Alfred Markwick, surgeon, and the Epithem Company

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medicine

Street View: 5 Suppl. and 18 Suppl.
Addresses: 19 Langham Place and 32 King William Street

19 Langham Place only appears in the 1847 Supplement to Tallis’s Street View. If you look at the street view itself, the building of which number 19 was a part seemed to consist of four non-consecutive house numbers: 3, 19, 25, and 21, but in the index to the Supplement, the numbering is slightly more consistent: 3, 19, 20 and 21. The number 25 on the street view must have been a mistake. If we look back to the original street view of 1839 for Langham Place we see that the building of which number 19 was a part, did not yet exist. The space was completely covered by number 3, the ‘London Carriage Repository’ of Marks and Son. You can read about them in another post (here), but first Alfred Markwick, surgeon, whose place of business was erected in 1842 at the instigation of James Fergusson, Esq. On Goad’s insurance map of 1889 we can see that another renumbering has taken place and what was number 19 is indicated as number 4, but number 20 is still number 20. Number 4 was used as the entrance to St. George’s Hall which was built in 1867 behind what was once Markwick’s place of business. In the 1890s, numbers 20 and 21 were demolished for Queen’s Hall, which extended with a rounded front into Riding House Street. The entrance to St. George’s Hall was moved to Mortimer Street. The houses that were numbered 3, 19-21 in Tallis, St. George’s Hall, and Queen’s Hall no longer exist as they fell victims to an air raid in 1941. The ruins were demolished in 1952 to be replaced by the concrete Henry Wood House, which has been given the more logical numbering of Langham Place 3-7.

Goad’s insurance map 1889

Ordnance Survey map 1892

detail of an old postcard showing 3 and 4 (former 19) Langham Place (the entrance to St. George’s Hall sticking out into the street)

But Langham Place was not the only address with which Markwick was associated. He and his father Mark were involved in the Patent Epithem Company at 69 (in 1847: 32), King William Street. They shared number 32 with Nicholls & Pellatt, the wine merchants. You can see the two Markwick properties in the elevations above this post (click to enlarge). Markwick had developed a pad to replace the old poultices filled with bran. They were called Markwick’s spongio piline epithems, a name a journalist of The Era dismissed as “calculated to throw an unmerited taint of humbug and professional quackery about it, and one which few people will tax their memory to retain”.⁽¹⁾ Despite the dismissal of the name, the journalist accepted the fact that the pads themselves contained heat a lot longer than the traditional poultices and would not go putrid or hard and dry. They were made of sponge and wool with a backing of India rubber and very beneficial in cases of “rheumatism, sore-throat, tic-douloureaux, &c.” There was also a form without the sponge for protection of the chest. From an article in The Lancet (1846) on the epithems we learn that Markwick was surgeon to the Western German Dispensary and formerly an externe to the Venereal Hospital in Paris.

advert in London Medical Gazette, 1846

advert in The Era, 1 November 1846

In time, the spongio piline came to be recognised as a valuable addition to the medical toolkit and the Epithem Company also developed an application suitable for horses, the “Horse Foot-Pad”, which was designed to fit inside the horse shoe.⁽²⁾ Markwick’s invention even made it into the Great Exhibition of 1851 with specimen of his epithems for medical, surgical and veterinary purposes, and also with a spongio-piline sock, knee-cap, finger-stall, and breast poultice.⁽³⁾ The entry was listed, by the way, for Mark Markwick, Alfred’s father. Markwick had received a Patent for his invention in May 1846 and in 1851 had granted an exclusive licence to his son who arranged with Messrs Kirkman and Brown for its manufacture. They were unfortunately not trustworthy and Markwick went bankrupt. He eventually regained his exclusive licence and made new arrangements with a Mr. Frimbey, and after the latter’s death with the Whiteheads. He sold them the licence for £350 and if an extension was granted, Markwick would receive an annuity during the extension. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, James Heywood Radcliffe, and John Dicken Whitehead of Royal George Mills, Saddleworth, Yorks, applied for such an extension of the patent in 1859, which was granted for five years in May 1860.⁽⁴⁾

Mark Markwick could be found at 32 King William Street as the manufacturer of the patent epithems, together with a business manager, a porter, and a servant. Alfred Markwick was certainly still at 19 Langham Place in 1851, as he is then listed in the Post Office Directory and in the census, but by 1856 he had left as one Alexander Bridge, also a surgeon, is found at number 19. And from 1860 onwards, we find the offices of The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and those of The English Woman’s Journal on the premises. The Ladies’ Institute consisted of the offices of that journal, a reading room, a cloakroom for shoppers’ parcels, a coffee/luncheon room, a registry for jobs and a committee room. It attracted a number of campaigners for women’s rights, such as Barbara Leigh Smith and Emily Davies, and they became known as the Langham Place Group.⁽⁵⁾

The 1855 London and Provincial Medical Directory gives Alfred’s address as Church Street, Croyden, but in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 censuses he is listed at 1 Leinster Square. He became a Physician at the Westbourne Homeopathic Dispensary, and a member of the British Homeopathic Society. He remained at Leinster Square till shortly before his death on 12 March 1887 at 32 Ventnor Villas, Brighton.⁽⁶⁾

The Medical Directory, 1885

Markwick’s book on urine (1847), online via The Wellcome Library here

(1) The Era, 18 October 1846.
(2) The Era, 20 August 1848.
(3) Official and Descriptive Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851, Class 4: Vegetable and Animal Substances.
(4) The English Reports, Volume XV Privy Council, 1901, pp. 116-118. The London Gazette, 11 May 1860.
(5) See the introduction by C.A. Lacey to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group (1987)
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1887. His estate was valued at over £17,800.

