(1802 – 1853)
Surgeon and Poet
Family records show that John was born 13 March 1802 at Bingham, Nottinghamshire. This small village is to be found eight miles due east of Nottingham itself, measured from the centre. The old Roman road, known as the Fosse Way (from fossa, a ditch) runs roughly north eastward just a mile to the west of Bingham, after a king four miles south where the north east becomes (perhaps) north east by north. This left of the road is running from Leicester to Newark. The whole road runs from Axminster to Lincoln.
Bingham takes its name, probably, from being a ‘woodland clearing of the family or followers of a man called Bynner, an Old English personal name (per Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names 2nd edition 1997, by AD Mills). It is specifically noted as being mentioned in Domesday Book (1086) as Biingheham.
Wright, as a surname, is noted widely across the country and is, understandably, the term for a carpenter or joiner.
The registers for the parish of Bingham show his baptism on 22 August, the son of Joseph and Philadelphia. Their marriage has been found, also at Bingham on 6 October 1799. A very helpful rector of the parish in the years 1955-62, who was pleased to examine the registers and write of his findings, was (retired) Bishop A Morris Gelsthorope, former Bishop in the Sudan, who was at King’s School Canterbury with Jim Flower and who recalled meeting him, returning to France after leaving during WWI.
Joseph Wright is shown as a miller and grocer in county directories.
A major source of information about John Wright has been second-cousin-once-removed, Dudley Jarrett (1902-1972), grandson of John’s daughter, Decima, who married Samuel Cropper. He greatly valued this descent and the documentary evidence he possessed and was happy to share the information from that archive with his relatives.
The resources of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, have been the greatest value in filling out the rather sparse early information. While we knew little of John’s siblings, we had no idea of how many there were, or of where they were baptised. It is here that the International Genealogical Index (IGI) was of such great assistance.
Within their church, the Mormons desire – and evidently require – genealogical information about their forbears to be able, post mortem, to include them in their church records as recognised persons within their church. To effect this they have, throughout Europe – and particularly in Britain – copied official parish registers of baptisms and marriages (but not deaths). Wright being a very common surname, there were very many pages of entries – too many to copy in their entirety to examine at leisure. In fact, the pages numbered 21,721 to 21,913, that is 193 pages of Wrights in Nottinghamshire, with up to sixty entries (baptism or marriage) per page!
What the IGI showed was that John was the second child of his parents. The first was Anne, who was baptised at Bingham on 20 November 1799 or 1800. There is some confusion, not understood here, but presumably the latter is the correct date, being some 13 months after the marriage.
Next, the IGI comes fully into play. It was necessary to examine every Nottinghamshire page on which Wright occurs, to seek the baptism of children of Joseph and Philadelphia. It if had been, say, John and Elizabeth – or any other pair of the most commonly used Christian names, the result would have been an amalgam of many different families, thus requiring places and dates to be examined to make a plausible family. However, in Joseph and Philadelphia we were lucky. Having noted them all, we only then had to put them in date order. There was evidently only the one so-named couple.
Thirdly came William, baptised 27 June 1804 at Papplewick. This little village is eleven miles north west of Bingham and thus seven miles north, north west of Nottingham
And, at the same place, the fourth child, Joseph, was baptised on 13 December 1805 or 1806. The confusion is not understood.
Then, on 27 January 1808, was baptised Thomas, the fifth child, at Bulwell, four miles almost due south of Papplewick, where the family remained, now only three miles north west from the centre of Nottingham.
The next five children, completing the family, were all baptised there:
Henry 5 February 1811
Philadelphia 5 November 1813
Samuel 6 December 1816
George 2 August 1818
Mary 4 April 1820
There were, thus, seven sons and three daughters to make up the total family of ten children.
It was only in Mary’s baptismal entry that father Joseph was, for the first time, described not only as a miller, but a grocer also.
If John went to school at an early age, this would probably have been at Bulwell, where the family had removed at least by early 1808, before he was six and, possibly, any time after late 1806. These surmises are based on the dates and places of Joseph’s and Thomas’ baptisms.
Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates mentions riots in Nottingham, in which the rioters ‘broke frames, etc’ in the period 14 November 1811 to January 1812. And, in April 1814, there was ‘much similar mischief’. At Bulwell, in these years, the family were probably well away from the disturbances. The ‘frames’ were evidently key parts of the manufacturing machinery of local industry, or lace-making or weaving.
William White’s Directory of Nottinghamshire of 1832 (no earlier directory has yet been traced, says of Bulwell: ‘In the vale of the Leen, 4 miles NNW of Nottingham, is a populous village and parish where there are three bleach works, a lace thread mill, three corn mills, several extensive limestone quarries and kilns and a number of stocking frames and bobbin net machines. It contains 2,611 inhabitants and upwards of 1,600 acres of land, all enclosed except 120 acres in the open forest. The church, dedicated to St Mary, stands upon a steep declivity. The Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists and the Baptists have each a chapel here. The Free School was erected in 1668 and the master teaches eight free scholars.’
‘Recollections induced by the recovery of a stone that furnished a mutual source of pleasure to me and my sister during childhood’ opens a small window on the simple pleasures of early days. This they rolled along the ground with great delight, but while ‘the childish friends that gathered near’ had all survived, his sister, ‘to whom my youthful heart with pure affection always glowed’, had not. He ends with:
Her spirit, freed from eath’s embrace
Darts o’er the bright celestial plains
To swell the theme of saving grace
In lovely and immortal strains.
Oh! that I might in heaven renew
That hallowed intercourse of mind
Which ripened as we hourly grew
Till she her precious life resigned.
Fifteen six-line verses tell another story of childhood, the story of willow trees beside the river Leen, by his youthful dwelling and to which he became attached. When the plan was to cut them down, his please for two to be reprieved, ‘to calm his anxious breast,’ the boon was granted. For when domestic murmurs drove him from the scene, he always went directly to these spreading trees and ‘recreated there at ease’. Between these trees, he made a garden. But later these two were sought to be felled. But he was granted the reprieve of one. When this, however, died, he and his mother twined osiers ‘to form a thickly verdant bower, impervious to the hasty shower’. And here she liked to sit. And, when ‘her soul exhaled – and went to heaven……. those willows form a weeping bower.’
What greatly surprises me is that nowhere do it find John delighting in the fact that the Leen, which flows on its way to Nottingham from the lake before Newstead Abbey, ancestral home of his much admired ‘illustrious Byron’, was quietly flowing past his beloved willows.
