Elizabeth Storie

Elizabeth Storie (July 1818 – 1897) was a Scottish writer, milliner and seamstress. She was a working-class woman from Glasgow who, through her 1859 autobiography, gave an account of the challenges she faced within medical, legal, and ecclesiastical systems as a disabled woman in early Victorian Scotland.

Her work is noted for providing a rare disabled female working-class account of navigating these institutions and overcoming legal bias to get compensation for medical malpractice. Her hybrid autobiography is unusual in combining personal narrative with various documentation to showcase her efforts to get justice and while challenging societal norms of the time.

Biography Early life and mercury poisoning There are no known photographs of Elizabeth Storie, but this 1862 photograph of Carleton Burgan shows the results of similar damage to the mouth and face caused by calomel.Elizabeth Storie was born in Glasgow in July 1818 to "poor but respectable parents", as she writes in her autobiography: a cotton weaver and a cotton winder. Storie became increasingly ill and after three weeks her face and mouth were black and putrid. Falconer then gave her aquafortis, a form of nitric acid that he forced into her mouth using a syringe. Storie writes that "the agony I suffered from this cruel operation was so dreadful that I did not know what I was doing".

Storie's father sued Falconer, but although the court ordered the doctor to pay £1000 in compensation, he refused to pay.

It was very unusual for working-class women to publish their autobiographies in the mid-nineteenth century, and those that were published were, like Storie's, mostly tales of ill treatment that had attracted the support of middle-class patrons. Mary Prince's dictated autobiography about her life living as a slave is another example, but in general, most working-class writers were men. Storie and Prince's autobiographies fall into the category of "appeal memoirs", a genre also used by middle-class and upper-class women who had been ill-treated. The appeal is clear from the first paragraph of Storie's book:Having a strong impression that injustice is often done to the poor, and more especially to the women of that class, who are more defenceless, both from their sex, and from the difficulty which poverty combined with it exposes them to, in obtaining the help of those who are their natural protectors, I have been induced to publish a statement of the wrongs and trials I have been subjected to, in the hope of encouraging those who may be similarly afflicted to put their trust in God, as they too often will find that "vain is the help of man".

The facts which will be brought to light may also serve to warn those in high power of the danger of doing injustice or injury to any, trusting that through the insignificance of their victims the world may never know how much they have made others to suffer. The autobiography combines Storie's own narration with documentary evidence including court transcripts and letters from doctors and others certifying facts. This is a common strategy for autobiographies at the time, and was used by women to legitimize their stories. The autobiography also draws upon the genres of horror in its detailed descriptions of surgeries and abuse, and spiritual autobiography in Storie's description of her journey from being a sinner to a devoted member of the church. Literary scholars Lai and Nelson argue that this genre fusion allows Storie to destabilise "those that tend to represent the dis/abled in a static way", for instance featuring "the narrative trajectory of a heroic 'triumph over adversity'".

Published works

Elizabeth Storie, The Autobiography of Elizabeth Storie, A Native of Glasgow, Who Was Subjected to Much Injustice at the Hands of Some Members of the Medical, Legal, and Clerical Professions (Glasgow: Richard Stobbs, 1859)