Neighbours:

<– 20 Langham Place <– 33 King William Street

3 Langham Place –> 31 King William Street –>

William Benson Whitfield, surgeon

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medicine

Street View: 32
Address: 64 Lamb’s Conduit Street

William Benson was the son of John Whitfield, cheesemonger at 16 Lamb’s Conduit Street, and Hannah Benson, from whom he derived his second name, Benson. He did not become a cheesemonger as his father and several of his relations had done, but he opted for a medical profession.⁽¹⁾ The 1841 census records him as a surgeon at 64 Lamb’s Conduit Street and the London Medical Directory for 1846 tells us that William Benson was a general practitioner with a Licence of the Society of Apothecaries since 25 August 1836, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons since 28 July 1837. The Student’s Handbook for the Medical Department of King’s College, London for 1845 contains a list of students who had won prizes in the medical department and William Benson’s name is mentioned quite a few times:
Session 1831-1832: botany and medicine
Session 1832-1833: botany and midwifery
Session 1833-1834: midwifery and medicine
Session 1834-1835: general medical proficiency, surgery and forensic medicine
It would be nice to know why exactly he received these prizes. Perhaps the archives of King’s College can tell us more, but I gather from their online catalogue, that the file holding the examination results and prizes only starts in 1860.

The 1882 Goad insurance map with William Benson’s house number 35 (was 64) circled and on the opposite side number 34 (was 16), his father’s shop

In 1843, William Benson Whitfield married Margaret Benning and this is where it gets complicated: William Benson’s father John had a half-brother William, butterman at 44 Old Bond Street, who had married Jane Barbara Benning, the daughter of James Benning, surgeon of Barnard Castle.⁽²⁾ One of Jane’s brothers was William Benning, the law bookseller of 43 Fleet Street; another brother was Joseph Anthony, whose daughter Margaret became the wife of William Benson. In other words, William Benson Whitfield married the niece of his father’s sister-in-law.⁽³⁾ And because he lived in London and would in normal circumstances require a license issued by the Vicar General of the archbishop of Canterbury, while she lived in Staindrop, County Durham, and would require a licence from the archbishop of York, he applied for a marriage licence from the Faculty Office, as one was supposed to do in the case of partners living in different ecclesiastical provinces. The license was issued on 21 September 1843 and was valid for three months. William Benson and Margaret do not seem to have had any children. The 1851 and 1861 censuses list William and Margaret at 64 Lamb’s Conduit Street, but by 1871 they had moved to Trimpley, Ellesmere, Shropshire. In the accounts for the years 1865 and 1866 of the Bedford Charity, 64 Lamb’s Conduit Street is listed for “J. Whitfield (per T. Robinson)”.⁽⁴⁾ Thomas Robinson, M.R.C.S. London, M.D. St. Andrews, General practitioner, must have taken over the medical practice from Whitfield as he was listed at number 64 (then 35) in the 1871 census. William Benson died in Ellesmere in 1889 and his probate record gives his widow Margaret as the sole executor. His estate was first valued at £8,415, but later resworn at £7,870. Margaret died in 1900 and had named George Corpe Whitfield, the son of William Benson’s uncle, George Pinckney Whitfield, as her executor. Her estate was first valued at £11,533, but resworn at £10,654.

As can be expected of a surgeon or general practitioner, William Benson was regularly asked to give evidence at inquests or court cases, and he also performed autopsies. In 1865, John Cockle, physician to the Royal Free Hospital, wrote a book on intra-thoracic cancer, a collection of previously published papers on the subject. On pages 105-111 he included a paper published in 1854 in the Association Medical Journal on ‘encephaloid cancer of the lungs simulating laryngeal phthisis’. The patient with the disease died and William Benson performed the autopsy. I will spare you the gruesome detail, but if you want you read them here. Whitfield himself wrote about one of his cases in a learned journal, The Lancet from which The London and Edinburgh Monthly Journal of Medical Science (1842) abridged the following report, which clearly shows that the treatment of diseases had a long way to go before they even resembled the kind of treatment we now expect. Below is the first part of Whitfield’s description, but, if you want, you can read the whole article here.