We do know, for a certainty, that John attended a school at Hucknall. This most useful information comes from a note to his poem, ‘The Blackbird’ which appears on page 60 of his ‘Poetry, Sacred & Profane’.
‘The road from Bulwell to Hucknall Torkard (the second half of this name appears no longer to be used), passing through the estate of the Rev Alfred Padley (Lord of the Manor) affords in summer a delightful treat to the lovers of rural scenery. The school at Hucknall, but a few yards distant from the church in which lie the remains of the illustrious Byron, though it presents not now a like claim to distinction was, at the period, I allude to, conducted by the Rev Joseph Bosworth, whose researches in Anglo-Saxon literature have earned for him a place in the esteem of every distinguished European scholar.’
Attention to this substantial footnote is drawn by an asterisk at the end of lines ‘…. Yielding cheerfully to rule, I bounded lightly o’er the green, in journeying to the distant school’.
It is no surprise to learn that John was no reluctant scholar. Ever a lover of the natural world, the four mile walk would have fed his soul.
This footnote is a real nugget of information.
Bosworth merits more time than a page in the Dictionary of National Biography, though the article is critical of his published works.
Joseph Bosworth DD (1789 – 1876) was educated at Repton, Aberdeen and Trinity, Cambridge. His Latin publications tempt us to attribute to him John’s love, not only of literature but also his Latin scholarship. After ordination as deacon in 1814, and as a priest in 1815, he was appointed to a curacy at Bunny, in Nottinghamshire. Bunny is seven miles to the south of Nottingham, half way to Loughborough. Bunny, being about nine miles from Hucknall, would surely have been too far for a daily journey at that time, so perhaps his school-mastering days were before his ordination, though John accords him reverence. Could this school have catered for all John’s general studies, or might he have progressed elsewhere for his final years (say 1816-20) or so? Wherever it may have been, we now know that it was not at the ancient Nottingham High School.
Not only was John a Latin scholar, but clearly he was proficient also in Italian, as demonstrated by his translation into English of two sonnets of Petrarch (Italian lyric poet and scholar 1304-74) at pages 192-195 of PS&P, as well as German – ‘The Story without an End’, on pp 247-253 and 334-336.
Another reference to his journey to school appears in a footnote (p97) to his volume ‘The Relative Influence…’ (which work will be referred to later).
‘…. a curious specimen….. appeared in one of two brothers, who journeyed with me daily to school, about three miles distant from the village in which we lived. He was a hungry-looking, long jointed lad, the very counterpart of Noah Claypole (Noah Claypole was a charity boy, apprenticed with Oliver Twist, to Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker. ‘A large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make, and heavy countenance – a red nose, and yellow smalls – mother a washerwoman and father a drunken sailor). Nor did his looks deceive the speculative observer; for he could east as never lad did beside him. His mother was an indulgent creature: having provided a commodious receptacle for food, made after the fashion of a domestic clothes basket, but not quite so large, her next pleasure was to fill it, whensoever its interior bespoke a nevessity for her doing so, which was once in twenty-four hours. The prevailing repast consisted of a ‘boiling’ of potatoes, interspersed with fragments of bacon, which the youths preferred to convey by means of a stick, to which their basket, with its contents, was suspended. It was always a matter of complaint with him, whose consumption exceeded not that of other boys, that he should be compelled to carry half of the provision; and he would endeavour, occasionally, to shove the basket handle beyond the notch which, by parental authority, had been indicated in the middle of the rod. If foiled in the attempt, his next contrivance was to get in advance of the starveling and importune him to come up with the load – a request which the latter always avowed the utmost willingness to comply with, on condition that he first be allowed the privilege of translating into his own stomach……’
Where, and when, he finished his school, we just don’t know. He had surely moved on from the village school at Hucknall.
The ninth and tenth children of his parents, George and Mary, were baptised in 1818 and 1820 but had all his nine siblings survived? Again, we don’t know. The only survivor of whom we know for certain, was the eighth child, Samuel, baptised in 1816, of whom more will be heard. The family were still to be at Bulwell, for the County director of 1832 lists there both Joseph Wright, grocer and miller, and also Joseph Wright, bobbin net maker but the occupations suggest two men of the same name. The Nottingham director of 1834 is a little more helpful with ‘Millers: Wright, Joseph (steam), Bridge Street, h. at Bulwell.’
For how long John knew that he wanted to study medicine we have no idea. Had he experienced, perhaps in the death of infant siblings, or other misfortunes of family or friends, a desire to minister to the sick, or was it, perhaps, a later decision when the time came to choose just what he would do with his life? We are unlikely to find the answer to this. However, his character suggests that he long knew just what he wanted to do.
He took his first step by becoming a surgeon’s pupil to Mr William Watts, who practised in Nottingham – the family doctor, or a friend, perhaps? There is no hint as to the formal or financial arrangements. Was there a contract signed? Was there payment of a capital sum? And was there a small wage?
If the study term were five years, which seems likely, he would have started in the spring of 1819, when he was seventeen years old. So his schooling had ended by then.
Mr Watts is shown by the directory of 1814/15 in Bridlesmithgate. The next available director is for 1828, when he was in Poultry. So quite where John was with him is uncertain. Mr Watts came from Kinoulton, Nottinghamshire, and was fourteen years John’s senior.
We must imagine them in the surgery and on visits together, the willing helper to the man of experience, the observer of all that the calling required of one. All this for about three and a half years. It has not proved possible to say exactly where all this took place. The Nottingham library does not have town directories at this early date and the Royal College of Surgeons has no medical directories earlier than 1845.
The date 2 October 1822, in the Guy’s Hospital medical school register, now held by King’s College, London, seems to have been his starting date there. On the same day, he was issued with an admission card to surgical operations and practice, but with no anatomy or dissections for twelve months. He was a student for twelve months to 17 November 1823 and paid £1/2/- for the privilege – for the whole of his training?
