ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY New York State Colleges OF Agriculture and Home Economics AT Cornell University Cornell University Library R 489.W14S76 The life and times of Thomas Wakley.foun 3 1924 003 441 957 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003441957 THE LIFE AND TIMES THOMAS WAKLEY KeproJiii-e.i from a his/, a rfplifa of one cxeLiih-d hy folni B.ll. Ill I In- Hall of '/7ic Lanrd Offho. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS WAKLEY FOUNDER AND FIRST EDITOR OF THE "LANCET," MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR FINSBURY, AND CORONER FOR WEST MIDDLESEX. BY S. SQUIRE SPRIGGE, M.B. CANTAB., ETC. " But Wakley is right sometimes," the doctor added, judicially; "I could mention one or two points in which Wakley is right." — MiddUmarck^ Book ii., c. i6. WITH TWO PORTRAITS LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1897 185119 Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &= Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFATORY NOTE BY THE EDITORS OF THE " LANCET " The occurrence in 1895 of the centenary of the birth of the founder of the " Lancet " seemed to us to afford a suitable opportunity of giving in the columns of the journal which he originated an extended record of his life and work. We placed the materials, some of which were easily accessible, whilst some were obtainable only from senior members of our profession and others (to all of whom we wish to tender our sincere thanks), in the hands of our friend and colleague, Dr. S. Squire Sprigge, who is responsible for the biography, b oth in its seria l and in jts_ present form. For the great interest and pains which he has taken in the work we may express our gratitude to him. To venture any opinion on the quality of that work is not, we think, under the circum- stances, within our province — the unprejudiced reader can judge for himself. We, the eldest son and grandson re- spectively of Thomas Wakley, cannot, in the ordinary course of human nature, be looked upon as free from bias. Indeed such a thing would be impossible, for the senior of us was his constant companion until his death, and was associated with him in his struggles and his work during the greater part of his public career. We have been anxious in two respects — firstly, that the services rendered to the cause of medical reform (and may we say to humanity ?) by the subject of vi Prefatory Note this biography should not, owing to the lapse of years, be lost sight of ; and secondly, that the story of his life and work should be told by a biographer who would not view them through the imperfect lens of family affection. One word more. This biography of a man, most of whose woi'k was done more than fifty years ago, may be considered belated, but whoever had written the life of Thomas Wakley much sooner would have incurred the chance of causing pain to many people. THOMAS H. WAKLEV, THOMAS WAKLEY, Jun., Joint Editors of the " Lancet." The " Lancet " Offices, April, 1897. AUTHOR'S PREFACE The plan of this book has been adopted with the object of preserving continuity in the narrative. There was a period in Wakley's life when he was at the same time journalist, politician, and coroner ; but to have described these three phases of his career concurrently would have entailed constant and confusing changes of scene. Each phase is therefore told separately, while the dates indicate where the events overlap. No dates are affixed to the heads of the last eight chapters, which consist chiefly of descriptions of Wakley's general attitude towards such questions as quackery. Poor-law administration, and the adulteration of food. Instead, the dates are given of any examples chosen to illustrate this attitude. S. SQUIRE SPRIGGE. United University Club, April, 1897. CONTENTS CHAPTER I [1795-181S] The Wakhys of Membury—The Birthday of Thomas WahUy—The Farmer's Son of the Period— Middle-class Education at the Beginning of the Century — A Taste for the Sea — The Entry to a Medical Career — The Influence of the Family Circle pp. 1-8 CHAPTER II [181S-1817] The Profession at the Beginning of the Century — The Privileged Classes wnd the Rank and File — The Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Society of Apothe- caries of London — The Staff of the United Hospitals — The Brothers Grainger — The Private Medical Schools — The Medical Student of the Period .......... pp. g-ig CHAPTER III [181S-1817] Life as a Medical Student — An Innate Puritan — The Curriculum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1817 — Enthusiasm for Anatomical Study — Great Dearth of Subjects for Dissection — Body- snatching and the Medical Profession pp. 20-29 CHAPTER IV [1817-1820] The Influences of youth and Training— The Guodchilds— Gerard's Hall — Courtship and Marriage— The Start in Practice— Prospects in Argyll Street — Fire and Attempted Murder PP- 30-39 X Contents CHAPTER V [1820] The Cato Street Conspiracy — The Execution of the Ringleaders — A Wicked Accusation — A Threatening Letter — The Origin of the Outrages in Argyll Street — Tom Parker and the Execution of Thistlewood and his Followers pp. 40-50 CHAPTER VI [1820-1821] The Effects of the Assault — The Attitude of the Hope Fire Assurance Com- pany — Mr. William Gardiner's Pamphlet — Sworn Testimony of Eye- witnesses pp. 51-61 CHAPTER VII [1821-1823] The Action against the Hope Fire Assurance Company : Statement of Wakley's Claim — Clothes and Furniture in the Twenties — Payment in Full of Wakley's Demands — Effects on his Future of the Outrages in Argyll Street — An Unsettled Period — The Friendship of William Cobbett — The Inception of the " Lancet " . . . . pp. 62-72 CHAPTER VIII [1823] The "Lancet" — Its Purposes and Principles as revealed in the Original Preface — Contents of the First Number — The Promises of the Preface Fulfilled pp. 73-80 CHAPTER IX [1823-1834] The First Ten Years of the "Lancet" — Their Stormy Character The Question of Copyright in Lectures — Sir Astley Cooper— His Opinion on the Publication of his Lectures — His Detection of the Unknown Editor — An Amicable Compromise pp_ 8j_g8 Contents xi CHAPTER X [1823-1834] Abernethy v. Hutchinson, Knight and Lacey — The Law of Copyright in Lectures — Abernethy^ Position as Lecturer and Surgeon — His First Application against the "Lancet" — The Arguments Employed and their Ill-success — The Fomentation of Bad Feeling — A Second and Successful Application for an Injunction — Wakley's Further Motion — The Importance of the Case pp. 89-101 CHAPTER XI [1823-1834] The ^^ Lancet" becomes a Rigorously Medical Paper — Wakley as a Chess- player — The Hospital Reports, or "Mirror of Hospital Practice" — Reproof to Students — The Preface to the Second Volume of the "Lancet" — Some Criticism of Hospital Procedure — Attack on Nepotism — Expul- sion of Wakley from St. Thomas's Hospital . . . pp. 102-110 CHAPTER XII [1823-1834] " Hole-and-corner" Surgery — The Interference of Dr. James Johnson — The Real Simon Pure — A Powerful and Libellous Indictment — Tyrrell v. Wakley : Damages laid at Two Thousand Pounds . . pp. 111-116 CHAPTER XIII [1823-1834] Tyrrell v. Wakley : The Case for the Plaintiff — The Case for the Defendant — The Judge's Charge — Fifty Pounds Damages Awarded — Contu- macious Behaviour — The Effects of the Trial . . . pp. 1 17-126 CHAPTER XIV [1823-1834] Wakley's Crusades against Hospital Administration and the Government of the Royal College of Surgeons of England — Their Personal or Impersonal Nature — The Procuring of Hospital Reports — Specimens of this Depart- ment in Early Numbers of the " Lancet " — The Scope of these Reports pp. 127-134 xii Contents CHAPTER XV [1823-1834] The Terrible Accusation of Malpraxis against Mr. Bransby Cooper — The Style and Matter of the Libel — Wakley Defends himself personally — A Legal Point decided in his Favour — The Evidence for the Defence PP- 135-145 CHAPTER XVI [1823-1834I Bransby Cooper v. Wahley — Sir James Scarlett for the Plaintiff — The Witnesses for the Plaintiff — Wakley's Reply — The Verdict — The Results of the Trial — The Solid Opposition to Wakley and his Solid Following — The Attitude of the Public and the Profession — Wakley's Expenses in the Trial Defrayed by Public Subscription . . . pp. 146-155 CHAPTER XVII [1823-1834] The Contemporary Medical Press — Its Attitude towards the " Lancet" — The "Medical and Physical Journal'' — Macleod v. Wakley — Dr. James Johnson — The " Medico-Chirurgical Review " — Wakley v. Johnson — The " London Medical Repository " — The " Medical Gazette " pp. 156-166 CHAPTER XVIII [1823-1834] The Constitution of the Royal College of Surgeons of England — A Sketch of its later History — Wakley's Attitude towards the College — The Reason for it — An Outspoken Letter— A Few Words about James Wardrop pp. 167-175 CHAPTER XIX [1823-1834] The Offensive By-law— Its Effect on the Private Schools— More Letters of "Brutus " — The Sorest Point with the Members— Dr. John Armstrongs Pamphlet — A General Meeting of the Profession suggested pp. 176-183 Contents xiii CHAPTER XX [1823-1834] The First Public Meeting of Members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England — Mr. Lawrence's Speech from the Chair — The Condemnatory Resolutions — Wakley's Amendment — Successful Oratory pp. 183-189 CHAPTER XXI [1823-1834] The Adjourned First Meeting of the Members — Its Action — A Metrical Squib — The Refutation by the College of the Charges brought against it — The Complete Insufficiency of the Refutation .... pp. 190-199 CHAPTER XXII [1823-1834] The Revolt of the Members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England — Wahley's Consistent Attitude — The Members' Petition — The Navy and the Diplomas of the College — Personal Attacks upon Abernethy and Sir William Blizard — Mr. Warburton presents the Petition in the House of Commons — Sir Robert Peel for the Defence — The Decision of the House pp. 200-207 CHAPTER XXIII [1823-1834] A Barren Victory — The Secession of Sir William Lawrence — His Demeanour towards Wakley — Wakley Continues to ^^ Peg Away" — The Insult to the Medical Officers of the Navy — The Members Pass Resolutions in the Theatre of the College — Wakley Treated by the Authorities as a Broiler and Rioter — A Disgraceful Scene pp. 208-217 CHAPTER XXIV [1823-1834] Proceedings at Bow Street — Wakley continues to fight — The College institute Criminal Proceedings — The London College of Medicine — Its Prospectus — Its Failure — Wakley determines to enter Parliament . pp. 218-225 xiv Contents CHAPTER XXV [1823-1834] The First Ten Years of the "Lancet" : A Recapitulation— The Early Staff of the Paper — The Milk Family — A few Details of Private Life— The Kindness of Mr. Goodchild—The Move to Bedford Square— Wakley resolves to Contest the Borough of Finsbury . . • PP- 226-233 CHAPTER XXVI [1832-1834] Wakley' s Aim in entering Parliament — The Amendments to the Apothecaries Act — A ^'Member for Medicine " —The Borough of Finsbury — Parochial Work — Wakley' s Local and General Claims as a Parliamentary Can- didate — The Support of Hume and Cobbett — The Invitation of his Constituents .... .... pp. 234-242 CHAPTER XXVII [1832-1834] Wakley' s First Contest for the Borough of Finsbury — The Economy of his Candidature — The Second Contest — The famous Tom Buncombe — The Third Contest — The Interposition of Mr. Hobhouse — The Fairness of Wakley' s Tactics — His Success — Enthusiasm in the Borough pp. 243-252 CHAPTER XXVIII [1835] A Bird's-eye View of General Politics — National Poverty and Hunger — The Reform Bill and the Rise of Chartism — The Poor-law Amendment Act and its Influence on the Repeal of the Corn Laws — The Irish Question in 1835 — Wakley's Attitude towards the Three Agitations The Spirit of the Times pp. 253-261 CHAPTER XXIX [1835] Wakley's Opportunity in the House— The Case of the Dorsetshire Labourers —His Special Fitness to Plead their Cause— His First Great Speech. pp. 262-273 Contents xv CHAPTER XXX [•835] Effect of Wakley's Speech — Release of the Dorsetshire Labourers — The County Coroners Bill — Mr. Warburton's Parliamentary Committee in 1834 — Mr. Guthrie's Evidence before this Committee — The Rejection of Mr. Cripps's County Coroners Bill — Wakley Encouraged to Persevere. pp. 374-282 CHAPTER XXXI [1836] The Medical Witnesses Bill — Petitions in its Favour — Daniel Whittle Harvey — Wakley's Speech in Support of his Motion — Hearty Co- operation of Prominent Lawyers — Permission given to Introduce the Measure into the House — Its rapid Transformation into Law. pp. 283-290 CHAPTER XXXII [1836] The Neiiispaper Stamp Duties — Wakley's Views on a Free Press — Edward Lytton Bulwer's Attitude towards the Question — The Debate in the House — Wakley defers his Motion for Repeal at the Request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer — The Proposals of the Government — Criti- cisms by the Press of Wakley's Conduct — The Approval of Leading Liberals ... pp. 291-301 CHAPTER XXXIII [1836-1837] Wakley's Position in the House — The Lord's Day Observance Bill — Flog- ging in the Army — The Publication of Lectures Bill — The Poor-law Amendment Act — Other Reform Measures — An Indefatigable Member of the Legislature . . .... pp. 302-309 CHAPTER XXXIV [1837-1841] Wakley Heads the Poll at his Second Election — Amendment to Queen Victoria's First Speech from the Throne — His Attitude towards Chartism — His Friendship with the Leading Chartists — The Case of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners — Sir James Graham's Vaccination Bill — Extra-mural xvi Contents Buyial — Infanticide and Illegitimacy — General Radical Views — Wakley's Hatred of Lawyers pp. 310-331 CHAPTER XXXV [1841-1845] WakUy's Third Election — Re-elected for Finsbury Unopposed — His Con- sistently Liberal Views — The Debate on Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill — Wakley ridicules the Claims of Authors — Wakley's Personal Appearance at this Time — " Punch " and its Criticisms of Wakley — Tom Hood speaks for Authors — Death of Mr. Henry Wakley of Membury — The Game Laws — A Fracas in the House — Mr. Wodehouse apologises — The great Courtesy of Sir Robert Peel pp. 322-337 CHAPTER XXXVI [1846-1852] Wakley's Fourth Election for Finsbury — The Brief Opposition of Samuel Warren — Wakley's Medical Registration Bill — Its Tenor and Pro- visions — Referred to a Select Committee — Graham, Macaulay, and Sir Robert Inglis — Mr. Rutherfurd's Medical Registration Bill — Its Fate and the Reason — The English Homceopathic Association — The Eccle- siastical Titles Bill — Wakley withdraws from the Representation of Finsbury — An Estimate of his Parliamentary Position . pp. 338-352 CHAPTER XXXVII [1827-1831] The Coroner's Inquest Seventy Years ago — The " Lancet " and Medical Coroners — Examples of Foolish Verdicts — Wakley stands for the Coronership of East Middlesex — A General Meeting of the Freeholders — John St. John Long — TheTerrible Case of Catherine Cashin — Wakley as Prosecutor before the Coroner — The Praise of Dr. Roderick Macleod — Wakley Defeated at the Poll — Trial of Long for Manslaughter — Conviction and Acquittal — The Testimonial of Dr. Ramadge — Ramadge V. Wakley — Verdict for Dr. Ramadge, Damages One Farthing PP- 353-368 CHAPTER XXXVIII [I831-1839] More Cases of Ill-considered Verdicts — Wakley's Claims on the Coronership — A Vacancy for West Middlesex — Wakley's Precarious Pecuniary Position — He resolves to Compete — The Boundaries of the West Middle- sex District— The Opposition of the Middlesex Magistrates — A Hollow Victory for the Medical Candidate pp. 369-377 Contents xvii CHAPTER XXXIX [1839] Wakley's Reforms as Coroner — Their Cold Reception — His Instructions to the Constabulary of Middlesex — Accusation of holding too frequent Inquests — Abuse in the Political Journals — The Case of Thomas Austin — The Censure of the Middlesex Magistrates — The Report of their Committee appointed to Enquire into the Proceedings of the Two Coroners — Complete Exoneration of Wakley — The Meaning of certain of his Instructions to the Constabulary .... pp. 378-389 CHAPTER XL ■' [1840- 1 846] Wakley accused of usurping Magisterial Functions — Indignation of the Middlesex -Magistrates — The Appointment of a Parliamentary Committee to Inquire into the Middlesex Coronerships — The Evidence of Baker, Wakley, and other Witnesses — The Findings of the Committee — Wakley''s Prolonged Struggle with the Magistrates — The " Ingoldsby Legends " and Wakley — The Composite District of West Middlesex- Three Specimen Medical Inquests — The Hounslow Flogging Case • pp. 390-403 CHAPTER XLI [1846] The Death of Frederick John White — The Report to Sir James M'Grigor — The Action of the Vicar of Heston — Wakley holds an -Inquest — Adjournment for Assistance of Mr. Day — Second Adjournment for Assistance of Erasmtis Wilson — The Evidence — The Verdict — Public Opinion and the Disputes that arose — Wakley's Attitude criticised — The Fortunate Result of the Inquest .... pp. 404-416 CHAPTER XLII [1846-1861] The "Medical Times" and the Hounslow Inquest — Three Successful Libel Actions against Healey and others — Peace on the Coroner's Bench — Some Inquests between 1846 and 1867 — The Case of John Sadleir — Charles Dickens as Juryman — His Testimony to Wakley's Humanity pp. 417-427 b xviii Contents CHAPTER XLIII Two Sections of Wahley's Life Completed — Further Notice of Wakley as Journalist — The Growth of the "Lancet" — Wakley's Personal Influence ever Present — His Views on Educational Developments and their Foresight — The Charter of the College of Surgeons in 1844 — The Medical Act of 1858 — The Study of Anatomy at the Beginning of the Century — Burhe and Hare — Bishop and Williams — The Anatomy Acts —A Brief Summary of Forty Years of Reform . . pp. 438-439 CHAPTER XLIV Wakley's Attitude towards Quacks — Chabert, the "Fire King" — Wakley's Public Exposure of him — Dr. Elliotson — His Experiments in Animal Magnetism at University College Hospital — Knave or Dupe? — The Exposure of the O'Keys by Wakley— Elliotson' s Resignation of his Posts pp. 440-449 CHAPTER XLV -The Position of the Medical Referee Fifty Years ago — Wakley takes up the Cudgels for the Medical Profession — Good Companies Mend their Ways ^^The Establishment of the New Equitable Life Assurance Company — Its Immediate Success — The Outcome to the Medical Profession pp. 450-459 CHAPTER XLVI The "Lancet" Analytical Sanitary Commission — The Editorial Definition of its Scope — The Enquiry into the Adulteration of Coffee, pp. 460-468 CHAPTER XLVII The " Lancet" Analytical Sanitary Commission {continued): An Enquiry into various Food-stuffs — Mr. Scholefield's Act and Subsequent Legisla- tion pp. 469-477 CHAPTER XLVIII The Poor-law Amendment Act of 1834 — Wakley's Hatred of it, and the Reasons — The Treatment of the Sick Poor in Workhouses — Wakley threatens an Immediate Enquiry-^The "Lancet" Enquiry undertaken Three Years after Wakley's Death pp. 478-486 Contents xix ■ CHAPTER XLIX A Few Family Details — Hospitality at Harefield Park and Bedford Square — The Pressure of Work hetween 1839 and 1852: a Day^s Routine — Letter to Douglas Jerrold — The Breakdown at last — The Progress of Disease — A Sojourn at Madeira — Death . . . pp. 487-497 CHAPTER L In Conclusion pp. 498-50Z Index . . . . . . . pp. 503-509 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS WAKLEY CHAPTER I [1795-1815] The Wakleys of Membury — The Birthday of Thomas Wakley — The Farmer's Son of the Period — Middle-class Education at the Beginning of the Century — A Taste for the Sea — The Entry to a Medical Career — The Influence of the Family Circle. Thomas Wakley, the founder of the " Lancet," and the suc- cessful originator of reforms in medical politics to which are largely due the present high standard of medical education in Great Britain and the general stability of medicine as a career, had no hereditary connexion whatever with the pursuits of his lifetime. He was the descendant of a long line of landowners, who gave their Saxon name to more than one north-country village, or adopted for distinctive purposes the appellation of their dwelling-place as a name — for both proceedings were common in primitive times. Henry Wakley, the father of the subject of this biography, was born in 1750, and acquired by will a family property in the parish of Membury, on the Devonshire side of the border between that county and Dorsetshire, and a little south of the Somersetshire dividing line. He belonged to a class now largely extinct, but one which a hundred and fifty or even fifty years ago was still very powerful in the A 2 Henry Wakley of Membury land. I^e was a large farmer, farming personally a holding which belonged to himself and hiring surrounding land generally on long leases, and treating it exactly as if it were his own property, subject only to an annual charge. The position of farming in England during the late Georgian and early Victorian ages made of such men a highly important class. Their private property, sometimes large, but more generally constituting but a small part of their holding, gave them an impregnable and dignified position. Their calling was a substantia.l and lucrative one. Many of them belonged to the oldest families in the neighbourhood, the homestead having been the headquarters of the family for generations — and this was the case with the Wakleys — while their pedigrees showed intermarriages with their greater neighbours whose rise in the social scale from yeomanry, through squirearchy, into the peerage was a theme of humorous respect among them. For the gulf between yeomanry and squirearchy was not a broad one, and was frequently bridged by a lucky marriage, a little commercial success, or some extra keen attention to agricul- ture on the part of a shrewd occupier. It was in this class that Mr. Henry Wakley was born, and in it he died at the great age of ninety-two, having established for himself a more than local reputation for his knowledge of agricultural affairs. He was one of the most respected authorities on things agricultural in his county and the two adjoining counties of Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, a very frequent arbitrator in disputes, and a universally trusted counsellor in times of need. He was a Government Commissioner on more than one occasion for the Enclosure of Waste Lands, and at one time was among the most extensive occupiers of land in Devonshire. Mr. Henry Wakley had eleven children, eight sons and three daughters, and of the sons Thomas Wakley was the youngest. The exact date of his birth can only be arrived at by means of a little calculation, for his baptismal certificate, which is dated January 27th, 1802, has a footnote upon it stating that at the time of the performance of the An Extraordinary Challenge 3 rite the child was six years, twenty-eight weeks, and two days old. The date of his birth would therefore be July 13th, 1795, supposing that the clergyman who issued the certifi- cate had made an accurate calculation. On the other hand, the register at Membury has a note of the birth upon July nth, and the inference is that the clergyman who issued the certificate was wrong in his figures, and meant by a year 365 days, while he calculated the year 1800 as a leap-year, a mistake often made. If both these errors have crept into the baptismal certificate, the discrepancy is explained and the correct date is July nth. Mr. Henry Wakley was a just but severe parent, the very type of man to rule a large family. He gave his orders and exacted obedience of them from all ; and as his position of master was unquestioned his family had no feelings towards him that were other than respectfully affectionate. In those days the sons of the practical farmer were employed on the farm. They oversaw the hands, and if necessary did an ordinary day's labour on the farm exactly as one of those hands. In time they went about their business or profes- sions, but while they were at home they made themselves useful. It was in this old-fashioned patriarchal mode of life that Thomas Wakley spent his boyhood, and to the frugality, self-denial, and open-air exercise that it enjoined upon him he owed, no doubt, his great bodily strength, as he certainly owed the taste for country sports that he manifested later in his life. For they were a great sporting family, renowned through the country side for their skill with the gun and their judgment of horseflesh. The three elder brothers were remarkably good shots, and the eldest of all carried on a successful business in horse-breeding on the farm. Mr. Henry Wakley, the father, was an ardent hunter. He rode regularly to hounds and with a pack of harriers, and not long before his death issued a challenge to all comers of his own age to ride a steeplechase over a fair hunting country, mounted on a horse as old as his own. At that time he was over ninety years of age and his favourite horse was thirty- three, so that it is not surprising that the gauntlet was never 4 Wakley's Early Education taken up, but the publication of the challenge shows him to have been an old man of extraordinary physique. In such a household it is not surprising that young Wakley grew up an active boy. He would be abroad at sunrise, and, if necessary, ride the horses to the plough. And though, doubtless, the task was not one of direct compulsion, yet if he had done this under his father's orders because no other plough-boy was employed, he would have been doing what the sons of scores of other landowners were doing daily in Devonshire, and also in more advanced parts of England, more directly under the scope of urban influence and more aware that the school- master was abroad. Although brought up in this simple and hardy manner Thomas Wakley's education was not neglected. He was sent to the best grammar schools in the neighbourhood — namely, that of Chard in Somersetshire, an endowed and ancient school, and that of Honiton in Devonshire. Chard lies about six miles north-east of Membury, and Honiton about ten miles west. To go to a boarding-school was, at the end of the last century or the beginning of this century, almost a thing unknown to the middle classes. The Royal Colleges of Eton and Winchester and six or seven other of the great public schools had reputations other than local, and so had become the great boarding institutions that they are now ; but the usual middle-class lad was educated at the nearest grammar school. As a consequence his education was prone to suffer much from the weather. A valley blocked with snow or a swollen stream would cut the young scholar off from his school for a week. Now the neighs bourhood of Membuiy abounds in rich valleys, and these, with their fertile loam soil and its subsoil of gravel, while forming an ideal foundation for pasture, easily became difHcult of transit for a boy on foot or on a pony. So that whether young Wakley sought instruction from the north- east at Chard, or the west at Honiton, he was always liable to be compelled to play truant by the inclement condition of the country over which he had to travel. Lighting also was A Taste for the Sea 5 expensive ninety years ago, and midnight study was not encouraged ; nor would a lad, the youngest in a household devoted to country pursuits, and rising in the early grey of •the morning, feel very disposed to prolong his studies far into the night. And, to add to these hindrances to study, there was nothing of the bookworm about the boy. That he made good use of his opportunities is undoubted, because no mind could have been so receptive, no wit so adaptable as his proved to be in later years, if their owner had not been trained to learn and taught to listen. But in mere book- learning Thomas Wakley did not excel. His education was sound in that it fitted him to go on learning when he found himself face to face with the problems of life. As a boy he laid a solid foundation upon which to build a more elabo- rate education. His writmg and public speaking alike bear testimony in this direction. When quite young he more than once expressed a desire to go to sea. He knew nothing of seafaring life. It is true that Membury is but eight miles from the channel coast, and that from the castle heights the bay of Lyme Regis can be seen spread out before the eye. But Membury is a purely agri- cultural place, with a purely agricultural population, and young Wakley's desire, which was real and not a mere idle expression of a passing fancy, must have been spontaneous in origin, and not inspired by any of his immediate sur- roundings or companions. It was an early example of his independence of thought. He obtained his desire, for when still quite young he took a voyage to Calcutta in an East Indiaman with his father's reluctant permission. It was not intended that this should be his entry into the career of a sailor, for he. travelled under the care of the captain, who was a personal friend of his father. Whether, his curiosity assuaged, he would have abandoned the sea as a profession is only a Subject of speculation, but it is difficult to conceive a boy with his restless, arguing, inquisitive temperament settling down to life in the merchant service, with its great demands upon patience, and its necessarily unquestioning obedience and resignation. Anyhow, circumstances worked 6 The Choice of a Profession against this voyage being a prelude to a sailoi^'s life, for on the journey back his friend the captain died, and there was no longer any inducement to the boy to remain with the ship. He came home and returned to school, and no one heard anything from that time of his experiences on the voyage. In answer to an inquiry why he had not brought his chest back, he said that he had had quite enough to do to take care of himself, and nothing more was ever got out of him. Life in those days was rough on board a merchant ship, as rough as, or rougher than, it was on board a man-of-war, and what that means is more than hinted at in several passages of Marryat's novels, and is recorded in the biographies of our naval heroes. His new school was at Wiveliscombe in Somersetshire, and there he remained until his choice of a future was made. It fell upon medicine. So at fifteen years of age he was duly apprenticed to a Mr. Incledon, an apothecary at Taunton, that being the very usual method in those days of commencing professional studies. For it must be remem- bered that before 1815, which was the date of the passing of the Apothecaries Act, the curriculum of the medical student was very vague. Previously to the passing of the Act it was not illegal for any unqualified person to practise medicine, and as a consequence there were very many people working in the medical profession who were believed by their pa,tients to be duly qualified medical men, but who had undergone no training and been subjected to no tests. Their education had consisted either of apprenticeship to a licensed apothecary, or of a few months' discharge of the duties of dispenser to an unquahfied practitioner. As it was not always possible to forecast the future of a lad, it was usual to send him to an apothecary first as an appren- tice. If he did not show any remarkable aptitude or desire for any further education, that might suffice, and he could con- tinue on the lines of his master. If, however, he desired to fly at higher game, or his parents desired it for him, he could afterwards be sent to London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Dublin, to walk the hospitals for a diploma. Both Thomas The Influence of his Family 7 Wakley and his parents wished that he should become a regularly qualified practitioner, so he was not allowed to complete his time with the Taunton apothecary, but was transfen-ed to his brother-in-law, Mr. Phelps, a surgeon of Beaminster, as a pupil. From Mr. Phelps he went to Mr. Coulson, a member of a well-known medical family at Henley-on-Thames, as assistant, and eventually, in 1815, went to London as a student of the United Schools of St. Thomas's and Guy's, known as the Borough Hospitals. X With his start in London as a medical student his real life-work began. Hitherto he had been under the super- vision of parents, elder brothers and sisters, schoolmasters and other masters, and what he did, and the way in which he did it, were not left to his choice. But in London he was alone, free to work or play, free to behave or mis- behave, free to rise if he would, and equally free to falL The real life of Thomas Wakley dates from the moment when his individuality for the first time received play, but the circumstances of his younger days exercised an in- fluence upon his future which was often, as will be seen, easily traceable. To his country bringing-up, he owed the simplicity and bluff directness that stood him in such good stead in controversy, and to it must be attributed the wonderful physical strength and keen vitality that enabled him to work at enormous pressure for hours together with no diminution of zeal or interest. To it also he owed his hatred of all shams. His youth had been spent among a simple folk, to whom truth was everything, and in whose eyes the pretender was a particularly obnoxious person. His position in his family must also be remembered. They were a fine and jovial set of sporting men and handsome women — his brothers and sisters — and his life in contact with a large and tuiprejudiced group of his seniors gave him from the first a certain assurance ; but he was junior among them, and the fact would temper the assurance, for there are no keener critics of manners, and no stricter dis- ciplinarians than the elder sister and the big brother. The boy was especially under the influence of his second sister, 8 Mrs. Newbury the wife of the rector, of the parish, Mrs. Newbury by name, to whom he was devoted. In the controversial circum- stances of his later life— and these were controversial, indeed — whatever his pen might have written his personal manner towards his opponents was blameless. This com- bination of firmness and simplicity with good-tempered courtesy he had learned in his country home ; his environ- ment there had taught him that it was good policy, and his sister had taught him that it was the right way to behave. So that when Thomas Wakley came to London he was well equipped for success. His physical condition was admirable — it was that of an athletic country lad, of book- learning he had a sufficiency, while his moral character had received the very training best calculated to enable him to deserve and attain a prominent position among his fellows. The Medical Profession in 1815 / CHAPTER II [1815-1817] The Profession at the Beginning of the Century — The Privileged Classes and the Rank and File — The Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the Society of Apothecaries of London — The Staff of the United Hospitals — The Brothers Grainger — The Private Medical Schools — The Medical Student of the Period. The profession at the time that Thomas Wakley joined it, namely 1815, was divided sharply into two classes : those who were going to be leaders, and those who were going to remain in the rank and file. Now and again a man whose original conditions ought to have limited his aspirations would break through his trammels and become a leader, when ivP the ordinary course of events he should have remained a private ; but this occurred infrequently. The almost invariable rule was that those who were specially picked out by circumstances quite independent of merit for promotion, received that promotion, less fortunate individuals remaining in the shadow of obscurity, whatever their claims to success. Of the men who were predestined to become leaders there were two divisions in London, corresponding to the two great divisions in the profession of healing — the physicians and the surgeons. The predestined rulers in 1 pure medicine were the men who had acquired a recognised/ university degree and subsequently to graduating had beeni elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London. The Charter of this body was granted by Henry VIII. for the advancement of medical science and ro Privileged Classes in the Profession for the protection of the pubhc "against the temerity of wicked men and the practice of the ignorant " ; but time had embellished its simplicity by importing into it restric- tions and disabilities never dreamt of by the Royal grantor. The College had now two divisions : a smaller, the Fellows, and a larger, the Licentiates. The Licentiates paid fees, but obtained nothing in return, not even protection ; for although the chief reason for paying fees was to obtain a licence to practise within seven miles of the metropolis, the College had no power to maintain for its Licentiates the monopoly thus sold to them. The Fellows, chosen from among the Licentiates under a system of favouritism, filled all the offices, and passed regulations for keeping their body select which were stupid and unjust. For example, no physician could claim admission as a Fellow unless he had graduated at Oxford or Cambridge, or had been admitted to a degree ad eundem at one or other of the ancient uni- versities. This restriction carried another with it, for the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were obliged at that time to be members of the Established Church of England, whence it followed that no Dissenter could be a Fellow of the College of Physicians. The leaders in pure surgery started in a less dignified, if more facile, manned on the saunter to a successful future. They became apprenticed, after payment of large fees, to the eminent surgeons hold- ing posts at the different hospitals, hoping to succeed, and very generally succeeding, to the appointments of their masters. This is a somewhat crude way of stating the methods of procedure, but in the main it is true. The fees might be waived because the young man was a relative or the son of a friend of the great surgeon, but from a stranger they were exacted, and the consideration received in return was not only the ordinary instruction due from master to pupil, but a very definite promise of the reversion of some of the senior's emoluments. The understanding that the pupil should succeed his master in any hospital appoint- ments the latter might hold was generally a tacit one, though occasionally some sort of documentary evidence of Promotion by Purchase ii the contract, something in the nature of a bond, is known to have been in existence. The eminent surgeons could not absolutely give away the hospital appointments, which were then, as they are now, in the gift of the lay governors of the hospital, but they could, and did, bring influence to bear upon the governors, and with wrong motives, or under circumstances that had the colour of wrong motives. Each man would naturally desire the election of the candidate from whom he had received an actual pecuniary considera- tion, for the sums thus paid were large, not infrequently amounting to ^^500 ; and the claims of merit would give way to those of expediency. The lay governors were canvassed,, and it was not the best man who won, but the man whose backer most clearly acknowledged the claim upon him, and so most urgently advocated his junior's candidature among the persons possessing votes. Hospital appointments, with all their advantages, direct and indirect, honourable and pecuniary, were given to certain Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London, personal influence counting for much in the matter ; examinerships and lectureships at the Royal College of Surgeons of England were given to certain hospital surgeons who were elected to the desii-able appointments which qualified them for their professorial duties largely in consequence of their ability to pay big fees for their introductions to big men. The man who could not pay these fees or afford a university education was fated to remain in the rank and file of his profession. There were of course exceptions, and the names of one or two will readily occur to all, but the medical corporations were slow to discover merit unless it was brought to their notice by approaching them along the usual avenues. Now and then the public would force upon their attention one who other- wise had no claim upon it, but these cases were rare, though not so very rare as they are now ; and it was just as well then that they were rare as it is well now that they are nigh impossible of occurrence, for great fame won first from the laity is but seldom the proportionate reward of merit, and 12 The Apothecary in 1815 the knowledge that it can be readily obtained must ever seduce many from the highest aims. It is undoubted that at the beginning of the century members of the profession appealed more directly to the public for an appreciation of their scientific talents than would be deemed seemly in these days, and that, to the shame of the medical world, it was occasionally left to the public to point out to the profession who were their greatest men. The rank and file of the profession consisted either of the general body. of the two Royal corporations — i.e., of those Members of the College of Surgeons and of those Licentiates of the College of Physicians who for this reason or that were debarred from rising to posts of office and responsi- bility — or of the Licentiates of the Society of the Apothe- caries of London. The Society of Apothecaries had secured considerable power by the recent Act of 1815. This piece of legislation had for its laudable object the stopping of pi-escribing and dispensing by unqualified persons. It really set up an inferior order of general practitioners. For who was to limit the scope of the apothecary ? Who was to say to the man who dispensed that he must not also diagnose and recommend treatment, when he had undergone ex- aminations in chemistry, anatomy, and medicine and served an apprenticeship with a medical man ? Clearly such boundaries to his duties could not be defined, and the apothecaries were recognised evei-ywhere save in London and a few provincial centres as the family pi-actitioners.