James Herriot, the man, the myth... the legend, by Keith Roulston

 

One of our daughters recently brought us the most recent six-season series of All Creatures Great and Small, the televised version of the books by Dr. James Herriot who wrote about being a veterinarian in Yorkshire, England in the 1930s and 1940s.
We had seen the original series on television in the 1970s and bought the series on DVD. It tells the story of Dr. James Herriot who served as a practicing  vet along with two partners in a large practice from the 1930s onward.

The thing that struck me watching the series is how much things have changed in both farming and veterinary practice over the years. The farms were small in the hills of Yorkshire, as they were here. 

Almost all farms had a few cattle and pigs, as they did here when I was a lad. People milked cows, by hand, and separated the skim milk from the cream, selling the cream to a local creamery to make butter. I remember school-mates who had after-school jobs packing butter for Silverwood Dairy in Lucknow.

I hope my father and our neighbours weren’t as rude as so many of the farmers James Herriot visited who, short on money themselves, resented fees they paid to the vet, even though they needed their help with livestock.

I remember our vet, Dr. Brock Clelland, who served the Lucknow area when I was a lad. I went to school with his children. Later he took on an assistant who moved to the Goderich area. He built a clinic on Hwy. 8 east of Clinton, which is now a centre selling locally-grown food.

When we moved to Blyth in the 1970s, we had a local vet who later sold out and became a teacher at the University of Guelph. His practice was sold to a young vet and I remember visiting his clinic with our cats and dogs to have them vaccinated or wounds repaired.

Over the years, a clinic was built at the south edge of Blyth and eventually small animals were no longer treated there as the vets concentrated on the large animals, serving local pig, cattle, sheep and goat farms. I don’t remember anyone having goats when I was young.

This is certainly different than in the James Herriot region where the vets had clinics to treat small animals (even birds).
James Herriot was not a real vet, but the stories are written by Alf Wight — a good thing since he makes his partners in the practice so controversial (and apparently they were).

In the James Herriot books he meets and marries a farm-girl, Helen, in real life Joan. They had two children. Jim, who became a vet himself and later wrote a book — The Real James Herriot — after his father’s death, which was published in 1999. His sister Rosie became a doctor.

Young Jim Wight graduated from Glasgow University in 1966 and later joined his father’s practice.

Jim worked alongside his father in the Thirsk practice for over 20 years, with never a cross word between them. In 1973, James Herriot's book sales went through the roof, especially in the United States.

Jim said: "Before my father died, I said to him: 'Somebody will write your biography,' and he said: 'I don't want a biography, but if anyone was to write one, it should be you.'

Alf Wight died in 1995, and Jim took two years off work to write his book.

Farming has changed so much over the years but, day to day we hardly notice. Despite all the changes farmers have made, it’s not much easier for farmers to make a living than in the days of James Herriot. Still, it’s interesting to see the way things used to be.◊