Apart from their relevance to my family biography, the hitherto mislaid books would have provided interesting background information for my investigative articles in 2008, 2011 and 2012. They had proved unobtainable on the Internet because a mean-minded beekeeper bookseller, with copies of the books for sale, presumably imagined, erroneously, that I am totally opposed to ALL bee venom therapies. As these two projected articles will underline once again, most of Mrs Owen’s career was devoted to successfully treating patients with arthritis, rheumatism and skin diseases. It was only in her final short, desperate period (?1974-) that she resorted to exaggerated claims of curing Retinitis Pigmentosa, which achieved the publicity she craved but which also brought about her spectacular downfall in early 1979 following the BBC TV exposé (detailed in one of my previous blogs).

The second article will attempt to set out those known biographical details about “Julia Owen” and the many other aspects which are still unclear, and for which, perhaps, some readers may be able to furnish vital further clues.  (Mrs. Julia Owen’s Biography. 2. The known and the unknown)

1. Clamouring at the Citadel

Self-published by Ms Owen in 1963 in Bromley, Kent, UK. Possibly with the help of a ghost-writer.

The short introduction offers important information and is reproduced here in full.

“For years I dreamed of a medicated bee venom clinic in England, but at the time this book opens I had neither money nor bees to bring this long cherished desire to fruition. Nevertheless, the idea haunted me till the urge to found a clinic became irresistible, and I determined to set forth on the hazardous errand of which I tell.

 “I had money and to spare for my project, tied up in valuable treasures and jewellery I left in Austria and Hungary when before the war I came to Britain. If I could get these here, my dream would come true. The odds were heavily weighted against success, but I meant to try, because I wanted this country, the only one where I have been able to treat the sick without interference, to be the first to benefit by my cure, and I had not then encountered the medical profession’s stubborn opposition to learning and adopting my method.

 “The task of finding, amassing and transferring my scattered possessions out of one country, into another and finally to England that they might be translated into the cash I needed to achieve my aim, seemed at times, impossible, but thanks to the courageous daring and ingenuity of a band of very noble helpers, culled from nearly every walk of life, but mainly from the Czech and Hungarian peasant population, who never forsook me in my hour of danger and need, even at great risk to themselves, I accomplished the mission, and was able to build bee chambers and establish a clinic in Bromley, Kent, financed by the funds I raised on my treasures, plus the currency I managed to bring in.

 “Without my special bees however, chambers and clinic were useless and I was helpless, as I cannot work alone, for bees, extolled by Shakespeare and beloved of thousands, the thousands upon thousands whose health and, happiness they have restored, are the wonder agents of my cures. I do not of course, refer to ordinary garden bees, which are dangerous, as is evidenced by the annual toll of lives from their stings, but to the bees I specially breed, hygienically rear, carefully select, and medicate through their diet according to the disease I intend to treat.

 “When I left Austria, fearing the conflagration looming ominously over Europe, I entrusted my precious bees to the tender care of an old professor friend of the family. The journey to recover them will be told in my next book. Suffice it to say here therefore, that some of the stories now set down, that is those which refer to the period after I brought my bees over, are not in strict chronological sequence, but may perhaps provide interesting and amusing reading, since they are true experiences I have had.

 “For those who do not even know my name nor my way of treating with medicated bee venom, it would perhaps be expedient to explain there is no hocus pocus about my method. It is as logical as the doctors’ syringe and injection, but for the diseases it can alleviate, much more successful, as is borne out by the number of medical men, their families and their rejects suffering from these ills they cannot cure, who find their way to me, begging for my aid. They come to me themselves but fear of reprisals at the hands of the General Medical Council here and similar bodies in other countries, keeps the doctors from sending patients to me. Sufferers who do come too late, that is before the advanced stage where bone, muscle and tissue have been destroyed by the disease or some of the modern drugs and treatments, go away restored to health and happiness, to the health and happiness which the doctors do not know how to give, can enjoy themselves, but are not allowed to learn to share with others.

 “The title of this book, Clamouring At The Citadel, has been chosen because it aptly depicts the plight of the rheumatics and arthritics everywhere today. They plead for relief and a cure, the cure the doctors do not know, and shout aloud through the press they do not know. Six and a half million of these sufferers in this country alone, not to mention the teeming millions of other lands, clamour at the walls of the impregnable citadel of the medical profession, where safe within its keep the men of medicine are guided by the accusing finger, and quake beneath the threatening fist, of the General Medical Council. They must lie low, shut their eyes and ears, shun my treatment and my patients, and cannot study or use it to help the tortured to whom it could bring new hope and usefulness. I am convinced that were the Lord Jesus Christ to come back to earth again, they would write Him off a quack, and forbid Him to touch their patients or perform His miracles as of yore.