* And as the fees of the Society of Apothecaries were low, while * " Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent there lived in a small town in the West of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a board which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of Apothe- cary and Surgeon, and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick-rooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, but would condescend to sell a brown paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter, or to vend tooth-brushes, hair powder, and London perfumery." — " Pendennis," chap, ii., opening words. The Choice of a Hospital 13 those of the corporations were high ; and as the apothe-- caries claimed a monopoly in dispensing and protected their Licentiates in this matter, while the corporations totally neglected the interests of their commonalties, it is not to be wondered at that lai'ge numbers of the profession made no attempt to gain any other diploma than that of L.S.A. Thomas Wakley did not belong to the privileged classes, but yet had no idea of becoming an apothecary simply. He came to London to make his own way for himself, with no university course behind him and no friends within the ring-fence of hospital administration. A brother of his brother-in-law, Mr. Phelps, to whom he had been appren- ticed, consented to look after him and to be the channel through which his modest allowance could be supplied to him, but Mr. Phelps could not assist him in the prosecution of his studies, and was possessed of no influence in the medical circles of London. That Wakley was greatly trusted by his family — trusted to an extent that no boy of his age save one who had shown himself capable of meeting considerable responsibilities would have been — is proved by the fact that he was left virtually to himself from the begin- ning of his London life, as far as his professional career was concerned. The United Hospitals of Guy's and St. Thomas's were recommended to him as the best institutions to "walk," as the phrase then went, by the gentlemen to whom he had been apprenticed, but nothing was definitely settled for him, and that he had a power of veto is proved by the fact that before entering any school he went round to listen to the various lecturers that he might have some personal ex- perience to guide him in his choice. At that time it was usual for the medical student to take out a course of lectures here with one man and there with another. The United Hospitals, St. Bartholomew's, and London were the only institutions at the time that had a medical school attached to them, though certain lectures were delivered by the staff at Middlesex Hospital to their pupils. At the other hospitals students received the privilege of walking the wards and attending the practice of the charity, but their scientific 14 The United Hospitals education had to be obtained elsewhere. And what good they reaped from belonging to their hospitals was rendered nugatory by vexatious restrictions. At Westminster Hospital for instance, the students were only allowed in the wards from ten to twelve in the morning; at St. George's the hours were from ten till two, but no one could enter the wards without the member of the staff whose day of .attendance it might be, and the staff were terribly unpunctual ; at Middlesex Hospital the students were only allowed admis- sion three times a week, and as all the surgeons made their rounds on the same day at the same time no student could see the practice of more than one of his so-called teachers. Young Wakley abided by the selection of his advisers to this extent, that he joined the school of the United Hospitals, one ■of the three places where he could have obtained a complete <;urriculum under one jurisdiction, but he decided to supple- ment his hospital course by attending the private school of the Graingers. He chose the hospitals because of his admiration of Sir Astley Cooper as a teacher, while the choice of a private school was one of convenience, the famous anatomical academy of the Graingers being in Webb Street, Borough, hard by. I The United Hospitals were at that time at their zenith. The story of their union is simple. The students of Guy's Hospital had by courtesy been allowed to attend the ■operations at St. Thomas's Hospital, and St. Thomas's had made a similar concession to Guy's. But in 1768 it was formally resolved that the pupils of each hospital should have the liberty of attending not only the operations but the surgical practice of both institutions, and the money re- ceived in fees was to be divided in certain proportions between the six surgeons of the hospitals and the two apothecaries who did their behests. From which it will be seen that the amalgamation of the two schools did not extend beyond their surgical practice. The staff of the Hospitals at the time when Thomas Wakley entered as a student was a decidedly good one, though on the surgical .side it formed a i-emarkable example of the pail that Sir Astley Cooper and his Relatives 15 nepotism and purchased favour played in the securing of appointments. Sir Astley Cooper, or Mr. Astley Cooper, to be accurate, for he did not receive his baronetcy until six years later, ruled supreme in 1815. He had been the ap- prentice of the elder Henry Cline, a surgeon of almost equal celebrity in his day, and lecturer on anatomy and surgery to St. Thomas's Hospital. In 1800 Cooper became his master's colleague as lecturer, and was appointed surgeon to Guy's Hospital. In 1812 the elder Cline resigned, and his son, Henry Cline, junior, became surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital and followed his father as joint lecturer with Sir Astley Cooper. Sharply on this came the election of three of Sir Astley Cooper's nephews — C. Aston Key, Bransby Cooper, and Frederick Tyrrell — to different posts, while the next surgical vacancies were filled by his apprentice, Benjamin Travers, and J. H. Green, Henry Cline's cousin, respectively. The aggregate ability of this group of surgeons is certain, and their individual skill was only once called into serious doubt ; but they owed their elections to other claims than their merits. Thomas Wakley attended the joint anatomy classes of Henry Cline, senior, and Sir Astley Cooper during the autumn session of 1815 and the spring and autumn courses of 1816, These were delivered at St. Thomas's Hospital, and his signature in witness of his attendance at them is in the books of the hospital, and is a flowing and very exact facsimile of the signature of his maturer years. At Guy's Hospital he attended Sir Astley Cooper's lectures on the Practice of Surgery, where he also did his surgical dressing and ward work. In those days students dissected and acted as dressers at the same time, an arrangement that might be calculated to impress the knowledge of patho- logical anatomy upon them, but could not fail to have been attended with some risk to the patients. His dissecting was chiefly done at the school of the brothers Edward and Richard Grainger, which was situated in Webb Street, Borough, under the very walls of St. Thomas's Hospital. Edward Grainger was a thoroughly good anatomist, so i6 The Brothers Grainger good that he was feared by all the recognised lecturers at the metropolitan hospitals, who did everything in their power to detach his pupils from him. His laborious life and early death precluded him from literary achievement, but his memory was green in the profession for a genera- tion after his death, and, in medicine at any rate, that comes very close to fame. He was essentially a teacher on broad lines, recognising what so many teachers fail to recognise, that it is badly spent time to instruct a student how to keep in the middle of the road or where to avoid a pitfall unless the road itself has been previously pointed out. Richard Grainger was younger than Edward, and started in life as a Woolwich cadet, but relinquished the idea of a military career to join his brother at the Webb Street School. The sad death of Edward Grainger, when only twenty-six years of age, left Richard at the head of the school when little more than a lad, but he proved himself equal to the situation, and became, like his brother, a very efficient rival to the regular lecturers at Guy's and St. Thomas's, being popular with the students, an untiring worker and moderate in his fees. Twenty-five years after the date at which we have now arrived — i.e., in 1842 — ^the Webb Street School was formally taken over by St. Thomas's Hospital, and Richard Grainger was appointed lecturer in anatomy and physiology in the medical school. His attainments at once became widely recognised, and the Royal Society, as an acknowledgment of the value of his researches into the anatomy of the spinal cord, made him a Fellow of their body. His ancient enemy, the College of Surgeons, appointed him Hunterian Lecturer, and he was employed by Government as an expert on several occasions where the work was of a sanitary or humanitarian nature. He died in 1861. These private schools played a regular part in the medical education of the London student of the day and for some time to come, and, although coincident with the institution and development of schools in direct connection with all the great general hospitals of the metropolis, they became The Private Medical Schools 17 superfluous and disappeared, they were at the time respon- sible for a condition of manners among the students, of morals, of ill, and of good, that lingered for a quarter of a century after their dissolution. The history of these schools — Carpue's School in Dean Street, Soho ; the Gerard Street or Dermott's School, with which was associated the Wind- mill Street School in Tottenham Court Road ; the Great Windmill Street School not to be confounded with the institution just mentioned, where the pupils were chiefly drawn from St. George's Hospital, while the lecturers were Sir Charles Bell, Sir Everard Home, and Mr., afterwards Sir Benjamin Brodie ; Lane's School in Pimlico ; the Webb Street or Graingers' School ; the Aldersgate School of Tyrrell and Lawrence ; Brookes's School in Blenheim Street, Great Marlborough Street, where Joshua Brookes, F.R.S., proved himself the best practical anatomist in England ; and others — will now never be written, for no succinct record of them has been handed down by any one with personal knowledge of them. Yet such a history, if the proper person were alive to write it, would form a most interesting chapter in a study of the rise of medical education in England ; in fact, it would form the first chapter in such a study. Each of these schools was conducted generally in con- nexion with a hospital, although they were strictly private enterprises. The Royal College of Surgeons and the Society of Apothecaries accepted work done at them and attend- ances registered at them as evidence of medical study to a certain extent, during Wakley's career as a student ; but the former institution never approved of the private enterprises, and a few years later attempted to break them up altogether. There were in these days no formal signatures required to testify that a man had duly heard a certain number of lectures or had been in the wards a certain length of time. There were no precautions taken against personation at the examinations, a thing which occurred frequently, and little attempt was made to gauge a candidate's knowledge before turning him loose upon the public with a licence. Testimony to certain apprenticeship and to payment of fees for certain 1 8 Hot-Beds of Bohemianism lectures and for the privilege ol attending the practice of a hospital had to be forthcoming, and the rest was plain sailing. It was to meet the wants of a happy-go-lucky curriculum of this sort that the private schools existed, and the looseness of the requirements of the examiners reacted upon the schools, so that they became hot-beds of a Bohemianism that was as undoubted in cold fact as it is, and ever will be, celebrated in comic fiction. There was nothing comparable to the life of the medical student in London, as fostered by the conditions under which he lived and studied at the beginning of the century save, perhaps, the life of the Parisian art student at that time and later. And what the studio of the professor, as depicted by Thackeray, Stevenson, and Du Maurier, was to the artist, the dissecting-room was to the medical students — a centre where all met on common ground, the ground of professional interest, and all vied with each other in the narration of episodes illustrative of their ingenuity under the stress of poverty, their coolness under the threat of the law, their personal courage, and their physical attractiveness. And all this inter-communication taking place in the dissecting-room bred a familiarity with repulsive objects which effectually did away with a proper regard for the decencies of life, and led to the interlarding of conversation with similes drawn from the mortuary table or suggested by the details of anatomical research. The result was the establishment among the mass of the London students of a regular and accepted tone of low shiftlessness, which tone it became almost necessary for each man to assume if he had it not, and an act of esprit de corps to transmit to his juniors. Bob Sawyer and Joe Muff were not gross caricatures ; they moved in the dissecting-rooms of the private schools, lived in the bars of Fleet Street, and had their being in the supper-rooms of Covent Garden — not, perhaps, as individuals, but most certainly as well-pronounced types. Their creators did not evolve them wholly from inner consciousness ; they but dotted the i's and crossed the t's of a human document not over-hard to read before such artistic amendment. When the medical students of much The Accuracy of Dickens 19 popular fiction are accepted at the present day, as they are occasionally by a public slow to mark the signs of the times, as a fair presentment of the modern aspirant to a medical career, all who know feel bound to rise up and protest angrily ; but Bob Sawyer, Joe Muff, and the egregious Tom Delorme and their friends were drawn in a spirit of carica- ture and exaggeration, yet with no wild disregard of facts. The London medical students of 1815, when Thomas Wakley threw in his lot with them, were very much as Dickens drew them in Mr. Pickwick's time, and the conditions under which student life was passed were responsible for much of the wildness and irregularity. The uselessness, in most cases, of aspiring to any great position in their pro- fession, and the low standard of proficiency required of them by the examiners, were not calculated either to urge them to consistent work or to inspire them with much professional ardour. The herding together of great numbers of students at the private schools — sometimes a popular school would have as many as three hundred nominal pupils in a session — did away with any attempts to provide individual attention, while the lecturers at these institutions were not, as a rule, in a position to insist upon the presence of their pupils, to enforce order when they were present, or to check insub- ordination. Those who cared to work might work, and those who did not want to work need not. All medical students were not dissipated rowdies — it is not desired to convey that impression — but a large proportion led lives that might well have ended in their becoming such. 20 Life as a Medical Student CHAPTER III [1815-1817] Life as a Medical Student — An Innate Puritan — The Curriculum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1817 — Enthusiasm for Anatomical Study — Great Dearth of Subjects for Dissection — Body -snatching and the Medical Profession. Thomas Wakley was placed by Mr. Phelps in lodgings in a small street running off Tooley Street in the Borough. In this district it was the almost invariable custom for the students of the United Hospitals to lodge, because in those days there were not the facilities that now exist of getting from one metropolitan area to another, so that it was necessary for a man to live near his work. The exact street is not known by name to his surviving relatives, and is not traceable in any documents ; but this much is certain, that it is pulled down, and that, like the ancient buildings of St. Thomas's Hospital, it stood upon ground now covered by the London Bridge Railway Station. There were some twelve small streets demolished in 1862 to make way for the necessary buildings of the railway company, and among them the street in which Thomas Wakley and a friend lodged. His fellow-lodger's name was Wiltshire, and at that time there was no relationship between the two lads, but Wiltshire (who subsequently discontinued the pursuit of medicine and became an architect) afterwards married the sister of Wakley's wife. The young student worked hard. He had sufficient self- restraint to live a laborious life at a time when it was not only unusual for a " medico," as the comic press delighted to term him, to work very hard, but unnecessary, having An Innate Puritan 21 regard to the perfunctory nature of the tests by examination. It is easy to understand that for the country-bred lad, with home influencie strong upon him, the grave licentiousness rife among the medical students of the metropolis would have no attraction. To him the coarse riots of the dissect- ing-room were only revolting ; the orgy of porter, the Fleet Street amour, and the cutty of black tobacco, which played so large a part in the lighter side of student life, were not able to seduce him from his studies, for he cordially disliked each form of indulgence. He was ab- stemious by nature and cleanly by temperament, and to the end of his days cherished an unaffected and hearty dislike for the habit of smoking. His descriptions of his student days, as well as the testimony of one or two of his contemporaries, all go to show that he lived as a lad the life that he lived as a man — a life of self-respecting, sturdily independent labour. The affectionate husband of five years later was no transmuted rake ; and the man who for thirty-five years of his life regularly worked fifteen hours a day did not learn the self-denial and strength under perpetual strain necessary for such a career in the vagaries of a mis-spent youth. It was his affectionate habit to attribute to the influence of his favoiirite sister, Mrs. New- bury, the fact that the gins into which so many of his fellow-students blundered had no teeth wherein to catch him ; but, in truth, all his after-life showed such an un- equivocal contempt for sensual allurements that it must be believed that he was something of the innate Puritan, It must not be supposed, however, that he was in any sort of way a milksop or a prig. He was, on the contrary, a very muscular, energetic, and hearty young man, popular with his fellow-students, and renowned among them for his physical strength and powers of endurance. He was a good and enthusiastic cricketer, a far better billiard-player than most lads of his age, and an adept at the old-fashioned game of quoits. Above all he was a brilliant boxer, and in those days the science of the gloves was more widely diffused than it is now, and it was possible for a man to get 22 An Income of Eighty Pounds as much fighting as he desired — it was colloquially termed a "bellyful of fightfng" — without going to the expense of subscribing to an elaborate gymnasium or taking out a course of instruction with a courteous maitre d'armes. Many a public-house had attached to it in a half-loafing, half-business capacity a pugilist who, when not occupied in keeping order for his employer, the landlord, would oblige that employer's customers by putting on the gloves with them. The Game Chicken, the public character who was "to be heerd on at the bar of the Little Helephant," was a very real person at the date of Thomas Wakle/s student life — more so, in fact, than many years later, when Toots retained him — and it was with such men that the young countryman would measure his strength, and from the instructions of such men that he derived his exceptional skill. His devotion to athletic exercise sufficiently redeems him from any charge of priggishness. He had to go for his fun where his fellow-students went for theirs — ^to public- houses and similar resorts, for not only did boxing and billiards take him into these places, but cricket and quoits necessitated sojourns at the same social centres. But his ideas of amusement, wherever he might find himself and in whatever company, were always hardy and innocent. In particular he loved the fierce give-atid-take of fighting, and rejoiced, as any natural young man will always rejoice, in his prowess ; and, if for no other reason than that he might always be in training for his chosen sport, he strictly abjured drink and tobacco. In 1815 young Wakley was receiving an allowance of ^80 a year from home, and the buying powers of ;^8o were considerably larger at that time than they are to-day. This was due to wants being fewer and simpler rather than to any item in the daily expenditure being cheaper. The cost of living — the bare cost of food — in London was not appreciably different then to what it is now, and the difference that existed compensated itself, one item being dearer while another was cheaper. Tea, sugar, and bread were, for instance, all considerably more costly, while beer. The Cost of Living in 1815 23 beef, and butter were proportionately moderate. It was in the simplicity of their wants that the poor men at the beginning of this century found salvation. The medical student did not expect to have more than rough, scanty fare. He moved in a stratum of society where to be exceedingly poor was to be like everybody else, and where to be eccentrically shabby and unconventional in dress was to emulate the manners of the choicer spirits. Consequently no money had to be spent on keeping up appearances. A roof was wanted to sleep under, but there existed no necessity for the student to have more than one room ; and a public cult of the beautiful was then a thing so far unknown that people vastly more rich and fastidious than medical students were accustomed to look mainly for durability in their furniture. Also, it must be remem- bered that much of the student's work of those days was done in the hospitals and the lecture-rooms of the private medical schools, for the curriculum of the College of Surgeons and that of the Apothecaries' Hall were such that much evening study could not be necessary. To share one room with a friend at a weekly rental of 8s. was the usual proceeding with the student of the United Hospitals, and the domestic arrangements of Wakley and Wiltshire, who had a bedroom each and a sitting-room to boot, must have savoured of lavishness in the Borough. Their meals they obtained out of doors at ordinaries, taverns, and cook- shops, and in this respect there was not much difference between what they paid and what the clerk in London upon 30s. a week now pays. They would have found it difficult to spend less than 2s. a day ; and, as a matter of fact, that sum exactly accounts for the expenditure of the whole of young Wakley's income, although we have it from himself that when he was a student he never knew what it was to want a sovereign. And he never once asked a penny from his father above his allowance, either to satisfy a creditor or gratify a taste, and if he had done so he would have taken nothing by the move, for Mr. Henry Wakley, being the arbitrary man that he was, in allowing his son 24 Wakley as a Pedestrian ;^8o a year expected him to live upon it, and said so. Fees would not have been less than ^^20 per annum ; his clothes would have cost him ;£io, for he was never unconventional in his attire, and even as a boy showed germs of the dandyism that later distinguished him ; and the cost of his board and lodging swallowed the rest. Travelling was not a cause of expenditure at the beginning of the century upon which any watchful eye had to be kept, for the facilities for rapid locomotion were so small that all temptation to run back- wards and forwards from town to country and from work to play was absent. There was also but one holiday in the medical year, and Thomas Wakley showed his sturdy muscularity, and perhaps the fact that he found the quietest living in the metropolis a strain on his exiguous resources, by walking all the way from London to Membury on these occasions. He was once accompanied on his walk by an elder brother, Michael, who was an accomplished pedestrian, but on another occasion he covered the whole distance in solitude. The curriculum which was required of the student by the J^oyal College of Surgeons of England at that day and pre- viously to 1823 looked vastly well on paper. The student was required to do five years' medical study, a fact that may come as a surprise to many who have been in the habit of regarding the extension of the curriculum in 1892 as a remarkably revolutionary and progressive step. During those five years the student was required to attend two courses of lectures and demonstrations upon anatomy at London, Dublin, Edinburgh,, or Glasgow, and to take out two courses of practical dissection at a recognised anatomical school. To this was added a year's practice to be seen in the wards of a general hospital in one of the four cities. The candidate's lowest age was fixed at twenty-two. Thomas Wakley counted his five years dating from 181 2, when he went as apprentice to his brother-in-law. He remained there nearly two years, going thence to Mr. Coulson, whom he assisted for more than one year. He qualified in 1817. From this distribution of his time will be seen the great Enthusiasm for Anatomical Study 25 importance that was placed at that day upon apprenticeship to a general practitioner. Out of a compulsory curriculum of five years it was open to the student to spend as much time as he liked as an apprentice, working under a qualified master. True, he was compelled to see one year's practice at a hospital, to attend certain lectures, and do a certain amount of dissecting, but inasmuch as he could attend the lectures and the courses of human anatomy at the same time, while he was also seeing the practice of his hospital, his curriculum really meant one year's academic work to be added to four years' experience as assistant in a general practice. Thomas Wakley, coming to London in 1815, and attending at the United Hospitals and the Graingers' School until 1817, gave a year's more time to the scientific side of his profession than could have been exacted from him and than was usual among those students who, having no pos- sible chance of hospital appointment, were looking to the public only for future advancement. But he spent over three years as an apprentice in the country. This is interesting to record, because it shows that the man, the key-note of whose medical policy was the maintenance of the rights of the general practitioner, had obtained a practical insight into their wrongs by considerable experience of their lives and work. He was exceedingly fond of dissecting, and is reported to have been a sound anatomist. It is only possible to speak upon report, for his years in practice were few, and no actual cases have been handed down in the treatment or diagnosis of which he betrayed any very special knowledge of the science, while the fact that he belonged to the rank and file of the profession and was not a fee-in-hand apprentice of a hospital surgeon precluded him from all opportunity, either in ward ov lecture-room, of proving that he possessed exceptional knowledge. That he considered an intimate acquaintance with the machinery of the human body an absolute essential to all medical study is revealed over and over again in his life, and he spent an amount of time in the pursuit of anatomy which was not required of him by the schedule of 26 The Dearth of Subjects for Dissection the College of Surgeons. For he took out three courses at St. Thomas's Hospital and also a course at the Graingers' private school (though he could but ill have spared the money necessary to buy " the parts," the expense of which was no slight consideration) when the minimum amount of dissecting required by the curriculum of the College was two courses. The science of anatomy was in those days not so easy of acquisition as it is now. Its professors were under con- siderable and unsavoury suspicion among the public, and there was every temptation to be-little the study of the actual body. .The dearth of bodies was one of the most serious drawbacks to a medical education. Subjects for dissection could only be obtained from two sources. The first, the legitimate source, was the gallows, the corpses of murderers being handed over to the dissecting-rooms after the criminals had suffered capital punishment. The second, the illegiti- mate source, was the resurrection man. The inefficiency of the first source could be shown by figures. The number of persons executed in the whole of England and Wales from 1805 to 1820, inclusive, amounted to 1150. It was known that not all these bodies were used for dissecting purposes, while the average number of students yearly entering upon their studies at the different London schools alone was estimated at nearly a thousand. And other legitimate sources — purchase, for instance — were not available. The law, by only allowing the bodies of the worst malefactors known to it to be used for anatomical purposes, stamped an obloquy upon the dissector and also upon the dissected, so that it became an awkward task to acquire a corpse from its nearest surviving relatives, while it betokened a certain absence of delicacy in the relatives to allow themselves to be tempted by money to hand over the body. As a conse- quence the second, or illegitimate, mode of obtaining bodies was resorted to by the professors of anatomy at the different hospitals and the proprietors of the different private schools. Body-snatching, in fact, was practised largely and regarded Body-Snatching and the Medical Profession 27 by the medical profession not so much as an infringement of the law, and an outrage upon all decency, as a necessity, painful perhaps, but with its humorous side.* It is narrated of a distinguished surgeon, the hero of many body-snatching stories, that on one occasion he went some way out of London to bring back a body that had been procured for him from a country churchyard where the watch against this form of desecration was not so alert as it was in London, and that on his return journey he propped up the body alongside of him in his gig, having clothed it in decent out- door garb, as the readiest method of getting it into his house * The closing stanzas of one of Hood's well-known comic poems, " Mary's Ghost, a Pathetic Ballad," shows that the association of ideas was present to the public mind. Here the ghost explains that her grave has been rifled and the contents distributed among the anatomical teachers of London in the following words : — The arm that used to take your I can't tell where my head has arm gone, Is took to Dr. Vyse.' But Dr. Carpue can ; * And both my legs are gone to walk As for my trunk it's all packed up The Hospital at Guy's. To go by Pickford's van. I vowed that you should have my I wish you'd go to Mr. P.^ hand, And save me such a ride. But Fate gives us denial ; I don't half like the outside place You'll find it there at Mr. Bell's * They've took for my inside. In spirits in a phial. _ , The cock it crows, I must be As for my feet, the little feet gone, You used to call so pretty, My William we must part : There's one I know in Bedford And I'll be yours in death al- Row,5 though The t'other's in the City. ■• Sir Astley' has my heart. ' Dr. Vyse cannot be traced. * Sir Charles Bell, demonstrator of anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital. 3 Abernethy lived for many years at 14, Bedford Row. ■* The Aldersgate City School of Anatomy. * Joseph Constantine Carpue, the head of a great private school of anatomy. " Mr. Richard Partridge, demonstrator of anatomy at King's College Hospital. 't Sir Astley Cooper. 28 A Grim Anecdote without attracting any attention. Having stopped outside a suburban public-house for refreshment, the potman who brought out the Hquor naturally inquired if the other gentleman wouldn't have anything. " Damn him, no," said the great surgeon coolly, recognising that he must account at once for the silence and immobility of his companion, " damn him, he's sulky." This is only one out of hundreds of stories for which very general credence is asked in proof of the fact that before the notorious murders by Burke and Hare and Bishop and Williams body-snatching was winked at in the medical profession. And it is not to be denied that this was the case. It would have been wonderful otherwise. A knowledge of anatomy was a necessity ; this knowledge could only be properly obtained by dissecting, and pre- viously to the passing of the Anatomy Act there were no bodies to dissect. The public at large looked upon body- snatching as contrary to all the established prejudices of humanity and did not care whether anatomy was studied or not, overlooking its paramount importance to the medical man. The profession, on the other hand, had a conscientious desire to know ail about the body they were going to treat, which desire could easily be strained into an intention to obtain the knowledge in spite of the public. These two attitudes were utterly irreconcilable, and, as is the case when people see things from different standpoints, a good deal of bitter feeling was occasioned. The students were compelled to depend for their acquisition of essential know- ledge, in the dearth of proper subjects for dissection, upon expensive illustrated text-books and papier-mach6 models made for the most part in France. Sir Charles Bell's celebrated plates were published in 1798, and were the students' main support in Thomas Wakley's time, as Lizars's plates, probably the best thing of the sort ever produced, were a decade later. The papier-mach6 models of the human figure were made in Paris and to some extent in Vienna, and were like a child's pictuie puzzles in the use to which they were put. The student learned his topographical anatomy with them by fitting the parts in among each other The Price of a Body 29 in accordance with coloured diagrams and wax models. All this was felt to be, by those who knew, a very poor substitute for actual dissection of the body, and the profession were sorely troubled by the inability to obtain due facilities for learning. The apathy of the authorities did not allow of the utilising of the bodies of the unclaimed dead, and few persons were sufficiently free from prejudice to leave their bodies of their own free will to the anatomy schools. So that nothing was open to the anatomists save to get the bodies by force or fraud. In the end this lamentable state of affairs led to crime, but for years before the notorious Burke and Hare trial the pilfering of bodies from the churchyards was known to be undertaken at the instance of members of the profession, and for the offence many persons were convicted and heavily punished. Upon this it followed that the fees to be paid to the resurrection men grew heavier in proportion as the risk grew greater and the trade developed into skilled labour. A body was worth ;£io to a professor of anatomy at a hospital, and even more to the owner of a private school, inasmuch as the hospital schools obtained such bodies as were at the disposal of the Government. A student had to pay in ready money as much as £2 or £2 los. for "a part," and the lucrative trade of body-snatching became almost a fine art, so necessary was it that the perpetrators of the sacrilege should avoid detection. The amount of empty coffins that have been discovered in the operations of sextons and in the course of the reclamation of graveyards proves beyond a doubt the prevalence of body-snatching ; while the fact that the medical profession was the only class of the community benefiting by the felonies suggests the probability that the teacher of anatomy stood in the position of instigator. 