The Forgotten Life of Annie Reay Barker, M.D

Annie Reay Barker (1851–1945) was a medical pioneer who was amongst the first women to qualify as a doctor in the late nineteenth century. Unlike other medical women of her time, Barker did not attract notable attention or publicity, therefore little has been written about her personal and professional life. Following a successful, yet tragically short-lived, career at the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women, Barker was committed to Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water with a diagnosis of ‘Chronic Mania’. Barker’s story sheds new light on the pressures placed on early women doctors to succeed, as well as the troubled internal dynamics of this pioneering group of women.