An example of evidence Whitfield had to give in a court case is that of the 1842 Old Bailey case against William Wells, accused of beating the child of his partner while she was out to do some shopping. Whitfield gave evidence as he had examined the child a few days later, stating that the injuries on the child’s head could have been caused by the bed rail as was alleged. The neighbours also testified against the accused and, although – fortunately – the injuries were not fatal, Wells was sentenced to one year in prison.⁽⁵⁾ All in a days work for a doctor, one might say, but in 1849, things were very different. Whitfield was called to Bartholomew Peter Drouet’s establishment for pauper children in Tooting where a serious outbreak of cholera had occurred. The children were referred to Drouet’s by various London parishes and he housed as many children as he could cram into the available space. In 1848, he housed around 1400 children and as was almost inevitable, an outbreak of a contagious disease had catastrophic consequences. In the 1848-1849 cholera outbreak, some 180 children died. The inspector from the Board of Health who visited Tooting in early 1849 reported that the overcrowding and lack of ventilation had certainly contributed to the spreading of the disease. Many children were removed, but many were not and suffered unnecessarily because of that decision. The children came from various parishes and were hence dependent on the decisions of the parish to which they belonged.

The various inquests on the death of the children saw very different outcomes, but the one held on the children from Holborn tried to prove Drouet guilty of manslaughter. He was tried at the Old Bailey in April 1849 and Whitfield gave evidence as one of the medical officers of the Holborn Union. He stated that he had seen the establishment on the 4th of January and that 156 children, on his recommendation, were removed the following day. Despite overwhelming evidence that poor sanitation, inadequate food and cold had not done the children any good, Drouet was found not guilty as the children had died of cholera and it could not be proven that their individual deaths were due to neglect on Drouet’s part.⁽⁶⁾ The verdict caused great outrage and Charles Dickens, who had already – anonymously – submitted several critical articles in The Examiner on Drouet’s establishment, wrote on 23 April in the same paper, “The peculiarity of this verdict is, that while it has released the accused from the penalties of the law, it has certainly not released him from the charge”. According to Dickens the prosecution had established that Drouets’ treatment of the children was appalling and he wished that the law had been enforced “with less tenderness for Drouet and more concern for his victims”. Drouet died a few months later in Margate. You can read more about Drouet, the court case and Dickens’s articles here.

Embed from Getty Images

 

But medical issues were not William Benson’s only worry. His father John’s will contained the following clause,

I give and devise unto my Son W[illia]m Benson Whitfield my brother George Pinckney Whitfield and William Todd of Barnsbury Park in Islington their heirs & ass[ign]s my messuages burgages or dwelling houses with the appurt[enance]s situate near the entrance into the church yard from the Market Place of Barnard Castle in the County of Durham and w[hi]ch were purchased by my said late Grandfather and also my part & share of the freehold messuages workshops warehouses yards & tenements at Barnard Castle afore said with the appurt[enance]s & of the mill & appurt[enance]s at or near Bowes in the Co[unt]y of York w[hi]ch are held by me in common with my partners in a Carpet Manufactory To hold the same unto the said W[illia]m Benson Whitfield Geo[rge] Pinckney Whitfield & W[illia]m Todd their heirs & ass[igns] Upon the Trusts hereinafter specified I give devise & bequeath unto the s[ai]d W[illia]m Benson Whitfield Geo[rge] Pinckney Whitfield & W[illia]m Todd then ex[ecute] & adm[inister] all my leasehold tenements & also all my money plate linen & household furniture stock in trade book debts & all of my Personal Estate & effects and also my part or share of the capital and stock of the s[ai]d carpet manufactury upon the trusts hereina[fter] specified …⁽⁷⁾

John Whitfield had been a partner in the carpet manufactury in Barnard Castle of Monkhouse, Whitfield & Dixon. In the early part of the 19th century, the workers of the town had their livelihoods threatened by a sharp decline in the demand for woollen cloth and an alternative source of income was provided by the opening in 1815 of the Monkhouse carpet factory. Whitfield joined Monkhouse and Dixon in the 1820s, possibly after the death of his father and uncle who both died in 1824 and left him substantial assets. In 1843, William Benson Whitfield, George Pinckney Whitfield, and William Todd, as executors of the will of John Whitfield, went into partnership with Joshua Monkhouse as Monkhouse & Company, but the partnership was already dissolved in 1845, and the carpet factory became known as Joshua Monkhouse & Sons and after Joshua’s retirement as Monkhouse Bros.⁽⁸⁾

64 Lamb’s Conduit Street in 2016 (now no. 35)

And, to come back to 64 (now 35) Lamb’s Conduit Street, which looks, from the outside, still very much as it had done at the time that Tallis produced his Street View (±1839). If we compare the elevation from Tallis at the top of this post with the Google Street View picture above, we can see that the house still has the same number of windows in the same place. The top floor seems to have been built with bricks of a lighter colour and the cornice between the second and third floor looks a bit odd, perhaps indicating that the top floor was not yet there when the houses were built and a later addition.