30 A Love of Fairness CHAPTER IV [1817-1820] The Influences of Youth and Training — The Goodchilds — Gerard's Hall — Courtship and Marriage — The Start in Practice — Prospects in Argyll Street — Fire and Attempted Murder. In October, 1817, Wakley passed his examination for the Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and walked home to Membury to announce the news. It will not be amiss here to point out how much the circum- stances of his home-life dictated his adult career. Brought up in the country among a simple and patriarchal folk, he positively detested shams of all sorts. A pretender was to him the biggest rogue the world could know. As a member of a large family he was endowed with a deep sense of what was fair. He obtained his own share of whatever of material enjoyment or comfort was going by favour, for he was the ' youngest, and could not have exacted it from his elders ; but he obtained it because it was freely recognised in Mr. Henry Wakley's house that share and share alike in common goods was the only fair plan. So that there was early implanted in his breast a keen sense of rudimentary justice — that crude kind of socialism so often seen in children — only developed to an extraordinarily high degree. He desired that every one should have his due, and in his student days this desire had developed to such a degree that towards all who belonged to classes whose manners or methods he found oppressive he could scarcely bring himself to be impartial. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of obedience as well as of equity, so that the privileges he obtained at home were the return of allegiance given. From a domestic environment Revolt Against the Privileged Classes 31 of this sort he went to a London hospital, and found a con- dition of things that was directly at variance with all his primitive and deeply implanted ideas of fair-play. He found that although he was allowed to do his part — to pay his fees and attend his classes — the authorities were not prepared to do their part by him. The lectures advertised were not delivered by the eminent people who received the fees, but by their demonstrators ; the one great practical help to the acquisition of a sound knowledge of pathology, presence at post-mortem examinations, could only be secured by the clandestine feeing of the post-mortem-room porters ; the honorary staff from whose lips he was to learn the science of healing were capricious in their visits and were generally dumb upon the occasions when they put in an appearance ; the list of operations was not published to the students, and only the favoured pupils of the staff knew what was going to be done by the great men and when. And, to cap all these injustices, he found that he was relegated to a class in his profession marked out from the beginning to constitute the rank and file, not in the least through want of personal merit, but because he had not paid exorbitant fees to apprentice himself to a great man. He had no objection to being a general practitioner ; on the contrary, he desired to be. He had lived for three years in the house of two hard-worked members of this class. He had shared their labours and known their trials. He could estimate the amount of good that they did and the amount of influence for good that they were able to exercise over the community. He saw these men, who did their duties for the most part rigidly according to their lights, always set on one side and looked down upon by their privileged brethren, who had themselves obtained their places in the medical hierarchy by purchase and not by merit, and who, being in posts of office, took the emoluments and omitted to do the work. These things he saw. His sense of justice revolted at them, and none the less because he personally suffered from their effects, and they will sufficiently account for the attitude towards hospital officials that he was soon to reveal, for his readiness to find them 32 An Engagement of Marriage wanting in skill, and his pertinacity in convicting them of unfairness and nepotism. His championship of the cause of the general practitioner was as obvious in its origin as it was outspoken in its activity. It was in this mood that Wakley arrived home in the character of a qualified man. His primary intentions were to practise in the country, and he stayed for some months at Membury after being qualified, during which time he was in search of an opening. He made many friends in the neighbourhood during this his first real vacation, and that he impressed them favourably is well shown by the generous response that Devonshire and Somersetshire people were wont to make for many years to his appeals in the columns of the "Lancet," and this in cases where it could only have been the personality of the editor, and not at all the urgency of the appeal, that swayed them. But he did not find any chance of making a practice that seemed to him to offer a probability of quick success. And he did not wish to wait. His wish to get speedily into practice was caused by the fact that he desired to become the husband of a young lady whom he had known during the last year of his student life, although he could not be said to be strictly and formally engaged to her. He had, however, obtained from her father a sort of qualified approval of his suit, accompanied with some very clear words as to the responsibilities that he would be expected to assume upon marriage. For Mr. Goodchild, the father of the girl, though a wealthy man, stated that he had no intention of supporting a son-in-law, but that his daughter's husband must maintain himself and his wife by his own labour. Mr. Goodchild was a merchant. His warehouses and offices were in Tooley Street, and his home was at Hendon, then an absolutely rural district, being considerably less accessible to the true Londoner than Guildford, Windsor and even Hertford are now. He was a lead merchant, and a man of wealth and large business connexions. Young Wakley made the acquaintance of the family by accident. The men in the Tooley Street works were very constantly in A Visit to Mr. Goodchild 33 need of the services of the adjoining hospitals. Mr. Good- child was a governor of St. Thomas's Hospital and a regular annual subscriber, but not to the extent that his income would have warranted the hospital authorities in expecting, or to the extent that was proportionate to the labour that was expended upon the care of his numerous workmen by the medical officers of the charities. H,e employed at that time a very large number of hands — two or three hundred — some of whom were daily in receipt of surgical assistance. The treasurer of St. Thomas's Hospital, to whose attention this was brought, sent Wakley and his friend Wiltshire to call at Hendon, commissioning them to ask Mr. Goodchild whether he felt disposed to support in a special manner art appeal that was being made on behalf of the hospital, having regard to the fact that his workmen were so largely benefited by their proximity to the building. Mr. .Goodchild not only made a generous response to the lads' appeal — he gave :them £100 — but invited them to luncheon and later to a party at his house. The acquaintance thus made ripened into friendship between the two students and the Goodchild family, and the friendship between the youngest daughter and Wakley soon became subject to a natural transformation into love. It says a great deal for the influence that Wakley had over those whom he desired to move, that he should have obtained Mr. Goodchild's consent to an early, if con- ditional, engagement ; for although he was not accepted as a suitor for Miss Goodchild's hand while still a student, yet he was accepted almost immediately upon becoming qualified, and when he had no remarkably good chances of prosperity and no expectations from home. He was one, and the youngest, of eleven children. To the eldest son the land would infallibly go. If he shared equally with the other nine it was all that he could expect. Probably he would be considered to have received his patrimony when his indentures and his London course of study were paid for. From a worldly point of view, therefore, he could not be considered a good match. He had his youth and his pro- fession, and that was all. But Mr. Goodchild was a judge c 34 Gerard's Hall of men, and he saw in his daughter's suitor the stuff of which success is made, though he did not guess the direction whence that success would come, and for a time at least cordially disapproved of those very departures that made his son-in-law a man whose biography has to be written, instead of a family practitioner of medicine. It was probably with some idea of asserting his independence that Wakley thought of setting up in practice in his own part of the world. There the esteem in which his father and family were held would have been some sort of counterpoise to the wealth of the prospective father-in-law. Be that as it may, the idea came to nothing, for in 1818 he returned to London, and went into private practice in the City. He lived at this time in Gerard's Hall, an old residential inn, and before the Fire of London the palace of the Lord Mayors of London, It possessed a remarkably fine crypt, used as a cellar, and stood in Basing Lane on a site that was afterwards cleared in the construction of Queen Victoria Street. Thither he returned and proceeded to look about him for patients and a practice, occupying himself in the meantime in completing the gaps which he felt to exist in his education. The testimony of Mr. Ivatts, the proprietor of the Hall, to his behaviour while he was that gentleman's tenant shows that, so far from feeling that because he was no longer a student he had earned the right to cease from work and consider himself completely informed — a very common attitude with the newly-fledged medical man — he doubled his energies. He was an ambitious, able, en- thusiastic young lover, and intended to leave no stone unturned in his struggle to deserve his wife and support her. Mr. Ivatts had occasion under distressing circumstances that will soon be narrated to make a statement upon oath as to the manner of life pursued by Wakley at this time, and he then said that he was particularly regular in his mode of living, temperate, keeping much to himself, and exceedingly studious, rising sometimes as early as four o'clock in the morning, even in the winter, to read and write. It was often a matter of wonder in later times, to his enemies and The Start in Practice 35 friends alike, where he had got his great store of information, and how he came from his earUest start on a journalistic career to control so adept as well as so virile a pen. It was to the rigid self-denial of his life in Gerard's Hall that he owed both. For hours each day — hours snatched from the sleep that was due to his labours — he steadily worked, reading copiously, and writing assiduously, and it was thus that he acquired the solid information and literary skill which enabled him to become a power in journalism from the moment that he entered the lists. During the following year an end was put to his period of probation, and he was assisted by Mr, Goodchild, now satis- fied that his daughter had chosen a man capable of taking care of her, to acquire a West-end practice. The practice lay at the top of Regent Street, and its owner, Mr. Samuel Malle- son, in disposing of it did not desire to dispose of his house also. Mr. Goodchild arranged that Wakley should take a house in Argyll Street, No, 5, which was hard by Mr. Malle- son's house, and should purchase that gentleman's drugs and the furniture of the surgery and transport them thither. The sum of ;^4oo was paid for the goodwill of the practice, and a similar sum as premium on the lease of the house in Argyll Street, then a fashionable and important street, and more money was paid both in Argyll Street for the fixtures and to Mr. Malleson for his stock and sundry furniture, so that ;^iooo would probably not have covered the immediate outlay. Mr. Goodchild was, however, a business man, and cannot be said to have made a bad investment, having satisfied himself that his future son-in-law was a trustworthy and competent man, for, of course, ever5d;hing turned upon that. The practice that was obtained for ;^400 cash had brought in Mr. Malleson ;^690 during 1818, and by the autumn of 1819, when it was purchased, ;^s6o had already been earned. Argyll Street was then a street of reputable private resi- dences. The town house of the Earl of Aberdeen shed an aristocratic flavour over the eastern side, and most of the inhabitants were persoiis of consideration if not wealth. 36 Marriage No. 5 was a house of fifteen rooms, including the back study, which was used as a surgery, and was of the type and date of the houses now standing in the older parts of Maiddox Street. It had a double dining-room and a double drawing-room and half-a-dozen bedrooms. This house its new possessor set to work to furnish handsomely, and those of us in this generation who are sufficiently modern to have begun to appreciate again the beauty, as well as the solidity, of the effects with which our grandparents delighted to surround themselves, know that the style of upholstery in the twenties was not an economical one. Wakley would not have equipped his rooms so lavishly had he not been preparing for the almost immediate reception of a wife ; but imposing externals were every whit as valuable then as they are now in forming a good connexion, and Mr. Goodchild's sure commercial instinct would have certainly gone in support of a somewhat lavish expenditure. From the first the venture was a successful one. The young practitioner retained the old patients who had been transferred to him, and new ones called him in, both in the neighbourhood and in the City, and when in February, 1820, he brought his wife home he did so with every prospect before him of a successful career in general practice. He was married on Saturday, February 5th, 1820, at St. James's Church, Picca- dilly, and the announcement of his wedding as it appears in the "News " of February 6th, takes us back a stride in history, for the same issue informed the world of the death of King George III. But the old contrast between present security and sad trouble in the immediate future was never more dramatically exemplified than in the case of Wakley's early married life. In February he brought his young wife to her new home. His marriage was one of affection, but also one of material advantage to him, while his prospects in his professional career were exceptionally bright. Young, talented, good- looking, healthy, a married lover, and a successful man, he was beloved by his friends and respected by all with whom his profession brought him into relation. In six months his Murder and Arson 37 home was broken up, his house burnt to the ground, his health temporarily injured, his practice well-nigh destroyed, and last, but most serious of all, his reputation was gravely impugned, the slanders that were rife about him being as widespread as they were malignant. On the evening of August 26th, 1820, No. 5, Argyll Street, was burnt to the ground, while a murderous attack was made upon the hapless owner. The extraordinary events that occurred on that night will have to be dealt with at some length, and to place them with perfect clearness before the reader, a digression must be made, and circumstances in the Cato Street conspiracy and the execution of the infamous Thistlewood must be detailed at the risk of appearing to give information upon matters of historical notoriety. The fol- lowing is the account of the occurrences which appeared in the "Morning Chronicle" of Monday, August 28th, 1820. The information was obviously obtained in large part from Wakley himself. ATROCIOUS ATTEMPT TO MURDER, SUPPOSED ROBBERY, AND SETTING A HOUSE ON FIRE. Yesterday morning, about, half -past one o'clock, a man called at the house of Mr. Wakley, surgeon, of No. 5, Argyll Street, Oxford Street, and knocked at the door. All the servants were in bed, and Mr. W., who was indisposed, was in his apartment putting some leeches to his temples. He placed a bandage round his head and proceeded to open the door, on doing which, a man, who appeared to be flurried, said that he had come from Mr. Ibbetson, of the Bath Hotel, Basing Lane, an old patient of Mr. Wakley's, who was dangerously ill, and required his immedia,te attendance. The fellow requesting a glass of cyder, as he said he was fatigued by a long journey, Mr. Wakley complied, and went downstairs to the cellar to procure him a glass. During the time it is supposed that the villain admitted some accom- plices. On the Doctor's return to the passage he observed something rush towards him, and at the moment he received a tremendous blow on the head wMch knocked him down. It was with some instrument, and at the same time the destructive weapon of the assassin was aimed at his breast, on which he received a stab ; he then thrust the instru- ment a second time, which passed through the collar' of the Doctor's coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and penetrated the skin; he received 38 A Fortunate Escape othet injuries, and while he lay in the passage he received violent blows and kicks from some person or persons; his abdomen was severely bruised. In this deplorable state he laid for three-quarters of an hour without the least assistance, when he was roused from his stupor by the flames in immense bodies rushing down the stairs and a dense smoke. He with difficulty arose and crawled out the back way, and climbed through the skylight leading to the house of Mr. Thomp' son, next door, in whose parlour he was afterwards found weltering in his blood and apparently in a dying state. He was immediately carried to the house of Mr. Parker, of Argyll Street, where Drs. Luke and Gates attended and dressed his wounds. On Mr. Wakley being supported to the above house a daring villain unfeelingly snatched at his watch and got it from his fob. He had the presence of mind to seize the villain by the collar ; the property was recovered, and he was taken in custody to the watch-house. Mr. W., after being dressed, was put to bed, and yesterday morning he bled himself ; and fearful that his wife, to whom he was lately married, should be alarmed by the too speedy intelligence of the atrocious deed, although in so dread- ful a condition, proceeded to his country residence yesterday morning. Three-quarters of an hour elapsed before the fire was discovered by Mr. W., who, as well as he was able, gave an alarm : the servants immediately arose and made their escape. A lamplighter broke the windows of the parlour, on which the flames burst forth in a great body and the neighbourhood was in a moment illumined. The utmost confusion prevailed, and the inmates of the adjacent houses were seen, in almost a condition of nudity, taking refuge in other houses. In a short time several engines arrived, and, having plenty of water, played with great activity on the element which seemed to threaten destruction to all around it, and persons employed in saving the furni- ture. In a few hours the house of Mr. Wakley was gutted, and what property there was in the house — ^if not stolen — ^was destroyed. Pro- perty consisting of guineas to an immense amount were in one ,of the upper apartments, and the firemen will be employed to search in order to ascertain if any robbery was committed, or if the above transaction proceeded from malice. The mysterious affair has caused many suspicions. A short time ago Mr. Wakley received several threatening letters, signed " Jealousy is the cause, but it is from a friend." The man who called is unknown to Mr, Wakley, and the case is involved in great mystery. During the course of the day various persons of distinction about the neighbour- hood made inquiry after the state of Mr. Wakley, and .the answer was, " Although severely injured there are hopes of his recovery." Fortunately the adjoining houses of Messrs. Thompson and Hodgson are not injured, save a slight scorching. So great an interest was excited by the quick circulation of the above horrid transaction that No Clue to be Found 39 crowds of persons assembled, and Mr. Tarrant the magistrate in the course of the day attended by Mr. Dyer, took the examination at the house of Mr. Parker of the servants belonging to Mr. W. and other persons, but he himself was in such a debilitated condition that he was unable to give his deposition. The surgeons who examined the wounds on the body of Mr. Wakley did not think that they were of so serious a nature as to affect his life, the fortunate circumstance of his having put the bandage about his head prior to opening the door prevented the violent blow he received having a serious effect. The blow was given with some heavy instru- ment, and must have been given with deadly intention. No clue whatever can be found as to the parties concerned in this atrocious affair. Information was speedily given at the police estab- lishment, and likewise to the Secretary of State's office, for the purpose of causing bills to be circulated for the apprehension of the party. Officers have received the necessary instrument, and we trust that in a short time the persons capable of such horrible transactions may be brought to justice. This story, as told by the " Morning Chronicle," aroused the curiosity and interest of all London. Nothing was wanting to its dramatic side. The crimes were terrible, the criminals were unknown, and the circumstances and plight of the victim gave additional sensationalism to the case. 40 The Cato Street Conspiracy CHAPTER V [1820] The Cato Street Conspiracy — The Execution of the Ringleaders — A Wicked Accusation — A Threatening Letter — The Origin of the Outrages in Argyll Street — Tom Parker and the Execution of ThistUwood and his Followers. On the evening of February 23rd, 1820, there were arrested in a loft in Cato Street, now named Horace Street, Edgware Road, certain members of a desperate band who had leagued themselves together to assassinate the King's Ministers, Th6 real origin of the plot and the real purpose of the conspirators were never made very clear. Want counted for something, for not a penny was found upon any of those arrested. A form of general discontent euphoni- ously termed " political," that bitter, vague disaffection bred of bad circumstances and nurtured by inflammatory speeches, counted for more. As far as Thistlewood, the leader of the gang, went, vanity counted for most. King George III. died on January 29th, 1820, and was suc- ceeded by a son who, whatever his claims to good breeding and his evidences of good nature, could not be called a good man or be expected to make a good king. The death of the aged monarch was a signal to the conspirators to strike their blow. Doubtless they hoped that the inevitable muddle in public affairs due to the devolution of the crown upon the Regent would assist in the wide-spread panic that they intended to create by the assassination of certain of the virtual rulers of the country, and this hope determined the date of their action. They had long been making their preparations ; muskets, pistols, cutlasses, and pikes had been The Intended Victims 41 secreted in a loft over a range of stables and coach-houses in Cato Street. Here, on the evening of February 23rd, 1820, they assembled to the number of thirty, vsrith the deliberate intention of making a murderous attack upon certain members of the Cabinet virho were engaged to dine with Lord Harrowby, the Lord Privy Seal, in Grosvenor Square. The members of the Cabinet who were Lord Harrowby's proposed guests .that night were : Lord Liverpool, the Premier ; Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor ; Lord Castle- reagh, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ; and Mr. Vansittart, Lord Sidmouth, Sir Robert Peel, and George Canning ; but of these it was Lord Castlereagh whose life was especially aimed at. Thirty conspirators in a vile cause and in desperately poor circumstances could hardly be expected to keep good faith with each other, and the scheme was revealed to the Bow Street authorities. A faid was made on the loft at the hour of rendezvous, and the misguided wretches were caught in the act of arming themselves. After a furious miUe, in which one Bow Street officer was shot dead, certain of the ringleaders were captured. Arthur Thistlewood, a commissioned officer in the militia and the only man of education who was involved in the plot — he is said to have served his time as an apothecary — escaped ; but the price of ;^iooo was put on his head and he was captured the next day. At the trial a man named Monument, a shoemaker, turned King's evidence, with the result that Thistlewood, Davidson, a negiro whose seditious speeches had counted every whit as much in the organisation of the plot as the former's social position and superior learning, Ings a butcher, Tidd a shoemaker, and a man named Brunt were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, while five of their colleagues were sentenced to penal servitude for life. The condemned men were publicly executed at Newgate in the presence of an enormous crowd on May Day, 1820. The bodies were allowed to hang for half-an-hour, when they were taken down, and in formal accordance with the words of the sentence a masked man stepped on to the scaffold 42 A Wicked Accusation and decapitated them, handing each severed head to an assistant, who held it up and proclaimed it to the crowd by the name of the late owner. The performer of this un- savoury task was clothed in a rough seaman's guernsey, but so deftly and speedily did he perform the decapitations that he roused in the minds of those who saw him a suspicion that he was a member of the medical profession. The crowd deeply resented the mutilation of the dead, all the more that the political glamour which had been thrown over their crime hid its foolish ugliness, and they yelled execrations mingled with groans and hisses at the man in the mask ; arid the feeling of disgust thus crudely expressed by the mob was echoed by many more responsible people, and was centred upon the unknown operator. It is easy, therefore, to imagine that to be under suspicion of having served his country in so bestial and degrading a fashion would be a terrible position for a young surgeon. And this is what happened to Thomas Wakley. How did the suspicion arise ? Who started it ? Had it any causal connection with the terrible events in Argyll Street on the night of August 26th ? These questions cannot be answered with any certainty, but the facts which guided Wakley and his legal advisers to their several opinions can be given. The belief that the decapitation of the con- spirators had been undertaken by Wakley, wherever it first originated, obtained such support as it received on account of a newspaper article which stated that the masked operator was " a young surgeon of Argyll Street," he being the only surgeon occupying a house in that small street at the time. It was found impossible to trace the originator of the phrase, which appears to have been printed without any personal feeling or any appreciation that it was tantamount to giving a name to the masked man whose anonymity was so much a subject of debate. The sentence may have been written by accident, or it may have been inspired by malice, and if the latter was the case the malice may have had a particu- larly mischievous and successful outcome. For the Cato Street conspirators were thirty in number ; and as but ten A Threatening Letter 43 of them suifered for their crimes, some of the remaining desperadoes may have planned the murderous and ruinous attack upon the man whom they believed upon public hearsay to have assisted the law in its last horrid offices upon Arthur Thistlewood and his co-conspirators. All this is purposely couched in the language of pure supposition, for no light has ever been thrown upon the real origin of the fire. To complicate matters in the search for an in- cendiary, Wakley had received, both before and after his marriage, anonymous letters, obviously inspired by jealousy. One of these letters, which was received in March, 1820, contained a distinct threat that his house should be burned down and himself murdered. In consequence of this threatening letter Wakley consulted his solicitors as to the advisability of increasing his insurance. The contents of the house had been originally insured for ;£6oo, but the policy dated from before his marriage. After his marriage many things were obtained — such as furniture, plate, and china, while the dresses and jewellery of Mrs. Wakley and her numerous wedding presents had also to be added to his effects. In fact, he found himself, with a distinct threat that his house would be burned down, in the unpleasant position of being secured against loss to the extent of one-half or perhaps a third of the value of his goods. His solicitors urged him to insure his effects to their proper amount and also to put the threatening letter out of his mind ; but the first he delayed to do and the second he was unable to do. At last he insured for a further sum of ;^6oo, and this increase of insurance was made so short a time before the fire, with all its extraordinary circumstances, that it is hardly to be wondered at that the insurance company withheld payment, not actually alleging that the luckless owner of the house had burnt himself out, but leaving the im- pression by their action that such was their belief. The complete refutation of this insinuation on the part of the Hope Fire Assurance Company followed almost immediately ; but during the time necessary to prepare the proper legal procedure for his vindication Wakley 44 The Origin of the Outrages suffered mentally under the belief that the suspicion was wide-spread. The actual culprits were never discovered. The question whether one of the Thistlewood gang set fire to No. 5, Argyll Street, and attempted the murder of the owner was never solved. If the writer of the anonymous letter, who had made categorical threats to do these two things, carried out his threats, he did so with impunity, for no clue to his identity was ever obtained. Wakley's lawyers seem rather to have leant to the theory that the assault and arson were the execution of the written threats. Wakley himself implicitly believed that he had been attacked by some of Thistle- wood's gang, or by persons, at any rate, who sympathised with Thistlewood to this extent, that they were prepared to take vengeance upon the man whom they were informed had played the part of amateur headsman upon his person. It required a man mad with jealousy to write the anony- mous letters, and it only required him to be a little madder to carry out the threats contained in them. So far the lawyers' view is tenable. But, as will be seen, Wakley was robbed as well as assaulted, and though jealousy might have dictated the burning of the house and the savage attacks upon the owner, they would not have instigated an un- successful rival to the meaner felony. That members of the Thistlewood gang were concerned in the matter seemed at the time probable, for men's minds were then full of the daring and vile enormity that these ruffians had planned to perpetrate against some of the more distinguished persons in the land, arid no act would have seemed too stupid, cause- less, and criminal to be attributed with reason to the residue of the band. It is, of course, possible that Wakley was right in his view. But in the beginning we are confronted with a coincidence that asks for much faith if any of the Thistlewood gang are to be held responsible for the Argyll Street outrage. We must believe that the exact threats made by one person in February for one reason were carried out by different persons in August, and for a different reason. Or we must believe that the jealous man The Action of the Assurance Company 45 seized the opportunity of the known though unreasonable fury of the coarsest socialistic party against Wakley to instigate some disciples of Thistlewood to the crimes. It is not very probable that any miscreant, however enthusiastic a follower of Thistlewood, or however nearly tied by blood or sentiment to any of that man's misguided followers, would, soon after the breaking up of the Cato Street gang, have dared to outrage the law in so public and flagrant a manner. Those of the actual band who were still at large had prices put upon their heads for high treason, and an example before their eyes warning them that capture meant subjection to the utmost rigour of the law. Their relatives and friends would for the same reasons be chary of drawing upon themselves the attention of the authorities. The sup- position that the outrages were the result of an ordinary robbery with violence, planned against a man known to be recently married and in possession of much portable pro- perty, is the one that demands the least exercise of imagina- tion, but does not fit in with all the circumstances. Such were the theories as to the cause of the Argyll Street outrages which broke up Wakley's home, injured his health, and ruined his 'practice, reducing him in a few moments from a position that had been truly enviable to one that was as truly deplorable. The grave effect that the sudden and terrible check to his material prosperity and domestic happi- ness had upon him at the time and afterwards — it possibly determined his career, and certainly influenced his life — would warrant the lengthy treatment of the whole episode, if no other reason were present ; but the action of the Hope Fire Assurance Company in withholding pa5mient of the sums assured brought the matter before a judge, when sworn testimony to the events was supplied by eye- witnesses. In a court of law it became at once clear that the slanders atti'ibuting the burning of his house to his own hand, and the anonymous messages and murderous attack to his own imagination, were monstrous as well as foolish. The identity of the man in the mask who assisted at the execution of Thistlewood and his followers is fairly certain. 46 The Executioner of the Conspirators He was in all probability a certain Tom Parker, at the date of the executions an assistant to Edward Grainger in the Webb Street anatomy school, and later dissecting-room porter at St. Thomas's Hospital, under Richard Grainger. It seems idle to repudiate for Wakley any share in the matter, but inasmuch as he himself took pains to refute the revolting and ridiculous calumny, and inasmuch as there were certainly persons at the time who believed it and others who spread it abroad, whether they believed it or not, it is best to put on record the following correspond- ence, which had the effect of silencing the slander entirely : — Letter from Thomas Wakley to J. W. Parkins, Esq., Sheriff of London and Middlesex. Kentish Town, September 21st, 1820. Sir, — From the period of my late catastrophe in Argyle Street, to add to my anxiety, I have been currently charged by a multitude of malignant slanderers as being the person who decapitated Thistlewood and his deluded companions in May last. Your official contradiction of this disgusting falsehood, as Sheriff of London, will confer a lasting favour on. Sir, Your obliged servant, (Signed) THOMAS WAKLEY. J. W. Parkins, Esq., Sheriff of London and Middlesex, Letter from Mr. Parkins to Thomas Wakley, No. 10, New Bridge Street, September 25th, 1820. Sir,— In answer to your letter of the zist instant I feel myself bound to comply with its contents to the utmost of my power ; but I am sorry to inform you that the whole of the disgusting business to which it relates was conducted with so much privacy and pertinacious conceal- ment from me that I was not even made acquainted with the order for the execution until the day after (Sunday, when I went to Newgate accompanied by a clergyman) it had been determined upon, and orders given for erecting the scaffold, &c., by the Lord Mayor, Bridges, and my colleague, Mr. Rothwell, who, accompanied by his deputy, had, I understood, been at the Secretary of State's office arranging the same. As to the man who decapitated the unfortunate Thistlewood and his Exoneration of Wakley 47 companions, he was procured for that purpose by the prison surgeon, and his terms, 3^20, agreed for by Mr. Turner, Mr. Rothwell's deputy, and which wages Mr. Turner told me were repaid to him by the Home Department, as also £$ he paid to the man who held up the heads. I did not see the man who performed the duty until he appeared on the scaffold masked, and dressed as a sailor. By the notice I then took of him (which was very particular) I perceived him to be in height about iive feet five or six inches ; and in answer to my inquiry the other day (in consequence of your note) who the fellow was, Mr. Turner informed me that he was a resurrection man who obtained bodies for the hospitals, and that when he asked him if he could perform the task of cutting off the heads, he replied, oh, yes, that he could do it very well, as he was in the habit of cutting odnobs (heads) for the purpose of obtaining nackers (teeth). I am glad for the honour of our country's humanity that it was no person of respectability, but a most illiterate and degraded being, as was also the wretched individual who held up the heads of the unfortunate men. In addition to the above, I am credibly informed that the individual who decapitated Thistlewood and his companions was engaged by the under-sheriffs from Yorkshire to go there for a similar purpose, but in the performance of which sanguinary work, thank Providence, he has been disappointed. I cannot conclude this letter without bearing testimony to the humane disposition of your heart towards the depraved young man who robbed you of your watch on the fatal night when crossing the road, and bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the assassins and incendiaries who had set fire to your house in Argyll Street, I hope this assurance will convince every one, even the most malig- nant of your enemies, that it was totally impossible any one could mistake a gentleman of your appearance and height (which I conceive to be about five feet ten inches) for the person (five feet five or six inches) who performed the sanguinary duty on Thistlewood and the others in May last, I am, Sir, Your most obedient servant, J, W, PARKINS, Sheriff. Thomas Wakley, Esq. Further Letter from Mr, Parkins to Thomas Wakley. November, 1820. Sir, — I hope you have not been liable to any further annoyance from the erroneous and wicked opinion which prevailed that you were the person who decapitated' Thistlewood and his associates. I am inclined to think that my letter of the 25th of September has been of 48 Tom Parker of Graingers' service to remove that impression, as a few days ago a stout woman called upon me and asked if the letter which you published was one from me, and on being informed that it was so she expressed her sur- prise, and said that if the man who did it could be found he would be served out or made away with. It did not occur to my recollection at the time or I would have endeavoured to trace out who those were who set your house on fire. I cannot conclude without noticing the cool indifference of Mr. Box, who could scarcely be induced to tell me who the man was that he hired for the purpose, Mr. B. stating as a reason that if the police officers knew him they would take him into custody for robbing the churchyards, and Mr, Deputy-Sheriff Turner said that it was not necessary to be more particular than merely to state on my authority that you were not the person. However, I now feel much satisfied that 1 gave you the letter that I did. With best wishes for your prosperity, believe me. Yours truly, J. W. PARKINS, Ex-Sheriff. To Mr. T. Wakley, Surgeon, Albemarle Street. From these letters of the worthy sheriff it is clear that the Home Office employed a dissecting-room porter and a resurrectionist to assist in carrying out the sentence upon the Thistlewood gang. Mr. William Adams, F.R.C.S., has supplied information which, taken in conjunction with that afforded by the replies of Mr. Parkins to Wakle/s letter of September 21st, 1820, confirms the rumour, prevalent at the time, that the Government's aide de camp on the gruesome occasion was " Tom Parker of Graingers'." Mr. Adams says that suspicion fell not only upon Wakley but upon his late instructor in anatomy, Edward Grainger, who was compelled to make a public denial. " The man," Mr. Adams writes, " who really did cut off the heads I have no doubt was a man well known as 'Tom Parker,' Grainger's head dissecting-room porter. This man was a celebrated ' resurrec- tionist.' He told me he once took fburteen bodies out of Old St. Pancras churchyard in the night. " That he possessed the requisite skill is proved by what I myself saw. In the year 1842 I was appointed Curator of the Museum and Demonstrator of Morbid Anatomy at St, Thomas's Hospital, and in that year we bought Grainger's School, appointed Grainger lecturer in A Baffled Beadle 49 physiology, and made other important changes. With Grainger we took several other well-known characters of the old school, and Tom Parker became my chief dead-house assistant. In 1843 I found that the museum was very short of separated bones of the skull, and I asked Tom to look out for any favourable opportunities. A young woman about eighteen years of age threw herself over Waterloo Bridge and died at the hospital. Tom said her head was just the thing I wanted, and, when we were alone after the post-mortem, he said : ' Now I should like to show you the secret of cutting off a head.' The knife, he said, would never do it, but there was a dodge in wrenching through the ligaments by twisting the head violently first to the right and then to the left after all the soft parts had been cut through. This he demonstrated on the spot by putting the girl on the floor, then raising the trunk and firmly grasping it between his knees, when he made the cut in front, sloping the knife towards the occipital articula- tion, and then the cut behind with the same slope of the knife. Then the violent wrench and the head came off. Tom was generally accused of being the man on the scaffold, and never denied it, but he never confessed it even to myself, next to Grainger his best friend. " The sequel to Tom Parker's case of decapitation was remarkable. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo-de-se, and the woman was buried in unconsecrated ground close to the churchyard of St. Thomas's Hospital. The beadle of the parish and a few others were at the grave, and the beadle said his duty was to see that the body was in the coffin. This, of course, Tom Parker resisted, and a few others that were at the grave ; but the beadle got his pickaxe' and forced open the coffin, when it was found that there was no head. Then the people adjourned to the public-house close by and Tom ran off to the hospital, put the head in his pocket-handkerchief, and went back to the grave and put the head on with a little sawdust over the neck. Tom Parker then went down to the public-house and faced the mob. Tom made a speech and said : ' Now this 'eer beadle says the woman was brought from St. Thomas's Hospital without her head. Now I mean to say that the beadle is drunk, and I insist that all the people here come to the grave and see for themselves.' Away the crowd went, and the woman, sure enough, had a head on, and he turned the tables upon the beadle.'' It is not really of much consequence who was the actual assistant at the Thistlewood executions, but, as a matter of historical probability, the exploit rests with Tom Parker. It had evidently got abroad somehow that the Graingers' School was represented on the scaffold, some gossip from the dis- secting-room having oozed out. Grainger himself was accused D 50 The Modesty of Tom Parker and Wakley, an enthusiastic student, as we have already seen, of the Webb Street School, shared the same ill-fortune. The Government probably applied to Edward Grainger for assistance in a practical difficulty. The authorities could not find a man capable of performing the decapitations with dexterity, and Grainger nominated his dissecting-room porter. Is it a very wild fancy to imagine Tom Parker first waxing wise and important when rumour was busy with the name of the masked man, and allowing that, an' he would he could a tale unfold, and then shirking the con- fession he half desired to make and thrusting what would have seemed fame in his eyes upon his employers ? The Effects of the Assault 51 CHAPTER VI [1820-1821] The Effects of the Assault — The Attitude of the Hope Fire Assur- ance Company — Mr. William Gardiner's Pamphlet — Sworn Testi- mony of Eye-witnesses. Wakley's bodily condition would seem to have been pessimistically described by the " Morning Chronicle," as he was able on the morning following the injury to go to Kensington, where his wife was staying with certain mem- bers of her family. This he did that he should be the first person to inform her that her husband was out of danger, while breaking to her the news that their home was de- stroyed. His comparatively light escape was due to no want of will on the part of his assailant or assailants, but to the fortunate accident of his having placed a bandage round his head and receiving upon that protective material the blow that was so deadly in intent. That he was stunned by the blow was also fortunate, as it prevented further injuries to his person from being inflicted with the vigour that would have inspired them had they been dealt out to a struggling man capable of resistance and of calling for help. Then it would have been necessary for the assailants to silence him at all risks ; but as he lay inanimate and to all appearance dead the stabs and kicks were not given with whole-hearted fervour. It requires more than ordinary callous determina- tion to finish off an unresisting foe, and the further attacks of the ruffians, after the first stunning blow, seem to have been perfunctory. But if his bodily ills were not as severe as first appeared, the shock that he had received . mentally 52 Nervous Shock was unmistakable. Of nothing are we more assured con- cerning Wakley than that his personal courage was great. Strong, hardy, healthy, and athletic, he was by physique and temperament the very type of the man to whom nervous terror should never come. Yet it came now, and came in exacerbated form. He seems to have been thrown off his balance by the horror of the attack, by the malignity that had dictated it, and by the dread lest his foes should even now not be satisfied, but should be following him up with intent to carry out their extreme threats. His be- haviour when beneath the roof of his opposite neighbour, Mr. Samuel Parker, whose account of the night's work has been preserved in the form of an affidavit, had every dis- tinguishing mark of real and very present fear. He was wild, excited, and stupid by turns. Home gone, practice gone, property gone, and all in a few brief moments ; while he had still to dread for himself and perhaps for his young wife that the blind savagery that had instigated the attack on his life might repeat itself at any moment. He was for a short time at the very limits of his self-control, which is a more terrible plight for a strong, usually calm, and reticent man than for pliable and hysterical subjects. Undoubtedly at this period he wanted cool and keen-sighted friends badly, for without dispassionate advice his grief, anger, and fear might have prompted him to actions that later he would have regretted. Such friends he found in his solicitors, Messrs. Pownall and Fairthorne, and in Mr. Matthew Lofty, who was then assisting in the firm, and shortly afterwards became a partner.* The first step to be taken was clearly to give notice to the fire assurance company of the loss that had been sus- tained. This having been done the Hope Fire Assurance * Seventy -five years ago Thomas Wakley applied to this firm for legal assistance, one of the then partners being his cousin. They advised him then, and their descendants continued to advise him through a career in which lawyers' help was often necessary ; and the same firm (now Messrs. Potter, Sandford, and Kilvington) to this day remain the legal advisers of the " Lancet," If Fama per Urbes 53 Company refused to pay, and intimated their intention of resisting the claim. Messrs. Pownall and Fairthorne at once took the matter up and advised Wakley to enforce the whole claim, and not to hear of compromise, for they saw that in such a course lay his only chance of public rehabili- tation. Nothing definite was alleged against him, but the action of the company could have but one interpretation : it was intended to intimate that he was responsible for his own misfortunes. So a writ was issued against the directors with a claim for the total amount insured. Unfortunately for the plaintiff their reluctance to pay leaked out, and forthwith rumour stalked through the city in true Virgilian style. Some said that Wakley had burned down his own house. These ridiculed the idea that he was the victim of a plot on the part of the Thistlewood gang to assassinate him. Others spread the story that he had been the masked man on the scaffold at the execution of Thistlewood and his co- conspirators, furnishing by their imaginings an excellent motive for the incendiary attack that other gossips found never to have taken place. Wakley's name was in all men's mouths associated with one lie or the other. Undoubtedly he had enemies, for the persistent manner in which he was maligned will allow of no other interpretation, but their motives and their persons remain equally unknown. At this juncture a cei^tain Mr. William Gardiner came to his aid. Gardiner was a journalist, a teacher of elocution, and a queer enthusiast with a passion for justice and a senti- mental desire to see it done quickly to all his fellow-citizens. Hearing the rumours that were busy against Wakley, and concluding that they were wholly and cruelly untrue, he wrote to offer his assistance in the preparation for public circulation of a statement of all the events connected with the assault and the fire. He had a relative in the publish- ing trade, which made it easier for him to ensure the prompt issue of such a work. The offer was gratefully accepted by Wakley, who saw in it a very fortunate supplementing of the legal proceedings that had been instituted. For although no unnecessary delay was to take place in the prosecution 54 Mr. William Gardiner's Pamphlet of the recalcitrant company, some lapse of time there was bound to be before a jury's verdict would silence his slanderers, and during that time the uncontradicted rumours grew daily in virulence and wildness. Gardiner was a prompt man. Immediately upon receiving Wakley's letter approving of the idea he set to work, and the result was the publication at the end of September, 1820, of a pamphlet entitled "Facts relative to the Late Fire and Attempt to Murder Mr. Wakley in Argyll Street, by William Gardiner, author of Wortley, A New System of Shorthand, Poems, &c., London : T. Gardiner and Son, Princes Street, Cavendish Square ; Sherwood, Neeley, and Jones, Paternoster Row ; and sold by all other booksellers. 1820. Price is." The pamphlet had an astonishing fore-word from the author's pen moulded on the style of the reforming divines. " That unglutted fiend," he said in respect of scandal, "whose appetite unsatiated with the destruction of a man's property must riot on his peace, and rifle the flower reputation from his brow." And again : "The viper Slander, whose venomed shape is matured in human distress, has lifted her hideous head, and, flattered by the misery of its victim, charges him with being the incendiary in order to compleat the sacrifice of his ruin." He concluded as follows : " The author, who well knows the purity of the sufferer's heart, contrary to his own wishes, for he, proudly feeling the mens conscia recti like the eagle on the rock, smiles at the malice of the storm, has, with the consent of his other friends, collected all the known facts of this horrible but mysterious transaction. He has principally sought the testimony of gentlemen whose rank in life lifts them above the suspicion of partiality. The task is completed without exaggeration or extortion, it is delivered fairly as received) and the public have only to peruse the same to rectify the delusion caused by the rapid and foul propagation of slander." Following upon his enthusiastic preface Gardiner printed sworn statements as to the events of the night from Wakley himself and from all the eye-witnesses whose evidence he Numerous Affidavits 55 could obtain. He received affidavits from Mr. George Thompson, the proprietor of Wakley's house, No. 5, Argyll Street, and occupier of No. 6, Argyll Street, which stood between Lord Aberdeen's house and Wakley's ; from Mr. Samuel Parker and Mr. Robert Campbell, the occupants respectively of 35 and 36, Argyll Street, the houses directly opposite Wakley's ; from Mr. Campbell's butler ; from Wakley's own servants ; from the servants at No. 9, Argyll Street ; from the medical men who attended Wakley for his wounds ; and from Mr. Fairth(.)rne and Mr. Matthew Lofty, referred to before. Wakley's deposition is given below in full. It is a history of the night's occurrences written out by himself at the time, and is nearly identical in many respects with the account given in the " Morning Chronicle." DEPOSITION OF MR. WAKLEY RESPECTING THE MUR- DEROUS ATTACK MADE UPON HIM#ON THE NIGHT OF THE 26TH OF AUGUST LAST. {Printed in Gardiner's Pamphlet^ Having applied two leeches to my temples in consequence of dim- ness of sight, and the leeches not readily taldng, I was kept up till the late period of half-after 12 o'clock. About this time, when preparing for bed, I heard a knocking at the front door, upon which I lighted the candle in my bed candle-stick, placed it on the seat in the passage, and at the same time took out of it the key of the door, which I then unlocked and unbolted, demanding " Who is there ? " A person answered, " I am come, sir, from Mr. Ivatts of Gerard's Hall, who is very ' ill, and wishes you to go immediately to see him.'" Having attended to Mr. Ivatts repeatedly for the last five * years I had no apprehension of danger, consequently took off the door-chain and let the man into the passage. I replied to him that " I was very sorry I could not go to see Mr. Ivatts then, being myself very unwell, but would endeavour to do so in the morning." Upon this the person said, " If your servants are not gone to bed, sir, I should be glad with a glass of something to drink, having walked very fast to your house." I told him " My servants are gone to bed, but I will get you something * It was not unusual in those days for an unqualified man to have regular patients. Wakley had no surgical diploma in 1815, but he had been for three years apprenticed to medical men, and had also resided with an apothecary. 56 Wakley's Deposition myself," asking him which he preferred, beer or cider ? Choosing the latter, I took the candle from the seat in the passage (the place being sufficiently lighted for the man's accommodation by the candles in the parlour, as the door was open) and went into the dining-room to the cupboard for the key of the cider. I then went down to the kitchen to get a jug ; but, not finding one, returned to the footman's pantry, where, having obtained it, I proceeded to the cellar in the back court or area and drew the cider. On my return into the passage, between the clock and the court door, and near to the foot of the stairs, I was knocked down by a blow from behind upon the upper part of the right side of my head. Whilst on the ground I received several kicks on diiferent parts of my body, and believe that I heard voices near me, but to this I cannot swear, being at the time in such a stupefied state. When on the ground I also had inflicted on my chest two slight stabs. I cannot say how long I remained in a state of insensibility, but at length got sufficiently recovered to find that I was enveloped in flames and a suffocating smoke. I attempted to stand, but was prevented from weakness. I then crawled from the horrible danger that sur- rounded me into the back kitchen, where I again relapsed into a state of torpor, but presently awoke, and perceived with horror through the skylight flames issuing from all the back windows of the house. I advanced a few steps, but found in the back court a great quantity of burning pieces of wood, so by this way I had no hope of escape. The heat was intense and the smoke insufferable. My situation cannot be described ; it was the very climax of horror. In my delirium I ran to the pump in order to prevent the lead which was above me from melting, as I feared it would do so, and fall in a fluid state upon my head ; but finding myself nearly suffocated I miraculously hit upon the expedient of getting on a fire-screen, by which means I was enabled to get hold of a beam under the skylight. I then broke the glass and got through, passed over the leads and fence-wall between Mr. Thompson's house and mine, and went from thence into Mr. T.'s residence. About five weeks subsequent to my marriage I received an anonymous letter stating that my house would be burnt within a month, and that jealousy was the cause. About three months after the first a second letter was conveyed to me. It said, " You are not yet forgotten ; your house will yet be burnt and you assassinated." The person who called was a dark-complexioned man about 5 feet 8 inches in height, with black hair growing low upon his forehead, and habited in a black coat and waist- coat, with a coloured neck handkerchief tied high over his chin, as if he had a sore throat. (Signed) THOMAS WAKLEY. N.B. — From what has transpired since the fire I have every reason to suppose from the deposition of Mr. Green's servants th3,t this attack Mr. George Thompson's Deposition 57 was made on me by some abandoned wretches who imagined I had beheaded the traitors, and that the party had no connexion with the writer of the anonymous letters. Of the remaining depositions save in two cases only the gist need be given, for the writers are a Httle voluminous, and the excellent Gardiner — not a judge summing-up but an advocate pleading — has evidently not exercised any super- vision over them. The various persons deposed to what they thought important, and he has reproduced their state- ments exactly as they swore to them, which was by far the safest and most honest procedure. Mr. George Thompson, Wakley's neighbour and landlord, confirmed his tenant's statements in every detail where the facts had come under his observation. DEPOSITION OF GEORGE THOMPSON, ESQ., FREEHOLDER AND PROPRIETOR OF MR. WAKLEY'S HOUSE, NO. 6,. ARGYLL STREET, AND LIVING AT NO. 5, SAME STREET. (Printed in Gardiner's Pamphlet.) I, George Thompson, being alarmed by the watchman's knocking at the door between one and two o'clock on Sunday morning, the 27th August last, drest myself with precipitation and ran into the street, when I perceived Mr. Wakley's house, the premises adjoining mine, to be on fire and the front door open. When I immediately returned to my own house to endeavour to preserve my property, and exclaimed to Mrs. Thompson, " I am afraid poor Mr. and Mrs. Wakley cannot escape.'' About three-quarters of an hour after this period I perceived Mr. Wakley at my parlour door in the passage in a state of exhaustion, covered with blood and dirt, whom I led into the room and gave some wine and water, which seemed a little to recover him, for he appeared as one lost in misery and distraction. Mr. Parker, of 35 in the same street, being with me to assist in the removal of my furniture, I ex- claimed, " For God's sake, Mr. Parker, take care of Mr. Wakley and never mind my house." They both then got over to Mr. Parker's house, where Mr. Wakley was put to bed. The deponent then called on Dr. Luke, requesting him to go to Mr. Parker's house and see what assistance he could render Mr. Wakley. About four o'clock in the morning, when the roof of Mr. Wakley's house had fallen in and I was convinced my premises were safe, I went over to Mr. Parker's to 58 Mr. Samuel Parker's Deposition inquire after Mr. Wakley, who then informed me that he had been knocked down at the bottom of his own kitchen-stairs by some person or persons unknown, and when recovered from the effects of the blow, and finding himself surrounded by flames, he crawled into the back kitchen and made his escape through the skylight to the yard, and climbed over the fence-wall that divided our premises and entered into my house about the time I found him. On my return from Mr. Parker's I examined the skylight on Mr. Wakley's premises and found it broken exactly as he had described it, and, further, the marks of his feet and knees were visible on the side of the fence-wall, where he had crawled down on my premises. (Signed) GEORGE THOMPSON, No. 6, Argyll Street. (Witness) Mary Hart, September 23rd, 1820. The deposition of Mr. Samuel Parker, Wakley's opposite neighbour, speaks to the pitiable plight in which Wakley appeared to be, both mentally and physically, when he was brought to No. 35, Argyll Street. He details the curious incident of the robbery from Wakley of his watch as he was being helped across the road, this being the occurrence to which Sheriff Parkins referred in his letter to Wakley con- cerning the Thistlewood executions. DEPOSITION OF SAMUEL PARKER, ESQ., 35, ARGYLL STREET. {Printed in Gardiner's Pamphlet.) About half-past one o'clock on the Sunday morning, the Z7th August last, I was awakened by the springing of the watchman's rattle, a loud knocking at my door, and the cry of fire. On looking out of my window the chimneys of Mr. Wakley's house were smoking. Before I had dressed the flames gushed out of the two parlour windows, and shortly after at the street-door. I went immediately over to Mr. Thompson's, next door to Mr. Wakley's, to assist him in securing the valuable part of his property ; when this was nearly effected I was informed that Mr. Wakley had not been seen, and had most probably perished. I accompanied Mr. Thompson, jun., to the top of his house. We called out there at all the windows and the upper back-leads in hopes of Mr. Wakley hearing us. When we descended I parted from Mr. Thompson, jun., in the back passage of his father's house, and I found A Second Robbery 59 Mr. Wakley, 1 believe, supported by Mr. Thompson, sen. Mr. T. requested me to take care of him and pay no further regard to his property. Mr. Wakley was in a most dreadful state ; his senses were obviously deranged, and the horror and dread he exhibited, imagining all around him to be the murderers, were excessive. He had shiver- ings, or rather tremblings, apparently the effect of mental horror, as they were accompanied with gestures and clenching of his hands which caused me to hold him iirmly, lest I should suffer violence ; a profuse perspiration covered his face and he showed symptoms of great agony. His hands, face, shirt, and cravat were much covered with blood and dirt, and the blood gushed from his left ear and trickled down his neck. One of Mr. Thompson's servants brought some water, which he drank greedily, and with great difficulty I restrained him from drinking of it too copiously. I then washed his face and hands, when he became more composed. On repeated questions as to the cause of his present state his only answer was, " It is murder, sir," and, in great horror and mental suffering, added, " I will tell you all soon." He continually asked, " Am I safe ; where am I ? " Mr. Wakley now became more calm, but being greatly annoyed by persons passing and repassing I determined to take him over to my house ; after going down the street, just at my door we were surrounded by a gang of pickpockets, one of whom Mr. Wakley saw pull his watch from his pocket, who, enraged at this act of villainy, collared the thief, who offered no resistance, and the officers coming up they took him from his grasp. I did not believe Mr. Wakley had lost anything and supposed his expressions had pro- ceeded from a return of his insanity ; but upon my servant finding the watch upon the ground, which the thief had dropped, my fears were happily removed. This last effort quite overcame him, and he fell down exhausted on my hall seat ; I gave him some more water and loosened his neckcloth, when a medical gentleman came to my relief and requested him to be put to bed ; on the stairs he was seized with violent vomitings, and with great difficulty we got him to a chamber, where we put him to bed. Mr. Wakley's body was covered with numerous bruises or kicks, and I discovered two stabs, one on his chest and the other on his side ; he recollected nothing of these, but expressed great horror at the remembrance of the kicks on his body and stomach. His sickness again returned, and was perhaps increased by the unfortunate circumstance of my servant, by mistake, having given him a cup of lamp oil instead of water, which Mr. Wakley drank off, and a little after complained the water was oily. Dr. Luke, who shortly after visited him, sent him a bottle of cider, which together with some medicine administered by Dr. Gates greatly relieved him. Both these gentlemen requested no person should be admitted into his chamber ; but Mr. W.'s man-servant, who had heard his master was at Parker's, did go in, when his expressions of joy and gratitude for his 6o. A Planned Burglary ? master's safety were for some time too powerful for Mr. Wakley'S feelings. It was about nine in the morning before Mr. W. seemed inclined to sleep, when I told him I should leave the room in hopes he could compose himself, but unknown to him I remained, judging it not right to leave him in such a state; he fell asleep, but it was agitated and broken, and he frequently exclaimed, in great agony of mind, " Save me from them, save me from them." Dr. Luke pro- mised in the morning to take Mr. W., if he were able to go, in his carriage to Kensington, to Mrs. W., as Mr. Wakley was fearful what the consequences might be if she heard the dismal intelligence except from his own lips ; myself and Dr. Luke accompanied him thither in the afternoon. (Signed) SAMUEL PARKER. (Witness) Charles Parker. DaUd the 23rd September, 1820. To the other depositions contained in Mr. Gardiner's pamphlet only the briefest reference need be made. Wakley's servants deposed to the fact that being awakened by the noise of the watchman giving the alarm they called out to their master and obtained no response. The housekeeper said that she found the front door unfastened, bearing out Wakley's statement that he had unlocked and unbolted it to admit the unknown bearer of the lying message — for there proved to be nothing whatever the matter with Mr. Ivatts of Gerard's Hall, who had sent no message to Wakley. Mr. Campbell, who lived opposite, and his butler, both of whom were aroused by the noise without, saw a man with a bundle under his arm run down the street into Argyll Place. The butler, who was earlier on the scene, was able to see that the man had emerged from No. 5, while he also noticed a hackney coach waiting in the street, the driver being ap- parently unperturbed at the conflagration which had by that time taken hold of the premises. These depositions almost established the theory of a planned robbery. The servants at No. 9, Argyll Street deposed to having heard from their area steps a group of three men, who were, like themselves, watching the fire, break out into frequent expletives signifying joy at the sight of the flames and hatred of Wakley. Their Medical Evidence 6i exact and ferocious expressions were deposed to on oath, and, if they did not proceed from the mouths of the guilty ruffians, still served to corroborate the undoubted fact that Wakley was a bitterly hated man by a certain set of un- principled fellows. The medical evidence was also in support of Wakley's statement. Dr. Luke referred Mr. Gardiner to the account in the " Morning Chronicle " (which has been quoted above and which, with some trifling discre- pancies, tallies entirely with Wakley's deposition) "for all facts that came to his knowledge." Mr. Gates testified to the violence of the assault that had been made. Mr. Fairthorne and Mr. Lofty deposed to the facts that Wakley had received anonymous letters threatening to burn down his house, and that they advised him to increase the insurance upon the premises and contents, which with reluctance he consented to do. 62 Wakley v. Barron CHAPTER VII [1821-1823] The Action against the Hope Fire Assurance Company : Statement of Wakley's Claim — Clothes and Furniture in the Twenties — Pay- ment in Full of Wakley's Demands — Effects on his Future of the Outrages in Argyll Street — An Unsettled Period — The Friendship of William Cobbett — The Inception of the " Lancet." On June 21st, 182 1, the trial of the action of Wakley v. Barron and others, being an action to enforce payment of a claim for loss by fire upon a policy underwritten by the defendants in their capacity of directors of the Hope Fire Assurance Company, was commenced in the Court of King's Bench before Lord Chief Justice Abbott, afterwards Lord Tenterden. Wakley's claim in detail was set out under the following heads : Household goods, linen, wearing apparel, wines and liquors, printed books, and plate in his dwelling- house, ;£990 ; fixtures, ^£60 ; china and glass, ;^i5o — a total sum of ;^i20o. Mr. Denman (afterwards Lord Chief Justice Denman), Mr. Curwood, and Mr. Adolphus were counsel for the plaintiff, while Mr. Marryat, Mr. Gurney, and Mr. F. Pollock (afterwards Chief Baron Pollock) were entrusted with the defence. Mr. Denman opened the case on the lines indicated by the depositions contained in Gardiner's pamphlet. He pointed out that the plaintiff was a young and successful man, the son of one wealthy man and the son-in-law of another, so that he could not be reasonably supposed to be in urgent want of ready money. Yet no other motive could have been present, supposing him to have burned down his own house, for with his house and surgery went not only his practice but goods to the extent Mr. Denman's Opening 63 of ;£400 in excess of the sum for which he was insured — the smallest estimate of Wakley's loss being ;^i6oo, while the terms of his policy only allowed him to claim ;^i2oo. Counsel explained the doubling of the sum insured — which until May, 1820, had been only ;£6oo — at so short a period before the fire by pointing out that the increase was due to his client's marriage. Just before that event Wakley had pur- chased furniture, plate, and china, and largely increased his wardrobe, while his wife had brought with her a great quantity of household linen, clothes, and other personal effects. Mr. Denman then read Wakley's affidavit as to what had occurred on the evening of the fire, which was practically identical with his deposition in Gardiner's pamphlet. He concluded his opening speech, which was recognised in legal circles at the time as a convincing piece of pleading, by saying that this affidavit, extraordinary as many of its details must appear, could not have been in- vented by the plaintiff for any motive ; therefore the jury should receive it as a statement of the facts. The defend- ants, as trustees for others, must not be " discommended " for resisting the plaintiff's claim until the transaction was fairly and candidly sifted to the bottom. As, however, he was able to prove every word of his opening statement he anticipated with confidence a verdict in his client's favour. Mr. George Thompson, Mr. Samuel Parker, and Wakley's two servants were then called. Their evidence was prac- tically in accoi'd with their depositions in Gardiner's pamphlet, and remained unshaken upon cross-examination. It should be remembered that the plaintiff himself in the year 1821 was not able to go into the witness-box on his own behalf, otherwise this elaborate support of Wakley's affidavit would not perhaps have been needed. Three very important witnesses were then called. Mr. Joseph Ashelford, an upholsterer, swore that the value of •the furniture in 5, Argyll Street, a house, by the way, with a rental of ;£i40, was £TiS. This does not seem a dispropor- tionate sum when it is remembered that a rental of ;^i4o in those days would be equivalent to one of ;^3oo now, that 64 Wakley's Comfortable Circumstances the house was by no means small, and that much of its furniture had been purchased with the view of fitting it out for the reception of a bride — a period when some lavishness of expenditure is the universal rule. Mr. Samuel Malleson, from whom Wakley purchased the practice in Argyll Street and certain furniture, testified to the fact that the practice, when he was obliged through ill-health to sell it, was worth about ;^7oo per annum. He had actually received £()()o during the year 1818, his last year in full work and when he was already failing in health, this sum being exclusive of book debts. During the first seven months of 1819, the seven months preceding the transfer of the practice to Wakley, ;^56o had been received. Archdeacon WooUaston, the previous tenant of 5, Argyll Street, testified, that he had sold certain furniture in Argyll Street for ;£3oo to the plaintiff. Mr. Goodchild, the plaintiff's father-in-law, proved that he had given his daughter a trousseau of the value of ;^3oo on her marriage. Certain patients were called to prove that Wakley had a good practice, as good as, or better than, his predecessor's connexion, and could have been in no want of ready money as they actually were his debtors for attendances the accounts for which had not been rendered to them. A few of his personal friends and acquaintances testified to the fact that the house was hand- somely furnished, and that marked additions to its contents were made at the time of the marriage. There was, in fact, general evidence that the young couple had started house- keeping with a profusion of plate, glass, and linen in a comfortable, and even luxurious, home. A statement was then made showing that the plaintiff had lost over ;£i6oo in goods, vouchers for ;£io5o being forth- coming. The prices of some of the goods, as valued for Wakley by his solicitors, make curious reading nowadays, and certain of the articles of attire take us straight back to the heroes and heroines of " Emma " or " Pride and Preju- dice." A handsome 6ft. by 7ft. bedstead with mahogany carved and panelled feet, pillars, and brass castors ; hand- some chintz furniture with French draperies, lined with pink Furniture in 1820 65 silk fringe, &c., new {£^'j 2s. i id.), give an old-world flavour to the catalogue ; and this sumptuous couch had further attached to it a straw palliasse {£2 los.), a brocaded wool mattress in a brown holland case, ticked border (£6 6s.), and a prime goose-feather bed in a bordered tick and bolster and two pillows {£16 i6s.). Seventy pounds in all for the bed in the front bedroom ! Ten imitation rosewood cane-seat chairs with brass ornaments (;£i2 los.) and ten horsehair cushions the same {£^ los.), make us shudder a little for the prevalent taste in drawing-room upholstery ; but a handsome polished steel fender and fire-irons {£x2 12s.) remind us that if our ancestors paid heavily for the equipment of their fire-places they obtained in return beautiful and lasting metal-work. A dozen forks and spoons priced at 28 guineas serve to remind us that silver was of account in those days, but four silver candlesticks at £1^ i6s. might be a bargain at the price at the present moment, so beautiful was some of the more elaborate Georgian- plate. The list of books that were burnt is, interesting, as showing the bent of their owners' minds and also the fashion of the day with regard to gift-books. To Mrs. Wakley must be attributed a distinct taste for verse, for it was assuredly she who sustained the loss of Bloomfield's, Campbell's, Parnell's, Akenside's, Rowe's, Montgomery's, Shenstone's, Collins's, and " A Lady's " poems. The poems of Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, and Keats were probably her husband's, as certainly were " The Automaton Chess Games," " The Chess-player," " The Letters of Junius," Count Volney's " Ruins," the works of Cicero, and " The Castle of Otranto." Wakley's medical library was a large one for the time, for in 1820 there were not special mono- graphs by numerous authors on every subject. He seems to have possessed many of the standard medical works of the day, and the total value of books destroyed by the fire was a little over ;£ioo. The wardrobe of the young couple was extensive. Wakley, who was all his life from youth upward a remarkably well-dressed man, had twenty pairs of trousers of various sorts, including nankeens and Russian ducks ; and among other quaint articles of attire whose loss he 66 Extensive Wardrobes laments are six pairs of black silk gloves, eight purple silk handkerchiefs and seven green silk ! Mrs. Wakley's clothes were on a still more lavish scale. We find enumerated thirty-three dresses, lingerie in profusion, and quantities of lace, ribbons, shawls, and kerchiefs. A long embroidered white scarf is the identical article of attire without which the young woman in the steel frontispiece to the gift-books of the day was never depicted, but what a pair of purple morocco boots were like imagination fails to tell. Nor can we now clearly understand why the fantastic foot-gear should be only 12s. and the reasonable wrap £'j los. The value of Wakley's clothes is set down in the statement of claim as ;^i44 7s. 6d. and that of his wife's at £'i^(> 17s. The ;^i6oo, which the plaintiff claimed to have lost, was made up in the following way : — Furniture £,TiS ^s. iid. ; plate, ;^i68 IDS. 6d. ; linen, j^ioi us. ; books, £io^ y. 6d. ; china, and glass, ;^i63 14s. 2d. ; Wakley's wardrobe, £1^ Js. 6d. ; and Mrs. Wakley's wardrobe, ;£346 17s. ; making in all a total of £i76/\. 