 “Medicated bee venom is most successful in the crippling and painful rheumatic and arthritic diseases, some skin and eye complaints closely related to them, and their allied ills of gout, lumbago, sciatica, fibrositis, as well as asthma, neuritis and other nervous disorders. [Bold type added]

“So my beloved bees I had to have, and I went for them.

“When all was ready to commence treating the afflicted, it would have served no purpose whatever to sit peacefully waiting for them to arrive, since the people of this country hardly knew my name. Although my form of treatment had been practised by the medical members of my family for many years in Europe prior to my carrying it on and further perfecting it, I was almost unheard of here, save to the very few who knew of my work on the Continent, and I needed to let the public know I was waiting to cure them. Publicity is an elusive will o’ the wisp very hard to ensnare. It seemed to me therefore, the only way to catch it, and indeed to merit it, would be to treat free some who were prominently before the public eye, in exchange for their chances and efforts in spreading the gospel of medicated bee venom. The poor of compassion I treated frequently gratis, but of the rest, I was compelled to assess their publicity possibilities on occasions, and waive the cost of their cures.

“The idea worked well in many instances, and though I have met and dealt with rogues as well as angels, their living testimony to the work and efficacy of my bees soon set the news arolling, and like a snowball gathering size and weight in rolling, it brought the sick to my door. From one to another hopeless reject of the medical profession it went, till from the far corners of the earth they came seeking alleviation, complete cure, and the return to the normal life they yearned for.

“A small book I recently published, for the benefit and guidance of those whose disease or purse will not permit them to come to Bromley for treatment, entitled, Treat Yourself for Your Rheumatic or Arthritic Disease, has also played its part in alleviating their pain, and has shown that victims of these diseases can do something to help themselves to a happier and less agonising existence.

But the picture could be changed to much brighter hues and so I toil on in the hope, perhaps the vain hope who knows, that there will come a day before it is too late, when someone may hear the cry of crippled and tortured mankind, uncommonly thick though the walls of the citadel be.”

*

The first chapter of Clamouring at the Citadel, ‘Dodging Dodges’, takes up over half of the book (152 pages) and deals in very great detail with the highly dramatic six months Julia spent in 1947 roaming Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in search of the many valuable possessions she had left behind when she fled the area in 1939. The money was destined to finance her proposed bee venom treatment clinic in London. This is an astonishing narrative, describing ingenuity, danger and many narrow escapes from authorities, each minutely described. The narration rivals the scenario for a 1940s thriller. Between February and August 1947, amid the austerities of post-war Europe, Julia claims to have retrieved countless valuables, including, jewellery, Meissen china, tapestries, and no less than 470 paintings by Hungarian artists “Professor Vidder” and Istvan Nagy, which she had presciently bought up (and hidden) before her 1939 flight to UK. She claims that many of these paintings were sold in Prague, to Americans, and the dollars transferred to her UK bank.

Having failed to discover any of her family in Austria, Julia went round collecting all these valuables from hiding places in Hungary (where she had owned a mountain villa, to which a faithful maid had transferred many of these precious belongings). From here, Julia smuggled them bit by bit across the river into Czechoslovakia (“54 hazardous river crossings”), sold some pieces for cash and, finally, armed with a safe conduct pass from President Eduardo Benes of Czechoslovakia (a friend from the past), took seven huge trunks by rail to Prague, where she was reunited with her anxious husband, “Albert” (?Owen?). She solved his shortage of foreign currency by selling a brooch for 5,500 pounds sterling for their expenses. In the Czech capital, with a 28-day visa achieved with the President’s help, she and her husband were guests of the President and his wife for a few days before Julia set about the daunting solo task of selling as many of her possessions as she could before flying back to the UK unaccompanied, with a large number of dollars concealed very painstakingly in a full length plaster cast on one leg. On arrival in England, she claims to have sought and obtained an interview with the legendary Sir Stafford Cripps, the dour Chancellor of the Exchequer, who refused her request for permission to import currency. So she made other arrangements.

In the remaining seven short chapters (pp 153-247), Julia gives an account of some of her experiences in treating patients for arthritis, etc. She gives monotonously detailed and very angry accounts of her difficult patients, especially whose who tried to deceive or cheat her. There is, unfortunately, nothing positive in these pages to add to her biography.

2. Doctors without Shame, 1965 (self-published)

This is basically a boring over-detailed chronicle of Julia’s frequent bad experiences with medical practitioners and organisations.

As with the previous volume there are few dates, places or names mentioned.

Of most interest for biographers:

PREFACE

“I have devoted much of my life, and the whole of the past sixteen years, to the development and application of a unique form of treatment which, as my readers will learn. is mainly for the various forms of arthritis and many types of skin diseases which so far have defeated orthodox medicine.

