Henry Vandyke Carter was the son of Henry Barlow Carter, artist, and Eliza Caroline Barlow; he was born in Scarborough and baptised at St Mary’s Church on 8 July 1831. It was Eliza’s wish that Henry should have the middle name Van Dyck after the famous artist Anthony Van Dyck, however, at the christening in St Mary’s Church there was a misunderstanding and Henry was registered as Henry Vandyke Carter. As he grew up, he inherited his father’s talent as an artist, but on returning, aged 15, from his schooling at Hull’s Old Grammar School, where the headmaster was one of his uncles, he decided to follow a career in medicine. He was apprenticed to the Scarborough physicians Travis and Dunn of Newborough Street, who taught him for nine months, but to progress he needed to become a licenced practitioner and to obtain these qualifications he had to leave Scarborough.
Henrys father, Henry, arranged for his son to be articled (apprenticed) with the Royal College of Surgeons in London under Doctor Sawyer, who would house Henry whilst he was studying fulltime at St George’s Medical School. It was whilst in his first year of study that he met Henry Gray, who was four years older than him and in his last year of study. Gray was a conscientious, hardworking, ambitious man and a successful student; Henry looked up to him and tried to follow his example and tried to follow his path through college. The two became friends and Henry would use his artistic talents to provide anatomical drawings for Gray’s thesis.
The quality of the drawings he produced soon became well known in the college and Henry supplemented his living by supplying other students and doctors with drawings for a small fee. Both the Henrys discussed the possibility of creating a manual of anatomy that was much more detailed and easier to understand, and more importantly, at a more affordable price for students, than had been published before. They got a publisher to take on the task who gave them a time slot of eighteen months to produce the finished book. It was a herculean task they had taken on, on top of their everyday work and studies, Gray was writing an encyclopaedia on every part of the body, and together with Henry they were carrying out dissections for Gray to write about and Henry to draw; Henry quickly realised it was quicker for him to draw directly onto the wood blocks used for engravings rather than onto paper first.
When discussing the finance with the publisher, for some reason they negotiated separately. Gray being the business minded man that he was, negotiated royalties for the book, he was to receive £150 for every thousand books sold an arrangement which lasted for many years after his death, whilst Henry, who was naïve, took a one-off payment of £150. The book was published in 1858 as ‘Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical, Anatomy of the Human Body’, it immediately became a very influential work on the subject. Most people referred to it as ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ a title it adopted for future publications, it continues to be revised and republished (42 reprints in 2020) to the present day and is often considered "the doctors' bible".
By the time the book was published Henry had committed to a major life change and had enrolled in the Indian Medical Service. His first job on arrival at Fort George, near Bombay, was tending to wounded soldiers. The conditions Henry was working in were appalling, there was little sanitation, disease was rife, there was no fresh water, the locals had little knowledge of hygiene, in addition there was little funding and assistance. Henry had come to India during the Indian Mutiny, the time when the people were rising up against British rule. Quite quickly he was reappointed and promoted as the anatomy professor at the newly established Grant Medical College.
He met and started an affair with Harriet Bushell a divorced lady, who had a son to her former husband; the affair was frowned upon by many of the local residents and even when he married her, they were not warmly welcomed. In 1860 they had a baby, Eliza Harriet Lily Carter, they kept moving house but the problem reached the ears of the principal of Grants College who, rather than see Henry lose his commission at a court of enquiry, made him sign an oath stating that he and Harriet would live separately. For a short while Henry paid for two homes before Harriet and the children travelled back to England with an allowance of £150 a year from Henry. In the following years Harriet and the children set up home in various places around Europe, meeting occasionally when Henry had furloughs from work. It was about the time Henry and Harriet split up that Henry received the news that Henry Gray had died; he had been treating his nephew for smallpox when he also caught it, his nephew lived but sadly Henry Gray died from it on 13 June 1861.
Somehow on top of his work commitments, Henry found time for research making a number of very significant scientific discoveries. One of the first discoveries made by Henry was concerning a foot disease which affected the poor, he tried to prove it was caused by cuts in the hands and feet, it was eventually proved that he was right, and it is now known as Carter’s mycetoma. After five years in Bombay, he was transferred to Satara and appointed civil surgeon and superintendent of the jail. He used the nine years he was based there to study over 8200 case studies of leprosy, disproving many myths surrounding the disease. He later released two influential books, one a monograph on mycetoma and the other about leprosy, the first official scientific study of the disease.
News came that Harriet had died suddenly and not long after in 1888, with thirty years work completed in India, Henry retired and returned to the UK; he was granted the honorary rank of deputy surgeon general for services to medical science and honorary surgeon to Queen Victoria. He first went to Hull where he married Mary Ellen Robison in 1890, they then moved to 2 Belgrave Crescent, Scarborough where Henry and Mary had two children,Henry Robison Carter 1891 and Mary Margaret Carter 1895, Henry died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 4 May 1897. Eliza, his daughter to Harriet, had married an Italian, and they had a son, Ignazo, sadly Eliza died aged just 31 but in Henry’s will there was a trust set up for Ignazo.
Visit :
Belgrave Crescent HV Carter Blue Plaque
Read :
Scarborough & Whitby Watercolourists Colin P Bullamore 1976
Scarborough Artists of the 19th Century A&P Bayliss 1997
HB Carter & Sons Gordon Bell 2006
The Making of Mr Gray’s Anatomy Ruth Richardson 2008
The Anatomist Bill Hayes 2008
