James Manby Gully

Dr James Manby Gully (1808 - 1883), was a Victorian medical doctor, well known for practising hydrotherapy, or the "water cure". Along with his partner James Wilson, he founded a very successful "hydropathy" (as it was then called) clinic in Malvern, Worcestershire, which attracted many notable Victorians, including such figures as Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

He is also remembered as a suspect in the Charles Bravo poisoning case.

Career

Gully studied medicine in Paris and at Edinburgh University. From 1830 he practised medicine in London, but was disillusioned with the inflexible orthodoxy of Western medicine.

In 1842 he read a paper by Vincent Priessnitz, an Austrian surgeon who advocated hydrotherapy. Almost overnight, Gully gave up his surgery in London and set up his first "water cure" clinic at Malvern with James Wilson, another hydrotherapist.

The fame of the establishment grew, and Gully and Wilson became well-known national figures. Two more clinics were opened at Malvern. Famous patients included Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Florence Nightingale, Lord Tennyson and Samuel Wilberforce.

Beliefs and Causes

Gully was an articulate and popular public speaker and writer. He was also a firm believer in a number of women's causes. He advocated women's suffrage, and preached temperance, due to the detrimental affects of alcohol on the husbands of many Victorian women. Gully separated the sexes strictly at his clinics, as he believed that many female psychological complaints (depression, anxiety, hypochondria, hysteria) were due to the pressures Victorian women were under to be chaste, ambitionless, efficient, selfless givers, at the expense of their own mental well-being.

Affair with Florence Bravo

In 1872 he met a young woman named Florence Ricardo (later Florence Bravo). They became secret lovers. The following year, after travelling with Gully to Kissingen in Germany, Florence became pregnant. Gully performed an abortion. Thereafter, their relationship became purely platonic.

Florence subsequently met and fell in love with Charles Bravo, whom she married in 1875. On hearing the news from a third party, Gully reportedly tore the letter to shreds. Just a few short months later, in April 18th, 1876, Charles Bravo died of poisoning. The culprit was never discovered: Gully was a suspect, along with Florence herself, but although he testified at the inquest, nothing further came of the case.

Gully died in 1883.

Further reading

• Death at the Priory: Love, Sex, and Murder in Victorian England by James Ruddick, Atlantic Books, 2002