Moody and Clarke: College members in focus for Black History Month
Publication: The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Volume 106, Number 7
Abstract
We celebrate the lives of Cecil Belfield Clarke and Harold Moody who founded the League of Coloured Peoples, the first civil rights movement in the UK.
For Black History Month, it is fitting to remember the lives of two members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England: Cecil Belfield Clarke (1894–1970) and Harold Moody (1882–1947). In 1931, they set up and led the first Black civil rights group in the UK, the League of Coloured Peoples.
Moody was a Jamaican-born physician who came to England in 1904 to study medicine at King’s College London. After qualifying, he was unable to find a job as a physician with an existing practice; this was likely the result of the prevalent racism of the time. He therefore set up his own practice in Peckham, southeast London.
Clarke was a Barbadian-born physician. Having completed his medical training at Cambridge and at University College Hospital, London, he practised near Elephant and Castle in south London.
The Council minutes of the Royal College of Surgeons of England contain the examination records for both doctors. Dr Moody received his diploma as a member of the College in April 1911, listing his address at King’s College Hospital. Dr Clarke passed the conjoint exam in October 1918, with his address being listed as University College Hospital. The College created the ‘conjoint’ MRCS LRCP exam with the Royal College of Physicians in 1885.
Having established a thriving practice in Peckham, Moody was involved in organising the local community and tending to civilian casualties during the Second World War. This heroic effort was largely ignored until recent research uncovered it.
After working at University College Hospital, Dr Clarke moved to Southwark and established his practice at Newington Causeway, where he worked until his retirement. He devised an important weight-based formula for calculating the paediatric dose of a drug, known erroneously as Clark’s rule.
Aside from their medical work, Clarke and Moody were prominent advocates for the UK civil rights movement. In March 1931, Moody formed and became president of the League of Coloured Peoples, which advocated for racial equality and civil rights in Britain as well as elsewhere in the world. Clarke was one of five inaugural executive committee members. Among the first members of the organisation were CLR James, Jomo Kenyatta, Una Marson and Paul Robeson.
Through their pioneering work with the League of Coloured Peoples, the two doctors helped improve the working lives of Black people in the UK and cultivated important international links with other Black civil rights activists. The League was notable for embodying the first conscious and deliberate attempt to form a multiracial organisation led by Black people.
The activists were also united by defiance of societal norms in their personal lives. Moody met Olive Tranter, an English nurse, at the Royal Eye Hospital. The couple married in 1913, when relationships between people from different races were still unusual and often met with animosity. They had six children, four of whom served in the armed forces and medical corps during the Second World War.
At a time of widespread discrimination and prejudice, Clarke lived as a gay man with his long-term partner, Edward Walter. Homosexuality was still a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.
Harold Moody died aged 64 years. His successor as president of the League of Coloured Peoples was the surgeon Dr Robert Cole FRCS. However, Cole resigned in 1949 and within two years, the League was dissolved. Moody and Clarke have both been commemorated with blue plaques at the site of their respective practices.
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Published In
The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Volume 106 • Number 7 • October 2024
Pages: 382 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, and adaptation in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed.
History
Published online: 30 September 2024
Published in print: October 2024
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