The Chamberlen family kept the obstetric forceps secret for over a century, and their instruments were found hidden in the family house two centuries later

The Chamberlens were Protestants who fled France in 1569 for Southampton. Peter Chamberlen the Elder, a barber-surgeon and male midwife, probably invented the obstetric forceps about 1600. The family made the tool a hereditary secret. It travelled in a covered carriage and entered the birth room in a large gilded chest. Only Chamberlen men were allowed in. The mother was blindfolded and her lower body covered so the man worked by touch. Midwives called them for difficult births. In 1670 Hugh Chamberlen went to Paris to sell the secret to the French government for 10,000 crowns. The surgeon François Mauriceau set him a test: a woman with a deformed pelvis. After three hours she died of a ruptured uterus, and the sale failed. In 1688 the College of Physicians accused Hugh of practising without a licence. He fled to Scotland, then Holland, where he sold part of a set of instruments. His son Hugh wrote that he kept the method unpublished so as not to harm his father and brothers. Dr Peter Chamberlen died in 1683 and lies in a raised tomb beside Woodham Mortimer Hall. Forceps came into general use about 1733. In 1813 the family's instruments were found hidden under the floor of the hall. They are held by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.