——————
(1) There was a Richard Gullett Whitfield, Apothecary and Secretary of the Medical School at St Thomas’s Hospital from 1833-1876, but there does not seem to be a close family link between him and William Benson.
(2) The will of James Benning is transcribed on the Will Transcriptions Website here.
(3) Thanks go to Catherine Ryan for helping me to sort out this web of relationships.
(4) Schools Inquiry Commission III (1866).
(5) Old Bailey case t18420103-582, online here.
(6) Old Bailey case t18490409-919, online here.
(7) PROB11/1985. Transcription copied from Will Transcription Website (see here).
(8) People and Patterns. The Carpet Weaving Industry in 19th century Barnard Castle, ed. Dennis Coggins, publ. The Friends of the Bowes Museum (1996), see also here. The London Gazette, 25 November 1845.

Neighbours:

<– 65 Lamb’s Conduit Street

63 Lamb’s Conduit Street –>

Archibald Barklimore, surgeon

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medicine

Street View: 27
Address: 4 High Street, Bloomsbury

Although Tallis lists a W.W. Barklimore, surgeon, in the index to his Street View for High Street, Bloomsbury, I have not been able to work out who this W.W. was, There is only one other one mention of him in a directory, but fortunately another surgeon could be found at the same address with the same last name, so this post is about him. Archibald Barklimore enrolled as a student of medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1799.⁽¹⁾ He did not finish the full doctor of medicine curriculum, but chose to become a surgeon. He went to the West Indies and in 1808 was captured when returning from there by a French privateer off Ireland. He, and a few others who had also been captured by the French, managed to escape. Apparently he had unsuccessfully tried to escape before from Verdun, but was re-captured and sent to Bitche from where the second attempt was made.⁽²⁾

Old Hall of the Royal College of Surgeons from their library website

Back in England he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh) in 1810 and settled in London. The first mention of him in the Capital is in the 1811 London and Country Directory with the address of 2 Piccadilly. In 1814 and 1818, Barklimore bought some books for Thomas Mcwhirter, who had attended Edinburgh University at the same time as Barklimore. Mcwhirter, however, finished the whole course and became a doctor of medicine and settled in Newcastle-on-Tyne.⁽³⁾ I guess that he could not so easily obtain the books in Newcastle that were published in London and hence procured them through his friend Barklimore.⁽⁴⁾

In 1822, in Pigot’s Directory, Barklimore could be found at 4 High Street, Bloomsbury. The Tallis index mistakenly lists him at 4 Broad Street, but every other resource, such as the Land Tax records, has 4 High Street as his address. In 1827, Barklimore married Hessey Owens at St. Mary’s, Dover, Kent. According to the announcement of the wedding in The Standard, she originally came from Ireland. In that same announcement Barklimore is listed as of Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury. Hessey died in 1830 and as far as I know, Barklimore did not marry again.

The Examiner, 24 June 1832

The Electoral Registers for 1832-1837 also give Barklimore’s address as 10 Charlotte Street. And so does Pigot’s Directory of 1839 which gives Wm W. Barklimore at 4 High Street. Who he is, remains a mystery, and he is not mentioned in Robson’s Directory of 1839 which lists Archibald Barklimore at both 10 Charlotte Street and 4 High Street. Barklimore cannot be found at 4 High Street in the 1841 census, but he is resident in Charlotte Street, which would suggest that the latter address was his home and 4 High Street his surgery.

Barklimore’s name crops up in various advertisements for articles that are said to improve one’s health, such as corsets, “spectacle lenses” and “voice conductors”. These last two items, glasses and hearing aids in our parlance, were advertised by Messrs. S. and B. Solomons of 39 Albemarle Street and were, of course, much better than anything that came before as was attested by the gentlemen whose names were listed in the advertisement.⁽⁵⁾

The London Gazette, 24 December 1844

1845 Medical Directory

1846 Medical Directory

In The Medical Directory for 1845 and in the one for 1846, Barklimore’s name is joined to that of William Simpson, but that partnership had already been dissolved in 1842. Simpson was apparently a common name among doctors and Simpson’s qualifications could not yet be listed in the 1845 directory, but by 1846, they had worked out which of the Simpsons he was. Note that he is still given the address of 4 High Street. Barklimore’s entry is an exact copy of the 1845 one. The British Medical Directory for England, Scotland and Wales of 1853 gives Barklimore as ‘retired’. He died on 2 April 1864 at the age of 86 at Old Quebec Street.⁽⁶⁾ A notice in the Belfast News-Letter of 8 April of that year, mentioned that he was the only son of Hugh Barklimore, late of Whitehouse, parish of Carnmoney, which precludes the illusive Wm. W. being a brother. So, Archibald Barklimore originally came from Ireland, but lived most of his life in London.

Breathing a vein by James Gillray (Source: British Museum)

(1) University of Edinburgh: Matriculation Album, 1786-1805.
(2) Roy Adkins, Roy & Lesley Adkins, The War For All The Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo (2006), unpaginated, but about halfway.
(3) University of Edinburgh: Matriculation Album, 1786-1805. Tentamen medicum inaugurale, de Pneumonia, 1800.
(4) Invoice offered by Richard Ford (accessed 6 May 2016).
(5) The Morning Post, 26 April 1839.
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1864. Estate valued at under £4,000.