The real evidence of his progress is the succession of related certificates of courses attended, studies completed and of his admission to membership of certain bodies (no pun intended!). The whole series of ten of them was held by the late Dudley Jarrett. However, the continued existence of them all is uncertain. Some were given to fellow descendants, but the record of those known about is detailed below, in date order.
|
2 October 1822 |
Guy’s & St Thomas’s Hospitals Admission card: Admit John Wright, a pupil, for twelve months to the surgical operations and practice Signed: Wm Keall, Steward Richard Stocker, Apothecary (No anatomy or dissections) ** |
|
23 December 1822 |
MIDWIFERY |
|
|
These are to Certify that Mr John Wright has diligently attended One Course of our Lectures on the THEORY and PRACTICE of MIDWIFERY and likewise attended and delivered in real labour Witness our hands and seals at LONDON. This 23rd day of December in the Year of Our Lord 1822 John Haighton James Blundell (This certificate is held by the writer of these notes) |
**
|
3 May 1823 |
THE LONDON DISPENSARY, Artillery Street, Bishopsgate Street for administering advice and medicine to the poor at the dispensary or at their own habitations. Instituted 1777 John Wright hath diligently attended the medical practice at this Institute during nine months John B Davis MD R Gayton, Apothecary |
|
**
|
4 May 1823 |
Two courses of lectures on General and Pathological Chemistry And on the Natural, Chemical & Medical History Of the Materia Medica 20 Norfolk Street, Strand |
|
|
F Collier |
**
|
APOTHECARIES OF THE CITY OF LONDON John Wright, Member, 8 May 1823 |
**
|
9 May 1823 |
Theory and Practice of Medicine John Wright diligently attended 2 courses of my lectures |
|
|
David Unwins MD |
**
|
20 January 1824 |
THEATRE OF GUY’S HOSPITAL Three courses of lectures on Physiology |
|
|
James Blundell |
**
|
ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS John Wright Member 5th March 1824 |
||
|
It is believed that this certificate is now in the possession of Mr Hugh Wright Jarrett in Australia |
**
John received a letter, dated 12 March 1824, from Astley Cooper attesting to his strict attention to his duties as a medical student and his confidence in him. Cooper was later a baronet and became President of the Royal College of Surgeons.
And, in the following year, Astley Cooper wrote to him at King’s Place, Harvey Gate, Norringham, a letter of 25 November 1825, and marked ‘Entre nous’. It sought his support for the ‘Resurrection Men’, who disinterred recently buried corpses for clinical dissection. Both these letters were in the possession of Dudley Jarrett.
With his medical studies successfully behind him, and no doubt some medical practice in Nottingham, John was able to embark upon the next major step in his life.
A glimpse of his professional life is given in ‘An Epicurean Address’ (pp 30/21):
‘Engaged as I am in the arduous plan of treating disease, which compels me to walk many miles in a day, and incessantly talk to those who are either affectedly weak, or willing, but really unable to speak.’
On 2 October 1827, at the church or St Mary the Virgin, the major church in Nottingham, and in the presence of Samuel and Anne Hurst, he married Sarah, daughter of John Mackley of Radford, Nottinghamshire, and his wife, Lucy (nee Grew, of a family from Sibson in Leicestershire). The only other personal information given by the formal certificate (it being still ten years before the institution of civil registration with its more comprehensive information requirements) was John’s residence within the parish of St Mary’s.
The immediate reaction to the certificate is to ask why there was no member of the family witnessing, but the Anne Hurst may well have been his elder sister, Anne, the first born of the family, now married.
John and Sarah’s first child, also Anne, was born on 20 October the following year (1828), with her name perhaps underlying a close bond with John’s own sister. Perhaps this is the sister whose death he lamented in the verses recalling the finding of the stone with which they had both played in childhood, already quoted.
Sadly, though, daughter Anne died aged only a year and a half, on 21 April 1830. She was buried at Holme Pierrepont, the first of a number of family burials noted there, a third of the way east from Nottingham towards Bingham, John’s birthplace. Perhaps this was the former parish of the Wrights.
The loss of Anne was, perhaps, a little compensated for by the birth, two months before, of John on 26 February 1830.
In the following year, Philadelphia was born. She was named after her aunt and grandmother and many other ancestors who bore this treasured name. They are dealt with elsewhere. She will, of course, be the focus of our attention later.
Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates reports that, on 31 December 1831, the castle at Nottingham was burnt to a shell by rioters during the ‘Reform Excitement’. Although no mention of the event is found with reference to John, it must have been a tense time, and memorable. The castle was restored in 1875 and is now a museum.
It was in about1832 that John took on an apprentice in the person of his brother, Samuel, who would have celebrated his sixteenth birthday in December of that year. Reference to this event appears in the support of John for Samuel for his candidature in 1841, referring to nine years of work together.
On 21 March 1833, Sarah Anne was born, receiving her mother’s name with that of her aunt, and that of the first-born. Then, on 6 February 1835, Hannah.
At about this time Samuel, John’s brother, born 1817, must have started his medical studies at Edinburgh University. Did John perhaps help fund these studies? And, if he didn’t, who might have done?
In furtherance of his researches for his book, ‘The Relative Influence of the Sexes….’, John embarked, in March 1835, upon an expedition to the west country and the reader should now refer to his own account, as set out on pages x to xiii in that book, incorporated therein.
And in September of that year, with the same aim in view, he undertook an expedition to Chesterfield, for a related purpose, set out on pages xiii to xvii, also incorporated herein.
THE RELATIVE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES
PROLOGUE
In the month of March, 1835, I determined to investigate the claims of the Devonshire cattle to the flattering representation given of them, in the Treatise, published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; and having business to transact in London, which could very shortly be disposed of, I proceeded by that route. The first day was consumed in reaching the Metropolis, – the next in passing thence to Exeter, where I arrived late at night, after travelling, in two days, on the outside of coaches, a distance of two hundred and ninety-seven miles, in unmitigated pain, arising from an obscure abdominal disturbance, of long standing, and counter-irritation, established for its cure.
The judges were, at that time, on their circuits, and I could obtain no accommodation at either of the large inns in the town. A fellow, after the class of those to be found often in the neighbourhood of such establishments, tendered his services to conduct me to an abode. Five minutes stay, however, within its walls, served to convince me that both my person and property would be endangered by remaining; and, in angry mood, I rushed, unceremoniously, into the street, in search of a more hospitable roof.
Whilst treating hastily along, and observing the previous bustle and anxiety of the day merge into the growing stillness of night, I was deploring the infatuation that had brought me thither, when, on a sudden, my reverie was interrupted by the separation of two elderly men at the door of one of the parties.
I mentioned my condition to the resident of the house, who, happening to be an innkeeper on a limited scale, was glad enough to entertain me. On the following morning, I proceeded by coach to Barnstaple, in time for a quarterly cattle market, to be held there the next day. The business of the market having been concluded, I rode a pony over ten or twelve miles of bad road, to the house of Mr Davy, of North Molton (a man of pleasing frankness and intelligence) with whom I passed an evening in profitable conversation.