My object has never been profit or honours for myself. Indeed, as a result of the expenses involved in research and in much treatment which I have given for nothing, I am, financially, considerably poorer than I was.

Similarly, my primary purpose in writing this book is neither to pillory individual members of the medical profession nor to receive public acclaim for myself.

I desire public awareness of my work and the benefits which it can bring: and, through that, relief and new hope to an ever increasing number of sufferers from those complaints which are within my particular province.

These stories which follow are about doctors who, often despite my every discouragement, have sought – and often obtained – my medicated bee venom treatment. They should prove more than anything else can, the truth of my claims. The doctors would not come to me for treatment for their arthritis, skin diseases and other ailments if the remedies were in their own hands. Equally, they would not come to me unless they knew, in advance, by reason of their own specialist knowledge, that I could help.

Whatever profits there may be from the sale of this book are of no concern to me except in so far as they may assist to alleviate the suffering of those whom my method alone an help and also to ensure that my work is continued after my retirement or death.

I hope to achieve this purpose in the following way. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go into a special account. I shall deduct only my publishing and administrative expenses.

The net profits, if sufficient, will be devoted to the acquisition of a suitable property which I shall convert into a clinic. There I will treat, for a period of two years, completely free of charge, as many patients as possible – depending upon the funds available from the sale of this book. The more books sold the greater the number of patients who can be treated. I am hoping that the clinic will be staffed by nurses who need my treatment for themselves or their relatives or valued friends.

During this period of two years, my private residence, ” Sunkist Vienna “, would be open to receive doctors, of any nationality, who wish to study my methods. Up to fourteen rooms can be put at their disposal. I would ask only that they acknowledge that they have come to learn from me, and that they learn in order to help others. In this way, it could be ensured that my knowledge and methods would survive to the inestimable benefit of countless thousands.

At the end of two years, my intention is to retire. I shall then present the clinic to the nation. If there is no one able and willing to continue its use as a bee venom clinic, the Government may devote it to whatever purpose they deem fit.

I should, perhaps, make clear that this is not intended as an appeal for subscriptions or gifts. On no account will either be welcome or accepted. My proposal concerns the use of the profits from the sale of this book at its published price.

This is my last throw. I have laboured long on behalf of the sick. I have done all in my power to bring my medicated bee venom treatment to the notice and within the means of those whose only hope is in my treatment. This cause is surely worthy of your support.

I began writing this book in January, 1964. Since then I have many times anxiously re-read and revised the stories which follow. While so doing, the thought often crossed my mind: will my readers believe what I have written? Will they not think it too fantastic to be true? They may reflect that, if these stories are untrue, I take a very serious risk in publishing them so widely. And yet, that may still not be sufficient to carry conviction. After all, the medical profession has always stood very high in the public estimation. Its members have been assumed to have been actuated primarily by a sense of vocation; the relief of others’ suffering was their concern, and not the furtherance of their own material rewards. Furthermore, their standards of conduct were believed to be in accordance with these high ideals; not for them the cynical pursuit of self-interest, in disregard of the national interest, which is alleged to characterise certain manual workers’ organisations.”

………………………….

 Also: The Foreword (pp. 9-12), and this advertisement on the last pages of the book:

THE JULIA OWEN CLINIC

1, Westbury Road, (Near Widmore Green),  BROMLEY, KENT. RAVENSBOURNE 2313.

THE JULIA OWEN CLINIC is the only MEDICATED BEE VENOM CLINIC in the world.

 “Medicated bee venom whilst primarily sought after for the cure and alleviation of the rheumatic and arthritic diseases, particularly the very painful ones known as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, has proved singularly successful in curing several other diseases as well.

These include certain forms of blindness, deafness and skin disorders arising from and with these illnesses, such as weeping eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis and urticaria. It is also extremely efficacious with retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes in patients who have not received insulin, muscular dystrophy, asthma and thyroid deficiency. [a very early mention of RP]

Members of Julia Owen’s family were among the earliest medical men to evolve, improve and use medicated bee venom therapy, which has long interested research workers on the Continent of Europe. Having studied and assimilated the findings of her forebears, she decided at a very early age to devote her entire life to the practice of this treatment, till today her clinic at Bromley, Kent, is the result of the forty odd years of further research she has carried out. To her come patients from all parts of the globe, often cases abandoned as hopelessly incurable, weary of being wheeled from hospital to spa, and from spa to costlier clinics elsewhere, till in a quiet suburban street in Bromley, they find relief from painful torment and a cure for their ills.

