"A Twopenny Box of Pills": Quacks and Medical Mountebanks in the North East by Dr Jo Bath

Name: "A Twopenny Box of Pills": Quacks and Medical Mountebanks in the North East by Dr Jo Bath
Start: 2026-04-17T18:00:00+01:00
Location: The Black Gate, Castle Garth, NE1 1RQ Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Schedule

Fri, 17 Apr, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

The Black Gate, Castle Garth, NE1 1RQ Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom | Newcastle Upon Tyne, EN

Join us in the Harbottle Suite of the Black Gate where we will dive deep into our Rogues & Vagabonds season with Dr Jo Bath as she explores all things Quack Doctors!
In 1761, the Newcastle Courant advertised for a "Merry Andrew" able to serve a travelling doctor in entertaining the crowds (preferably with a violin). A hundred years later, the press was publicising an arsenic-based "fatal case of quack doctoring" in Elswick. Who were these people - the "self-taught professors" and "botanical doctors" - and what were they really getting up to?
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Jo "the historymonger" Bath is a Doctor of Crime (well, seventeenth century crime), but is equally at home in all periods of history, as long as she gets to mess around with the gory, sexy, spooky, wild, weird or wonderful bits of it. She teaches history to anyone of any age who stays still long enough to listen, and has recently braved doing so via this "internet" thing as well.
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Doors will open at 17:45, come to the Black Gate reception on Floor 1 to check in and visit our gift shop, and then head up to Floor 2 for the talk.
Timings
Doors open at 17.45
Talk starts at 18.00