Physiotherapy and the shadow of prostitution: The Society of Trained Masseuses and the massage scandals of 1894

Abstract

In 1894 the Society of Trained Masseuses (STM) formed in response to massage scandals published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The Society's founders acted to legitimise massage, which had become sullied by its association with prostitution. This study analyses the discourses that influenced the founders of the Society and reflects upon the social and political conditions that enabled the STM to emerge and prosper.

The founders established a clear practice model for massage which effectively regulated the sensual elements of contact between therapist and patient. Massage practices were regulated through clearly defined curricula, examinations and the surveillance of the Society's members. A biomechanical model of physical rehabilitation was adopted to enable masseuses to view the body as a machine rather than as a sensual being. Medical patronage of the Society was courted enabling the Society to prosper amongst competing organisations.

Using Foucault's work on power we explore the contingent nature of these events, seeing the massage scandals in context with broader questions of sexual morality, professionalisation and expertise in the late nineteenth century society. We argue that many of the technologies developed by the founders resonate with physiotherapy practice today and enable us to critically analyse the continued relevance of the profession to contemporary healthcare.

Introduction

Little has been written about the history of physiotherapy as a profession, and to date there have been no critical accounts of the events surrounding the emergence of one of the largest health professional groups in Western healthcare. This is in contrast to the attention that has been paid to nursing (Gastaldo & Holmes, 1999), medicine (Armstrong, 1995), dentistry (Nettleton, 1992), psychology (Rose, 1985) and some of the allied health professions: chiropody (Dagnall & Page, 1992), chiropractic (Coburn, 1994) and podiatry (Borthwick, 1999).

Physiotherapy began as a profession in 1894, as a response to massage scandals promulgated by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The formation of the Society of Trained Masseuses (STM) by four august Victorian women would lead, eventually, to the creation of the first and largest profession allied to medicine, and to the formalisation of physical rehabilitation as a professional discipline.

It is surprising then that so little attention has been paid to the events surrounding the formation of the Society—particularly given that researchers and historians have concentrated so much scholarship upon late Victorian England—showing this to have been an exceedingly rich period in the history of social and political reform. Such events include the advancement of women's emancipation, the development of germ theory and sanitary science, social problems of urban overcrowding, the effects of two foreign wars, and political questions of sovereignty and government, classical liberalism and legal reform.

The events surrounding the formation of the STM have been detailed twice before, in Wicksteed's (1948) book, ‘The growth of the profession: Being the history of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy 1894–1945’, and more substantially in Barclay's (1994) book, ‘In good hands: The history of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, 1894–1994’. Both of these texts present excellent accounts of the events surrounding the formation of the STM, but neither undertakes a critical analysis of the social and political context that influenced the actions of the Society's founders.

One might ask for instance: why was there such concern to professionalise massage practice at this particular time, when massage had been practised for centuries, in many different societies and in many different ways? What circumstances conspired to bring the massage practices of a few disreputable London institutions into the spotlight and cause such moral outrage? What events allowed the formation of the STM to be seen as the appropriate response to these scandals? And how did the STM succeed in becoming the orthodox face of professional massage?

In this paper we attempt to address these questions by undertaking a genealogical analysis of the documentary evidence pertaining to the period. We have attempted to unravel some of the discourses that influenced the actions of the Society's founders, and present our analysis in a social and political context. We are not attempting here to analyse physiotherapy practice per se, but rather the formation of the Society that sought to regulate the work of its members and, in so doing, colonise the notion of what it meant to offer legitimate massage practice.

This paper has two principal goals: to present a genealogical analysis of the discourses surrounding the massage scandals of 1894, and to write of these events in such a way that they have relevance for the contemporary and future histories of physiotherapy practice. As Foucault would put it, we aim to construct a history of the present.