12s. yd. From this ;^ioo was deducted as the estimated value of the salvage. None of the plaintiff's witnesses were seriously cross-examined, and hardly an attempt was made to shake the jury's confidence in either their good faith or veracity. The line of the defence was that the claim was a fraud, and that goods to the value specified had not been lost ; but the suggestion that the house had been fired by any of its inhabitants was not hinted at. As a matter of fact this silly rumour had been so overwhelmingly refuted by Gardiner's pamphlet that the Hope Fire Assurance Company did not dare to put it forward in court, though they had used it as an argument wherewith to intimidate Wakley. The first witness for the defendant was a watchman, who stated that he was at the door of the house when the servants came out, and that he heard the bolt being withdrawn before the door was opened. This evidence was meant to contradict Wakley's story that he had opened the door to a false messenger from Gerard's Hall, and that being struck down at once he lay unconscious and could not have closed it The Case for the Assurance Company 67 again. It would also to a certain extent have disproved the theory that some of the property described by Wakley as having been in the house had been removed by a robber or robbers. The tendency of this evidence, so directly at variance with Wakley's statement and the sworn testimony of four of his witnesses — namely, his two servants and Mr. Thompson and Mr. Parker — was to incriminate the servants, a side issue which, in view of the fact that they bore excellent characters and were still in Wakley's service, was pursued no further. The result of the evidence was to convict the watchman of not having watched. A Bow Street officer deposed to having taken down from Wakley's mouth a statement of the events of the night, and to having since received the blood-stained clothes that the plaintiff was wearing at the time of his escape from the burning house. The witness's examination was conducted with the assistance of a dummy attired in Wakley's clothes, the intent being to show that the cuts in the shirt, coat, and waistcoat did not tally with the cuts in the skin ; but the evidence broke down under cross-examination. The only part of the Bow Street officer's testimony that really remained unrebutted was a repetition of Wakley's sworn statement, a more remarkable case of a witness being called to curse and remaining to bless not being often seen. The head fireman of the Hope Fire Assurance Company and one of the appraisers testified that they were unable to find traces of certain properties which were alleged in the plaintiff's statement of claim to have been present in the house at the time of the fire and which were from their nature more or less imperishable, and insinuated that some of the articles found had been overcharged against the company. Dr. Luke, who saw Wakley after he had been conveyed across Argyll Street, deposed that the wounds could not have bled much, and would not have accounted for all the discolora- tion on his shirt. Some evidence as to the value of Mr. Samuel Malleson's furniture was also given by the owner of a house in Mill Street, where Malleson had resided while in practice, and whence certain of his furniture was transferred 68 The Verdict to Argyll Street when Wakley bought the practice. It appeared that a man had rented the house after Malleson had left, and that he, too, in his turn had gone, but had omitted to pay the rent. The owner of the house had therefore distrained, and the broker through whom the distraint was made swore that he could only find ;^2o worth of furniture in the house. As it turned out, however, on cross-examination that the distraint was made after Wakley had removed some or all of the goods that he had bought into his new house, the evidence went for less than nothing. Mr. Parker was then recalled, and proved that the plaintiff's hands were severely cut when he was brought into the house, and that the haemorrhage from these cuts might easily have caused the excessive staining of the shirt that puzzled Dr. Luke ; in making which point he incident- ally confirmed Wakley's story that he had been compelled to break his way out of the burning building through a sky- light. ^he Lord Chief Justice summed up entirely in Wakley's favour, and the jury, after a delay of under half-an-hour, found for the plaintiff, damages ;^i2oo, or the full amount that he was able to claim under the terms of his policy. He also obtained his costs, which amounted to a sum of ;£28i xos., and further costs not covered by that sum were defrayed by public subscription, to which one, at least, of the jurymen subscribed, as well as the son of one of the auditors of the Hope Fire Assurance Company,* Such was the satisfactory termination of a trial upon the issue of which hung the reputation and fortune of Thomas * The " Record " in this action, consisting of many skins of parch- ment, on the back of the last of which was endorsed the " Postea," signed by the proper officer of the court, and constituting the official statement of the result of the trial, has been placed at the author's disposal by Messrs. Potter, Sandford and Kilvington. Mr. Serjeant Ballantyne, in " Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life," states that Wakley's damages were not paid, and that his action was against the County Fire Office. Each statement is completely inaccurate. The Effects of the Outrages 69 Wakley. He was paid in full, his name was cleared of the aspersions that had been showered upon it, while the public subscription to meet such of his costs as would otherwise have fallen upon himself constituted a public apology for the wrong that had been done him by rumour. But if the actual proceedings were now stayed, if his pecuniary loss was reduced to a small sum and his good repute before all men restored to him, the effects of the terrible experiences of the past ten months yet remained. And not only did they remain, but they changed the tenour of his life, forming the sharp stimulus that pricked him from the regular routine of the life of a general practitioner into a course of more free and individual assertion. He had been personally attacked, he had won, and a spirit of combat had been roused. During his time of trial he had found his friends staunch and his professional brethren ready to repudiate for him the hard and evil things that were said of him. But when the strife of battle was over it left him an unsettled man, and though there was nothing shiftless about his hesitation to embark again in private practice, surely there was nothing hard to comprehend. He had prepared all things to Hve the life of a general practitioner of medicine. He had chosen his locality, and furnished his house to that end. Through no fault of his own the house had been destroyed, while ten months' neglect of his practice had severed his connexion with his patients. It was necessary for him to start entirely afresh, and his reluctance was only natural. What had been done a few months ago with the ardent solicitude of a young husband had now to be done over again by a disappointed man, who, though successful in obtaining his rights in a law court, had none the less been treated with physical and moral savagery, and had lain under undeserved stigma at the moment when he was most in need of sympathy. He was some months in settling down, during which time his letters were dated from such different parts of London as Kentish Town, Hatton Garden, and Little Chelsea, which was a colloquial name for the southern part of Brompton. He was at this time a poor 70 Friendship with William Cobbett man. He had little or no income. It is true he had ;^i2oo, but it was necessary that he should reserve that sum, or as much of it as he was able, with a view to purchase a new practice and furnish another home. And in taking these steps he had more than ordinary reasons to be cautious. His father-in-law was a generous man and had stood by Wakley in his troubles well, but he was none the less a business man, and he resented the disappearance of the Argyll Street practice. He was just enough not to actually blame his son-in-law for the results of pure misfortune, but an able-bodied man out of employ was a sight that jan-ed on all his commeircial instincts. Relations became strained between them, for which reason Wakley felt that it was necessary that his next start should lead straight to success. Failure would not be condoned a second time. And this feeling of responsibility led to the months of hesitation. It was during this uncomfortable period of his life that Wakley made the acquaintance of, and matured a friendship with a man who was shortly to assist him in starting the work which afterwards became the chief business of his life — the work of medical reform. The link that bovmd William Cobbett and Thomas Wakley together originally was a quaint one. The Cato Street Conspiracy was a subject upon which all the papers in London wrote, and wrote persis- tently, and Wakley's name occurred more than once in the character of a victim to the blind brutality of Thistlewood's followers. Now it happened that William Cobbett, editor of the " Weekly Political Register " and the " Evening Post," and accepted Parliamentary candidate for Coventry, firmly believed that he, too, had been destined to be a victim to this gang. He may himself have felt conscious of what many even among his admirers knew, that his Radicalism was more fervent in expression than thorough-going in policy, and he may have, therefore, suspected that his academic declamations of socialism would be more likely to irritate the mere ruffianly mob than would the declared opposition of a Tory. But for this reason or that Cobbett A Second Start in Practice 71 believed that the Cato Street conspirators had designs upon his life, and his belief, upon which he founded several articles in his evening paper, led him to make himself known to Wakley, a man in the same plight. Cobbett was exactly the man to make an impression upon Wakley, who, though not likely to be a blind follower of any leader, was receptive and ever willing to learn. He was thirty years Wakley's senior, and had a life of chequered experiences behind him, having been gardener, private soldier, tutor in France and the United States, political pamphleteer and refugee, bookseller, and Radical journalist. He was an eloquent propagandist and a practical man in spite of the violent character of some of his political writing. In Cobbett's company Wakley met other joui-nahsts and men of the reforming type, and he saw how instinctively these men turned to pen and ink for the redress of any wrong. The acquaintanceship thus made ripened into a friendship which never waned, and there can be no doubt that Cobbett's friendship and example counted for much in Wakley's reso- lution, so soon now to be taken, that he would set the medical profession aright by publishing wherein it was wrong. What the reform of the political electorate was to Cobbett's pen, the reform of the profession of medicine was to be to the younger man's pen. Two uneventful years had to go by, however, before any vague ideas that might already be in his head took definite shape. During these two years he practised his profession. After desultory work here and there in the localities already mentioned, he at last settled in practice at the north-east corner of Norfolk Street, Strand, where a good opportunity seemed to him to exist for making a lucrative livelihood. The practice was an old-established one, and the income good, but the class of patients was not the same as it had been in Argyll Street, nor was the neighbourhood so pleasant a one for residence. To Wakley these things did not matter so much as they did to his wife. He was satisfied to be doing good work, irrespectively of the class among whom it was done, and to be receiving enough money 72 The Inception of the "Lancet" through his labours to sustain his household. But his wife did not like Norfolk Street or the fact that her husband was keeping a dispensary, and she urged him to leave, and even to discontinue his profession if it were necessary for him to pursue it under such disagreeable surroundings. So in 1823 everything was ripe for the "Lancet." Wakley had gone through the fire of severe trials and had measured himself with big men. As a result he felt that there had grown up within him the capacity to do bigger work than that upon which he was employed. His wife's desires for a change ran side by side with his own inclinations. The abuses that Cobbett and his school were quick to spy out in the body political, but not alwaj's quick to persuade other people to see, were in the case of the medical profession bare to the casual eye. Nepotism was there rampant, ignorance was too often exalted, and pecuniary traffic determined success. The soul of the reformer had always been in Wakley, and to set aright these things he determined to take the field with a weekly newspaper devoted to the interests of the medical pro- fession. The First Number 73 CHAPTER VIII [1823] T/je "Lancet" — Its Purposes and Principles as revealed in the Original Preface — Contents of the First Number — The Promises of the Preface Fulfilled. The first number of the " Lancet " was issued on October 5th, 1823, which was a Sunday. It bore the imprint " Printed and published by G. L. Hutchinson, at the " Lancet " Office, 210, Strand, London, where all communications for the editor are requested to be addressed (post paid). This work is published at an early hour every Saturday morning, and sold by Knight and Lacey, Paternoster Row, and by all booksellers in the United Kingdom." It is a fact significant of the stormy career upon which the new paper at once embarked that the names of the printers and publishers were omitted from the imprints after the second number. The names reappear on the title-page to the second volume, and the connexion of the same agents with the paper is proved to be existent in 1825 by the unpleasant circum- stance for them that they were made defendants in a case shortly to be mentioned and of the gravest importance not only to Wakley but to the literary world — ^the case of Abernethy v. Hutchinson, Knight and Lacey ; but the future defendants obviously did not seek from week to week any share in the notoriety that the " Lancet " rapidly began to enjoy. The editorial office at 210, Strand was a room in the printing establishment of Messrs. Hutchinson and Co., whose premises stood on the south side of the thoroughfare nearly opposite St. Clement Danes' Church, and consequently about fifty yards only from Wakley's private residence 74 An Ingenious and Temperate Programme in Norfolk Street. From this it will be gathered that the true editorial office was Wakley's house, the address at 210, Strand, being only given to preserve for the editor some measure of anonymity. The preface in which Wakley defines with boldness and some ingenuity his intentions in coming before the medical world with a new journal is given below. His boldness is shown in a manner which in these days it is hard to appre- ciate, for the vested interests upon which his prefatory words declared war have so long disappeared fr»m the history of the profession that we can hardly realise that they ever had their monstrous being. . That the great hos- pitals of the metropolis were managed in the interests of a few rather than of the community at large seems to us now ' incredible. Yet so it was. A few persons through interest or purchase obtained the appointments and became at once pledged to dispose of these appointments by similar methods when the time should arrive. The medical pro- fession as a body were wronged by their leaders. They paid for general education and special instruction which they did not obtain ; they were examined under conditions which did not sift the grain from the chaff, so that the general intellectual status was perforce low ; and they had jio voice in the election of the rulers who thus mismanaged their affairs and misappropriated their fees. The sinners, however, sat in high places and it required some boldness in an unknown young man to challenge their time- honoured methods. Wakley's ingenuity is shown by the temperate manner in which the war is declared and the large scope of the policy indicated. Not a word is said in abuse of persons flourishing under a corrupt system. Their words as theorists and their acts as clinicians are to be made public ; if they object it must be for interested reasons. But it is assumed that, being the men of distin- guished light and leading that they should be, they can have no motive for desiring the shelter of the bushel ; while the publicity promised for them is not to satisfy any narrow curiosity, but to benefit the medical profession, and there- The First Preface 75 fore the world at large, by furnishing an opportunity to the rank and file of that profession of remaining in intellectual touch with their leaders. PREFACE TO NO. i, VOLUME I., OF THE "LANCET." {Reprinted in the second edition, but not in subsequent editions.) " It has long been a subject of surprise and regret that in this exten- sive and intelligent community there has not hitherto existed a work which would convey to the Public, and to distant Practitioners as well as to Students in Medicine and Surgery, reports of the Metropolitan Hospital Lectures. " Having for a considerable time past observed the great and increasing inquiries for such information, in a department of science so pre-eminently useful, we have been induced to offer to public notice a work calculated, as we conceive, to supply in the most ample manner whatever is valuable in these important branches of knowledge ; and as the Lectures of Sir Astley Cooper, on the theory and practice of .Surgery, are probably the best of the kind delivered in Europe, we have commenced our undertaking with the introductory address of that distinguished professor given in the theatre at St. Thomas's Hospital on Wednesday evening last. The Course will be rendered complete in subsequent numbers. ' " In addition to Lectures, we propose giving under the head, Medical and Surgical Intelligence, a correct description of all the important Cases that may occur, whether in England or on any part of the civilised Continent. " Although it is not intended to give graphic representations with each Number, yet we have made such arrangements with the most experienced draughtsmen as will enable us occasionally to do so, and in a manner, we trust, calculated to give universal satisfaction. " The great advantage derivable from information of this description will, we hope, be sufficiently obvious to every one in the least degree conversant with medical knowledge ; any arguments therefore to prove these are unnecessary and we content ourselves by merely showing in what directions their utility will prove most active. — To the Medical and Surgical Practitioners of this City whose avocations prevent their personal attendance at the Hospitals — to Country Practitioners whose remoteness from the head-quarters, as it were, of scientific knowledge leaves them almost without the means of ascertaining its progress — to the numerous classes of Students whether here or in distant Univer- sities — to Colonial Practitioners — and, finally, by adding to the stock of ■useful knowledge of every individual in these realms. In this attempt we aro well aware that we shall be assailed by much interested opposi- 76 The Value of Publicity tion ; but we will fearlessly discharge our duties, We hope the age of ' Mental Delusion ' has passed and that mystery and concealment will no longer be encouraged. Indeed we trust that mystery and ignorance will shortly be considered synonymous. Ceremonies and signs have now lost their charms, hieroglyphics and gilded serpents their power to deceive. But for these it would be impossible to imagine how it happened that medical and dietetical knowledge, of all other the most calculated to benefit Man, should have been by him the most neglected. He studies with the greatest attention and assiduity the constitutions of his horses and dogs and learns all their peculiarities ; whilst of the nature of his own he is totally uninformed and equally unskilled as regards his infant offspring. Yet a little reflection and application would enable him to avert from himself and family half the constitu- tional disorders which affect society ; and in addition to these advan- tages, his acquirements in medical learning would furnish him with a test whereby he could detect and expose the impositions of ignorant practitioners." The last paragraph of this preface conveys the real pur- pose of the new paper. The " Lancet " was devised to dis- seminate medical information primarily, and incidentally to make war upon the family intrigues and foolish nepotism that swayed the elections to lucrative posts in the metro- politan hospitals and medical corporations. A flooding light of publicity was to be let in upon hole-and-corner mischief in either class of institution. The spread of scien- tific knowledge was the first object of Wakley's paper, and he never lost sight of it ; but the task of fighting the op- ponents of progress was so much more sensational in its developments that it necessarily attracted wider attention than his beneficent schemes for post-graduate education of the profession and for the amelioration of the educational condition of the student. Indeed, while he remained con- stant to his original design of supplying medical informa- tion, almost every passage in his life for the next ten years goes to prove that he considered himself to be under a mandate from the profession at large not only to keep them well posted in the scientific side of their work, but to see that the rights of the general body of practitioners were not infringed by a particular set of persons. This attitude it was that prompted him to violent attacks upon individuals ; this A Class of Four Hundred 77 it was that made him so intolerant to the contemporary medical press, which was written to please the eminent few rather than the profession at large ; and this it was that was responsible for all the good that arose, directly or in- directly, from the founding of the " Lancet," as it was responsible for certain errors of taste and judgment which marked the early career of the paper. An eloquent man of passionate convictions is not always prudent in balancing his phrases ; a young editor with a good cause and no one to supervise his manuscript is not always mincing in his epithets. There were things written in the early numbers of the " Lancet " that would not have appeared had the editor been a man of wider experience ; but the harm that they did was small and recoiled chiefly upon Wakley, who was never afraid to meet his liabilities, while the value of his fearlessness and ardour to the cause of reform was in- calculable. The contents of the first number of the " Lancet " show how far the editor proposed to carry out the promises of his preface. A surgical lecture by Sir Astley Cooper, Sergeant- Surgeon to the King, occupied the place of honour. This lecture was preceded by a paragraph which gives us some idea of the position held by the eminent and eloquent surgeon at that time : — " At half-past seven the Theatre (the theatre of St. Thomas's Hospi- tal) was crowded in every part by upv/ards of four hundred Students of the most respectable description ; in fact we never before witnessed so genteel a Surgical class : the sight was most pleasing, for they alj appeared gentlemen of cultivated manners and good education." A class of four hundred ! When it is remembered that all these students had paid fees of three guineas and upwards, and that the greater part of the money so collected belonged to the lecturer, it will be seen that a successful hospital lecturer occupied in those days a fine pecuniary position. And this fact explains both the eagerness of the senior men to be succeeded by their friends and their relations, and the righteousness of Wakley's contention that only the best men should hold such posts. The amiable reference to the 7^ A Curious Medley demeanour of the audience emanated from a certain editorial prudence. The new journal was partly addressed to the students, and it was the design of its founder to make the grievances of this class a prominent feature in his arguments for medical reform, therefore it would be but ordinarily civil to put them in good conceit with themselves. The next article is headed " Politics," and its alternative title is " En- lightened Liverymen." It has no medical interest at all, but is a short display of Wakley's vehement and occasionally truculent literary style when dealing with those opposed to him in thought. Of the younger Pitt he speaks as follows : — " His admirers, in rapture, called him a ' boy-statesman ' in his twenty- third year ; and in his forty-seventh year he was still the same ; still the oflScial coxcomb, running after wild impracticable schemes, regardless of everything but the gratification of his own senseless, remorseless, and petty ambition." This is hardly an accurate or temperate account of a patriotic statesman and a great fiscal politician, who guided our country autocratically, perhaps, but unselfishly and splendidly in times of her severest need. It may be taken for granted that William Cobbett inspired the sentiments ; though Pitt, the creator of peers, was not likely to be a grateful personality to the editor of a journal directed against the abuse of oligarchical privileges. Then follows a paragraph headed " Dr. Collyer," contain- ing an innuendo against that gentleman's character which gained double force from the fact that the subject was a well-known dissenting minister. Next we have three columns entitled " The Drama," in which EUiston's acting in the " Rivals " at Drury Lane and Kemble's in " Much Ado About Nothing" at Covent Garden come in for favourable notice. Then we come to an important department, en- titled "Medical and Surgical Intelligence." It contained reports of three cases from a clinical point of view — namely, a Case of Anasarca, a Case of Hydrocephalus, and a Case of Hydatids of the Liver ; a long reply from Mr. Henry Earle, assistant surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, to Sir Quotation at Length 79 Astley Cooper, who had, a little hastily, attempted to con- trovert his junior's views on the union of Fractured Femur; and two editorial articles, one entitled Obstruction of Blood in the Lung, and the other the Fatal Effect of Fear. In this department Wakley borrowed largely from his con- temporaries. The first clinical case was communicated to his columns specially, but the second came from the " London Medical Repository" and the third from the "Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal." Mr. Henry Earle's letter was a judicious reply to a ridiculous accusation from Sir Astley Cooper. The great Guy's champion said that the surgeon from St. Bartholomew's took a favourable view of the chances of union of a fracture of the cervix femoris so as to exalt the practice of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where the prognosis in this injury was good, at the expense of Guy's where it was bad. The letter was addressed to the editor of the " London Medical Repository." Of the two editorial articles only the second is original. It is an interesting little account of a case where a patient at the London Hospital died suddenly while an operation — of course, without the production of anaesthesia — was being commenced upon him for the ligature of a femoral aneui-ysm. Next we find a column headed " Medical Extracts." These are short, practical remarks on treatment and pathology derived from the lips or written works of Abernethy, Wilson, and Hamilton. The germ of a great idea lay hid in the next article, entitled " The Com- position of Quack Medicines." In this we have the results of an analysis of Dalby's Carminative, Daffy's Elixir, and Spelbury's Antiscorbutic Drops. A batch of newspaper extracts follow, whose force and point are not very obvious to modern readers ; and the number closes with a reprint of an open letter from Charles Lamb to Robert Southey, Poet-laureate, which appeared in the " London Magazine." The number had thirty-six pages in all, and no wrapper. As will be seen, the promise of the preface was very fairly carried out in the first number. An excellent clinical lecture followed by records of interesting cases in surgery and medicine gave the scientific information, the spread of which 8o Information and Reformation Wakley put in the front of his intentions; while a free- spoken communication from a distinguished hospital official about another still more distinguished colleague gave suffi- cient evidence that no amount of prestige was to protect a man from criticism in the columns of the " Lancet." The analysis of certain quack remedies was the protoplasm whence the " Lancet " Special Analytical Commissions were to be evolved ; and the editorial note upon a sudden death occurring at one of the metropolitan hospitals was inserted as a proof that the doings within those fastnesses of pre- judice and secrecy were open to the editorial gaze. It was characteristic of the young journalist that he should never have considered whether he had a legal right to publish Sir Astley Cooper's lectures. His intentions were good, and he expressed them somewhat in this way in sundry editorial communications : — I will publish to the medical profession the lectures of the hospital surgeons and physicians to their different classes ; if they are good so much the better for the profession at large who will read them in my pages and for the students who have paid to listen to them ; if they are bad their publication will let the profession see that the students are being taught by men unfit to hold the posts from which they draw large salaries, and to which they have been corruptly elected. It was a good example of fairness on Wakley's part that he should have selected Sir Astley Cooper as the first lecturer to be introduced to the medical public. Sir Astley Cooper was then at the zenith of his fame. He was a splendid lecturer, with enormous experience to draw upon and lucid methods of presenting his facts, so that the issue of his lectures was a real boon to the profession. Had Wakley desired he could have selected as a specimen lecturer some inept bungler and have reported him and criticised him simultaneously. But he desired to iniorm as much as to reform, and whatever his legal position might have been in the matter, consideration of which will form the subject of the next chapter, the great value that the publication of such lectures was to the medical world is beyond all doubt. Ten Years of Fighting 8i CHAPTER IX [1823-1834] The First Ten Years of the " Lancet "^Their Stormy Character — The Question of Copyright in Lectures — Sir Astky Cooper — His opinion on the Publication of his Lectures — His Detection of the Unknown Editor — An Amicable Compromise. For the first ten years of its existence the " Lancet " was a duelling ground for a series of fierce encounters between the editor and the members of the privileged classes in medicine. The lectures of certain of the great hospital surgeons and physicians were reported in its pages to the exasperation of the lecturers, and the delight of the profession at large and the students. The great men feared that their fees as teachers in the metropolitan schools would diminish if the cream of their teaching could be bought for sixpence a week instead of for ^^5 a session ; while every medical man or student, unable by circumstances to attend the classes of his leaders, rejoiced in the chance offered to him of acquiring familiarity with their methods and theories through the medium of print. The meetings of the medical societies, again, were reported at the length that their importance warranted — a proceeding which the officials of the societies objected to as an infringement of copyright. They con- sidered that the editor of the Transactions of the Society, a person appointed by themselves, enjoyed the copyright as a matter of common sense as well as common law. Briefly, from the beginning the hospital surgeons and physicians were ranged in unbroken phalanx in opposition to the new and, as they considered it, mischievous print. The officials of the medical societies followed suit ; and the office-bearers of 82 Ten Actions at Law the medical corporations, the pi-actices in two of which were scathingly reviewed in early issues of the " Lancet," were not slow to scent their foe. Every one who had anything to gain by the peaceful reign of existent methods in school, hospital, or corporation — a definition which included most of the influential members of the profession — looked with un- easiness at the growing power and popularity of the new journal. Wakley, for his part, was quick to discover his enemies, and their tactics dictated his. For the first few weeks the " Lancet " attracted no particular attention, and such notice as it received was complimentary. Then a few of the privileged classes became frightened, and in return sought to frighten Wakley. They denounced him as a literary pirate and a disseminator of moral garbage. His replies were chiefly in the nature of reflection on the complete and fretful ineptitude of his denunciators. He pointed to his growing circulation, scattered with doubtful taste but cruel point a few nicknames, and hinted at astonishing revelations of abuses arising out of the fact that publicity had hitherto been avoided by hospital officials. As a natural pendant to his assertion that the elections to the staffs of the various metropolitan hospitals were made at the instigation of pure nepotism, accounts were given of mal-administration in the schools and malpraxis; in the wards. And upon these came action and cross-action. Certain of the criticised were compelled to proceed legally against their critic, while their defence outside the law- courts, too keenly and bitterly undertaken by friends or rival journals, on more than one occasion laid the defenders open to counter-charges of misrepresentation. In the first ten years of the existence of the " Lancet " the editor was en- gaged in no less than ten actions, his opponents being eight separate persons. The proceedings in these actions con- stitute a most interesting phase in the history of medical reform. Six of these actions were actions for libel, the aggregate sum of ;^8ooo being claimed for damages, and the aggregate sum of '^^iss os. ojrf. being awarded, while The Fame of Sir Astley Cooper 83 the editor's costs were largely defrayed by public subscrip- tion. Wakley's first contest with the law was the longest and most expensive suit that he was ever engaged in, and the real question at issue was a much more important one than was stated in the pleadings or than is represented by the precedents which Lord Eldon's judgments have since formed. It was the question of the legality of the publica- tion of certain lectures addressed to medical students by Abernethy, at that time the senior surgeon at St. Bartholo- mew's Hospital, and the person of professional eminence selected by Wakley to succeed Sir Astley Cooper as the chief attraction in his columns. The publication of Sir Astley Cooper's lectures in the place of honour of the new paper had proved a fine stroke of journalism — of that there could be no doubt. The lectures possessed all the qualifications that an editor would desire for his most important articles. They were excellent in material, wise, practical, and easy to follow. A large class of readers might be expected to constantly buy a paper which contained such contributions. To those seeking instruction in the broad roads of surgery as much as to those desirous of revising their knowledge of the obscurer by-paths the light shed upon their course from the clearest surgical intellect of the day was equally valuable ; and Wakley could confidently count upon a respectable number of subscribers desirous of obtaining such help and such only from the paper and quite indifferent to questions of medical policy or medical reform. In short these lectures ' attracted and held readers. Hardly less important from a business point of view was the prestige that their publication conferred at once upon the " Lancet." For they had what first-class and useful work does not always have — that is, a widely known and distinguished signature. Sir Astley Cooper's was at the time a name to conjure with. He was at the highest point of his professional fame, his unrivalled surgical reputation being enhanced by his wealth, his hand- some person, his popularity with his pupils, his recent title, 84 Sir Astley Cooper's Lectures and his acknowledged position in the social world. It was impossible for the public or the profession, for rival journals or for the frightened owners of vested interests, to cry down the " Lancet " as a worthless gutter production while Wakley was issuing in its pages week by week the work of such a man, and doing so without formal protest from the lecturer. The note of scientific importance once struck by the editor gave the key to his journal. That Sir Astley Cooper himself did not resent the publica- tion of his lectures in the " Lancet " is certain. We have his own opinion on the matter, as stated to his faithful surgical class, who were prepared to uphold his view and would certainly be prejudiced towards a policy of remonstrance, as such a policy would have been in support of privileges of their own for which they had paid. The following is the first allusion made by Sir Astley Cooper to the publication of his lectures in the "Lancet," and it contains no protest against Wakley's proceedings : — " In detailing to you the errors into which surgeons have fallen I execute a very unpleasant task — a task much more disagreeable now, from the publicity which my lectures receive, than at any former period ; but, as your pilot, it is my imperative obligation to warn you against those shoals and rocks which have foundered but too many of your predecessors. He who publishes the lectures, however, cannot be too particular in his discretion with regard to pubUshing names when those names are blended, as they sometimes are, with unfortunate cases. " When I found, week after week, that my lectures were published, and that consequently I was daily paragraphed in the newspaper, I called upon the editor of the "Lancet" and told him that I was about ■ to move for an injunction. He replied, ' That will not be of any use.' Well, gentlemen, in the end I told him that if he omitted my name I should take no further steps in the matter. He promised to do so, and as far as I have seen he has fulfilled his promise ; and, of course, I have fulfilled mine. Indeed, the lawyer's instructions to counsel have been this very day destroyed. " Now, gentlemen, though I did not regard the publication of my lectures I felt myself disgraced and degraded by my name forever appearing in the diurnal press. Not a paper could I see but my name flourished in it in some form or other. This looked so much like A Friendly Attitude 85 quackery, so much like puffing, that I am unable to describe to you how much it annoyed me. Although the publication of my lectures exposes me to the critical ordeal of my professional brethren, yet I fear it not ; I care not who may be made acquainted with the doctrines I advance, the instructions I give, the principles I inculcate, while in this theatre. Therefore I am perfectly indifferent as to who publishes them, and equally indiiferent as to who may be made acquainted with them." This cannot be regarded as unqualified disapproval of a dedication to the public of property hitherto considered private. Sir Astley Cooper's attitude may be called profes- sional but friendly. He had the foresight to know that wide dissemination of correct surgical teaching must be for the benefit of the profession of which he was the head. He had the acumen to see that to set up a claim to exclusive property in spoken words would be attended with legal and moral difficulty. His personal appreciation of his own position was not over modest at any time, and he must have felt that his surgical classes would always remain well attended though the heavens should fall. Therefore, for liberal reasons he would be inclined to approve of the publication of his lectures while for private reasons he would be indifferent. But for professional reasons he would at that time be bound to object. The hebdomadal appearance of his name in capital letters in a print