Neighbours:

<– 5 High Street

3 High Street –>

Benjamin Holwell, confectioner

Tags

food and drink, medicine

Street View: 31
Address: 30 Blackman Street

You may assume that a confectioner produces daintly little cakes, sugared nuts, candied fruit and lots of sweets, and Holwell may very well have done that, but checking through some newspapers, I came across his name in advertisements for patent medicines. In The Examiner of 24 November 1833, the Holwell shop is listed as one of the agents where Allender’s Pectoral Balsam of Carrageen could be bought. This balsam alleged to have been “used with the most decided success in a vast number of cases of coughs, asthma, hoarseness, colds, influenza, and all diseases of the lungs”. But Allender’s amazing balsam was not the only solution available at Holwell’s to sort our your cough problems, you could also buy Collis’s Essence of Honey⁽¹⁾ or Greenough’s Tolu Lozenges⁽²⁾. And after a copious dinner, you might have need of either Hall’s or Plumbe’s Digestive Pills⁽³⁾. In advertisements for Plumbe’s pills (1823), Holwell was given the address of 96 High Street Borough and unless the street name and the numbering changed dramatically, there must have been at least one move. None of the advertisements give an initial or first name for Holwell, so we must turn to other sources to determine who the proprietor of the confectioner’s shop was.

T. Rowlandson and G. Woodward, 1801 (Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images)

An obvious place to look are the records of the Sun Fire Office, but Holwell, confectioner, cannot be found there, so further detective work had to be done. Tallis kindly gave the initial B in his index and that letter can also be seen on the façade (see top of this post). This pointer led to an announcement in The London Gazette in which Esther and Benjamin Holwell let it be known that they had dissolved their partnership of wholesale and retail confectioners at 30 Blackman Street as of the 31st of January 1838 and that Benjamin was to continue the business.⁽⁴⁾ The 1841 census gives us a Benjamin Holwell, confectioner, with his wife Elizabeth and children in Blackman Street, but no house number.⁽⁵⁾ If, however, we compare the names of his neighbours with those in the Tallis index, it becomes clear that this Benjamin indeed lives at number 30. Although the youngest child is called Esther, she would be unlikely to have been his business partner, but a close family relationship is indicated. Perhaps his mother?

Confectioners’ Shop c.1820-1840 (Source: British Museum)

No, not his mother. A lead to this Esther and Benjamin can be found in the will of one William Holwell, confectioner of 269 Borough High Street. William asks his executors to sell his property and business and to invest the money for the benefit of his wife Esther and after her decease to divide the income equally among his children. One of the signees of the will is Benjamin Holwell of 32 St. Andrew’s Road, Horsemonger Lane. The will is dated 16 February 1832 and proved 16 November 1836. William Holwell and Esther Carter married on 13 September 1817 at St. Giles, Camberwell, but unfortunately by licence and names of fathers are not included in the record. Anyway, when William drew up his will in 1832, his children were all minors, so the Benjamin witnessing the will was not William’s son, but perhaps his brother which would make Esther Benjamin’s sister-in-law. That we are talking about the same Benjamin as the one who later occupied the 30 Blackman Street property, can be worked out in a roundabout way. Benjamin married Elizabeth Butlin on 26 March 1816 at St. Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney and the addresses where they lived can be deduced from some of the baptismal records of their children. The couple moved regularly in the first years of their marriage and Benjamin’s occupation changed a number of times, from shoemaker(!) in 1816, to confectioner (1818), to ‘gent’ (1820), to confectioner again (1822) and once again to ‘gent’ (1825-1830). When his son Alfred Robert is baptised on 7 November 1830, the address is indeed given as St. Andrews Road, so that corresponds nicely to the 1832 signing of the will.

Benjamin obtains his freedom of the City of London in 1833 by redemption via the Saddlers’ Company and he is then described as a confectioner of Blackman Street. Can we assume that Esther used the income she received from William’s estate to invest in Benjamin’s business? We will probably never know for certain why and how exactly, but that the shops of confectioners William and Benjamin were somehow linked through Esther seems certain.

Thomas Mills & Brother, United States Confectioners’ Tool Works, Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of Goods (1886) (Source: Exhibition University of Michigan here)

As we saw, Benjamin was found above the shop at 30 Blackman Street in the 1841 census. Elizabeth dies in 1842 and Benjamin remarries in 1843 to Frances Caroline Allen (neé Turner), a widow. The marriage registration at St. Marylebone’s helps a lot as Benjamin’s father is named as Edward Holwell, a hatter (and through him Benjamin is possibly related to Charles Holwell, the hatter of Westminster Bridge Street). The registration also tells us that Benjamin has changed careers (again) and is now a chapel clerk. The 1851 census gives his occupation as scripture reader and his address as 17 Hayes Place, Marylebone. So, the confectionary shop in Blackman Street has been let go and does indeed show different occupants in the 1851 census. The 1851 census also gives us a clue to Benjamin’s origins as it lists Exeter as his place of birth. The 1861 census goes one better and says Exeter High Street. Another clue may be the name of one of Benjamin’s children. In 1830 Elizabeth Christiana is baptised and in 1772 one Edward Holwell of Exeter had married a Christiana Cooper. There is no concrete evidence that this Edward was indeed Benjamin’s father (or grandfather or uncle or …), nor can I conclusively link Benjamin to Charles Holwell the hatter, but perhaps one day …

I will leave you with the title-page of a recipe book, one that the Holwell’s may very well have had, and two recipes from it, just in case you feel you are in need of something sweet after so much genealogical information.

