally get degrees 150 years after campaign to allow women to study medicine. The Scotsman [online] Available at: https://www.scotsman.com/regions/edinburgh-seven-finally-get-degrees-150-years-after-campaign-allow-women-study-medicine-548642 [Accessed 8 July 2020].
- Hall, S. (2004) Cust, Aleen Isabel. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/56033.
- Martins, D. (2019) Standing on her shoulders: BVA celebrates centenary of women entering the veterinary profession. Veterinary Practice [online]. Available at: https://veterinary-practice.com/news/2019/standing-on-her-shoulders-bva-celebrates-centenary-of-women-entering-the-veterinary-profession [Accessed 8 July 2020].
- McKinstry, B. and Dacre, J. (2008) Are there too many female medical graduates? British Medical Journal, 336, pp.748-749.
- New York Times (1937) Miss Aleen Cust Dies; British Veterinarian [online]. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1937/01/30/archives/miss-aleen-cust-dies-british-veterinarian-first-woman-of-royal.html [Accessed 15 July 2020].
- The University of Edinburgh (2018a) The Edinburgh Seven [online]. Available at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/celebrating-diversity/inspiring-women/women-in-history/edinburgh-seven [Accessed 5 July 2020].
- The University of Edinburgh (2018b) Sophia Jex-Blake and the Edinburgh Seven [online]. Available at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/medicine-vet-medicine/about/history/women/sophia-jex-blake-and-the-edinburgh-seven [Accessed 8 July 2020].
- Waters, A. (2017) What will the future bring? The Veterinary Record, 180(14), p.340.