Another day was spent in the inspection of Mr Davy’s beautiful herd of North Devon cattle, and in visiting Mr Tapp, of Twitching, and the Messrs; Quartley, of Molland for the same purpose.
At night, I reposed at South Molton, intending to proceed by the mail, that should pass through, the next morning, on its way from Barnstaple to Bristol, in my return home. I rose by 6am and the mail not being expected till 9 o’clock, I slung my carpet-bag, weighing, with its contents, and an upper coat for which I had now little occasion, 17lbs, across my shoulder, and walked leisurely on to North Molton, for the sake of contemplating, from a hill in its immediate vicinity, a spot renowned for the excellence of its cattle, and one too, where I had recently experienced the greatest possible kindness.
After feasting my soul awhile in meditation, I wandered along a circuitous path, that led me to the Bristol road; and now I discovered that a walk of four or five miles had served to advance me about one and a half on my way home. Presently the mail came up, and lo! It was full. I had, therefore, the option to return to South Molton, where I must have remained unoccupied till the following day, or journey in a direction that should afford me no refreshment within the next fourteen miles.
Not liking to retrograde, I pursued my way and, by noon, found myself comfortably seated at the Reindeer, near Bampton – having completed about eighteen miles, under the grievous burden already mentioned, without food. Ten or twelve miles, if my memory serve me aright, yet lay betwixt me and Wiveliscomb, whither I was anxious to arrive that day.
Before doing so, I grew very tired; when observing a man of professional exterior approach, who was riding in the same direction, I begged that he would, for a few minutes, relieve me of my load. Thinking, probably, that so great an act of condescension would ill accord with the dignity of his station, he refused; and I, feeling invigorated by the repulse, experienced little subsequent fatigue.
Having reached Wiveliscomb, I passed the night there and, hastening on to Bristol the next day, arrived in time for the mail to convey me thence to Birmingham, by night; and at noon, on the eighth day, I was with my family, after travelling six hundred miles (five hundred on the outside of coaches), and that, too, under the pressure of unceasing pain.
At four o’clock one morning, in the latter part of September 1835, I set out for Chesterfield, where the Derbyshire Annual Agricultural meeting was about to be held, intending to proceed thence to Wiseton, for the purpose of enriching my stock of information, if possible, with some facts, derived from a survey of Earl Spencer’s short-horns. By 11am, I had accomplished the first part of my undertaking; and after spending two hours in the show yard, I resumed my walk in the direction of Worksop. In the village of Staveley, I had the good fortune to come up with a gentleman, who was driving thither, and who generously invited me to accompany him. I now thought there was a prospect of reaching Barnby Moor that night, and immediately, on leaving my friend, proceeded along the road he had described, through Bilby, and arrived where I anticipated the comfort of repose, before 7 o’clock.
Whether the honour conferred on the posting establishment in Barnby, by her Majesty (then Princess Victoria) having been graciously pleased to sleep there, on her way to Doncaster, shortly before, had rendered its inmates insensible to the necessities of so mean a subject as myself, or whether it was the custom of the house to refuse an entertainment to pedestrians, I know not. But this I know – it was denied to me; and, at the instance of those with whom my interview was conducted, I subsequently applied to another establishment in the same place, where, for my consolation, I was assured that they lodged none but coachmen and guards.
This negative, like the former, was accompanied with a friendly intimation that I should most likely be able to find an asylum elsewhere – that is to say, if I would incur the trouble of walking to Sutton. The proposition was, in some measure, acceptable to me, since that village lay a mile nearer the estate I was about to visit. Still I could hardly forbear to reproach myself for having risked so much bodily fatigue and mental torture, without the least probability of realising either an immediate or prospective advantage.
Already had I walked nearly forty miles, to say nothing of two hours’ exercise in Chesterfield; and had partaken of no food since my breakfast at Mansfield, excepting some bread and cheese, the best fare the good landlady, at whose house I rested awhile, in Staveley, could provide; and I was both hungry and tired.
While musing on the horrors of impending starvation, the village I was in quest of appeared in sight; and thinking it advisable, without regard to the occupation of its inhabitants, to make my case known, wherever there should seem to be indications of comfort, I did so. One had not a spare bed, another had, but it had been so long out of use, that my safety would unquestionably be endangered by sleeping in it. Others declared that to be a cross-country road, in which men of honourable pursuits were never benighted, and affected to regard my application as a marvellous piece of daring. Prudence forbade me to tell them that I had money, wherewith to discharge every obligation, lest I should share the fate of a later resident of that village, who had been murdered for the sake of a few pounds he had with him.
At length I entered public house, at the farthest extremity of the place and was making my best appeal to the feelings of its inmates, when a good-natured man, who listened attentively to my story, observed that, if I would wait till he should have emptied his cup, he would engage to procure me a lodging at Lound, another mile yet on the road to Wiseton.
With a promise of a few more ‘cups’ when he should have accomplished his purpose, we started off together; and soon he introduced me to a matronly lady who, after surveying me with an air of singular curiosity, avowed her willingness to serve me in the best way she could. Having administered to the demands of hunger, she conducted me up a crazy staircase, into a three-bedded room, appropriated, ordinarily, to the use of two grown up sons, and an elderly man who lodged with them.
To have demurred would have been ungrateful, since any accommodation within doors, was preferable to the fields or highway; but never shall I forget the inconvenience to which I was subjected. The bed set apart to my service was so unaccountably short that, though commanding no greater altitude than five feet nine inches, I could not stretch myself out at full length, even when observing some degree of obliquity.
In this state I lay, unable to sleep and afraid to request that the old man, whose stocking emitted a most noisome stench, would be pleased, for my sake, to draw them on his legs again, till the light approaching more should invite me to a purer air.
Shortly before 6am, I arose and walked to Wiseton Hall, where I had the good fortune to meet his lordship’s bailiff, commencing the routine of his daily labour. After inspecting, with as much minuteness as time and opportunity would allow, what perhaps might justly be deemed an unrivalled herd of cattle, I returned to Lound, at a somewhat unseasonable hour, for breakfast; then walking to Worksop, in time for a coach that should pass though that town, on its way to Nottingham, I got home in the evening of the same day.
In 1837, after five years, Samuel’s apprenticeship with his brother John ended.
Mary was born on 27 January 1837 and Joseph on 30 April 1838. But, on 14 April 1839, Hannah, but four years and two months old, died and was buried at Holme Pierrepont with Anne. John’s son, Samuel, was born on 3 March 1840.