(1) Advertisement in The Morning Post, 26 March 1841.
(2) Advertisements in The Morning Post, 19 February and 24 December 1845. See for Greenough himself here.
(3) The Times, 29 October 1823.
(4) The London Gazette, 13 March 1838.
(5) Benjamin is given as 45 years old, Elizabeth as 40, but the 1841 census ages are only approximate. The children are William (15), Susannah (20), Henry (15), Jane (15), Alfred (11) and Esther (9). Benjamin and Elizabeth were not born in London, but the children were.

Dr. Culverwell’s bathing establishment

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medicine

Street View: 7
Address: 23 New Bond Street

23 New Bond Street was used by several businessmen: Richard James Culverwell had his bathing establishment there, but Tallis also lists James Cooper, a tailor, Thomas Ince, a wine merchant, and G.H. Watton, tobacconist “Importer of Havannah Segars & Foreign Snuffs”. As you can see from the elevation at the top of this post, it was rather a large building which easily accommodated all these various businesses. Watton had apparently the most money as he had his name engraved above the building, but that is not to say that his shop was the largest; we do not know. The building was situated on the corner of New Bond Street and Conduit Street where today you can find the even larger building of Burberry’s.

Back cover of the autobiography

Culverwell wrote an autobiography, The Life of Doctor Culverwell, written by himself: being Curiosities of Thirty-Five Years’ Medical Experience, Embodied in the Biography of the Author (1850?), but unfortunately for us, Culverwell’s account is rather verbose, not to mention the fact that he refers to himself as ‘we’, because “it appears less gratingly egoistical”, so you never know whether he means ‘I’ or indeed ‘we’. All this does not make for easy reading. And the ‘facts’ about his life with which he interspersed the account of his medical cases may not be reliable, but I will draw upon them from time to time as they do fill in the gaps between the real facts elicited from dry archival records. Culverwell says that he was born on 13 July 1802 and that his father was a merchant. The date is born out by his baptismal record at St. Sepulchre, London, which gives the same date for his birth when young Richard James was baptised there on 8 August 1802 as the son of Richard James senior and Mary Ann Culverwell. Richard junior became an apprentice apothecary and he received his Licentiate degree in November 1824 at Apothecaries’ Hall after which he could legally start his own career. A year earlier, in November 1823, he had married Ann Eliza Mansell at St. Maylebone and after Richard’s exams, they proceeded to set up their own medical business. Richard typically does not give us the exact address, although later on he mentions living at number 3, but it was “on the borders of a bustling suburb of the north of London, in a newly-built residence” and his account of the preparations to open the shop are a good example of his style of writing.

The old custom for the draper, druggist, and other dealers, was to emblazon in shaded characters, black and white, gold and green, or any motley antagonism, as we see now in our palatial hotels, and other monster establishments. Accordingly, ciphered in due form over a broad front with a couple of transparent paintings in two central windows, one representing the hieroglyphic emblem of a rhinoceros, with “Chemicals from Apothecaries’ Hall” and another notifying the popular attractive fact that advice was to be had at certain hours for nothing, a card on our counter, and a conspicuous lamp, showing its refulgence a mile off, over our door, threw we open our “Medical Hall” to the admiring curious of the neighbourhood.

We may not know the address where he sat himself up in 1825, but we do know that he lived in St. John Square when his daughter Ann Eliza was baptised on 26 August 1824 at St. James, Camberwell. His profession is then given as surgeon. When his next child is baptised, Georgina Phillis, on 4 June 1826, the family’s address is Lower Road (now Lower Street), Islington. They were still there when the third daughter, Harriet Muriel, was baptised on 29 October 1828. We know from later records that there was at least one more daughter born to the couple, Fanny, but I have not found any baptismal record for her. Judging by the census records, she was born c. 1834. That brings me to the first census record available, that is of 1841, when the family are residing at Grove Place.