Medicated bee venom treatment is not obtainable under the National Health Service. Its fame and reputation bring people from every walk of life, Members of Parliament, barristers, businessmen, scientists, artisans and even arthritic and rheumatic doctors and nurses often from thousands of miles away. Case histories are meticulously recorded and testify to the amazing cures of the clinic.

Briefly, bee venom therapy is the application of medicated stings, but not those of ordinary garden bees, for they are dangerous and account for a number of deaths each year. The bees used in the JULIA OWEN CLINIC are of special strains, hygienically bred, carefully selected and medicated via their diet to the medical requirements of each patient an_–d disease. Furthermore, they are perfectly safe.

Those who visit the clinic whose complaints are considered curable by medicated bee venom must first have radiological examination, then blood and urine tests are made to determine the kind of medication necessary, and only after this, the standard routine of any scientifically run clinic, is the precise medicated bee venom treatment prescribed.”

*

There is little else of new biographical importance in this second volume, except:

‘Full Circle’, pp. 13-26, about Julia’s medical studies in Vienna and her dislike for her disapproving mother, “a glorified medical snob” and her intention to abandon her studies to do further research on bee venom therapy, particularly relating to arthritis.

‘The Airborne Char’ (pp. 225-240), which gives her version of an aborted 1960 deal over treatment clinics in Canada with a Canadian doctor, Dr Joseph Staine. (There are also two independent Canadian newspaper reports of this fiasco, which I shall list in the Bibliography accompanying the second of these 2 biographical articles.)

One further source

During my 3-month stay in Bromley in 1978, Mrs Owen asked me to read part of a draft manuscript of a new biographical book which she was preparing.

From my written notes, these points may be of interest.

From the Foreword:

“For 52 years I have been treating successfully ailments for which doctors can do little or nothing – among them arthritis, asthma, skin diseases and certain types of deafness and blindness, although from pressure of work, I am now concentrating only on deaf and blind cases. One of my greatest successes is with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a form of blindness which top eye specialists the world over have categorically pronounced untreatable.”

“Medicated bee venom, a form of therapy which the medical members of my Austrian family evolved and developed over 6 [sic] generations and which I, in turn, greatly improved and now use with miraculous effect.”

*

She studied medicine in Vienna but gave up 5 months before qualifying [c 1925?] because she “disagreed with the treatment of arthritis i.e. with gold injections and injecting freshly boiled milk, which nearly sent the patient insane. I had no desire to belong to such a profession.”

*

“No harm is done by the bee treatment. Stings are absolutely safe. The bees are of special strains, hygienically bred, carefully selected and medically dieted to suit each person’s ailment. After feeding the bees with necessary medicaments, I pinch them behind the head so they are not quite dead but not suffering. I then apply them to the patient.”

“I must explain that I have to test new patients for several weeks, sometimes months, before I know which glands need feeding and how many different medicaments will be necessary and how long it is likely to take.”

“Many incurable illnesses are caused by malfunctioning glands and hard drugs (cortisone, steroids, butozolodene, etc.) damage the glands and induce new diseases.”

*

In reply to a suggestion that she publish her formula:

“… Bee stings which are herbally medicated definitely have excellent therapeutic effects with horrnonal and glandular systems of the body. Pituitary and adrenal glands are affected and I assess the effect of my treatment day to day by testing the urine, observing temperature reaction, appearance of oedema, change in colour of the skin and swelling, which all point to glandular effect. In other words, it points to the way the glands are working: slow, medium or fast. It is, in fact, a very finely controlled and sensitive therapy.”

*

“I do have the most rewarding successes with Retinitis Pigmentosa in all cases where the doctors have not tried to inject at the back of the eyes or carried out tissue insertions.”

*

“When will they realise that Retinitis Pigmentosa is nothing to do with the eyes? In fact, I find that most eye complaints I can treat so successfully are caused by different gland behaviour because the body is sick.”

*

(Part 2 is to follow soon.)

Media Acclaim and Promotion 1975

Mrs Julia Owen had already spent decades studying apitherapy and treating arthritis, dermatitis and other ailments with bee venom. She had also self-published three promotional books in the mid-1960s. Following her return to UK from Australia in 1972, as a sexagenarian anxious for greater public recognition of her skills, she appears to have decided to concentrate on the much more emotionally appealing treatment of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a hereditary disease leading to blindness. Although I cannot trace any UK media articles about her in the early 1970s, this is mainly because such material is not available on the Internet. The fact is that Owen must have stirred up public interest in the years 1972-1975, possibly through her habit of encouraging British RP patients to spread the news of their claimed cures, especially to the local newspapers. Without some sort of similar growing publicity, there would have been no incentive for journalist Ena Kendall to have researched Owen’s controversial bee sting work in 1975 and no incentive either for the prestigious UK Sunday paper The Observer to have published Kendall’s nuanced but basically favourable article on 16 February 1975 in its Sunday Magazine under the title ‘Can Bee Stings Cure Blindness?’ (pp. 25-7).

