# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Cullingworth, Charles James

​CULLINGWORTH, CHARLES JAMES (1841–1908), gynaecologist and obstetrician, son of Griffith Cullingworth, bookseller, by his wife Sarah Gledhill of Eddercliff, was born on 3 June 1841 at Leeds. Of Wesleyan stock, although he afterwards joined the Church of England, he was ​educated at Wesley College, Sheffield. On leaving school he was employed in his father's business, but on the latter's death in 1860 entered the Leeds School of Medicine (1861), and there took many prizes in anatomy and physiology, surgery and medicine. Whilst studying he served four years as an apprentice to a general practitioner in Leeds. He became M.R.C.S. in 1865, and licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1866. After eighteen months as assistant in a country practice at Bawtry, near Doncaster, he entered the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1867 as resident physician's assistant, and later was appointed resident medical officer. In 1869 he commenced private practice in Manchester, and from 1872 to 1882 was police surgeon. In 1873 he began his special work, on being appointed honorary surgeon to the St. Mary's Hospital for Women and Children at Manchester. In 1881 he graduated M.D. at Durham University, and then gradually relinquished private practice and became a consultant only.
Meanwhile, appointed lecturer in medical jurisprudence at the Owens College in 1879, he made a pronounced success as a teacher. His lectures were invariably clear and comprehensive and were delivered with elocutionary power. In 1885 he was appointed to the chair of obstetrics and gynæcology in the Owens College. He was secretary to the board of studies in medicine at Victoria University, Manchester, from 1883, when the university obtained in its supplemental charter power to confer degrees in medicine.
Cullingworth worked hard for the Manchester Medical Society for nineteen years. He was honorary librarian (1872–8) and honorary secretary (1879–84). Actively interested in literature generally, he devoted much of his spare time to the library of the society and to the cataloguing of the books. At Manchester, too, he helped to found the ‘Medical Chronicle,’ a monthly magazine, still published, which provides abstracts of good work appearing in medical journals.
In 1888 he gave up his posts at Manchester to become obstetric physician at St. Thomas's Hospital, London. He remained on the active staff until 1904, staying on for three years beyond the usual age limit. He was then appointed consulting obstetric physician and made a governor of the hospital. On removing to London he was appointed visiting physician to the General Lying-in Hospital, York Road.
In 1879 Cullingworth became a member of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1887 he was elected a fellow, and in 1902 he was the first obstetric physician to read the Bradshawe lecture, his subject being ‘Intraperitoneal hæmorrhage incident to ectopic gestation.’ For many years he was active in the proceedings of the Obstetrical Society of London and contributed his best papers on strictly obstetrical and gynæcological topics to its ‘Transactions.’ He was one of the founders, and always an active member of the committee which published the ‘Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire,’ and he contributed some papers to it. During the last two years of his life he was editor.
Cullingworth was prominent in the movement for securing the legal registration of midwives. In 1902 the midwives bill became law, and he was appointed to represent the Incorporated Midwives Institute on the Central Midwives Board which was instituted for the proper working of the Act. He received the honorary degrees of D.C.L. from Durham in 1893 and LL.D. from Aberdeen in 1904; he was a member of numerous gynæcological societies at home and abroad.
Never of a robust type, he suffered during his later years from angina pectoris, but continued his work till his death in London on 11 May 1908. He was buried in the Marylebone cemetery at Finchley. He married in April 1882 Emily Mary, daughter of Richard and Harriet Freeman of London, and left one daughter. An enlarged photographic portrait is in the board room at St. Thomas's Hospital.
Cullingworth was a great pioneer of gynæcology. He did his best professional work on the causation of pelvic peritonitis, which he was one of the first in England to maintain was secondary to other conditions, and not a primary disease. His most original and valuable book was on this subject: ‘Clinical Illustrations of the Diseases of the Fallopian Tubes and of Tubal Gestation,’ a series of excellent and lifelike drawings with descriptive text and histories of the cases (1895; 3rd edit. 1902). Cullingworth also published ‘The Nurse's Companion, a Manual of General and Monthly Nursing,’ 1876; ‘A Manual of Nursing, Medical and Surgical’ (1883; 3rd edit. 1889); ‘A Short Manual for Monthly Nurses’ (1884; 6th edit. 1907); and he wrote an important article on pelvic inflammation for Allbutt, Playfair and Eden's ‘System of Gynæcology’ and many papers for medical periodicals. A ​paper read before the Obstetrical Society in 1892, entitled ‘The value of abdominal section in certain cases of recurrent peritonitis, based on a personal experience of fifty cases,’ gave rise to discussion in which all the leading gynæcologists in England joined, but Cullingworth's views are now generally accepted.
[Personal knowledge; information from Mrs. Cullingworth; Brit. Med. Journal, 23 May 1908; Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology, June and July 1908.]
E. M. B.