Wendy Savage: archives (1935-)

The collection falls mainly into two categories:

Records relating to the enquiry into Savage's 1985 suspension, approx. 1973-1998

Daily notes

Publications and media coverage: Reprints; Newscuttings on the enquiry and its aftermath; A Savage Enquiry; Media appearances

Support material: Support letters; Support file; Support petition

Wendy Savage Appeal Fund

Correspondence pre-dating suspension, and on the suspension and its aftermath

Media "spin-offs"

Enquiry proceedings: Transcripts of the enquiry; Supporting evidence; Enquiry's findings; High Court case; Tape recordings of proceedings

Records not specifically relating to the suspension enquiry, approx. 1973-2000s:

Work in the area of obstetrics and gynaecology

Work in the area of abortion

Work in other areas (family planning, human rights etc.)

Media work

Work in the area of NHS reforms

Later work

Further material was donated by Wendy Savage in 2021 forming accession 2556, which has yet to be catalogued. These records date from 1990s-2000s and include GMC newsletters, questionnaires from published research on Gynaecologists' attitudes to abortion 1989 and 2003 and Postcoital contraception and Caesarean Section, and other papers from Savage's career.

1968-2005

110 boxes

The collection is arranged as follows:

Section A: Enquiry material, 1973-1998

Section B: Work obstetrics and gynaecology, 1973-1996

Section C: Work on abortion, 1968-1995

Section D: Miscellaneous work, 1979-1996

Section E: Media work, 1981-1995

Section F: NHS reforms, 1981-1995

Section G: Later work

Donated to Wellcome Collection by Dr Wendy Savage in 1996, 2007, 2013 and 2021.

Professor Wendy Diane Savage, FRCOG is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, and advocate for women's rights in childbirth and fertility.

Savage was born in 1935 in Norbury, a suburb of South London. She attended Cambridge from 1953 and began her medical training several years later at the London Hospital Medical College. While at the London, as she calls it, she was deeply influenced by both her teachers and her experiences. Dr Archie Clarke-Kennedy, for instance, taught her that she must view people as a whole, to understand their place in the world and the community and not just treat them as a patient in bed while Dr Donald Hunter warned that employers often exhibited a callous disregard for their employees. She speaks of the deep impression that her training in obstetrics, and in particular the experience of being present at the time of birth, had on her, both the sense of almost exaltation after a successful natural birth and the "numbed horror" that follows a stillbirth.

After her training, she had two children of her own and several temporary positions before moving to the US and working as a research assistant. From there she moved to East Africa, where she had first-hand experience of women risking death through self-administered abortions to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies. She returned to the UK in 1969 and worked in the areas of family planning, venereal disease and psychosexual medicine. She spent a year working for the Pregnancy Advisory Service, first as a counselling doctor and then as a gynaecologist, both advising patients and administering abortions. In 1973 she moved to New Zealand, where the abortion law was more stringent that the post-1967 Act UK, and worked as a specialist in obstetrics, gynaecology, venereology and family planning.

Savage had been taught in the pre-1967 Abortion Act era, and therefore was, by training, originally of the opinion that abortion was wrong. But her opinions were shaped by her experiences, in her own words: "What I have learnt from being a doctor and a working mother in four continents, and what I have learnt from patients, is that women are individuals and they should have control over their own fertility."

Savage was appointed locum lecturer/honorary senior registrar at the Mile End Hospital in November 1976. By August 1977 she had been appointed Senior Lecturer at the London Hospital Medical College and Honorary Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology to the Tower Hamlets Health Authority. In 1985, she was accused of incompetence by the professor in her department and suspended from her post at the London Hospital Medical College, but she was cleared of all charges and reinstated in 1986 following a high-profile public enquiry.

A British Medical Journal editorial concluded that a clash of personalities had led to the charges against Dr Savage: "Mrs Savage's strongly held and voiced opinions on women's rights to a say in their method of delivery and in their rights to abortion made her a public and at times controversial figure; rumours of other sources of conflict with her colleagues have ranged from style of dress to private practice."

Savage said of herself: 'I am not a member of the 'establishment' and saw no reason to conform to the medical profession's unwritten, but well-documented, 'party line', especially if I thought this was not in the interests of patients.' She wrote about her experiences in her book Savage Enquiry (Virago, 1986). Her later book, Birth and Power (Middlesex University Press, 2007), revisits the issues raised by her suspension. She is co-chair of the pressure group KONP (Keep Our NHS Public).

She was the first woman consultant to be appointed in obstetrics and gynaecology at The London Hospital. She was an elected member of the General Medical Council for more than 16 years. She was shortlisted for the BMJ Group Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

Sources and further reading
Birth and Power, A Savage Enquiry Revisited, Wendy Savage, 2007.
A Savage Enquiry, Who Controls Childbirth?, Wendy Savage, 1986.
The Politics of Maternity Care, Jo Garcia, Robert Kilpatrick and Martin Richards, 1990.

Copyright for material produced by Wendy Savage in this collection has been signed over to Wellcome Collection.

This collection has been partially catalogued and the catalogued part is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.