This investigative article filled in some much-needed background to Mrs Owen’s life and work (supplied mainly by her) and focussed on her claimed success in the newish venture of treating RP sufferers, although the research included comments on her preceding success with arthritis and other conditions.

Kendall begins her article with brief but enthusiastic testimonials from three British RP sufferers (including an unnamed barrister) who claim that in a brief time Mrs Owen had improved their condition. Kendall also reveals the protracted antagonism between Owen and the orthodox medical profession by quoting her objection to medical examination of her (treated and allegedly cured) RP patients on the basis that such tests would be harmful and “…These patients can now see beautifully … what more proof can they want?” We are then offered the dissenting opinion of a consultant ophthalmologist that there is not only no evidence of cures of RP, but that the patients’ fleeting subjective conviction of improvement is a documented psychological phenomenon. He also adds: “One doesn’t want to raise hopes among people going blind.”

Mrs Owen then offers Kendall some sketchy biographical details: Her Austrian father and grandfather had been medical practitioners of bee therapy. She had come to London after the war, and settled a few years later in Bromley, a prosperous city 15 miles south of London. For 20 years she treated “people with arthritis and kindred complaints”, before emigrating with her second husband (presumably Mr Owen) to Australia between 1966 and 1972. (Details of the Australian sojourn and any healing work carried out in that country would be useful for this jigsaw biography with so many pieces missing. More interesting would be ANY details of her Austrian name, the identities of her apitherapy practitioner family and her work until 1947, aged 39). All we are told is that she is 67, married an Englishman (from Staffordshire) before WWII and that Mr Owen was her second husband and died in 1972.)

So, although Owen had used bee venom for 48 years to treat “arthritic and rheumatic diseases, skin afflictions …” etc., now, “through pressure of work, she concentrates on blind people and […] asthmatics”. As for the treatment itself, “Bee venom works on the glands. You find out which gland is limping. You clear this gland and the pain disappears. With retinitis pigmentosa I dehydrate the pigments, a form of fungus of the eye. The treatment for arthritis can take eighteen months to two years.”

As for the treatment itself, which Kendall is allowed to witness during an afternoon session, Owen claims to use specially bred bees fed on a secret mixture of fermented herbs. On treatment day she selects the bees she will need, possibly up to ten per patient, and pinches them behind the head to subdue them and make them more manageable and finally applies them to the patient’s head, neck and back [and sometimes hands]. The stings are left in for up to two hours for maximum effect. The article ends with the following triumphalist self-promotion by Julia:
“I’ve got healing bees.” “Darling, it is a heaven. You have a blind person coming in and you put your arm around her and say: ‘Don’t worry, darling. You will be seeing.’ It is the most wonderful thing on earth to give somebody back his sight. It is beautiful for me because I beat the best men in the land.”

The above alone would explain why Ena Kendall’s report in such a widely read and respected British newspaper attracted immediate attention from many RP sufferers and their families in UK and abroad. It would also show why the article was instrumental in many of these patients coming to see Mrs Owen in the following three years (including the artist and writer Andrew Potok, who has described his treatment and reactions in great (and very useful) detail in his memoir Ordinary Daylight). But in addition to the details already summarised, the article also introduces two celebrity testimonials, which further strengthen readers’confidence in Mrs Owen’s miraculous abilities. One is the mention of a contemporary British celebrity actor, Jack Warner, who is quoted as saying that Mrs Owen was able to help him with a severe arthritic condition which orthodox medicine had not been able to treat. There is even an appealing photograph of the avuncular Warner standing behind (a rather stern) Mrs Owen, with his hands on her shoulders.

The other testimonial is longer and may have had an even stronger impact on some readers, particularly on RP sufferers, since it appears to be freely and enthusiastically delivered by a consultant doctor at the famous Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (presumably to Ena Kendall). The consultant’s name is given as Dr Lambert Mount (see Google) “who is fully qualified in orthodox medicine and has made a study of natural treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture and hydrotherapy.” As quoted by Kendall, this eminent specialist’s endorsement of Owen’s whole therapeutic practice runs to about a hundred words. This is the part which RP patients and their families would have found most encouraging:
“She’s getting remarkably good results with retinitis pigmentosa, sometimes within a week or even two or three days. She has cured arthritis successfully. […]”
“The balance of the glands is affected by her therapy, which is a deep systemic treatment, affecting the functioning of the whole body, and there’s a change in the metabolic reactions. She is producing the most outstanding cures I’ve seen in fringe, unorthodox medicine.”

