Edward Berdoe was an unusual character, with a long and varied career. He began working here as a chemist and photographer, but he later went on to scandalise the Victorian medical profession under his pen name Aesculapius Scalpel.
Berdoe worked in Reading at the very beginning of his career, before he completed his medical training he was a chemist, selling things like cough drops to local people. He then expanded the business to include photography. At this time in Reading all sorts of people were trying their hand at photography because it was new and very popular. There were photography businesses running alongside key cutters, cobblers and even painters and decorators. Clearly Berdoe already had a scientific mind, so it made perfect sense for him to have a go at taking photographs. None of his photography work seems to have survived, and shortly after this he began his medical training.
Berdoe was a physician in both the Crimean War and the American Civil War. He returned to Reading in between these two events to marry his wife Mary (nee inskipp) in 1858. Berdoe also had a passion for literature and became a well-respected authority on the work of the poet Robert Browning. He was on the committee of the London Browning society and even wrote an encyclopaedia of browning’s work which is still in print today.
When Berdoe began writing about the medical profession he used the pseudonym Aesculapius Scalpel, clearly he knew the book he was about to write (St. Bernard’s: The Romance of a Medical Student) would outrage a lot of people around him. St Bernard’s is a gothic story about a hospital full of untrustworthy and cruel doctors who routinely experiment on their patients. The book is a work of fiction, though in the book the author asserts that 75 percent of it is fact.
Berdoe was heavily involved in the strong anti-vivisection movement, he wrote the book about indifferent doctors and human experimentation to draw people’s attention to what was happening to animals. Edward Berdoe was a life-long vegetarian and spent a lot of his career trying to stop cruelty to animials. His last documented visit to Reading was in 1895, when he came to give a speech about on behalf of the Victoria Street Anti-Vivisection Society.