Portrait R.J. Culverwell, Stipple engraving by W. F. Holl after S. Chinn (Source: Wellcome Library)

By then of course, the baths were well established in New Bond Street as Tallis’s Street View testifies, but before that the Culverwell baths were to be found at Founders Court, Lothbury. An advertisement in The Examiner of 14 March 1830 announces “Culverwell’s shampooing, sulphur, Harrowgate, medicated, vapour and warm baths”. A warm bath would cost you 2s. 6d. According to Richard’s autobiography, the idea of providing hot baths emerged when he still lived and worked in the suburbs (presumably at the Islington address) when a rich patient used a large copper cauldron at the surgery for the hot baths he had been advised by a physician, rather than going up to London to have a good soak. Word got out and hot baths turned out to be more profitable than bottles of physic. The Culverwells had a wooden bath lined with lead constructed in a separate room, but it caused severe disruption to family life as a waiting room had to be arranged in the parlour. One day, the demand for hot water was so great that the chimney caught fire. The coach house at the back of the house was subsequently converted into several bath rooms where vapor, sulphur and warm baths could be had. The drawback was that customers had to go through the house and garden to get to the baths and in winter everything got mouldy and damp. With a neighbour⁽¹⁾, Richard then planned to open a bathing establishment in London and as the neighbour went there every day for his work, he was to find suitable premises, which he eventually did in Founders Court. Culverwell claims to have had twelve rooms with baths in each of them, and in some of the larger rooms, they had vapour, hot air and sulpher baths. The prices were adapted to London standards and a hot bath was now 3s. 6d., later reduced to 2s.

Culverwell branched out into writing books about medical subjects, not so much because money was to be made from the books themselves, but because they could be used to draw in the customers. Some of his publications have several pages at the back eulogising about the baths and itemising his growing list of publicatons. And it worked; business was going well and thoughts of expansion entered Culverwell’s mind. One day, “in a West End ramble our eye caught some premises to let, at 23 New Bond street”. And so Culverwell moved his family to Bond Street and attended to his customers at Founders Court in the morning and to Bond Street in the afternoon, but “the West End Establishment was not successful or satisfactory as a locality for practice. After enduring many discomforts, we sold it for less than half of the original outlay”. And so the baths moved again, this time to 5 Broad Street. Culverwell does not provide years for the several moves, but from advertisements and other sources, we can deduce that the move from New Bond Street came about fairly soon after the Tallis Street Views were published, as an advertisement in his Medical Counsellings; or, The Green Book of 1841 already gives the Broad Street address. An advertisement in his Illustrated Domestic Handbook for Invalids of 1843 tells us that he had moved his family and doctor’s practice to 21 Arundell Street, Strand, while maintaining the baths at Broad Street. Richard had by then acquired his medical degree on the Continent which, according to him, was a lot cheaper than trying to obtain the degree from the College of Physicians.

And then came the last move and finally Culverwell gives us a date “On the 8th of August, 1846, we removed to Argyll Place”. And there they stayed. In December 1852, Richard died, but the business was continued by the widow. The 1861 census shows her as the “owner of public baths”, living with daughter Fanny at 10 Argyll Place. Ann Eliza died in December 1863, but the baths remained in Argyll Place for many years to come.

1885 advertisement sheet (Source: British Library)

(1) The neighbour is just referred to as Tom in the autobiography, but two notices in the London Gazette (2 November 1830 and 8 May 1838) tell us that his name was Thomas Cooke.

Neighbours:

<– 24 New Bond Street

22 New Bond Street –>

Thomas Hosegood, surgeon

Tags

medicine

Street View: 31
Address: 90 Blackman Street

Thomas Hosegood (±1778-1844) had his medical practice at 90 Blackman Street, Borough. The street is now simply part of Borough High Street, but the section south of St. George the Martyr used to be called Blackman Street. Number 90 was situated on the corner of Lant Street (of Dickens fame); the opposite corner, number 91 was occupied by Yate and Son, chemists and druggists, which would have been quite handy for ‘surgeon’ – as he styled himself – Hosegood.

The doctor’s practice undoubtedly had its fair share of patients with ordinary household complaints and diseases, but from time to time, everyday life was shaken by an unusual event. In January 1833, William Dunningham, an ostler at the Star-Yard livery stables (79 Blackman Street), came to the surgery for a cut on his nose which he said had been caused by the throwing of a brush by a comrade when they were ‘larking’. No major injury had been inflicted, or so it seemed, and the cut was dressed by the doctor’s apprentice. But a few days later, the man came back with a high fever and he died that same night. At the subsequent inquest, Hosegood and his apprentice Richardson alleged that the man died from the effect of heavy drinking, but one of the parish surgeons, Mr. Evans, was of the opinion that the man had died from injuries inflicted by violence. The postmortem had revealed a deep cut across the nose to the opposite cheek bone. The nasal bone had been broken, causing inflammation of the brain which, according to Evans, resulted in the death. Another surgeon, one Mr. Hooper, was of the opinion that the blow that broke his nose could not have been done after death, but as Hosegood persisted in his denial of witnessing the fatal injuries when the man first came to him, the jury could at first not come to a decision and Evans was recalled. When cross-examined by the coroner, he could not positively say that the injury had caused the man’s death. The final verdict was that Dunningham “died by the visitation of God”.⁽¹⁾