A reminder: it seems very prudent to distinguish between the use of apitherapy for arthritis and its use for Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Postscript:

Having a teenage daughter with recently diagnosed RP, I was one of the many who tried to contact Mrs Owen in early 1975 via The Observer after seeing Ena Kendall’s article. In a letter dated 2 June 1975, the Secretary to the Editor of the Observer Magazine wrote to warn me that the response had been so heavy that Mrs Owen had stated that she was fully booked for three years. (Mrs Owen had finally succeeded in attracting attention on a large scale.) Persevering with my request a year later I was pleased to receive a lengthy reply from Ena Kendall herself expressing sympathy and revealing Mrs Owen’s home address. That much is anecdotal. Her further helpful comments to me will be of interest to some readers as they reveal her favourable opinion of Mrs Owen and her serious personal concern at being responsible for many people contacting Mrs Owen, not all them satisfied clients, to her apparent surprise. If Ms Kendall reads this I hope she will not object to my reprinting her words for which I thank her. If only she could add her view of later developments in 1978!

“When I first interviewed Mrs Owen and the group of people she was then treating for retinitis pigmentosa, I was very impressed, and still am, in many ways, although her methods, as applied to the larger cross-section of people who have now been in touch with her by no means meet with success in every, or even in most cases. In the past 14 months I have heard from people who cannot speak highly enough of her and of the improvements she has brought about in their sight, and others who say that they have not had any tangible improvement. It is only fair to say that many people have gone to her whose sight is in such a bad way in any case that the basics on which she has to work have been destroyed, and she cannot put these back. She is extremely fond of children, and claims her best results with young people because, she says, they have not been subjected to as many drugs as adults have — and by this she means any drug for any sort of ailment.

“She refuses to let anyone else into the secret of her treatment, despite repeated pressure from doctors, scientists and just ordinary people. If she would allow her patients to be examined or studied in any way, perhaps it would be discovered why some appear to react well and others not at all to her bees. Another point about her treatment is that it may go on for months, and she insists on people staying nearby, so it can be a very expensive business.”
*

(For more background to this thread, see:
‘Julia Owen and bee stings in Bromley’ and
‘Helga Barnes plus bee therapy leads to Julia Owen’ .)

(In Part 2 of Julia Owen, Retinitis Pigmentosa and the Media, the rest of the available 1978-1979 media articles and broadcasts will be listed, with some commentary, especially on the decisive 1979 BBC TV ‘Nationwide’ programme by Roger Cook, which must have mortified Ena Kendall.)

Until recently I had assumed that (prior to my 2008 blog, Julia Owen and bee stings in Bromley) the 1975 Observer article by Ena Kendall was the major written source of information about Julia Owen (apart from her two out-of print self-published books on her struggle against orthodox medicine for recognition, both highly subjective).

Extensive Internet searches failed to reveal much of value, except that apitherapy has a respectable pedigree. One intriguing little item to add to the hazy biography of Mrs. Owen is available in two brief wire articles in Canadian newspapers on 24 November 1960. In the Ottawa Citizen version of a Reuters dispatch from London we are informed that Dr Joseph Saine, a Canadian medical entrepreneur, gave a Press Conference to London journalists on his plans to invest one million pounds to set up a chain of clinics in Canada for developing and applying Julia Owens’s bee venom formula to treat arthritis, skin diseases and nervous disorders – the conditions that Owen had initially become famous for treating. The note goes on to state that the journalists walked out of the Conference when Dr Saine failed to satisfy them with his responses about the characteristics of bee venom. Nothing further was heard of the project.

My recent very belated discovery of Andrew Potok’s Ordinary Daylight. Portrait of an Artist Going Blind, offers a fascinating detailed account of a patient undergoing three months of bee sting treatment from Mrs Owen (in 1976 or 1977) in a desperate attempt to save his failing sight. The book was originally published in 1980 and in paperback in 1981 and has recently (2003) been reissued with a new Foreword and Afterword. A large part of the memoir is about Potok’s experiences with Owen, although other relevant aspects of his life are also interwoven. The reason Search Engines have not picked up the connection is entirely due to Mrs Owen’s bullying modus operandi, threatening to sue left, right and centre against any criticism of her work. To avoid this eventuality, Andrew (or Andy, who also has a Facebook page) sensibly changed all the names, including, naturally, that of Owen, who becomes Helga Barnes, as well as the name of her chauffeur and minder Geoffrey (Dirkson here), and even the names of Owen’s two self-justifying books, which reincarnate as Disgrace in the Clinic and Storming the Distant Tower.

In the 300-page 2003 paperback, there is only one belated mention of the name Julia Owen in the final pages of the Afterword, where Potok explains that his original publisher’s lawyers had insisted on the changes.