which frankly con- tained some non-medical matter, though its circulation was chiefly among medical men, came as a recurring shock to his ideas of professional decency, and on this point, and the further one that his weekly lectures in the " Lancet " were daily quoted in the lay press, he based his objection. And not quite his only objection, for, as will be seen by the conclud- ing words of the speech to his class of which we have already quoted the opening sentences, and in which he is dealing with the propriety of the publication by the "Lancet" of reports of operations at the metropolitan hospitals, he was un- certain whether his extemporary addresses, naturally couched in familiar style, would have a literary merit commensurate 86 The' Advantages of Anonymity ■with their scientific importance. With these small reserva- tions Sir Astley Cooper may be said to have approved of Wakley's revolutionary departure. He did not, as the smaller fry did, scream out " robber " and " thief " : — " Having said thus much respecting the lectures," he continued, " I now deem it prudent, while I am on the subject, to state my opinion to you with regard to the publication of operations ; this practice, I can- didly confess, appears to rae to be fraught with great danger, and will, I suspect, prove destructive to the reputation of the rising generation of surgeons. Suppose a very young surgeon had performed the opera- tion lately executed by myself in the other hospital, and that it had terminated in death ; suppose a young surgeon to be unfortunate for five or six operations in succession ; would not the public, with one accord, exclaim, ' Good God I what a butcher that man is ' ? Such I fear would be the general feeling, and the ruin, the absolute ruin, of the operator, the unavoidable consequence. We must, I believe, hold a meeting of the surgeons for the purpose of adopting some measure by which, if possible, the system may be prevented. It is a practice to which I am opposed, and I will put it to the candour of any man, and ask if it be not calculated to produce much mischief ? Believing this myself, it is a practice to which I much object. With regard to my lectures the case is different : I have a duty to perform in this theatre, and I have no objection for the whole world to be made acquainted with the manner in which it is discharged. I will here remarh, how- ever, that, in consequence of the colloquial style in which my lectures are delivered, they are not in that respect calculated for publication.'' The arrangement under which Sir Astley Cooper withdrew objection to the publication of his lectures if Wakley would, on his side, guarantee to suppress the author's name came into force in the tenth number of the " Lancet " under some- what droll circumstances, and was loyally kept on either side. The name of the editor of the "Lancet" was not at first known. " Secrecy of design when combined with rapidity of execution," wrote that eccentric divine, the Rev. Charles Caleb Cotton, " like the column that guided Israel in the desert, be- comes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends and a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies." The secrecy with which the " Lancet " had been A Droll Interview 87 .planned and the suddenness with which it was placed before the public no doubt disconcerted the persons who would naturally be its foes. They had no time to organise either a counter-attack or a defence, nor did they know against whom to proceed. But a secret that was necessarily in the keeping of many persons did not long merit the description of impenetrable darkness, and within a few weeks it was cir- cumstantially stated that Wakley was the enterprising editor. Other epithets were added according to the views of the speakers and their positions in the profession, but the quality of enterprise was never denied. At length it reached Sir Astley Cooper's ears that it was his old pupil at the school of the United Hospitals, Thomas Wakley, who was responsible for the unauthorised publication of the surgical lectures to the students at St. Thomas's Hospital, and the great man went personally to Norfolk Street to confer with the young editor. As has been already said, Wakley used his private house for his editorial purposes, the office a few yards away in the Strand being merely a place where communications were received and whence the business of publication took place. Sir Astley Cooper obtained admission in the character of a patient, and caught Wakley, who at the time believed his secret to be inviolate, in the act of correcting a proof of one of the lectures in question. Never did a small check serve a man to better purpose than did Sir Astley Cooper's little " score " — there is no other word — serve Wakley. The great baronet was so pleased at the success of the rather trans- parent ruse that had gained him entrance and at the sight of Wakley's obvious discomfiture when he found his anonymity gone that any wrath he might have been cherishing was dissolved in hearty laughter. Friendly relations had pre- viously existed between pupil and teacher and they were at once resumed. With complete amicability the lecturer stated his views and the editor stated his. These latter could not have been otherwise than flattering to Sir Astley Cooper's pride, for Wakley's chief argument was that the publication of the lectures must be for the undoubted good ,88 Compromise of mankind. A compromise was speedily made to the effect already stated by Sir Astley Cooper. If Wakley would sup- press the author's name no formal objection would be taken to the publication of the lectures. The agreement was loyally kept. In accordance with it the fifteenth and ensuing lectures of Sir Astley Cooper were issued without the author's name ; and when proceedings were afterwards instituted by Abernethy, supported by other lecturers in a similar plight, to obtain an injunction against the publisher and printers of the " Lancet," on the plea that the author's copyright in his lectures was infringed by their publication. Sir Astley Cooper took no part in the quarrel. The Law of Copyright in Lectures 89 CHAPTER X [1823-1834J Aberneihy v. Hutchinson, Knight and Lacey — The Law of Copy- right in Lectures — Abernethy's Position as Lecturer and Surgeon — His First Application against the " Lancet " — The Arguments Employed and their Ill-success — The Fomentation of Bad Feeling — A Second and Successful Application for an Injunction— Wakley's Further Motion — The Importance of the Case. On Friday, December loth, 1824, Mr. Abernethy, the senior surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and a great figure in the scientific world, applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain the publishers and printers of the " Lancet " from issuing his lectures. The law of copyright in lectures is not very clear or definite. Lectures are peculiar in their character and differ from books, inasmuch as, though they are made public by d^^livery, they have not necessarily a visible form capable of bein^ copied. Nevertheless, it has been thought right by the legislature to afford them the protection of copyright. The sitiiition of the law with respect to the protection of lectures is exactly the same now as it was in 1823. The author of any literary composition has the right at common law to prevent its publication until he has himself made it public. He does not necessarily forfeit this right by . delivering his composition as a lecture. His right after delivery will be decided by 5 and 6 William IV. c. 65 : — " An Act for Preventing the Publication of Lectures without Consent." By this Act the author of any lecture or his assignee may reserve to himself the sole right of publishing the lecture by giving two days' notice of the intended go Abernethy's Colloquial Peculiarities delivery to two justices of the peace living within five miles from the place of delivery, unless the lecture is delivered in any university, public school, or college, or in any public foundation, or upon gift or endowment — such lectures being free. Whatever may be the origin of this provision it is little known and probably never, or very seldom, acted upon, so that statutory copyright in lectures is very seldom acquired. If the lecture has not been printed — when it falls under the head of a book — and has not been duly copyrighted according to the above proceeding, what constitutes dedica- tion to the public ? This is what the publication of Aber- nethy's lectures has decided, and Lord Eldon's judgment in the case forms a much-quoted precedent. The fact that Abernethy objected to the publication of his lectures was perfectly well known to Wakley, for his dis- approving words had been actually reported as he expressed them to his class ; while certain members of that class, in obvious deference to what they knew to be their lecturer's wish, had on two occasions put out the lamp in the theatre, designing by that means to baffle the unknown shorthand reporter. In the " Lancet" of December nth, however, the tenth lecture of the course was reported in full, with no reference to previous threats or to the commencement of legal proceedings. The subject of this lecture was Irritative Inflammation, Erysipelas, and Furunculus, and the reporter was a little cruel to the lecturer in his faithful reproduction of the colloquial peculiarities employed by Abernethy in delivery ; otherwise nothing in that issue of the " Lancet " tends to show that Wakley was aware of the legal exception that had been taken to his proceedings. " If I am wrong I shall be very happy to have my errors pointed out and corrected. I'll be hanged if erysipelas is not always a result of a disordered state of the digestive organs Egad, it is a travelling disease, and, as I say, the parts are disposed to swell If it be seated in an unimportant part in the name ofG let it go on there. .... O, said the dresser, it is a case of erysipelas and he only came in last week. Good G / said I, is it possible? .... Hoi he had his jaming-tacks on board, as a sailor would say.'' John Hunter's Disciple 91 These are among the specimens of Abernethy's manner- isms which were set down in the " Lancet's " unchastened report. It can be readily understood that the speaker found it a Httle embarrassing to read his expletives in cold print, though he may have felt certain that they had added force to his style and point to his meaning as they fell hot from his lips, and had given a fillip to the interest of his hearers, as apt, probably, then as now to consider attendance at •lectures a great bore. The feeling that he was occasionally made to look foolish by the fidelity of the reporter may have been his determining reason in making his application, but it was well understood that as much in the initial proceed- ings as in the later he was only constituting himself the mouthpiece of his order — the order of lecturers attached to medical schools, whose equanimity was much shaken by Wakley's irresponsible behaviour. Abernethy was second only to Sir Astley Cooper in the surgical hierarchy of London, and was regarded by his juniors with peculiar reverence because in him they saw the great exponent of the great John Hunter's teaching. Failing Sir Astley Cooper, who was bound by his word not to object to the publication ,of his own lectures, and therefore as an honourable man was bound to refuse to assist others in questioning Wakley's legal position in the matter, Abernethy was the strongest man to pit against Wakley to dispute his legal status in the affair ; just as, failing Sir Astley Cooper, Abernethy was the best-known surgical lecturer likely to attract readers to the paper. That Abernethy was put up to fight the battles of his colleagues is undoubted, for he was quite a shrewd, astute man, and would not have had any motion made on his own behalf unless he had felt that in so doing he was conforming to the general wish of others in his position. When the subject of the motion was mentioned to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon, his lordship put a case to himself and concluded by saying, " I shall make short work of it " ; and if his assumption of the questions that would be before him had been completely correct he would have been 92 Lord Eldon in a Hurry justified in doing as he promised, but, as will be seen, the great lawyer took a narrow view. The following is the rather extraordinary dialogue which took place between the Lord Chancellor, the Solicitor-General (Sir Charles Wetherell), who represented Abernethy, and Mr. Home, who was retained by Wakley in the interests of the de- fendants, Mr. Gilbert Linney Hutchinson, the publisher, and Messrs. Knight and Lacey, the printers. Lord Eldon: The case is to decide whether a party attending lectures in any branch of philosophy or learning for his own information is at liberty to publish the lectures for his own advantage. I shall make shor^ work of it. Mr. Horne: The case is not of the nature your lordship sup- poses. The Solicitor-General: Your lordship's mind has caught the whole point in the case, and, in fact, there is nothing more to be decided. Mr. HoRNE : His lordship cannot decide a case he has never heard. With this view the Lord Chancellor concurred, and being unable to hear the case fully on the day of the application for the injunction, in spite of. an appeal of urgency on the part of the Solicitor-General, postponed further hearing to the date suggested by Mr. Horne — namely, December i8th. His Lordship said that no articles were to be made use of in the interim, with the exception of the number then in the press and to be published the following morning. " Let us have no more bleeding until I have examined the patient myself and decided upon his case," was his jocular pro- nouncement of his interdiction. He evidently felt that his expression of opinion was ill-timed, and Sir Charles Wetherell's commendation of his attitude, meant to confirm him therein, caused him to veer. His premature remark did not, however, escape the notice of the press, although he had consented to a postponement of the trial, for the " Morning Chronicle" of December nth, 1824, contained the following satirical stanzas of an uncomplimentary sort upon The Lord Chancellor and the "Lancet" 93 his abuse of his position in thus prejudging and dismissing an unheard application : — " A wonder happened t'other day ; I scarce know how to word it : The Chancellor, who loves delay, A case at once decided — nay. Before he even heard it. " Home and Wetherell well might stare To find he never falter'd. If known next session I know where Some persons may their speeches spare. If Eld-n be so alter'd. " Who knows to see this change in him But it may lead to others : — Befriend the Catholics for a whim ; C-nn-ng wiU cease to sneak and trim. And Plunket call them Brothers." On the second day of the hearing of the motion, December 1 8th, 1824, an affidavit was put in by Abernethy which at great length cited the circumstances of the delivery of the lectures and gave an account of his calling forth the " hireling of the ' Lancet ' " from the ranks of his students without response. He bitterly inveighed against the appro- priation of his copyright, but at the same time protested that he would never withhold from mankind any words of his the publication of which was for the true good of the public. The affidavit of the defendant Hutchinson contended that the publication was made exactly for the good of the public, and, such being the case, free publication ought to be per- mitted without legal restriction. He further tried to show that there was no precedent for the recognition of copyright vested in verbal utterances. Long and technical speeches from counsel on both sides followed. Sir Charles Wetherell attempted to set up a claim for exclusive copyright .in that the lectures were delivered in a private capacity to private pupils. Mr. Home, on the other hand, maintained that it was Abernethy's public duty to deliver himself of surgical teaching in a public place for the public good ; he held that 94 Unflinching Determination the colloquial style of the lectures sufficiently proved absence of all intention to set up a claim for literary copy- right in the way such a claim should be advanced — ^viz., by issuing the lectures as a book ; and, lastly, he alleged that Abernethy's lectures, being merely a replica of John Hunter's teaching, contained no matter in which Abernethy had any peculiar property. The Lord Chancellor on the third day decided that he had heard quite enough and, contrary to his suggested opinion of the previous week, refused to grant an application and withdrew the interim order of injunction. Thus it was temporarily decided that words used in lectures for the public benefit had no copyright vested in them and were liable to be published without reserve for the good of humanity. But Lord Eldon several times in the course of his judgment said that he would hear an argument upon the point whether there had been a breach of trust or of implied contract. The "Lancet" of December i8th, 1824, did not contain a continuation of the report of Abernethy's course of lectures, because until the evening of that day the interim order of injunction was in force. The issue of Christmas Day also contained no lecture, being virtually a supplement devoted to an exhaustive resume' of the proceedings in Chancery during the preceding week ; but the issue of January ist, 1825, contained Lectures XL and XII., being in direct con- tinuation of Lecture X. published on December nth, 1824, and showing that Wakley's agent had not omitted to take the notes necessary for the subsequent transcription of Abernethy's words, although the Lord Chancellor's decision in the matter was still in abeyance. This resolute and un- flinching determination to have his way in the matter, as far as the law and his own ideas of right and wrong would allow him, was characteristic of the man. He was pug- nacious, and to be slapped in the face did not suit his pug- nacity ; but there was more behind the methodical manner, in which he was careful to leave no word in the course of Abernethy's lectures unreported and no argument, legal or sentimental, of Abernethy's supporters unrefuted, than a The Reforming Spirit 95 love of fighting for a good liberal cause. He was also ex- ceedingly proud of his journal, and at that time an interdic- tion of the publication of medical lectures might have made a serious difference to the circulation of the " Lancet " and the position of its editor. Many readers would have been lost ; the editor would have had much laborious prospecting to undertake before he could hope to strike an adequate sub- stitute for the scientific wealth contained in the soil of the hospital lecture rooms ; and he would have been convicted of having done wrong. Nor do these things wholly explain his resolution in the matter of the reporting of lectures and the importance that he attached to a continuance of the practice. As there was more than pugnacity behind his attitude so there was more than self-interest. And the third factor, which dominated the other two entirely, was the reformer's spirit. To report the lectures of the surgical teachers at the big schools was to make a bold and novel attack upon the privileges of a glass of men whom individu- ally he might and often did admire as great in the profes- sion that he loved, but whom collectively he considered to be corrupt, selfish, and feeble. Wakley knew that in report- ing Abernethy's lectures he was defying and not a little frightening the hospital lecturers, and that amused him. He knew that terror of the verbatim reporter would compel many of them, not usually so circumspect, to be punctual in their attendance, thoughtful of what they had to say, and careful of how they said it, and this result he considered a worthy one for the paper to accomplish. And, lastly, he counted upon issuing to all medical men who required it the assistance that first-class teaching must always be. It was not Abernethy against whom he was measuring himself, for we have his own words repudiating the suggestion at the very time when the interim interdiction was in force, but all who stood between him and the carrying out of his prefatory promises to the profession that they should read these lectures in his columns and be improved by them. " Had Mr. Abernethy," he writes in a leading article on December i8th, 1824, " consulted his own. judgment and inclination rather than 96 Abernethy's Acerbity the support of that corrupt and rotten system of which he is unfortu- nately a part, we are very certain that he would not have appeared in Chancery for the disgraceful purpose of throwing new obstacles in the path of medical science. The object of those with whom Mr. Aber- nethy is in concert is not so much to prevent the weekly publication of his lectures as to effect the destruction of this publication. The 'Lancet' is not suited to their taste or interest " Wakley's action in the matter was all a part of his reform- ing spirit. He did not intend to give way to the pleasure of the class whose privileges it had been his intention from the beginning to dispute, and he was resolved not to forfeit his word to the rank and file, whose moral and pecuniary sup- port he had demanded on the specific ground that he would publish these lectures for their instruction. Having so far won the day and successfully resisted Aber- nethy's attempt to obtain an injunction he would, we can- not help seeing, have been better advised to let the matter drop. It would have been more graceful and more politic to continue upon the course he had originally shaped for himself without further reference to the defeated arguments of his adversary, but further polemics were in a manner forced upon him by the acerbity with which Abernethy and his supporters received their check. Abernethy, the essence of whose complaint was that Wakley had reported him too faithfully, so that the value of the copyright in his lectures was gone, they having been brought verbatim and at a moderate price to the attention of the only public they could hope to enjoy, now said in one of his lectures : — " If the editor of the ' Lancet ' should still publish my lectures I only know, from what I have seen of those parts of them which have appeared in the newspapers, that they represent me as one of the most pert, balderdash fellows in existence. Any person would say on read- ing those paragraphs : ' Well, I always thought Mr. Abernethy a well- informed man, and somewhat of a scientific man, too, in the practice of his profession, but I really think he must be a very weak man.' " Wakley was not the man to allow this aspersion of the accuracy of his journal to go unnoticed. Again, while the "Times" and the "Morning Chronicle" were to a certain Offensive Criticism 97 extent of opinion that Wakley was right in publishing pro- fessional lectures to the profession, one of the contemporary medical journals, the " London Medical Repository," edited at the time by Copland the lexicographer, expressed disap- probation in terms of unbounded indecency : — " As to the honesty of the transaction," ran the offensive passage, " it cannot require consideration. A man may just as well go to dine at a restauraUur's and, after satiating his own appetite with that portion of the bonne chire for which he paid on his own account, carry oif the remainder of the landlord's provisions to be sold for a penny a pound to all who might choose to buy ; or, perhaps, we may liken the trans- action to that of insuring one's house, then setting it on fire, to obtain the large amount for which a very trifling premium was paid." Wakley could not sit quietly down under such an insult as was put upon him by his monthly contemporary. On January 9th, 1825, there appeared in the "Lancet" a long article practically daring Abernethy to attempt to interfere again with the publication of his lectures ; for it had got abroad that a second application was to be made to the Lord Chancellor upon the ground, suggested by Lord Eldon as an argument to which he would gladly listen, that Abernethy lectured to the students under the protection of an implied contract limiting their use in what they heard to aural instruction. A week later, no move in this direction having been taken by Abernethy, Wakley proceeded to demolish the two arguments which had already been put forward by Sir Charles Wetherell in favour of the injunc- tion ; an unnecessary proceeding, because on these very arguments the plaintiff lecturer had failed to obtain what he wanted. The first argument was that Abernethy had suffered probable pecuniary loss by the fact that no publisher would consider favourably the issiie of his lectures in book form after they had been disseminated in sixpenny instalments among the profession. The second was that Abernethy had suffered certain pecuniary loss by the abstention of students from his classes who preferred to pay sixpence a week rather than ten pounds a year for the 98 An Estimate of Abernethy privilege of learning his views. The first argument Wakley did not demolish in a very workmanlike manner. He dealt some hasty blows right and left, but he hardly made his point. He replied that Abernethy's were poor lectures and that action at law had been taken because the lecturer felt that he had been placed at the bar of public criticism as a hospital teacher, and out of regard for present and post- humous fame was anxious to prevent an exposure of his ignorance. All that was good in Aberneth3^s lectures was, said Wakley, to be found in Hunter's works upon whom im- mense plagiarism had been practised, and it was impossible to imagine Abernethy enjoying a copyright in his lectures under such circumstances and ridiculous to suppose that a publisher would be found willing to issue them in a col- lected form. This was not a very good rejoinder on Wakley's part, because it convicted him of bad catering for his public. To the second argument his reply was crush- ing, for he demonstrated that the students could not abstain from attending Abernethy's lectures if they wished, because of a by-law of the Royal College of Surgeons, recently framed by the Court of Examiners, of which Abernethy himself was at the time a member. On March 19th, 1824, the Court of Examiners resolved that certificates of attend- ance at lectures on the theory and practice of surgery should not be received by the Court save from the pro- fessors of surgery in certain universities, or from the teachers in certain medical schools formally attached to recognised metropolitan hospitals, or from members of the honorary staffs of such hospitals. This by-law, remarkable enough on the face of it, practically compelled all the medical students in London to attend the lectures of some five persons, of whom Abernethy was one ; for at that time there was no University of London, and but six hospitals ■ namely, St. Bartholomew's, St. George's, the United Hospi- tals, the London, and the Middlesex — had acknowledged schools. Westminster Hospital, though of very ancient foundation, was but a dispensary in James Street until 1834 ; Charing Cross Hospital was instituted in 1818, but Wakley in Chancery Again 99 the prfesent building was riot erected until 1831, and prior to that date the institution only enjoyed the position of a large ambulance station, having for its particular object the care of the numerous accident cases occurring in the neigh- bouring streets ; University College Hospital and King's College Hospital were founded respectively in 1833 'and 1839 ; and St. Mary's Hospital dates only from 1845. So that when it was pleaded for Abernethy that the publication of his lectures was likely to lead to the diminution of his surgical classes Wakley was, if unnecessarily forcible, cer- tainly unanswerable in saying : " In the name of God, do not let us hear any more of such loathsome trash." January, February, March, and April of 1825 were allowed by Abernethy to elapse before he made his second application to the Lord Chancellor for an injunction on the ground that his lectures were delivered to persons under an implied contract not to publish them, but at the end of May the application was made and the hearing was commenced on June loth. Abernethy renewed his application obviously rather in the interest of other lecturers than in his own, for at the time his lectures were not being printed in the " Lancet," having been discontinued at the completion of the course some two months previously. " He may possibly have vanity enough to suppose that we shall reprint his lectures," wrote Wakley. " On this point his mind may be perfectly at ease ; our pages have been already obscured with his hypothetical nonsense during six tedious months, and when we read the proof of the last paragraph we felt relieved of a most intolerable incubus." The result of the second application was that Abernethy was successful. The Lord Chancellor in his judgment to a certain extent went back on himself. He held that the lectures could not be published for profit, that if any pupil who had paid only to hear them afterwards sold them to the publisher he infringed the law, and that the publishers in so publishing them enacted "what this Court would call a fraud in a third party." He dwelt upon the practical difficulty that existed in bringing home this fraud to any loo A Legal Precedent one whei-e no manuscript was in existence, but did not otherwise allow that there was any difference as far as the author's rights were concerned whether the lecture was delivered from a manuscript or as an extemporary effort. This is the judgment which forms the precedent upon which cases of infringement of copyright in lectures are decided, and in text-books upon the subject it is the case that is always quoted. Upon November 28th, 1825, Mr. Home applied to the Lord Chancellor to dissolve the injunction, granted against Wakley at the previous session, restraining him from con- tinuing to publish or sell Abernethy's lectures in the " Lancet." The motion was unopposed, and Lord Eldon dissolved the injunction. This judgment did not, and does not affect the value of his previous judgment with regard to the legality of the publication of lectures, for the dissolution was granted upon new facts which were brought to the knowledge of the Court. Wakley had all along contended that it was monstrous that Abernethy should by one act confer upon himself as a member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons the exclusive right of lecturing in the character of a public functionary, and by another claim the protection due to private lecturers on the ground of the injury which his reputation or pecuniary interests might sustain from the issue of his lectures in cheap form. After the injunction Abernethy had delivered an address to the students on the occasion of the opening of the session at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and this address had appeared in full in the " Lancet," precisely as if no in- junction existed, on the ground that it had been delivered by Abernethy in a public capacity. No retaliatory steps were taken by Abernethy. Shortly after this, a few days only before Wakley's application for a dissolution of the injunc- tion, Abernethy tendered his resignation as a surgeon to the governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital whilst desiring to remain a lecturer to the institution. The governors refused to accept his resignation as a surgeon unless he also tendered his resignation as a lecturer. This recognition of an in- A Drawn Battle ioi separable tie between the two posts of surgeon and lecturer reached Wakley's ears and supplied him with the very point in his argument for a dissolution of the injunction that he required. "Of course Abernethy's lectures are public property," he said; "they are delivered in his public capacity as surgeon to a public charity and the students of the metropolis must attend them, or lectures from some five or six other functionaries similarly situated, whether they like or no." The facts of Abei-nethy's offer of resigna- tion to the governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital were set out in the form of an affidavit, and, no one appearing to represent Abernethy in opposition to a motion for dissolution of the injunction, Lord Eldon removed the restriction. The determined manner in which the case of Abernethy V. Hutchinson, Knight and Lacey was fought had a great effect on the prestige of the " Lancet." It showed the editor to be a resolute man willing to do battle for his opinions, and it revealed the new paper as one with a large circulation and a substantial pecuniary foundation. That both com- batants did not shine to advantage in their every utterance did neither of them any personal harm, for all who watched the quarrel saw in their excited and occasionally illogical remarks only evidence of collision between two self-willed persons determined to look upon a matter from opposite views. Abernethy fought for his order and Wakley fought for his readers. That each of these eminently clear-headed men should by force of circumstances have been driven to contradict themselves out loud shows how very angry they became at different stages of the dispute. Wakley was led to pooh-pooh Abernethy's admirable qualities as a lecturer, having previously extolled them ; while Abernethy, the whole gist of whose claim upon the " Lancet " for infringement of copyright was that the reports were accurate, was ill-advised enough to insinuate that they were very far from being so. Each, on the other hand, showed remarkable ingenuity in advancing his own opinions, and each won a victory that gained him credit without hurting his foe. 102 An Established Success CHAPTER XI [1823-1834] Thi "Lancet" becomes a Rigorously Medical Paper — Wakley as u. Chess-player — The Hospital Reports, or " Mirror of Hospital Practice" — Reproof to Students — The Preface to the Second Volume of the " Lancet " — Some Criticism of Hospital Procedure — Attack on Nepotism — Expulsion of Wakley from St. Thomas's Hospital. By the end of 1825 the " Lancet" was a recognised pubHca- tion of more than two years' standing, with a regular circula- tion of upwards of 4000 and a well-defined policy and range. Wakley kept his promises of the original preface during the first two years, but as the paper grew in authority and increased in circulation two alterations in its contents became noticeable. The first was that all attempts to interest the reader in matters outside the science, practice, and politics of medicine and the allied sciences were given up. The second was that the position of Wakley and the hospital officials towards each other had crystallised into unmistakable hostility. The disappearance from the paper of the weekly columns entitled respectively " The Chess-table," and " The Dramatic Lancet," and " Table Talk," meant more to the editor than the importance of the articles would seem to warrant. It was a sacrifice of his own hobbies to the pressure of what he conceived to be his wholly absorbing duty. All writers who use their pens to promote certain definite serious results, political, social, financial, or what not, know how pleasant it is to have an opportunity of lightening the important labours of the day by a little desultory writing A Eulogy of Chess 103 upon some topic in which they take a less absorbing or a more Hght-hearted interest. Wakley was a great chess- player, and an enthusiastic play-goer. His chess he had learned when quite a boy. It formed his chief recreation during his period of hard study in Gerard's Hall, and throughout his life he was a votary of the most absorbing and scientific of domestic games. He was one of the very few players who contested successfully with the original and celebrated automaton player ; and it was his habit, when engaged in editing his paper, to have a chess-board by his side, upon which, during the intervals of dictating and proof-reading, he would set himself problems. It is a curious fact that the " Lancet," which became after its first few numbers so rigidly a medical paper, should have been the actual journal to inaugurate the practice of publishing chess-problems and accounts of games of chess ; but Wakley, as will be seen from his own words, believed that the study of chess would form a recreation peculiarly fitted to the mind of the properly trained medical man, and so might almost form a factor in the ideal medical education. " This is," he wrote on November 1833, " perhaps the only game to which the medical student may profitably devote any portion of his time and attention. It is liable to none of the objections which apply to games of chance, it holds out no encouragement to cupidity, and while it affords an agreeable relaxation from more serious pursuits it strengthens the intellectual faculties by the unremitting attention which it demands, and may even have some influence on our moral habits by the lessons of foresight, patience, and perseverance which it inculcates. To avoid errors on the one hand by foresight and circumspection, and to endeavour to retrieve such as are committed on the other by patient industry and perseverance, — these are matters applicable to all pro- fessions and situations in life, and which, as the American philosopher, Dr. Franklin, has observed, are constantly illustrated on the chess- board. The study of chess has, we believe, been recommended to medical students by the distinguished Professor whose lectures stand at the head of this publication (Sir Astley Cooper), and who unites to his great professional and general knowledge a very considerable degree of excellence in that scientific game. The recommendation was founded, not only on the superiority of this amusement to all others in an intellectual point of view, but upon a more benevolent motive ; for I04 The Dramatic Lancet circumstances might possibly occur in which the surgeon's acquaint- ance with chess might reheve the mind as much as his professional skill could mitigate the bodily sufferings of his patient." From this it will be understood that Wakley did not allow his chess articles to be crowded out without a pang nor without some little doubt that he was sacrificing to utilitarianism a subject that had its utilitarian side. The " Dramatic Lancet " came to an end even sooner than the contributions to the literature of chess, and it also was not allowed to disappear without regret. Wakley had an extreme love of the stage. He was well read in dramatic literature and a constant attendant at the play, a fact upon which his future, oratorical successes were largely dependent. Many of his similes and illustrations and many of the nicknames distributed freely by the writers in the early numbers of his paper had their origin in the editor's histrionic proclivities. In omitting the notice of the drama, moreover, Wakley was not only narrowing his range by excluding the discussion of a subject very palatable to his own taste, but he was taking work away from some of his press friends who, when the " Lancet " was a small paper, and not quite limited either in programme or performance to things medical, gave him their assistance. The exclusion from the columns of the " Lancet " of all but strictly medical matter was not an important event. It had relation to certain idiosyncrasies