John, perhaps for the first time shown at 21 High Pavement, Nottingham, on 20 December 1840, lecturer on midwifery and diseases of women and children to Nottingham medical school writes, in a testimonial to Samuel’s offering himself for the Chair of pathological anatomy and clinical medicine at University College, London: ‘I certify that Dr Samuel Wright served an apprenticeship of five years to me ….. It was his maxim always to keep pace with the progress of the day …………. directing his great talent mainly to the cultivation to literature and science.’
And, in his own curriculum vitae, Samuel wrote: ‘…… five years were passed by me in the form of apprenticeship with my brother, a practitioner resident in the town of Nottingham, under whose guidance and instruction I enjoyed very extensive opportunities of professional improvement for, during the last two years of my servitude, I had the chief management of sick clubs, whose members numbered about eleven hundred, together with the patients chargeable to an extensive parish in the neighbourhood of Nottingham’.
The above quotations are taken from a bound copy, inscribed on the title page: ‘To my brother John, with my affectionate regards and best thanks’. There is no evidence that Samuel actually achieved his purpose here. This again is taken from the archive of Dudley Jarrett.
A tantalising letter, dated 15 March 1841, arrived from Buckingham Palace, from Mr G D Anson, Private Secretary to HRH Prince Albert, the Prince Consort. John’s own letter was acknowledged and his enclosure had been laid before the prince. He was commanded to thank him for his observations upon a subject in which the prince is much interested and which must always be important to the country at large.
Upon enquiry in 1998, the deputy registrar of the royal archives at Windsor Castle observed ‘unfortunately, surprisingly little of the Prince Consort’s correspondence has survived, and I regret that I cannot find any letters from or two John Wright in our files, nor any reference to him’. My own surmise is that John’s letter to the prince had related to a matter of public health.
The census of 1841, taken on 6/7 June, listing the family, now at High Pavement (but house numbers are not given) in the east of Nottingham, shows a household of eight, with John and Sarah given as 40 and 35, though actually John was 38 (not 40 until August 1842) and Sarah 34 (not 35 until July of 1841). A text book on the subject explains, specifically for 1841: Exact ages in years are given for children up to the age of 14 inclusive. For persons of 15 and older, ages are given in five-year groups indicated by the youngest year of the group; that is ages from 15 to 19 inclusive are shown as 15; from 20 to 24 as 20, and so on. People, however, did not always state their ages correctly.
That may have been the rule, but they got it wrong as John should have been show as 25 and Sarah as 30!
The children ranged in age from ten years to one.
In the Introduction to ‘Poetry, Sacred and Profane’, John avers that ‘not one of the poems was constructed before I had entered on my fortieth year’. He writes (pp v-vi):
‘…… as it seldom happens that a man begins to exercise the faculty of imagination at that period of his life, the reader may be curious to know why the usual course of things has been reversed in me. The story is simple, and may be soon told. Until then, excessive irritability combined with constitutional powers of endurance that few enjoy, prompted me daily to physical pursuits very far exceeding the demands of a laborious profession. A seeming superfluity of nervous impulse was my inheritance; and preferring the pure atmosphere of the fields to that artificial mode of existence which the usages of society impose, my delight was to expend it in walks which, were I circumstantially to record them, might be thought by many to exceed the bounds of credibility.
As time, however, progressed, though as yet sensible of on diminution of nervous activity, a growing inaptitude for vigorous exercise was discovered and I sought, in retirement, to profit by a long train of previous observation. In spite of a prejudice imbibed, on reaching manhood, against poetry, for reasons that some little reflection on lovely woman – prejudice so strong that, for nearly twenty years, I would neither read, nor suffer to be read to me, any production of the divine art, I now began to meditate in verse. Progressively my evenings became more and more devoted to this amusement; and when those who feared that the pursuit might endanger my health enjoyed rest, the only reply I could offer was that of the Roman poet, verum nequeo dormire ; and dreading a worse imputation, aut insanit homo, aut versus facit ; I have occupied my leisure in the cultivation of elegant literature with such intervals of relaxation as the kindred pursuit of gardening has required, thought the last ten years.’
In May, 1841, a bazaar was projected for reducing the debt incurred in the erection of Wesley chapel, Nottingham. In honour of the occasion, John produced an address in verse, which covers seven pages (78-83) of his published works.
The chapel was in Broad Street, and stood not quite square to the road. There was a grand faux portico, the whole crowned byh a plain pediment with just ‘1839’ on the plain frieze. There were six pilasters, the outer two being square and quite plain, but the inner four were fluted and with Ionic capitals. In the upper story were five tall round-headed windows and below two doors alternating with three windows. Within, there was a substantial gallery which ran round the whole of the interior, and at one end was an enormous organ with a most impressive display of over seventy pipes. This instrument is now in Nottingham University great hall. The total seating capacity must have been many hundreds – the record shows 2,000. The site had cost £2,000 and the building work £11,000.
At a service in 1844, during the visit of the American evangelist, the Reverend James Caughey, the youthful William Booth (1829-1912), later founder of the Salvation Army in 1878, embraced Methodism and was accepted into membership in this very chapel. He may thus have been known to John.
At its peak of activity I 1863, the Sunday school ad 1,111 children and 157 teachers. The last service was held n 1954. It was then sold and, after being an educational centre, it became the Broadway Media Centre, showing films and as a training centre for those entering media work.
The building still stands and can be recognised with its ‘sanitised’ columns and its sitting askew to the road. All this information has been supplied by the Nottingham Methodist archivist.
!842 opened with the birth of Lucretius on 6 January. Reference will be made to him later. He was named after the Roman poet and philosopher.
On 20 May, he dated his preface to his book ‘The Relative influence of the Sexes Considered, in reference to propagation, as well in Man as in the Lower Ranks of Animals’. This he published privately: ‘Printed for the author 1842’. The copy held bears the inscription: ‘My dear son John – In testimony of his Father’s love’.
This is a difficult book to describe, as it was a difficult book to read, even for the second time. He seeks to understand and rationalise the progeny with the parents, not only in terms of their mental and physical characteristics, but also with the circumstances of their conception, but in environmental terms, and in their mental states at that time. Whether his musings on the subject, taking very many actual cases into account, would find much favour a century and a half later, is more than I can surmise, though while looking for possible influences, I had the feeling that some imaginings were somewhat fanciful.