A year and a half later, Blackman Street was the scene of road rage. One evening at about half past eight, a ‘gentleman’ returning from Epsom races, rode his horse at such a furious pace that an elderly woman was knocked down at the corner of Horsemonger Lane. She escaped with ‘just’ a broken arm, but Mr. Tibbs was knocked down in Blackman Street and his “skull was so severely fractured that but very little hopes are entertained of his recovery”. These two accidents did not stop the rider, however, and at the corner of Union Street, another elderly woman was run over. She was not badly hurt, but the rider was thrown of his horse. He quickly appeased the woman with a few shillings and gave a false address to a witness who tried to interfere. The man remounted his horse and rode on to knock a young lad down near London Bridge; he then continued onwards and out of this story. The unfortunate Mr. Tibbs was taken to Hosegood’s surgery, but whether Hosegood managed to save his life is unclear.⁽²⁾

Normally Hosegood’s life was far less eventful, at least he did not feature in any more newspaper reports, and presumably went about his normal medical business. He was heavily involved in the vaccination programs set up after the discovery in 1796 of the smallpox vaccine by Edward Jenner. The Royal Jennerian Society (in full, The Royal Jennerian Society for the extermination of the small-pox by the extension of vaccination) was established in 1803 to roll out a wide-scale vaccination program. However, one of the staff members, Dr John Walker, allegedly flaunted the inoculation regulations and much public in-fighting resulted in his resignation. Walker set up the London Vaccine Institution in 1806 which did rather well, leaving the Jennerian Society struggling for survival until 1809 when they expired, although the name was later revived.⁽³⁾

James Gillray, The Cow-Pock-or-the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation! (1802) ©British Museum

The row between the societies was fought very publicly with pamphlets for and against each other, no doubt supplying the public with plenty of entertainment. The Circular Letter to Supporters of John Walker’s London Vaccine Institution, Emphasising the Society’s Disapproval of Walker and His Activities of 1808 was mild-worded compared to another one that did not mince words to describe the opposition. In 1816, John Ring wrote A Caution against Vaccine Swindlers, and Imposters in which he strenuously denied having anything to do with the “falsely calling itself the Royal Jennerian Society”, which, in his eyes, had been “organizing a complete system of quackery”. He continues for pages and pages with – probably largely unfounded and reeking strongly of anti-Quakerism – accusations against John Walker who he puts down as “ignorant, illiterate, and unskilful”. Unfortunately for Mr. Ring, Walker’s efforts did bring about a large decrease in smallpox cases and smallpox deaths. A report of the ‘Parliamentary committee on the expediency of continuing the vaccine board’ states that the average yearly mortality by smallpox had decreased from 2,204 in the period 1770-1780 to 654 in the years 1830-1832.⁽⁴⁾

Whether Hosegood was a member of the first Jennerian Society is unclear, but in 1831 and 1833 he figured in the list of ‘managers’ of the London Vaccine Institution. His name was graced with an asterisk to signify that he was “of the medical profession” and hence on “the Committee of Medical Assistants, or Medical Council”.⁽⁵⁾

Of his private life we know next to nothing. His will mentions a brother George, already deceased when the will was drawn up in 1837, and a sister Ann who had married one Henry Pollard.⁽⁶⁾ Thomas seems to have remained a bachelor and left his money to his sister and his nephews Thomas Hosegood (the son of George) and Henry John Revoult Pollard (the son of Ann) and his niece Mary Revoult Hosegood Pollard (the daughter of Ann). Surgeon Thomas died on 27 October 1844 and was buried at St. Mary’s Newington on 2 November. His burial record gives his age as 66, so he was born ca. 1778. His much younger sister Ann (b. ±1800), died in Paris on 31 March 1846 and was buried on 7 April, also at St. Mary’s. According to a listing of the memorials at St. Mary’s, her son Henry John Revoult died a few years later on 24 April 1849, aged just 28, and was also buried there.⁽⁷⁾ Thomas’s will mentions “two freehold messuages […] in the parish of South Molton in the county of Devon”, so he may have come from there. The Hosegood name certainly appears in the Devonshire genealogical records, but whether and how Thomas is related to them I have not been able to find out without going to Devon to look at the parish records myself. In 1751, 1762, 1771 and 1783, a (or maybe more than one) Thomas Hosegood appears in the records as holding a freehold in South Molton, but here again, no evidence of a family link.⁽⁸⁾ And last, but perhaps not least, there is a baptism record in South Molton for one Thomas Hosegood, the son of William and Hannah, on 17 June 1779, which would more or less be the correct year for Thomas the surgeon.⁽⁹⁾ Perhaps someone in Devon can shed some light on the matter?

(1) The Morning Chronicle, 18 January 1833.
(2) The Examiner, 1 June 1834.
(3) In 1813, the name Royal Jennerian Society was reused by a newly set up branch of the London Vaccine Institution. The two institutions had different names, but one common management.
(4) The London Medical Gazette, vol. 13 (1834), p. 126.
(5) The title-pages of the 1831 and 1833 transactions give the institute its full name: London Vaccine Institution, for Inoculating and Supplying Matter.
(6) PROB 11/2010/320.
(7) The Monumental Inscriptions in the Old Churchyard of St. Mary, Newington, part 1 (1880), p. 147.
(8) S. Dixon, Devon Freeholders, 1711-1799, Friends of Devon Archives
(9) IGI

Neighbours:

<– 89 Blackman Street

91 Blackman Street –>