So although Googling Helga Barnes + bee therapy will produce some new information on Julia Owen, you will really have to buy yourself a copy to find out all that Potok reveals about Owen’s modus operandi: the pain of the stings, bravely borne because of his initial belief that his eyesight was improving; her paranoia, hectoring, ranting, and control tactics. And the eventual realisation that her methods were futile for him, a decision his similarly-afflicted daughter took a couple of weeks to make.

You will also be enlightened by Potok’s other investigative activities during his long “confinement” in London, interviewing medical experts on RP and bee venom, and tracking down the prominent homeopathic doctor who so strongly recommended Julia Owen’s work to the journalist Ena Kendall in 1975, whose article initiated Owen’s final flurry of activity related to RP.

And, although much needs to be added to flesh out Julia Owen’s scanty biography and antecedents (generations of Austrian apitherapists according to her), one thing is certain: Roger Cook’s BBC TV Nationwide programme on Julia Owen’s activities (3 January 1979), and notably her own self-indulgent contribution to it, had a strong impact on Mrs Owen’s activities. After a long career, 1978-1979 seems to have been both the zenith and nadir of her mentions in the media.

PS
Potok’s latest book is A Matter of Dignity: Changing the World of the Disabled.

On 16 February 1975, an eccentric self-promoting apitherapist was catapaulted into public attention by the quality British Sunday newspaper, The Observer. The title and photograph on the first page of Ena Kendall’s Sunday Magazine feature article, ‘Can bee stings cure blindness?’ were eye-catching. Nevertheless, the later account (and photograph) of 67-year-old Mrs Julia Owen’s celebrity patient, Jack Warner, the veteran British TV actor whose crippling arthritis was apparently cured by Owen’s bees’ stings, must have inspired an equal amount of mail responses from desperate people in UK and beyond. Readers were informed that the miracle-performing therapist was the Austrian widow of two British husbands and currently lived and practised her therapy in a leafy suburb of the prosperous Kentish town of Bromley (30 miles from London). She claimed to have successfully treated arthritis and asthma patients with her secret method for decades. Now, in her twilight years she had turned her attention to the dramatic field of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a degenerative eye disease with no traditional medical cure (then or now). She had begun to claim spectacular results unequalled by traditional or alternative medicine. This and later newspaper reports echoed these claims. (Encouragingly, thirty years on, several lines of traditional medical research are finally indicating the possibility of some degree of cure for the small percentage of RP sufferers in the world.)

For the next four years, Mrs Owen’s self-promotional media activities, and the enthusiastic reports from her RP patients were to seek and enjoy meteoric media attention in UK and abroad. Many desperate Retinitis Pigmentosa sufferers (from UK, Australia, some continental European countries and one or two other countries) with enough money to spend on the lengthy residential personal treatment offered by Julia Owen deluged her with letters. A small selection of them endured periods of several months of virtually solitary residential bee venom treatment in Bromley, eager to be stung and to endure the inevitable painful swellings in order to be relieved of the sentence of their degenerative condition.

It was in the early months of 1978 that I came into personal contact with Mrs Owen during a visit to Europe. This short contribution of my hitherto unpublished observations of this final period of Julia Owen’s largely undocumented career (apart from her three autobiographical books) is taken from contemporary research notes on many face to face and telephone conversations, as well as some follow-up correspondence with Mrs Owen and unofficial conversations with a few of her closely chaperoned patients. The thirty year gap in publication of these notes should exonerate me from any accusation of a wish to “rush into print” with what is a strange but tantalisingly incomplete story.
Bibliography of Mrs Julia Owen’s self-published books:
Treat yourself for your Rheumatic Disorder or Arthritic Disease and Avoid the Doctor
Clamouring at the Citadel
Doctors without Shame

In 1978 Julia Owen’s patients, who probably averaged a dozen at any one time, were lodged in small groups in two or three rented houses in suburban Bromley. Since RP strikes hardest and fastest during the upheaval of puberty and middle age (the menopause for both sexes), Mrs Owen’s patients tended to be in those two age groups, with a predominance of the younger set.
Before describing the venom treatment, it is necessary to offer some preliminary idiosyncratic methodological details for consideration when weighing up the possibilities of alleged cures which were not subjected to medical verification. Firstly, not only were the RP patients not encouraged to meet fellow patients in Mrs Owen’s other rented houses in Bromley, but they were subjected to quite deliberate indoctrination by her on her daily visits to apply the stings directly to their bodies. They were also under constant pressure to obey her strict instructions, not to gossip unless it was about a cure, and to admit both to themselves and to their anxious families (and, if possible, journalists) that they were beginning to see much better than before.
In Mrs Owen’s explanation of her work, there was no talk of farming, freezing and injecting the bee venom. For her the process was much more direct and intuitive – she would probably have added ‘scientific’. She kept swarms of specially bred and selected bees and claimed to feed them on secret (and expensive) herbal mixtures (“some from Switzerland”), blended to suit each patient’s needs. These needs included the flushing out of prescription drugs which had, as she maintained, made their eyesight worse, because of the ignorance of doctors. The main announced purpose was to produce a salutary cleansing effect on the glands rather than to treat the eyes directly.

