Marjorie Howard Futcher Digital Photo Collection

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine and the McGill University Library are pleased to announce the launch of the online Marjorie Howard Futcher Photo Collection. This is a series of close to one thousand images arranged in two albums dating from 1890 to 1910 by Marjorie Howard Futcher (1882-1969), daughter of the former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Osler’s mentor R. Palmer Howard.

The site contains a number of photographs of medical people, including Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Dean of McGill Medicine Francis Shepherd (1851-1929), and even Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918), later famous for his poem In Flanders Fields. It also illustrates the social life of a young, well-connected Montreal woman during the period, including school days in England and Germany, and vacations in the lower St Lawrence area of Metis-sur-Mer, England, Scotland, Paris and Italy. The site provides an insight into the intersection of the worlds of elite medicine and wealth.

Viewers can virtually flip through the photo albums, replicating the experience of examining the originals and also seeing each picture in its larger context.

The original albums were donated to the Osler Library by Mrs Futcher’s son, Dr Palmer Howard Futcher of Baltimore, in 1998. We are grateful to the McGill Faculty of Medicine Class of 1978, whose generous class gift helped make this possible, and to those who contributed to this project.

For more information, please contact the Osler Library at osler.library@mcgill.ca or 514-398-4475, ext 09873.

Note: The image above (#FUT1_002-001_P) is from the Osler Library collection, and depicts Majorie Howard Futcher in 1900 at Métis-sur-Mer (Québec).