of the editor, and so notice of it finds due place in a biography ; but, as a matter of fact, the lay matter was so small in quantity and unimportant in quality compared with the medical that its formal omission made no difference to the position or value of the paper. . But the second alteration, the alteration in tone towards the hospital officials, was a very important departure. If Wakley had not quarrelled with the hospital surgeons as a class many regrettable passages — regretted more by himself than by anyone else — would never have been written. On the other hand, his intuition and foresight told him, and his love of fighting supported him in, the view, that unless he A Mirror of Hospital Practice 105 declared absolute and unrelenting war upon those who were attempting to restrict his operations for reform he would fail utterly and hopelessly. And he was right. All the good that Wakley did was due to the fact that when he came to the little stream separating the province of medical jour- nalism, as then understood, from the kingdom of the monopolist, he boldly crossed the Rubicon and declared war, recognising that fighting was his only alternative to utter ineffectiveness. The war began in the department of the paper that is now known as "A Mirror of Hospital Practice." The reports of proceedings in hospital practice were first started regularly in the " Lancet" of November 9th, 1823 — that is, in the sixth number that was issued. From this period they have been continued for seventy-three years without inter- mission — for the first twenty-six years under the original title of " Hospital Reports," and since then under the title of "A Mirror of Hospital Practice." Guy's Hospital and St. Thomas's Hospital came in for the most lengthy notice, the reason of this being simply that the operative surgery of Sir Astley Cooper overshadowed that of every other surgeon in the kingdom, and the most trivial procedure in surgery under his hands became a matter of professional interest. Proceedings at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where Abernethy was the great but infrequent operator, had allotted to them also considerable space, while the cases of Charles Bell at Middlesex and Benjamin Brodie at St. George's Hospital were usually detailed at some length. Throughout the first volume the reports were, on the whole, eulogistic. Every now and then the lack of some little convenience in ward or operating theatre was made the subject of uncomplimentary comment, but no word derogatory to the operator ever appeared. Not that there was any slurring over of the real s^sue of the cases out of deference to the feelings of the surgeon, for as eai^ly as November i6th, 1823, we have the fatal sequel of a case narrated in uncompromising terms. A man had died after being operated upon for stone by Sir Astley Coopei", and the death was attributed to haemorrhage io6 The "Lancet" and Medical Students from the artery of the bulb in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, showing that the reporter was more concerned in giving a truthful record of hospital surgery than of being pleasing to eminent persons. A caustic remark on an operation under- taken for stone where the patient " was carried back to the ward without receiving much assistance from chirurgical skill, as no stone was extracted," was the only really unfriendly comment on hospital surgery that Wakley allowed himself during the first volume. On the other hand, the journal which professedly catered largely for the medical students did not scruple to speak severely to them of their behaviour at lectures and to urge upon them the necessity of paying due attention and respect to their appointed teachers. For Wakley was no friend to rowdiness. The man who hated that element of student life when a student looked with no more favourable eye upon it now, and all his counsels to his student readers were good and sober. This must be put on record because one of the wild accusations against him was that he stirred up the students against their masters — his foes, the hospital surgeons. His conduct was absolutely the reverse, and until the hospital surgeons saw in the faithfulness of the reporting and the fi-eedom of the speaking in the " Lancet " menaces to their interests the accusation was not brought forward. But the preface to the second volume of the "Lancet" stirred apprehensions in the hospitals. Hitherto a little wondering among a few whether they would be subjected to what they termed the " piracy " of their lectures had been the measure of their objection to Wakley, but the following words had an import serious to the surgical staffs of all the hospitals : — " The next distinguishing feature of the " Lancet " is the publication of Hospital Reports. It has long been a matter of astonishment that from the different hospitals in this great metropolis no reports of cases have been sent forth to the world. This deficiency we shall endeavour to supply, and our reports will have this advantage over any that might be published by the surgeons of the different institutions — that while they would have an interest in concealing many circumstances which might reflect discredit on themselves and the institutions to which A Glaring Abuse 107 they belong, we cannot be influenced by any such considerations, and as the only argument that can be adduced against our reports is that they are not sufficiently authenticated we have only to observe that, by giving the cases as they occur in the hospitals, a sufficient number of ■checks is affijrded by which our claims to the coniidence of the pro- fession may at all times be readily investigated." Here we have the first loud sounding of the reformer's cry. This is the first time that Wakley said of the hospital surgeons — his brother practitioners — that they might conceal things awkward to themselves or their hospitals, in which case it would be his duty to reveal them. These words may be taken as the beginning of war. But no increased asperity was employed in the reporting of hospital cases. The records remained strictly fair and accurate, and Wakley was shown to have had no impending revelations in his mind when he wrote of his future intentions. His wish was to submit the deeds of the medical officers to the test of publi- city, exactly as he was already submitting their words by pubhshing their lectures to the students. Certain hospital abuses were found fault with, the blame being secondarily apportioned to the medical staff, who were credited with ignorance of the matters detailed. Here is an example : — " We understand that persons were allowed to vend porter in the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital, and to hawk oranges, tarts, &c. through those of Guy's. We cannot suppose that the medical officers of these institutions are aware of these facts, and on that account we refrain for the present from making any remarks on them. The abuse is too glaring to be allowed to exist by any one concerned in the treat- ment of the sick and who has it in his power to effect its redress." This little paragraph^ revealing as pages of writing could not do the exceeding lack of proper administration in the wards of the metropolitan hospitals seventy years ago, is the only passage that could have given offence to (he most susceptible sensibility or the most uneasy official conscience. A case of lithotomy was mentioned in which Messrs. Travers, Green, Morgan, and Tyrrell diagnosed a non- existent stone, but the fact was mentioned as one of surgical io8 The Amenities Preserved interest, and no unfavourable comments were made. At length, however, a point arose upon which the "Lancet" required more light. A case of compound fracture of both bones of the leg was admitted to the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital. The patient remained eight days with only allevi- ating treatment, but finally when the parts were threatened with gangrene Mr. Travers consented to operate. The femur was amputated about three inches above the knee, and the operation was performed with very little loss of blood. Nevertheless the patient, who was in a desperate plight when surgical interference was at last resorted to, died three days afterwards. The reporter of the case to the " Lancet " put certain questions to Mr. Travers concerning the cause of the delay in operating. This may be taken as the first assertion on the part of Wakley of a right to criticise events occurring in the hospitals as good as his right to narrate them. He received no answer, but he did not make any reflection on this as an omission on Mr. Travers's part. On the contrary ; in the next week's issue the "reporter gave at some length an account of a case where Mr. Travers was pressed to operate upon a patient for stone, but declined to do so, as his colleagues, Mr. Key and Sir Astley Cooper, could not detect the presence of a calculus. This patient died, and a post-mortem examina- tion showed that opening of the bladder — at any rate with a view of removing a stone — would have been useless as no stone was present, and Mr. Travers was congratulated upon his discrimination. As yet the amenities were preserved. It was Sir Astley Cooper's lectures, or rather their too faithful reporting in the "Lancet," which fired the train already laid. Sir Astley Cooper had a very intelligible and rational contempt for the routine treatment with mercury of certain complaints and expressed himself as follows to the students of the Borough Hospitals in May, 1824 : — " To compel an unfortunate patient to undergo a course of mercury for a disease which does not require it is a proceeding which reflects disgrace and dishonour on the character of a medical institution. No consideration shall induce me to repress my feelings on this subject ; Sir Astley Cooper on His Colleagues 109 no authority shall restrain me from giving full expression to these feelings. As long as I continue a surgeon of Guy's Hospital I will endeavour to do my duty ; but I care not whether I continue a surgeon of that hospital another day. I do say that the present treatment of patients .... in these hospitals, by putting them unnecessarily under a course of mercury for five or six weeks, is infamous and disgraceful. The health of a patient is, perhaps, irremediably destroyed by this treatment ; and after all not the slightest effect is produced by it on the disease." Immediately after the publication in the " Lancet " of this vigorous indictment of his colleagues by the omnipotent prince of surgery, meeting after meeting of the surgeons of the Borough Hospitals took place, and one week later Sir Astley Cooper stated that new and improved regulations concerning these cases had been agreed upon. Wakley was not a little jubilant at this public announcement, for it enabled him to point to an undoubted instance where the publication of lectures had been of good. Sir Astley Cooper had fulminated against the abuse of the mercurial treatment at the Borough Hospitals on previous occasions to the students, but no practical reformation had ever re- sulted therefrom. No sooner, however, were his words made public in the " Lancet " to the whole profession than reform, drastic and salutary, followed. Wakley's little self- congratulatory crow was natural and inoffensive, but it happened that Sir Astley Cooper in making public the designs for better administration in the faulty wards made an ingenuous disclaimer of having been actuated in his previous plain-speaking by any desire to ignore the feelings of the surgeons of the Borough Hospitals. " Who are the men, gentlemen," he said, "against whom it has been supposed that these observations were directed ? Are they men whom I could possibly feel disposed to injure ? Mr. Travers was my apprentice, Mr. Green is my godson, Mr. Tyrrell is my nephew, Mr. Key is my nephew, Mr. Morgan was my apprentice." Wakley rallied Sir Astley Cooper on the nepotism thus naively revealed, professing himself to be convinced that it was impossible that Sir Astley Cooper no Excluded from St. Thomas's Hospital should be actuated by other than friendly feelings towards such a family party — " a party united to each other, not only by the amiable ties of consanguinity, but by the no less delightful vinculum of a common participation in ^^3600 which they annually extract from the students." That same day. May 22nd, 1824, Wakley was excluded from attendance at St. Thomas's Hospital by order of the surgeons to the institution, and from that day for upwards of ten years the relations between the "Lancet" and the metropolitan hospital officials, already strained, became those of overt and uncompromising hostility. The attitude of the officials was reasonable from their point of view. They looked upon the hospitals as theirs, not the public's. As a simple chronicler of events the medical journalist would be tolerated about their paths, a certain sort of publicity having its value to theili ; but if he began with criticism to spy out all their ways, to reflect upon the wisdom of their operations, the language of their lectures, their ties of consanguinity, and the substantial nature of their emoluments, he must be expelled. Wakley's attitude was equally reasonable. These men, he said, fear publicity, because they habitually betray their trusts. They discharge public duties inefficiently and fear lest the public should find them out. Therefore they drive out the truth-teller from among them. Spurred on by a sense of duty, and not made more suave in his language by a rankling sense of the insult that had been put upon him, Wakley continued his Hospital Re- ports ; and while he defied the surgeons of St. Thomas's Hospital to prevent him from obtaining whatever informa- tion he desired, he spared no pains to prove to his readers that the "Lancet" was feared because the surgeons knew that an ignominious exposure of their unworthiness was inevitable. HOLE-AND-CORNER SURGERY III CHAPTER XII [I823-I834J " Hole-and-corner " Surgery — The Interference of Dr. James John- son — The Real Simon Pure — A Powerful and Libellous Indictment — Tyrrell v. Wahley ; Damages laid at Two Thousand Pounds. In accordance with the words of his defiance to the surgeons of St. Thomas's Hospital, Wakley continued to print weekly reports of proceedings at that institution with regularity, and to personally visit its wards and operating theatre whenever his inclination moved him, while he occasionally alluded to the action of the surgeons who had attempted to avoid publicity in scathing articles having for their common title, " Hole-and-corner " Surgery. These articles were written in a tone that precluded any idea of an amiable compromise between the offended hospital surgeons and the offended journalist. Messrs. Travers, Tyrrell, and Green, the three gentlemen under whose written authority Wakley's expulsion from the building of St. Thomas's Hospital had been designed, were contemptuously called " The Three Ninny- hammers," a nickname hallowed by Sterne, Swift, Arbuthnot, and, indirectly, Shakespeare ; and their action was criticised as a good example of the forcible-feeble behaviour to be expected from persons so designated. Mr. Travers was especially blamed for having said in an address to the students of St. Thomas's Hospital that if any student should be discovered furnishing an account of hospital cases to a newspaper he would be immediately expelled, for the hospital surgeons had not the powers necessary to carry out the threat. The articles upon "Hole-and-corner" Surgery were not. 112 A Ridiculous Argument however, directed solely against Messrs. Travers, Tyrrell, and Green, but were partly written in reply to the article of Dr. James Johnson which appeared in the "Medico- Chirurgical Review," then being issued under his editorship. Dr. James Johnson's interference was unfortunate. To begin with, Wakley was not the man to brook interference of any sort. He could understand the opposition of the persons interested in fighting with him, and had a sympathetic feeling for a firm foe. But for any meddle- some patronage or gratuitous advice he never had anything but very uncompromising language. We have seen that an article in the " London Medical Repository," which compared the publication of Abernethy's lectures to two especially mean acts unlike in their felonious importance but alike in their meanness, formed the probable stimulus to the con- tinuation of the legal processes before Lord Eldon that they were designed to squash. Similarly the strictures of the " Medico-Chirurgical Review " stirred into a blaze the ardour of a quarrel that if left to the parties concerned might have smouldered down and eventually gone out. Again, if the interference of the " Medico-Chirurgical Review " in favour of the action of the surgeons of St. Thomas's Hospital was unfortunate in itself, the particular line of defence adopted, by Dr. Johnson was doubly so when placed in opposition to a man like Wakley, who was always on the side of the public or the rank and file — a true friend of the weaker. " No man," said the ' Medico-Chirurgical Review,' " can command success in surgical operations; and if a surgeon fail from want of dexterity he suffers mortification enough, heaven knows! in the operating-room, without being put to the cruel and demoniacal torture of seeing the failure blazoned forth to the public 1 " This argument was made the subject of utter ridicule by Wakley. He begged his readers to imagine a case in which some simple operation in surgery had been performed in a bungling and disgraceful manner, so that the patient's life was endangered by, or actually sacrificed to, the operator's want of dexterity. If such a case as this had occurred in A Reflection upon Mr. Tyrrell 113 private practice Wakley could conceive that it might be desirable to suppress the cause of failure out of tenderness to the feelings of the relatives and friends of the deceased. But the expediency of suppressing all public notice of the malpraxis of a surgeon must be defended only on an amiable, if injudicious, regard for the feelings of the friends, not out of tenderness to the ignorant operator. "This latter," said Wakley, "is so monstrous a proposition that, prepared as we were for the imbecilities of the Hole-and-corner champions, we were somewhat staggered at the impudent absurdity with which it is advanced Not a scintilla of compassion does the Hole-and-corner advocate suffer to escape him for the victim of the surgeon's want of dexterity ; all his sympathy is reserved for the ignorant operator." The remarks of the "Medico-Chirurgical Review" furnished Wakley with exactly the kind of object he most relished attacking — a narrow view held by monopolists or their advocates. He combated it with a savage relish of the task, laughing at it and rending it alternately. From only one standpoint would he allow it any sort of consideration, there being only one standpoint from which regard for the feelings of the operator could be seen to affect the patient's interests. It was just possible that if cases of failure were published medical officers of public institutions would not risk their characters by performing operations necessarily attended with but doubtful chances of success. While conceding this point, Wakley held that, as no surgeon ought to operate without a hope of success, if a hospital surgeon should be deterred from discharging his duty by a dread of the press he could not be fit to hold his situation. The preface to the volume of the " Lancet " published on October 9th, 1824 contained a very serious reflection upon Mr. Tyrrell. Sir Astley Cooper's lectures had come to a conclusion in the previous year, and the editor, in con- gratulating himself upon having been the medium of bringing them before the notice of the profession, made a reference to the fact that twelve of these lectures had just been H 114 An Accusation of Plagiarism published by Mr. Tjn-rell at the price of half-a-guinea, with illustrative cases from his own hospital practice appended. Wakley rejoiced over the fact as the invaluable principles contained in the lectures could not be too extensively diffused, but he objected to Mr. Tyrrell's action in the matter because it was marked by an act of literary dis- honesty. In Wakley's opinion, the part of Mr. Tyrrell's volume, which really consisted of Sir Astley Cooper's last course of lectures, was copied paragraph for paragraph and phrase for phrase from the " Lancet," a proceeding that was inevitable if Sir Astley Cooper's lectures were to be repro- duced at all, as the transcript for the " Lancet " was the only manuscript in existence. What Wakley particularly objected to was the fact that Mr. Tyrrell had concealed the source from which he had obtained his material for the book. " He would have remained silent," he said, " if Mr. Tjrrell had not had the singular effrontery not only to conceal the source from which his fragment of the lectures is derived, but actually to represent him- self in his preface as the veritable Simon Pure and to declare that his is the only correct and authentic copy. Now this is too much ; it is too ludicrous to see Mr. Tyrrell alternately figuring as a Hole-and- corner Surgeon and as a humble transcriber of the pages of the • Lancet ' ; at one time striving by all the contemptible artifices which we have so frequently exposed, to put down the ' Lancet ' ; and at another meekly sitting with our volume before him, coolly appropriating our labours, even servilely adopting our phraseology, where it differs from that of Sir Astley Cooper ; and finally, with unexampled intrepidity, declaring that his is the only correct copy, for the sake of adding a little to the enormous profits which he already extracts from the pockets of the students." A footnote to this passage said that Mr. Tyrrell had fallen into the pitfall so fatal to the plagiarist, and had transcribed passages which Sir Astley Cooper had never uttered, but which had been incorporated in the "Lancet" reports by error. This was the warning of a coming storm, but not until November 20th, 1824, was any further notice taken of Mr. Tyrrell's book. Upon that date, however, an article ap- peared the style and tone of which must have been adopted out of deliberate attempt to force matters to a legal contest. The Real Simon Pure 115 .The article was entitled "The Real Simon Pure,"* and accused Mr. Tyrrell in unmeasured terms of literary and pro- fessional, incompetency and dishonesty, asserting that the text of Sir Astley Cooper's lectures had been bodily stolen from the " Lancet " and that the illustrative cases were badly chosen and unimportant as a whole, and that one in parti- cular had been seriously garbled, being recorded as a success in spite of the fact that it had a fatal termination. Terribly relentless and almost savage as this article was, "as an indictment it was a masterly piece of work, and it is impossible to read it now without feeling that the pen that wrote it was moving in obedience to a mind not stirred by petty malice, but fiercely swayed by passionate conviction. That Wnkley had a personal grievance against Mr. Tyrrell is not denied, and it is probable that being a very human man he was not sorry to catch him tripping ; but it was not Mr. Tyrrell alone whom he had in his mind when he poured out the vials of his scornful wrath, but Tyrrell's uncle and pati^on, his colleagues at St. Thomas's Hospital, and all who throve by nepotism and secrecy at the institutions that should have been the purest fountains of charity and the most unpre- judiced sanctuaries of science. The article commenced by taking a passage from every tenth page of Mr. Tyrrell's book, commencing at a certain place, and comparing it with the corresponding paragraph as it appeared in the " Lancet." Six such parallel passages were given and shown to be practically identical. The illustrative cases were then very roughly criticised, and here the crowning offence urged * Simon Pure was a character in an early eighteenth century play ■entitled "A Bold Stroke for a Wife," and written by Mrs. Centlivre. The story turns upon the impersonation of a young Quaker hero by an adventurer named Feignwell, and the hero is Known as the Real Simon Pure to distinguish him from his counterfeit. The nickname does not appear very well applied in the connexion that it was used by Wakley, who evidently meant by it the True Culprit, but the word " Pure " attracted him. All the tyranny of the Council of the College of Sur- geons was, as will be seen later, adopted towards the commonalty to mark the difference between " Pure " Surgeons or Hospital Surgeons and mere general practitioners. ii6 A Successful Case ? against Mr. Tyrrell was reached, for among these cases was one quoted by the author as a success, the subject of the operation having died before the issue of the work. " This," wrote Wakley, " we consider the climax. We have toiled through a jumble of commonplace remarks, stale truisms and long-spun cases These, it is true, we might have overlooked in benevolent compassion for the imbecility o£ the head that could think of adding to the value of Sir Astley Cooper's lectures by such paltry trash He might have been content with palming upon the public our pages for his own production .... without having the unblushing effrontery to publish false facts The world will hardly credit that a hospi- tal surgeon could publish, as a successful case, one that we had already given the post-mortem examination of; such, however, is the fact, as may be proved by a reference to our own pages." The case in question was that of a certain Thomas Denman, occasionally alluded to as Timothy Desman, who was ad- mitted into St. Thomas's Hospital on the last day of August with a depressed compound fracture of the vertex of the skull. Mr. Tyrrell's account of the treatment of the case was as follows : — " I removed the whole of the fractured bone, which was comminuted ; one small portion had pene- trated the dura mater. He has been treated just as the former patient was and has not had a bad symptom since." The case was immediately recognised as one that had been reported in the " Lancet " of the previous quarter as liaving a fatal termination through abscess of the left frontal lobe of the brain, and Wakley appended the account of the post- mortem examination, which he had printed at the time, as a note to Tyrrell's account of the case. Upon this undoubtedly libellous article an action was brought against the editor of the " Lancet " and damages of j^20oo were claimed. Wakley's First Libel Action 117 CHAPTER XIII [1823-1834] Tyrrell v. Wakley : The Case for the Plaintiff — The Case for the Defendant — The Judge's Charge — Fifty Pounds Damages A warded — Contumacious Behaviour — The Effects of the Trial. The case of Tyrrell v. Wakley came on for hearing on February 25th, 1825, before Lord Chief Justice Best (after- wards Lord Wynford) and a special jury. Mr. Serjeant Vaughan and Mr. Serjeant Adams appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr. Brougham (afterwards Lord Brougham) and Mr. FitzRoy Kelly (afterwards Chief Baron Kelly) for the de- fendant. Mr. Serjeant Vaughan, in his opening speech, referred to the deplorable state of friction between Wakley and certain of the hospital surgeons, and attempted to show that the publication of the libel was the direct and malicious outcome of Wakley's exclusion from St. Thomas's Hospital by Mr. Tyrrell and his colleagues. He justified that exclu- sion by saying that Wakley had made ill use of the privilege enjoyed by old students at St. Thomas's Hospital of being free of the wards and lecture-rooms of the institution aftei they had completed their medical curriculum ; that false statements had been made by him in his paper ; and that it had therefore been thought proper by the authorities to exclude him from the hospital. Mr. Tyrrell was one of those who put his name to the paper by which Wakley was expelled from the hospital in May, 1824 ; and from that date a series of libels on Mr. Tyrrell could be traced to the " Lancet," ending with the one now specifically complained of, which made a most direct and bitter attack on his character. The damages were laid at ;^20oo, which counsel did not consider •ii8 Serjeant Vaughan for the Plaintiff excessive having an eye to the scurrilous nature of the article and the wide circulation of the paper in which it appeared. Mr. Tyrrell was held up to the public in a paper with a known circulation of more than four thousand as a man who had been in the habit of publishing false state- ments to the world, and of attempting to raise a spurious reputation on the supposed success of his practice by publishing his unsuccessful cases without adding to his accounts their luckless terminations. The imputations were not merely of a want of talent — not merely of errors of the head — but of the worst vices of the heaii. Mr. Tyrrell was practically called in the article in question a thief of another's labours and a mendacious boaster. - One part of Mr. Serjeant Vaughan's speech certainly carried •weight, and that was where he dealt with Wakley's property in the lectures. Mr. Tyixell could not be said to have stolen irom Wakley what Wakley had never legally owned — and 4:he question of Wakley's right in these lectures was very doubtful. Some sort of right in them had been given him by Sir Astley Cooper, but how much was an open question. Moreover, as the Abernethy case was at this very. time being considered in another court under the rather notorious cir- cumstances already detailed, every one felt that the question of copyright in lectures was in an unsettled condition and that an accusation of gross literary dishonesty founded upoii any assumed settlement of that question did not at the time ;com6 very well from Wakley. When Mr. Serjeant Vaughan said; that the lectures were undoubtedly Sir Astley Cooper's, and that he must be allowed to do whatever he liked with them and that he therefore was within his right in employing his nephew, Mr. Tyrrell, to publish certain of them in a book with a view to correct the inaccuracies present in the reports which had appeared in the " Lancet " he made a point and it was the only one he really did make. With regard to the imputation that Mr. Tyrrell had wilfully suppressed the fatal termination of postpone the hearing of their complaints had been made with the acting- President and not with his gown. Sir Astley Cooper tried to cast oil on the waters, spoke highly of the naval surgeons, and characterised the action of the Admiralty as improper. He suggested that the purpose of the members would be better served by their deputing six of their number to confer with the Council. Mr. Keate, supported by Mr. Thomas, a member of the Council, persisted that he would lay the resolutions before the Council and personally could hear no more on the subject as he was not present in an official position. The meeting terminated by Wakley's 214 A Piece of Quibbling i"emark that the members had done their duty and it only remained for the President and Council to do theirs. The resolutions were duly laid before the Council by Mr. Keate, but were considered " irregular," and the Council " found it impossible " to act upon them. This decision was come to by a majority of 15 to 3, the three more liberally minded men being witliout any comparison the three most important men on the Council — namely, Sir Astley Cooper, Lawrence, and Benjamin Brodie. Wakley considered this a gross breach of confidence. The members had heard the oration with patience on the distinct understanding that the President and Council would listen to them afterwards. At the close of the oration the acting-President found himself unable to do more than convey a message to the Council, having hung up his official position in the ante-room with his gown — a piece of quibbling that had been received by the meeting with hearty disapprobation. Consequently, in the following week Wakley again begged the profession to attend at the College and decide what course should be taken to compel the Council to espouse the cause of the oppressed naval officers. The members were enjoined to assemble at the College at three o'clock, at which hour the doors of the theatre would be open in preparation for the next Hunterian Oration at four. Immediately upon this invitation being given by Wakley the Council issued a notice in the morning papers that the doors of the College would not be opened until a quarter to four P.M., and that no public discussions would be allowed in the theatre of the College either upon that or any other occasion. Circular notices 1.0 this effect were also posted to some of the metropolitan members. The members, however, either being ignorant of the Council's action or believing it to be a ruse, arrived in great force to the number of three or four hundred. The pointer did his duty and refused to admit anybody until a quarter to four, in spite of the very inclement weather. At about twenty minutes to four Wakley arrived and demanded admission, but the porter stuck to his instructions, only exceeding them bv making a special Bow Street Officer to the Rescue 215 attempt to exclude the editor of the " Lancet." At twelve minutes to four the doors were thrown open, and no sooner had the theatre been filled in every part, which occupied but a minute or two, than Wakley was called for on every side. He rose to speak in a scene of confusion and uproar amount- ing nearly to riot. The majority of the meeting was with him, but a small opposition was noisy and demonstrative. Wakley declared that nothing need now be done until the President's arrival, when the officers of the College must be asked by the assembled members who was responsible for the advertisement and circular forbidding them to assemble in their own College. At four o'clock the President, Council, and a posse of Bow Street officers entered the theatre. Wakley rose holding the circular in his hand, and tried to ask whether it was an official document issued by the Council. The President, Dr. Morson, and Mr. King, as well as Mr. Guthrie (a member of the Council), tried to make themselves heard without avail. The disorder seemed wildest in the immediate neighbourhood of Wakley, who remained on his feet without speaking, the centre of a circle of applauding supporters. A Bow Street officer was sent to order him out. The surrounding members would have rallied to his aid, but Wakley forbade them, saying that the Council had not the least power to remove him. He informed the officer of this fact, who returned to the Council saying, " Mr. Wakley knows perfectly well what he's about." The Council were exasperated, and one gentleman went so far as to suggest the use of the constables' staves. The uproar still continued and at last the President rose and left the theatre, being followed by the Council and visitors. Wakley then addressed the meeting, imploring them to preserve quiet behaviour. •He proposed that they should put themselves in order by electing a chairman, and suggested Mr. George Walker, a surgeon at Sheerness, and a very senior member of the College. Mr. Walker was unanimously elected and Wakley at once continued his speech. He observed that they "had not listened to a lecture on hernia, but that rupture was a verj' 2i6 Wakley Expelled from the College appropriate subject on such an occasion." He asked the members whether they did not consider that he, had been right in inquiring of the Council whether the precious document he held in his hand had emanated from them officially ; he described it as one of the most extraordinary pieces of composition he had ever seen, and suggested that it must be the work of Mr. Belfour's cook. He said he would not move a vote of censure on the Council for the indignities to which he and his brother members had been subjected because he really thought that vote had already been as good as passed. He described for the meeting the gross insult put upon the naval surgeons by the Admiralty, and finally moved a resolution that the members deeply regretted the unsympathetic attitude of the Council as shown by the fact that they had refused to notice the resolutions of the members passed for their consideration at the previous meeting. "This refusal," said Wakley, " is another added to the already innumerable existing proofs that the President and Council are alike indifferent to the honour, happiness, and respectability of the commonalty of this chartered College." The resolution was seconded by a Mr. Complin and carried with only two dissentients. A few moments later Mr. Belfour, the secretary of the College, and the person whose name had been appended to the offending circular, entered the theatre and handed to Wakley a paper bearing the following words : " Mr. Wakley, you are required by the President and Council to quit the theatre." Wakley refused point-blank, when a similar order to the members, written large and pinned to a board, was held up over the lecturer's desk. No one moved. Suddenly a number of Bow Street officers rushed into the theatre and making for Wakley seized him by the collar, arms, and legs, and proceeded to expel him by force from the building* The surrounding members ran to his assistance and a tug of war ensued. While he was thus stretched out a Bow Street officer aimed a blow at his head with a truncheon. This providentially missed his head and fell upon his shoulder. His struggles were so fierce as to throw himself A Free Fight 217 and half a dozen persons down several benches to the floor of the theatre. The fighting might have been prolonged in spite of the nature of the odds, for Wakley was a man of great strength and large frame and an expert boxer and wrestler, but it was not his desire to continue the brawl. He consented to leave the building, and urged his friends to forego further resistance. On getting outside the officers released their grip, when Wakley at once ordered them to take the officer into custody who had aimed the cowardly blow at him. This they refused to do, but at last two Bow Street officers to whom the previous occurrences were unknown were fetched who complied. A procession was now made to Bow Street, consisting of the Bow Street officers, the arrested man and his custodian, Wakley with his clothes hanging on him in rags, and a body of sympathetic followers. On its way through Covent Garden it collected a large and uproai'ious crowd, and at seven in the evening Wakley charged his assailant before the chief magistrate, , Sir Richard Birnie. In the meanwhile the members who had remained in the theatre proceeded with the business for which Wakley had convoked them. They passed a resolution that three of their number should form a deputation to the Lord Chamberlain (the Duke of Devonshire) to point out to his Grace the invidiousness of the position in which the naval medical officers had been placed by their exclusion from the levies of the Sailor-King, and they selected to represent them Messrs. Wakley, Walker, and King. 2i8 Sir Richard Birnie, the Magistrate CHAPTER XXIV [1823-1834] Proceedings at Bow Street — Wakley continues to fight — The College institute Criminal Proceedings — The London College of Medicine — Its Prospectus — Its Failure — Wakley determines to enter Parliament. In 1831 the stipendiaries of the metropolis did not hold the position that they do now. They were not lawyers