Researchers say Caithness should be proud of ‘elite midwife’ Christian Couper
University researchers have said that Caithness should be proud of an “elite midwife” from two centuries ago who delivered almost 4000 babies.
Christian Couper (née Campbell) was born in Houstry around 1766 and trained in Edinburgh.
She left behind a midwife book that gives a rare insight into the training and work of midwives in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mrs Couper’s legacy was the focus of a talk and question-and-answer session on Midwifery and Nursing History in Caithness hosted by Nucleus in Wick on Tuesday.
It was a collaborative workshop with Edinburgh Napier University and was attended by Professor Nicola Ring and Dr Nessa McHugh, from the university’s School of Health and Social Care.
They pointed out that their interest in Christian Couper had begun with a John O’Groat Journal announcement dating back 182 years.
“This time last year we had never heard of Christian Couper,” Prof Ring explained. “But we ran a public event with the National Library of Scotland [NLS] and the Royal College of Nursing for people who had got a nurse or a midwife in their family tree and wanted to know how to go about researching them.”
One of the NLS team showed a “random example” of the kind of information that can be sourced from the British Newspaper Archive. It was Mrs Couper’s death notice from an 1843 edition of the Groat, noting that she had delivered almost 4000 babies.
“We sat up at this point because there’s not much necessarily written about women midwives in this time period – and often, in what is written, they are portrayed really badly, like ignorant old crones,” Prof Ring said.
“The death notice says that she was a loss to obstetrics, so she was clearly rated. We wanted to find out more about her and this was our starting point.”
They contacted Caithness archivist Jamie McCaffrey at Nucleus and he was able to provide some family history.
Prof Ring said the “holy grail” was discovering that Mrs Couper’s book still existed. The original is held at the National Records of Scotland, while the Caithness Archive has a facsimile copy alongside a typed transcript arranged alphabetically by surname.
Public engagement funding from Edinburgh Napier University allowed Prof Ring and Dr McHugh to visit Wick and share what they have found so far. As well as talking about midwifery and nursing history at Nucleus, they visited the nearby Laurandy daycare centre.
They are keen to find out more information about Mrs Couper, who lived in Thurso and is thought to have delivered 3948 infants during her career.
Dr McHugh pointed out: “Some of the people in the censuses will be practising midwives but it won’t be mentioned as an occupation because it wasn’t seen as significant.”
Anne Fraser, family historian at High Life Highland, also took part in this week’s session. She has produced a database of midwives in Caithness, covering the period between the 1841 and 1901 censuses, amounting to more than 100 names.
She said: “I have found the whole thing fascinating, from the word go. It’s just a great project to look into.”
Prof Ring added: “It’s a privilege to have come up today to work with these wonderful folk.
“Christian Couper was a professional elite midwife – that was her job. She was delivering doctors’ babies, she delivered the Countess of Caithness four times… This was an elite midwife.
“Caithness should be really proud of her.”
Mrs Couper’s brother or half-brother Sir William Campbell became Attorney General of Cape Breton Island and was later the Chief Justice of Upper Canada. His house in Toronto is now a museum.