In his research for this study, he travelled round the area and further afield, and he gives accounts of some of these travels. The two major expeditions have already been interpolated in their due time in this story.
In February 1843, an infant died but not, apparently, one of his, from the complete record we have of his family. However, he was sufficiently moved to write a poem ‘suggested’ by this death and titled ‘The Snowdrop’ (pp5/6), ending with the touching couplet ‘The flower when withered truly dies – the soul forever lives!’.
Such was his interest in their affairs, that he wrote some verses, a dozen of the, for the anniversary meeting of the Agricultural Society of England, held at Derby, 12 July 1843. Tantalisingly, this is dedicated ‘To *********’. It would have been nice to know whose identity is hidden behind these asterisks.
On 3 September 1844, a very special event was the arrival of twin daughters, Decima (being his tenth child) and Daphne.
There was another proud moment at the beginning of 1846. John had written to Charles Dickens (1812-1870), by then already famous as author of ‘Pickwick Papers’, ‘Nicholas Nickelby’, ‘Oliver Twist’ and others. John had sent ‘some lines’ to enquire of the novelist whether they were ‘of a creditable order’. He must have been gratified to be told, in a letter of 9 January 1846, in the hand of a secretary, but signed by the author (later authenticated by his son, Sir Henry Dickens, as his father’s signature), that they were ‘certainly very creditable indeed’ and that they had been read with pleasure and thought very good’. A very optimistic enquiry was initiated to see if the ‘lines’ themselves could be identified. This was sent to the Dickens museum, in Doughty Street, London but, as anticipated, no help could be given, as no relevant papers could be traced.
A year later, on 8 January 1847, the twelfth child, Horace, was born and named after the great Roman poet and satirist. John’s literary preoccupations force this presumption. It seems more likely than referring to Horace Walpole or another. Lucretius is such sufficient precedent.
On 28 January 1848, an ‘impertinent youth’ had ‘spoken contemptuously’ of a sermon preached by the Rev J Loutit; Although titled ‘A Gentle Remonstrance’, the first of two four-line verses begins: ‘Thou spark of Hell’s creative blast, which no amount of grace can smother…..’. (PS&P p133)
Later the same year, he wrote ‘Reflections on Time and Eternity’, suggested by the close of another year, 1848 (PS&P pp326-8), nine verses of six lines each. This is philosophical rather than historical and refers to no particular events in the year just passed.
1849 was a year to be remembered with horror and, thereafter, thanksgiving. The former for the ravages of cholera and the latter for the devotion and unrelenting work of the doctors and medical staff fighting it and for the survival of the more fortunate and eventual slow end to the outbreak.
John wrote, on 25 September, on the evening of the day appointed for fasting and public worship during the prevalence of cholera. There were three verses of six lines each.
Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, under ‘Cholera’, for the year 1849, gives: ‘Another (after 1832) visitation of cholera in England. The number of deaths in London, for the week ending 15 September 1849, was 3, 116, the ordinary average being 1,008 and the number of deaths from cholera from 17 June to 2 October, in London alone, 13,161. The mortality lessened and the distemper disappeared about 10 October 1849.’
But the Nottingham outbreak was nothing like so dreadful as in London. There seem to have been fewer than a dozen deaths – all connected with ‘noisesome privies’ in three locations. And these responded to the efforts of the sanitary committee, with no recurrence. The seats of infection, namely: Brewitt’s Yard; Crosby Place, Leenside; and Gedling Street, tempt visions of Dickensian squalor.
The report clearly shows that the more wretched and less salubrious parts of the town were intolerably offensive. But the same can probably be said of most, if not all, towns at that time.
A surgeon notes: ‘the poor are not disinclined to cleanliness, though many of them do not know in what it consists’.
John must have been sorely tried at this time.
‘Written for one of my twin daughters to ………..’ is the title of a three page narrative poem dated 13 October 1849 (pp237-9). It is an imaginary letter beginning, ‘Sir’ and ending ‘I am, etc, Daphne Wright’. The twins had been five years old earlier in the month. But who might the addressee have been? It relates to toys not thanked for from him (yes, ‘he’ is referred to) and their fate at the hands of Deci, Horace, Joe, Delphia and Sally. It could be called an apology, I suppose.
Again he indulged Daphne in a supposed letter in verse, addressed to ‘Mr William’, ‘her lover’, who was ill. She sought an earlier recovery and signed off ‘your warmest friend is Daphne Wright’. Whoever might he have been?
The first of three parts of ‘Pastimes with the late Poet Laureate’ is dated 26 January 1850. The poet concerned is William Wordsworth, who was John’s bête noir and the subject of much criticism and ungenerous comment. These ‘pastimes’ amount to some 86 four-line verses; parts II and III are dated 6 and 9 February 1850 (pp290-311).
John and Sarah’s last child was born on 27 February in 1850. Interestingly, he was called John Junius. Double interesting, in fact, for elder brother John (born 1830) was still living. It is not unknown to genealogists that there are plenty of instances of there being two children of the same name co-existent in a family, but it still strikes on as odd and one wonders why. Secondly, the name Junius. There are two possible reasons for this and both have literary associations. Francis Junius (1591-1677) was a German-born Dutch philologist (philology is the science of the structure and development of language). Also Junius was the pen-name of the (never certainly identified) author of a series of letters in the late eighteenth century attacking political figures. So take your pick from these.
‘Stanzas’, (seven four-line) were suggested during an attendance at divine worship, on the evening of Sunday 22 September 1850. ‘…… what a godless void unhappily prevails in me’. So John, as one would suspect, of one of his sensibility, was subject, from time to time, to self-examination. (pp116-117)
The frist event noted in 1851 is the census, taken on 31 March. The family is still at High Pavement. John is shown as 49 and Sarah as 44. Actually John was not 49 until 22 August 1851, but Sarah was indeed 44 on 20 July 1850. Seven children are shown. John is there, aged 21, which is, perhaps, a surprise since the record within the family is that he had gone to Australia the previous year! Philadelphia is absent. She would have been 19 and is, perhaps, living in as a secretary or companion elsewhere, perhaps nearby, or even staying with friends. (*Ancestry.co.uk 1851 census reveals Philadelphia was an ‘assistant’ at a girl’s boarding school in Nottingham; the school was run by Mary Ann Cusworth and her sister, Ester Blackley Oldham).