Before her daily morning or afternoon house visits, Owen selected the requisite number of bees, rendered them semi-conscious and then, on arriving at the treatment houses, took them out of special boxes and applied them, one by one, in quantities ranging from 1 to 12, directly to the skin (usually the face, head, hands, neck and shoulders) of each patient. The patients were under strict orders to leave the stings in for one or two hours before removing them, to get the maximum effect of the medicated venom. With that instruction, and perhaps some words of advice, Mrs Owen would leave the house, carrying the little boxes of dead bees off with her. After the two hours were up and the stings had been removed by the patients, they were left to look after their swellings and themselves for the next 24 hours, although they also received phone calls at any time of day from Mrs Owen.

On the phone, as well as in person, she lectured them on their good fortune in receiving her miraculous bee treatment and insisted that they should be feeling an easing of their visual condition. In addition, they were scolded for perceived misdemeanours, forbidden to gossip and harangued about evil ignorant doctors and their conspiracy to discredit her treatment or to steal Owen’s secrets. Patients were also strongly urged – or told – to publicise the success of the treatment, especially to the media. The four RP patients I spoke to in 1978 (without Mrs Owen’s permission, of course) agreed that on her visits and in the frequent phone calls to their residences, she repeatedly attempted to make them agree with her assessment that they were seeing better and that their eyes were “clearer”. One young lady accused her of “bullying me into saying that I can see fantastically well when I haven’t noticed any change.”

However, some patients, who may have felt a subjective improvement, complied (out of gratitude or fear), and further newspaper articles duly appeared. Much later some of these stories were retracted. In fact, in the time I was in Europe, I was not aware of any clear case where the RP condition was cured or reversed. There was, however, as would be expected, some evidence that patients in this very special atmosphere did perceive a temporary subjective improvement, which subsequently dissipated. I was told that one grateful patient was driven up to the House of Commons in Mrs Owen’s chauffered car with the purpose of lobbying his local M.P.to publicise her claims in the House of Commons. Not only was the M.P. not available to see them but the patient abandoned Mrs Owen’s treatment shortly after. Such psychological pressures and expectations, on top of the physical pain and temporary swellings, were intense, especially to patients who were far from their families and, in a few cases, in a foreign land.

Mrs Owen was always willing to talk at great length (and with bouts of almost megalomanic incoherence) to anyone willing to listen. By listening to her over a period of 3 months in early 1978, as well as from letters and phone calls answering my questions, I was able to form a reasonably solid opinion. I was even allowed to read a draft copy of one of her books. The latter contained the same sort of mixture as her conversation: strong vehement claims, intemperate shrill tones and language when denouncing people for stupidity or the medical profession for their ignorance of bee venom and the harmful effects of all their drugs, as well as tales of patients and others who had let her down. The two books by Mrs Owen (one of them possibly ghost written) that I have since seen were self-published. They deal ramblingly with her biography and long struggle over 50 years. As for the new draft MS it was equally rambling and shrill and similarly reticent about specific biographical facts. Her main topics were again her bee venom method, diatribes against the medical profession, a catalogue of her impressive claims of success in treating arthritis and, more recently, at the end of this long and unrecognised career, eyesight terminally impaired by RP, which she obviously saw (or grasped at) in the mid 1970s as her possible crowning glory and chance for world recognition.

In the second half of 1978, which had begun so promisingly for Mrs Owen, not only did the success stories dry up but murmurings of discontent from patients and families began to be heard. Julia Owen, who had always been prone to emotional outbursts, became more and more uninhibited with her shrill accusations and complaints against many people who, she maintained, were being unfair and nasty to her. Inevitably, she was more or less publicly discredited in a BBC TV documentary by Roger Cook (Nationwide) on 3 January 1979. Her own ranting interview was rather pathetic but also typical of other scenes that investigative documentaries are able to produce to educate or appease the public. The bubble had finally burst. As far as I am aware, the British media paid her no further attention and, if she continued for a while with her treatment, it was probably more discreetly and almost certainly with a return to more traditional apitherapy bee venom cures of asthma and arthritis, where the “flushing out” by the bee venom may be of measurable and lasting benefit.