When Drs. Julia Ogden and Rebecca James perform autopsies in Murdoch Mysteries, they’re doing more than solving a fictional crime—they’re preserving the memory of the barriers real women faced in medicine, barriers that are all too easily forgotten.
Set in Toronto during the early 1900s, Murdoch Mysteries highlights a legacy of female coroners and feminist trailblazers who fought against the gender and racial restrictions of the not-so-distant era. When I watch female characters being underestimated, denied opportunities despite their qualifications, jeered at in medical school, and prohibited from entering polling stations, I bear witness to the authentic struggles women once endured—and continue to endure daily.
Portraying these experiences in popular media matters. Without these reminders, we risk legitimizing a narrative of historical determinism, where progress appears inevitable rather than hard-won through sacrifice and resilience.
We forget that challenging institutions is disruptive and met with heavy resistance, often at the expense of the pioneers. We forget the first woman to attend a University of Toronto had to listen through an open doorway so she didn’t distract the male students. I forget about the invisible shield laid down by women who came before me, protecting my days at Queen’s with the injustices they endured.
Some may argue that a show featuring a successful female doctor in the 1900s is historically unrealistic. But what’s unrealistic isn’t her success—it’s the idea that her success would be unimpeded. When it comes to realism, the authenticity of a character’s experience—not their likelihood to exist in a setting—comes first.
Dr. Ogden isn’t real, but the problems she faces are painfully so. In season four, she’s forced to resign from her position after teaching women how to access birth control under threat of imprisonment. Dr. James faces additional discrimination as a Black female physician by having her qualifications constantly questioned and being turned away from a hospital job interview on sight.
These characters draw powerful parallels to their contemporary counterparts. In 1932, Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw became the medical director of Canada’s first family planning clinic. Abortions and contraceptives were illegal at the time, and she risked up to two years in prison, yet she continued operating underground. Queen’s University’s Faculty of Medicine banned women in 1883 and didn’t allow them back in until 1943. Black students were banned in 1915, before being accepted once more in 1965, but the ban was only officially repealed in 2018.
By accurately portraying the barriers faced by trailblazing women, the media challenges revisionist claims that misinterpret current disparities as isolated events. Instead, we recognize them as the lingering effects of a recursive, systemic exclusion which, demonstrably, can change.
As a current Health Sciences student, I’ve benefited from policy changes that make my educational environment more welcoming than it was for previous generations. Without media that accurately portrays the experience of sexist and racial discrimination, I wouldn’t fully appreciate how recently these changes occurred or recognize and speak out against biases that persist today.
Writing these words, I know their extraordinary resilience will fade from my memory, forgotten time and time again. But every now and then, I might catch an episode of Murdoch Mysteries and be reminded that women in healthcare stand on the shoulders of true giants.
Bo Fei is a second-year Health Sciences student and a member of The Journal’s QTBIPOC Advisory Board.
Tags
feminism, Gender, historical realism, medicine, Murdoch Mysteries
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Dr. Kim Stepney
In 1993, I was returning to work as a female family physician, after taking 9 weeks off to have my baby. I was lucky enough to have had a locum in my office, and she was interested in working part time with me so we could each look after our families (I was breastfeeding) and care for my full time practice. Being in practice at that time required having hospital privileges, in order to see patients every day when they were admitted. I applied to the (male) hospital committee to allow my locum and I to share the job of doing hospital rounds. Having 2 part time doctors share a full time practice had never been done before in our community. While I waited for the committee to decide if we could split the hospital rounds, I attended my patients every day, while breastfeeding and bringing my baby to the hospital. After a year, the committee finally decided it would be all right. In the years following this, I saw a number of female physicians apply to work with partners when they had their babies. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but now I realize that I was a pioneer of women’s rights— in 1993. Yes. 1993.