Sarah and Mary are included as 18 and 14, which ages are agreed. Joseph and Samuel are missing. They should be 12 and 11. Joseph had supposedly gone to Australia with brother, John, but this is very doubtful. The suspicion is that they were, at this time, staying with friends. And Lucretius, Decima, Daphne, Horace, and John Junius (at 8, 6, 6, 3 and 1, all agreed) are listed.
The penultimate poem published by John (at p329) was ‘written on Easter Sunday, 20 April 1851, after the performance of a surgical operation on my right cheek.’ One suspects that this was a cancerous growth.
The last is written two days later (p330) and is headed ‘Thoughts suggested by the prospect of death, whilst walking with a few friends, on the evening of 22 April 1851’.
1851 saw the publication of ‘Poetry, Sacred & Profane’, John’s introduction to which is dated 18 July. It is a nicely produced volume, published in London by Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, octavo, in boards covered with red cloth and impressed with decorative stylistic leaves and scrolls on the borders and panels on the spine. It consists of an ‘Introduction I – xxxix and 341 pages, including notes.
The dedication to:
To
Samuel Wright,
MB DCL LLD FAS &c, &c, &c
This volume
Is affectionately inscribed
By
His brother
It was printed by Spottiswoodes and Shaw, New Street Square, London. A small sticker on the back endpaper records that it was ‘Bound by T R Eeles & Son, Cursitor Street, London’. This street, off Chancery Lane, was the present writer’s last office address before retirement, known as ‘cursed whore street’! It was named after the office of the Cursitors who issued writs in the name of the Court of Chancery.
The list of contents shows 128 separate poems.
How does one do justice to this product of a dozen years? The natural world was clearly his chief inspiration, with 19 poems to creatures, mostly birds (two to the skylark, pp 100 and 137) but including a sonnet ‘Reflections on a garden slug (p134) and ‘The fate of a tyrant pig’ (p189) and a dozen to flowers and trees, and a number to the love of women. It may be supposed that all are fairly free of the matters he found so infelicitous in the works of William Wordsworth. His Epigram on Wordsworth, Poet Laureate: ‘Had I been asked, I should have guessed his name had been applied in jest – so truly do his works set forth a claim to ‘words’, but no one to ‘worth’ (p289).
The volume of John’s poems held by the writer hereof is inscribed:
To Sarah,
My dear wife
Who, as Heaven’s best gift
Has never ceased to ‘serve’, ‘love’ and ‘honour’ me
Through all the waywardness implied
In the pursuit of literature
|
September 3 1851 |
John Wright |
I would recommend the reading of this volume of poems to any descendant.
John’s mother, Philadelphia (nee Jones) died 24 August 1852, aged 81
John himself, aged 50, died 17 February 1853 of a malignant tumour of the colon and was buried at Holme Pierrepont on 25th February. An embossed memorial card is held.
EPILOGUE
THE GENIUS OF WORDSWORTH
Harmonised with
THE WISDOM AND INTEGRITY
of
HIS REVIEWERS
This, John’s third book, was published posthumously in 1852. He wrote most of the Preface (see below) but this was concluded, after his death, by ‘E’, with the date 19 April 1853. The first 20 pages repeat the Introduction to ‘Poetry, Sacred and Profane’, which there covered pages i to xxix.
Thereafter, from p21 to p130 (the end of the book) comes ‘A Reply to an article on Mr Wright’s ‘Poetry, Sacred and Profane’ as contained in the Nottinghamshire Guardian of October 30 1851. Unfortunately, it has not proved possible to obtain a copy of this article as copies of this newspaper are not held locally, and those at the British Library Newspaper Library at Colindale, Hendon, are too fragile to be handled.
The Preface explains the article quite vividly:
‘In a volume I published a year ago, entitled ‘Poetry Sacred and Profane’ were included some imitations of Wordsworth, together with a satire called ‘Pastimes with the late Poet Laureate’. As an apology for the latter, I prefixed to the verse an ‘Introduction’ containing a summary of the Poet’s character. This gave serious offence to that inflated tribe of public censors, termed reviewers’ and they castigated me unmercifully – one craving a ‘stone bow’ to hit me in the eye, or in the event of failure, a scaffold – on which I might expiate my crime. The ‘Morning Post’ led the van; then followed ‘Tait’, ‘Fraser’, ‘The Literary Gazette’, ‘The Critic’ and a host of servile imitators – amongst which appeared the ‘Nottinghamshire Guardian’, whose exploits on the occasion afforded no little amusement in this neighbourhood. Its proprietor aspired but to an echo of the ‘Morning Post’; but none of the literary junto connected with the journal could furnish even that. He heard of a disciple of the Lake school who, with creditable amount of scholarship, could swallow as much laudanum with impunity as did Coleridge. This man was invited to the task; and he achieved it as might have been expected of one under the habitual influence of a deadly narcotic. Confiding in the integrity of my own cause, I replied to the local critic, when the proprietor of the ‘Nottinghamshire Guardian’, seeing the hopelessness of his position, dismissed his new ally.’
‘Here Mr Wright’s engagement on his own little work closed from fast increasing bodily necessities; and the explanation which he was unable to complete must be thus shortly supplied. Soon after the appearance of a Reply to the article contained in the ‘Nottinghamshire Guardian’, Mr Wright proposed to enter upon a yet more elaborate consideration of Wordworth’s character as a poet, with a view to justify the course he had already adopted. His design was accomplished in the Essay concluding this work. Declining health, however, for some time prevented Mr Wright from making a fair transcript of what he had written; nor was this perfected until a few days before his death, which occurred on the seventeenth of February 1853. Regarding his last treatise as a continuation of the subject occupying the earlier publications, it was Mr Wright’s intention to print it, accompanied, in the order of their composition, by the ‘Introduction’ to his poems, and the ‘Reply’. This arrangement it has been thought right still to observe; and there only remains to regret that it was not permitted to him to fulfil a task which no other hand can perform as well.’
It might be an interesting pursuit, for the more literary-minded, to locate some, or all, of the comments made following John’s attack on the late Poet Laureate, but it would be beyond my ability to make much of it. Locating the relevant references would be a task in itself. It has already been noted that the ‘Nottinghamshire Guardian’ is not available, and the ‘Morning Post’ is also elusive. However, I would like to have read some of the more personal remarks made about Wright in the course of this controversy.
This slim volume in blue, is bound en suite with the Poetry volume itself. The copy held bears the following inscription:
The last work of her
Lamented Father
Presented
To Philadelphia Wright
By her
Affectionate Mother
May 20th 1853
At John’s death, his widow, Sarah, had many children still to care for. While John and Philadelphia were of age, Sarah Anne was nearly so, but from Mary, sixteen, onwards, there were still eight children to be looked after.
Being the widow of a surgeon, she was eligible for assistance from the Royal Medical Benevolent Society, who admitted her as a pensioner at Epsom, near the college, that was also part of the same foundation. There she remained to the end of twenty-five years of widowhood, dying on the 27 June 1878, aged 71 and being buried in Epsom cemetery. A memorial card is held.
What is known of the children is set out below, child by child, rather than chronologically during their mother’s later life.
Of the thirteen children, two had died young, as already recorded.
John (No 2) supposedly sailed to Australia in 1850 but, as already noted, he was listed as at home at the 1851 census. The fact of his going is not doubted but clearly the date is suspect. Enquiry of the City of London Guildhall Library failed to find a ship sailing from Liverpool on 11 July 1850.
Philadelphia (3) married, as his second wife, John Smith of Coventry, then in Glasgow. Full reference is made to her life, from their first meeting to her death, in the account in John Smith’s life as ‘a family man’.
Sarah Anne (4) married Samuel Cropper, member of the Nottingham branch of a family that manufactured folding boxes. She had nine children and died in 1870, being buried at St Martin’s church, Epsom. Her widower married her sister, Decima – see below.
Mary (6) of whom we know nothing more, died in 1880 and was buried at Abney Park cemetery, Stoke Newington, London. Her death certificate would tell us a little more but it has not been followed up.
Joseph (7) supposedly sailed with John in 1850 but he would then have only been 12, so this is surely mistaken. No doubt they went at some later date.
Samuel (8), born 1840, also went to Australia, but no date is suggested for his going.
Lucretius (9) was a Foundation scholar at Epsom college but, after twice running away, he was expelled. He is said to have gone to India. A very helpful librarian at the India Office section of the British Library tried to trace him but, despite the unusual name, he found nothing.
Decima (10), born 1844 (known to certain relatives as ‘Aunt Deci’) married in Scotland in 1872 Samuel Cropper, widower of her elder sister, Sarah Anne (was it not then legal in England to marry a deceased wife’s sister?). From her descent the Jarrett and Stockall families. Her elder sister, Sarah Anne, had nine children by the time of her death, so Decima’s firs child was Cropper’s tenth, so Decima’s first was also named Decima. This could be a unique circumstance. She was known to certain relatives as ‘Auntie May’.
Daphne (11), twin to Decima, married – and died in 1928 when the present writer was but nine days old
Horace (12) born in 1847, was educated at Christ’s Hospital – he is recorded as there in 1853. He also went to Australia and was drowned, crossing a creek.
Finally, John Junius (13) born in 1850, died as West Ham a month before his eighth birthday and was buried at Holme Pierrepont.
There is no photograph extant of John Wright, his death taking place in the fairly early years of professional photography. There is, however, a photograph of Sarah, evidently taken well into her widowhood. The original is identified as being ‘Aunt Deci’s mother’.
John Wright would not have been content for an account of himself and his family to fail to give some place to his brilliant brother, Samuel, fifteen years his junior and a physician. He had qualified at Edinburgh University in 1840. Had John, perhaps, funded his studies? He died on 29th May 1853, only months after his brother, John. His library of about 3,000 volumes was sold by Sotheby & Wilkinson, 3 Wellington Street, Strand, London on 14 – 16 November 1852, fetching £496/18/- in total. Apart from medical works, there were numerous editions of Shakespeare and an extensive collection of Shakespeareana.
A convenient account of Samuel’s medical life is given in Washington Irving’s ‘Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey’, and a copy of the encomium for Bulwell, his birth place, is included as an illustration hereto, which should be read.**
There was a controversy in relation to the authenticity of, and the authority for, some of the degrees and honorary appointments of Samuel. This was conducted by a David Nelson, MD Edin, who addressed a formal letter to the Rt Hon Lord Lyttleton, Principal of Queen’s College, Birmingham on 12 April 1853. It is not clear how this matter was eventually settled.
On 12 February 1838, Samuel delivered a speech of about 3,000 words ‘In Defence of Capital Punishment’ to the Associated Societies of Edinburgh University. Dudley Jarrett had a booklet of 26 pages recording this.
In 1839, Samuel replied to Daniel O’Connell MP’s letters to The Wesleyan Methodist Society in a spirited defence of the memory of John Wesley.
Bulwell may well be proud of having given birth to Dr Samuel Wright, an eminent medical practitioner, who died during the year 1853, in the prime of his life, and the full career of his fame and usefulness, at Birmingham. Few men ever possessed greater talents that Dr Wright, or a more happy way of employing those talents with advantage to himself, and without being burdensome to others, or awakening jealousy among competitors for similar honours. Nor were his talents solely confined with the range of his medical studies. A ready and copious elocution, a sparkling wit, a cutting sarcasm, with great store of erudition upon almost all subject which engage the attention of the scholar and man of science, there was scarcely any topic he could not handle with ease and familiarity; so there was no walk of life open to genius and industry, in the which he would not have been able to distinguish himself above almost all competitors. Whilst a student at Edinburgh, Dr Wright twice obtained the annual prize of the Harveian Society for a medical essay, in one of which his competitor was the most learned physiologist living in this country. He was also elected senior president of the Royal Medical Society, which as a student’s society is considered as standing altogether unrivalled in the world. This appointment, so ardently aspired after by the most accomplished alumni of the University, may justly be considered as proof positive of the high reputation that Dr Wright enjoyed among the most jealous and discriminating of judges – namely, his fellow students. In 1840, he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Before proceeding to the degree, it is necessary for the candidate to write a thesis on some subject connected with medical science. Dr Wright selected the popular drug mercury for the subject of his dissertation. So important were his researches, that he obtained one of the gold medals of the University for his thesis. Among many other valuable testimonials which were borne to the extraordinary talents of Dr Wright, may be mentioned that he was presented with a diploma of membership in the Imperial Society of Physicians at Vienna, one of the first medical societies on the Continent of Europe, and the corresponding membership of the Medical Society of Genoa. At the time of his death, Dr Wright held the situation of senior physician to the Queen’s Hospital at Birmingham. As a professor, his merits here were probed to be of the highest order. His eloquence, his power of luminous statement, and his singularly extensive reading on subjects that interested him, combined to make him a most efficient and popular teacher. His premature decease, whilst thus in the full career of his usefulness and honour, was a loss to be deplored, alike by his profession, his country and the world.