and they possessed the same qualifications to act as magistrates that the provincial mayors possessed, and no more. They had not the education of the country justice of the peace. Sir Richard Birnie, who was a saddler, and his fellow magis- trates, who were drawn from the same class, after deliberation decided that they could not grant Wakley a warrant against Ledbitter, the Bow Street officer who had assaulted him. The reasons for this were not made very clear in words by the worthy knight, who frankly confessed his partial feelings • in the matter. He seems to have considered, first, that Wakley was debating in the building of the College affairs that were not collegiate, and that, therefore, the President of the College had a right to have him removed. To this Wakley said that the wrongs of the naval surgeons, whose diplomas and certificates were very generally granted to them by the College, were exactly matters of the highest collegiate as well as professional interest, and that even had they been otherwise the man Ledbitter had struck out at him with his truncheon in a murderous way. Sir Richard Birnie then said that Ledbitter was wrongly arrested, inasmuch as the Bow Street officer who had taken him in custody was not an actual eye-witness of the alleged assault. A Complaint at Bow Street 219 and it was a general instruction to the Bow Street officers that they should only arrest a man for a wrong-doing of which they had personal ken. To this argument, which was unfavourably criticised from the bench by another magistrate, Wakley responded by exhibiting his ruined clothes to the court and asking if there could be any reasonable doubt that he had been savagely assaulted. The Bow Street officers themselves, moreover, admitted the truth of Wakley's account, merely saying that they had received their in- structions upon two separate occasions from the Council of the College to expel Wakley ; and they identified a person in court, who turned out to be Mr. Wilde, the soHcitor to the College, as the individual who had told them that for whatever they did the authorities of the College would hold them indemnified. As Sir Richard Birnie would not grant a warrant the matter ceased there as far as legal proceedings on Wakley's part were concerned. Some preliminary steps were taken to bring Ledbitter to justice in another way, but Wakley was not truly desirous of prosecuting the man and did not per- severe in the face of tedious formality. If he could have prosecuted the Council of the College for the assault he would have done so ; this he said repeatedly, and no one can doubt that he meant what he said, but he was advised that his chance of making out a legal case against them was slender. A moral case, however, was easily to be established against them, and Wakley's pen was not idle. It is characteristic of him that after one powerful outburst of rage, his allusions to the personal indignity that he had undergone became infrequent and dispassionate. The fact that the Council had expelled him by violence and with the assistance of Bow Street officers from the theatre of the College added no bitterness whatever to his strictures. In fact, after the first natural feeling of wrath; and insult had subsided, he was not ungrateful to his enemies for providing him with so graphic a proof of his contention that they were autocratic, careless of the rights of their commonalty, and unscrupulous in their methods of preserving their own 220 Criminal Proceedings against Wakley position as irresponsible rulers. These three propositions he demonstrated week after week ceaselessly and i-emorselessly, and concluded by recommending the London students not to affiliate themselves to the College of Surgeons at all but to be content with the licence of the Apothecaries' Hall, which Company charged less in fees and did more to protect its general body. His argument in support of this advice to students was ingenious. It was based on the working of the Apothecaries Act of 1815, which had been unduly pressed by the Apothecaries' Hall against the College of Surgeons, properly qualified surgeons having been prosecuted by the Hall for dispensing medicines. The Hall, in fact, took active and selfish steps in defence of those possessing its licence, and Wakley, whilst reprobating the institution of prosecutions against the members of the College of Surgeons, advised the coming men to join the Hall. This advice may or may not have stung the Council of the College into reprisals ; it was calculated to damage the corporate purse, which Wakley said was the tenderest spot in the corporation, but certainly their next move was a strong and almost unwarrantable one. It was no less than a motion for a rule in the court of King's Bench calling upon Thomas Wakley, Thomas King, George Walker, and George Darby Dermott (whose name had not previously been conspicuous in the proceedings of the reformers) to show cause why a criminal information' should not be filed against them for certain misdemeanours committed in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on the occasion of the riotous proceedings at the College in protest against the exclusion of the naval surgeons from the King's levies. The motion was heard by Lord Tenterden who made the rule absolute against Wakley and King, and discharged it against the other defendants, stating in his remarks from the bench that it was illegal for the members to discuss in the theatre of the College any subject not connected with the acknowledged duties of the corporation. Wakley undismayed responded with an entire elaborate The London College of Medicine 221 and cut-and-dried scheme for a new corporation of surgeons to be entitled the London College of Medicine, to have a Royal Charter and to do everything as properly as the existing College did everything impropei-ly. The London College of Medicine was really a socialistic dream. The idea of founding such an institution undoubtedly sprang up in Wakley's mind as the swiftest and most drastic method of punishing the College of Surgeons. When he formulated the scheme for it he was not in the mood to weigh matters as calmly and judiciously as was his wont, for undoubtedly a great sense of personal anger had been roused in him by the institution of criminal proceedings against himself and his colleagues. This bent his judgment, which had not been warped in the least by the violent physical treatment that he had received. He over-estimated — and for the first time — the power of his pen. As a destructive weapon it had proved terrific ; he now proposed to employ it in con- struction. The London ■ College of Medicine, "founded upon the most enlarged and liberal principles, in which all legally qualified practitioners, whether physicians, surgeons, or apothecaries," were to be " associated upon equal terms " and to be "recognised by the same title," was obviously fore-doomed to failure. Below is an abridgment of its prospectus, by which it will be seen that its constitution was really an attack on the College of Surgeons. The new College proposed to do for the public and the profession everything that the old one did not do, and for the neglect of which the more advanced reformers found such bitter fault with it. After a preliminary clause stating that all persons in the United Kingdom at present holding a medical or surgical degree or diploma were eligible to be chosen as Fellows without examination, it proceeded as follows : — " The possessors of the diploma of the London College of Medicine are denominated Fellows, and will enjoy, both in and out of the College, the title of Doctor. " The London College of Medicine will be under the government of a Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, and Senate. 222 Joseph Hume " The Senate will consist of not less than thirty-six Fellows elected by ballot, annually, by the Fellows in general convocation. "The Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, and Scrutators are elected by the Senate ; a majority of the Senate to be present, or the election void ; the elections to be conducted by ballot, and the decision of the majority, final. " On each examination of candidates for the diploma, seven of the Senate constitute a medical jury ; the Scrutators are ineligible to the office of jurymen. " On each examination the votes of a majority of the jury to decide the candidate's admission or rejection. " The examination of candidates will be conducted in public by the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, the Scrutators, and the medical jury. " Candidates are not required to produce any certificates whatsoever ; the capability of undergoing a fair and searching professional exami- nation being considered the only professional qualification necessary for obtaining the diploma. " The fee demanded for the diploma of the College is three guineas from gentlemen engaged in practice, and five guineas from students. No candidate after a second rejection to be eligible for re-examination until twelve months shall have elapsed." Wakley went to a personal friend, who was to be in the immediate future his political god-father, Joseph Hume, for. assistance in the matter, and Hume consented to take the chair at the preliminary meetings, which were enthusiastic entirely because Wakley's strictures against the College of Surgeons were so forcible and so amusing. Hume had once been a medical man, but his whole career was now political, and he really did not understand the nature of the departure he was being made to join. If Wakley had sub- mitted his scheme to any man of Hume's talent but who was in touch with the needs of the profession, a lecturer or a man with experience on a hospital staff, he would have received criticism and guidance that would have prevented him from pursuing with so much energy such a will-o'-the- wisp as the scheme for founding the London College of Medicine was bound to prove. But Hume, a reformer and great politician, almost a statesman, was ignorant of the true needs of the medical man or the extent to which the College of Surgeons had abused its position. He was A Still-born Scheme 223 informed by Wakley, who was too angry at the time to be able to inform him quite impartially, and so when things were referred to his judgment he could only frame an answer in accordance with one-sided information. But in the absence of competent advice Wakley, with immense perseverance, wrote up the cause of the London College of Medicine, where the ruling body was to be elected by universal suffrage ; where there were to be no grades of rank or distinctions in title ; where no monopoly in the teaching or the granting of certificates to the taught was to be countenanced ; where the fees were to be low and only the standard of courtesy between examiners and examined high. But write as he would he could not galvanise this stillborn scheme into life. It was without the elements of existence. To begin with, unless the Government granted the promoters a charter their associa- tion among themselves was no use. Unless the State recognised the diplomas of the new college there would be no inducements to candidates to present themselves to obtain them. Now it was not for a moment probable that Government would have anything to do with the new scheme. A Royal Charter had been granted to the College of Surgeons together with much money. Against this Charter a petition had been presented to Parliament which had so little to recommend it to the notice of the House that after a perfunctory order to the impeached corporation to present certain accounts the matter dropped out of notice. The House would certainly consider the new scheme the outcome of private ill-will against the officers of the older body, who had already been recognised by the Crown and were in receipt of public money. To support a rival body designed in every way to ruin that corporation would be to stultify the action of the Crown in granting the Charter and to waste the money already granted with no niggard hand. So that if Wakley had been supported by the mass of the College in the way that he confidently expected he had nothing to hope for from Government. But as a matter of fact for the first time the better sort of his own particular 224 A Still-born Scheme followers and readers were not wholly with him. They admitted the perfect unselfishness of his project, .but they did not want it. They had no real hate of their College or its authorities. They desired it to be reformed and they thought that Wakley might reform it. But they did not want it destroyed and a new institution with no history and no prestige substituted for it ; so that the London College of Medicine died of inanition before anyone save its inventor and a few ardent and not wholly disinterested colleagues would allow that it had ever been born. The criminal proceedings against Wakley and King also came to a speedy termination. Though supported by Lord Tenterden's rule and dared by Wakley to proceed, the Council decided to let the matter drop. So that the out- come of the great and stormy meeting of February 14th, 183 1, was nothing at all save that the naval surgeons were readmitted to the King's levies, to agitate for which was the reason that Wakley summoned the members together. Wakley was advised that he could not-prosecute the Council, and he did not desire to prosecute Ledbitter. The Council having been successful in their initiatory steps against Wakley decided that it would be impolitic to proceed further. The London College of Medicine, instituted to meet the wants of the rank and file of the profession and to take the place of the College of Surgeons, whose behaviour towards its members was so ruthless, came to an early and inglorious end. During the next three years Wakley's intentions to carry on his agitation against the College of Surgeons were not altered, but he decided to change his methods. He had done as much as was possible in his private capacity and as a journalist. It remained now for Government to carry on the work that he had commenced, and to carry it on with a far larger scope. The Royal College of Surgeons of England was not the only medical corporation in the kingdom that did not do its duty by its commonalty, and the behaviour of the hospital officials of the metropolis was not the only A New Determination 225 feature in medical education that needed improvement in the interests of the students. A thorough scheme of reform devised for the good of the public as well as of the profession — in short, a new Medical Act — ^was wanted, and this could only be carried through with the aid of a paiiy in Parliament. The failure of the London College of Medicine showed Wakley tha,t he must not expect much from any co-operation of the profession, and he resolved to transfer the scene of his struggles from Lincoln's Inn Fields and the columns of the " Lancet " to Westminster. 226 The First Ten Years of the " Lancet " CHAPTER XXV J ;. J , .';[i8?3-i834] The First Ten Years of the "Lancet": A Recapitulation — The Early Staff of the Paper — The Mills Family — A few Details of Private Life — The Kindness of Mr. Goodchild — The Move to Bedford Square — Wakley resolves to Contest the Borough of Finsbury. A period has now been reached when Wakley began to lead three careers, any one of which would have sufficed to satisfy the appetite of most men for hard work. While remaining a journalist he desired to represent a London constituency in Parliament, and to be also coroner for one of the divisions of Middlesex. In a short time he achieved each aspiration, being elected Member-for Finsbury in 1835 and Coroner for West Middlesex in 1839. For purposes of clearness his life will be told in two divisions from this point, otherwise the constant change of scene and breaks in narrative would make the story impossible to follow. It is proposed to treat his parliamentary career first, because his parliamentary work was in very direct continuance with his struggles in the cause of medical reform, and a brief recon- sideration of what he had already effected will show that before he turned his thoughts towards Parliament he had advanced his projects by seven-leagued strides. The " Lancet " was started in the interests of the profession at large inclusive of the students, and was designed to show that the great hospitals of the metropolis were managed to the advantage of a few rather than of the community, and that medical men as a body were wronged by their leaders. The establishment by the action at law with Abernethy of A Summary of Results 227 the right of the " Lancet " to publish the lectures delivered to hospital classes was much more than the solution of an undecided question in copyright. The privileges of copy- right would have prevented, and actually did prevent, Wakley from printing the lectures. But when he proved the lectures to have been delivered in a public capacity he gained his point, and in doing so damaged the unearned fame of many eminent teachers and got his journalistic foot for the first time into those fastnesses of privacy — ^the metropolitan hospitals. The articles against malpraxis among hospital surgeons immediately followed, and reached their climax in the sensational case of Bransby Cooper v. Wakley. They did good and harm. They roused a whole- some distrust in the minds of the profession of the systen: under which such mishaps were possible. They sounded a revolt against a nepotism that nowadays seems too monstrous to have existed, but which appeared seventy years ago to be natural and void of reproach. They stirred up in the minds of the profession at large a determination to be better treated and only to be ruled by those who were worthy to rule them. All this was effected by Wakley, and almost immediately a purer and better state of things was brought about within our hospital walls. The harm that these articles did was much less than the good, but must not be overlooked. The public dissemination in the "Lancet " of such bitter criticism on lecturers, sui^geons, and administrators in the well-known hospitals of London brought the profession of medicine into public and unequivocal disrepute. The " Lancet " speedily became a purely medical journal, but others besides medical men read it, and learned with some shattering of their idols that the great Abernethy more than once attempted to give his students unfair measure in return for their fees, that the great Cooper considered the indispensable qualification for an appointment at Guy's Hospital to be relationship or apprenticeship to himself, and, finally, that medical staffs selected in accordance with these principles, not only at Guy's Hospital, but at all the metropolitan hospitals, more than occasionally failed to attain to the high standard of skill 228 A Summary of Results and knowledge that was to be expected of them and with which they were generally credited. A second disadvantage to the profession that followed on Wakley's revelation of hospital mismanagement was the stirring up of bad blood. Some men were for Wakley and some were against, but his excessively plain speaking and downright methods of con- ducting a dispute made it imperative that those who were on his side should quarrel outright with those who were not. From reviewing and criticising the administration of the hospitals Wakley passed naturally to the consideration of the corporation which granted the diploma most sought after by the students. This, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, was officered by the very hospital surgeons whose scientific methods left in Wakley's opinion so much to seek. The Council of the College were hospital surgeons wholly or in large majority. They were chosen for life and nominated their own successors. They selected examiners from among themselves and took no certificates save from hospital sur- geons. Here the " Lancet " did good from the first days of its existence. By his outspoken denunciations in the columns of his paper Wakley roused a wide-spread feeling among the members against their Council. He then exposed the unsoundness of the constitution of the College ; he criticised certain of the by-laws in such a way as to ensure their repeal ; he summoned the first public meetings ever held by the members, and dominated those meetings ; he placed the College on its defence, and elicited from the Council a poor refutation of the charges brought against them ; he organised a petition to Parliament for State assistance in his schemes for reform ; and he came into personal conflict with the Council in an attempt to assert on behalf of the members a right to meet in the theatre of their College to discuss matters of professional interest. All these things he had accom- plished before he decided that only in Parliament could he carry the work on further. A few words should be said of Wakley's staff during the first ten years of the " Lancet," for had he not been loyally Wakley's Early Staff 229 supported by his assistants he never could have accomphshed what he did during the period, or have laid the foundation for his great success in the future. From the beginning he was helped by Cobbett and Wardrop, but on the paper being transfei-red to the offices of Messrs. Mills, Jowett & Mills he was introduced to a family with whom he was to remain for many years in close contact, and whose assistance to the " Lancet " can be over-estimated with difficulty. Mr. Mills, senior, had four sons, Samuel, George Ireland, James Bas - nett, and Alexander Dickson. Samuel was in his father's firm, and became head-printer to the " Lancet," while the three younger sons joined the staff in different capacities. George Ireland Mills succeeded to much of Lambert's editorial work when that gentleman retired from the staff after the Bransby Cooper case. He later became Wakley's private secretary, and was for some time his deputy-coroner. James Basnett Mills was a very fine young scholar. He frequently acted as Wakley's amanuensis. He eventually took orders, and was classical coach to no less a person than Benjamin Jowett, the famous Master of Balliol, who was a son of the partner in the firm of Mills, Jowett & Mills ; while his next pupil was Wakley's eldest son. Alexander was a proof-reader in the establishment when the printing of the " Lancet " was removed to Bolt Court. He was the first sub-editor of the paper, and combined the duties with those of publisher. Alexander Mills's room formed the business office of the " Lancet" and here the meetings of the staff' took place on Friday nights. Friday was the only day upon which Wakley went regularly to the office of his paper, it being his habit to do most of his editorial work at home. But on Friday evening he would go to the office to supervise the " make-up " and arrange with his staff for the next issue. These meetings were of a very jovial descrip- tion, the usual attendants being Keen, a barrister and the legal adviser to the " Lancet " ; John Yonge Akerman, the numismatist, at this time William Cobbett's secretary, and later, secretai-y to the Society of Antiquaries ; Henry Smith, the " maker-up " of the paper, a practical printer as well as a 230 Wakley's Early Staff journalist, and afterwards editor of the " Cambridge Chronicle"; G. F. Knox, the dentist to the Westminster Hospital ; James Wardrop, and William Lawrence. Cobbett would generally join the party, punch was brought, the battles of the past week were re-contested, and the attacks of the next week planned. Wakley was most ably and enthusiastically helped by his small staff. He took his own line always, he wrote the greater part of his leading articles, and he dictated the whole of the policy of his paper ; but he was fortunate beyond measure in obtaining allies of such worth. And there was much for them to do. The pages of the " Lancet " were not filled, as might be supposed from the frequent allusions to them, with abuse of hospital officials and criticism of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. To depict Wakley justly it has been necessary to show how his paper had its origin in a desire to remedy the flagrant abuses that called for a new Medical Act, and how his resolve to sit in Parliament sprang from intention to complete there what the " Lancet " had begun. But the staff of the " Lancet " had much to occupy them outside these matters — reports of meetings, reviews of books, and attacks on quackery for example, while Wakley was not monomaniacal on medical reform. Wakley's public career has bulked so largely that almost nothing has been said of his private life. Nor is there very much to say. The rise of the " Lancet " from a young man's journalistic venture to an assured and serious success was accompanied by a commensurate rise in the private fortunes of the editor. These, when they were last the subject of mention, were, it may be remembered, at a low ebb. The disastrous fire had consumed his goods, which were not insured to their full worth, and the Hope Fire Assurance Company, by resisting his claim for compensation, had kept him out of his money until his practice was ruined. The fire cost him ;£i6oo and a practice of ;£7oo per annum for which a large sum in ready money had been paid. He received in compensation all that he could legally claim — From Poverty xo Prosperity 231 viz., ;^i2oo, and was unable to makeup his mind howto use this sum to the best advantage. His father-in-law looked askance upon him, not desiring to support his daughter's husband, yet thinking that the possibility of his having to do so was far from remote. The ready-money practice that he purchased in Norfolk Street, Strand did not give him congenial occupation, and, much as his wife loved her husband, she did not conceal from him that she had a cordial dislike of his profession. She was also aware that her wealthy parents desired .for her and- the two children then born a fitter environment than Norfolk Street. ■ This was the state of Wakley's domestic affairs when the " Lancet " was first published. The paper- proved almost immediately a pecuniary success. The circulation was shown in one of the earlier libel actions to be large, and it was considerably increased by the editor's attitude towards the College of Surgeons. From a journalistic point of view his resolute stand against corruption in that body was his greatest coup, as it was among the most important achieve- ments of his life. The other successes of the "Lancet" were smaller and more personal. However earnestly Wakley might plead that his actions and counter-actions at law had all been undertaken in defence of the broad principles of reform, a certain proportion of his readers would be unable to see how their interests were advanced by his pugnacious tactics. They might hope that he would win in the mag- nanimous way that outsiders generally desire victory to go to a gallant fighter against odds, but it was more or less as outsiders that they watched the contests. The attack on the College of Surgeons, on the other hand, was so clearly made in the interests of the profession at large that the feeling of being merely interested as spectators disappeared from the mind ' of his readers and was replaced by a very definite and properly selfish partisanship. In his crusade against the College Wakley was obviously fighting the battle of all the medical men in the kingdom save a few privileged persons, and his list of subscribers at once increased rapidly, while his own position rose from that of a journalist who 232 The Support of Mr. Goodchild catered capably to the wants of his public, and now and again furnished them with a thoroughly enjoyable sensation, to that of a leader of a liberal movement attended from the first with success and promising greater things in the future. Upon the more general recognition of Wakley as a single- minded reformer followed a vast improvement in the position of his paper. It gained in power and importance, its opinion had to be reckoned with, while its intolerance and scurrility — the occasional presence of which cannot be denied — were seen not to be its essentialities. One of the first persons to recognise the great position that Wakley was securing for himself and his paper was Mr. Goodchild, his father-in-law. The very business qualities in that gentleman, which had led him to bitterly resent the failure that had attended Wakley's fortunes con- sequent on the Argyll Street outrages made him prompt to recognise the quick passage of his son-in-law from unmerited discredit to a position of influence and responsibility that was rapidly passing to one of power. The instinct (jf the successful commercial man warned him that in the "Lancet" Wakley had a great property, and that the shrewdness, humour, and force that were displayed in the editing must secure him a prominent public career. He was, moreover, casting about for a fitting opportunity to come to the suc- cour of his daughter, and the I'ising position of the " Lancet," together with the storminess of its career, afforded him an excellent one. It would be generous to help and it would not be foolish, so he approached his son-in-law and offered to assist him in his literary venture. This timely aid completely turned the scale of fortune in Wakley's favour. As soon as circumstances warranted his doing so he gave up the house in Norfolk Street and took one in the pleasanter neighbourhood of Thistle Grove, which had the attraction for himself, his wife, and children of pos- sessing a large garden. Thistle Grove was then almost a country lane,'but now it is a street called Drayton Gardens, in the heart of that thickly populated part of Brompton and Chelsea that delights to disguise itself under the name 35, Bedford Square 233 of South Kensington. The street still preserves many of the features of suburban villadom. Here his two younger children — Henry and James — were born, and here he stayed until 1828, when he moved into No. 35, Bedford Square, the house which is associated with all his public life as Member of Parliament for Finsbury and Coroner for Middlesex. The neighbourhood of his new address was chosen for a very definite purpose, and one which was approved of by Mr. Goodchild in a practical manner — which means to say that he helped Wakley to find the necessary money to make so important an alteration in his domestic affairs. Wakley's intention now was to offer himself as political candidate for the borough of Finsbury, and Bedford Square was fortu- nately situated for the purpose, being near the office of the "Lancet,'' and also on the edge of the enormous parliamentary district which he aspired to represent. Immediately upon his establishment in his house he set about using it in accordance with his designs. An open-handed, cheery, and humorous man he delighted in good company, and it must not be supposed that all the profuse hospitality which at once became the rule in the domestic management of 35, Bedford Square, was the outcome of a design upon the minds of his possible electors. But while he revelled in the entertainment of his friends he was assiduous in the recep- tion of his political allies, medical and lay. At his fort- nightly gatherings for whist or chess he collected round him a large number of staunch friends who were attracted by his eloquence, his audacious defence of popular rights, his detei-mination, self-confidence, and kindliness of manner. And most of his guests believed in him and prophesied for him a speedy success in the political world, thereby con- firming him in his intention and endorsing the opinion of his once angi-y father-in-law. 234 Determination to enter Parliament CHAPTER XXVI [1832-1834] Wakky's Aim in entering Parliament — The Amendments to the Apothecaries Act — A '^ Member for Medicine" — The Borough of Finsbury — Parochial Work — W alley's Local and General Claims as a Parliametitary Candidate — The Support of Hume and Cobbett — The Invitation of his Constituents, Wakley's aim in entering Parliament was very definite. At a time when all around was reforming, itself or being reformeci, when the word "Radical" was for the first time attached collectively to the more progressive groups of English politicians because of their constant and common demand for radical reform in one direction or ;another, Wakley desired to represent the interests of his profesfeion in Parliament and to press there for reform in medical politics. Over and over again in his war against the constituted authorities of the professional world, in his conflicts with the College of Surgeons, and in his attempts to break down the barriers of secrecy erected by the administrators of the hospitals to screen their work, he had felt the need for a strong friend within the walls of Parliament Houses The great English corporations had many such friends. Sir Henry Halford and Sir Astley Cooper were powers, in the social world whose influence could always be brought to bear upon ; political questions and whose persorts were familiar to many legislators. When the members of the College of Surgeons presented their petition to the. House of Commons it was received without enthusiasm, almost with- out comment, and no attempt was ever made to inquire into- the justice of their demands. This apathy on the part of The Spirit of the Times 235 the House Wakley considered to have been directly due to the private representations of the impeached ^Qorporation. He believed that the College of Surgeons had been.;. able to catch the ears of individual membei's of the Government, and bis grounds for the behef were very sound.;', He desired, therefore, that someone with real knowledge of the needs of the medical profession should be in Parliament to prevent such petitions being brushed aside contemptu- ously. Rating the influence of a private member very high, he thought that if a well-informed man could give the legis- lature the benefit of his experience on medical topics from the advantageous standpoint of being himself a legislator the assistance would receive respectful attention, while a few well-timed words from such a man would show up manoeuvres similar to those by which the cause of medical reform had been recently strangled; Wakley perceived that it was imminent that other medical questions would find their way into the House. Reform was the order of the day all round, and the constitutional agitation that; was spreading far and wide in opposition to authorities or privileges having no better reason for their existence thap an ancient history was certain not to stop at one petition against the ruling body of one corporation. He felt that the movement represented by that petition was gaining in strength, and inasmuch as the possessors of power do not usually resign their positions upon moral conyiction, but generally await the legal curtailment of their priyil.eges — this being the first thing, as a rule, to bring moral con- viction into play — he foresaw that the House of Commons must be the ultimate scene of the adjustment of many dis- putes involving the rights»of the medical man. The Apothecaries Act of 18 15, for example, was to be amended, greatly to the disgust of the Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company, who were straining every nerve to resist projects of reform which would interfere with their valuable warrant to dispense medicines and to prevent other persons from doing so. The rights and wrongs of the questions here raised must have been abso- 236 The Anomalies of the Apothecaries Act lutely unintelligible to the lay member of Parliament. The Apothecaries Act of 1815 created a large class of general practitioners in England who had a monopoly of dispensing and could if they chose enforce their privileges against duly qualified practitioners not belonging to their Society, Yet many of the Licentiates of the Society desired the Act to be amended, and one of the reasons given by them for this was that under an amended Act the status of the English general practitioners would be raised and they would thus be better able to resist the very general invasion of the country by graduates of the Scotch Universities. On the other hand, a large number of the Licentiates joined the officers of the Society in protesting against the abolition of their privi- leges, and one of the reasons which they gave for desiring to remain in their present estate was that the Society by exercising a monopoly in England and Wales of the right to carry on the business of apothecaries, was able to fine and otherwise harry the Scotch interloper back to his country. And this view at first sight seemed to be sound because the Scotch medical corporations petitioned Govern- ment urgently in favour of the amending of the Apothe- caries Act, clearly believing that their country had more to gain under the new proposals than under the old charter. Here was a coil ! In the matter of an ancient City Com- pany persons who were not within the fold asked for its reform, while persons who were within the fold could not agree among themselves whether it ought to be reformed or no, the two parties differing entirely as to what they wanted while both used the same argument to enforce their views. Wakley had the whole matter at his fingers' ends and only desired to expound it to the legislature, his feeling being that the country as well as the House ought to be properly informed on such points — or injustice would be done. Questions arising out of the existing Poor-law, out of the State regulation of the study of anatomy, and out of the acknowledged abuses existent in the administi'ation of the law in coroners' courts were also engaging the attention of Parliament at the time, and in every case the editor of the A " Member for Medicine " 237 " Lancet " felt that the medical profession needed a voice within the House to make medical matters, often of a severely technical kind, distinct to the comprehension of the legislators. That was his single aim in desiring to enter the House — to further the cause of medical reform, to be an expert witness ready to hand whenever a point arose in the de- liberations of the House where the views of one thoroughly experienced in medical matters might be valuable. He was not without the exaltation that every man must feel within his breast on attaining a position' entitling him to hope for a voice in the government of his country. Wakley was, on the contrary, an ambitious man, and to sit in the mother of Parliaments had for him, being young and the architect of his own fortunes, a promise of pleasure that it would not have had either for one grown grey beneath the worries of public life or for one born in a social sphere where a seat in the House of Commons was but a due appanage to heredi- tary position. But the cause of medical reform was the cause that he intended to advocate there if he could obtain the suffrages of his fellow citizens. It is not sufficient, however, for a young man to have a call to politics, as a revivalist preacher has a call to a pulpit, to justify him in attempting to obtain a seat in the House of Commons, and had Wakley offered himself as a political candidate for Finsbury solely on the ground that he felt within himself the capability of being useful to his genera- tion because of his professional knowledge he would have been wrong and also unsuccessful. If he had acted upon his own initiative his opponents would have been able to say : " Granted that the House is sorely in want of a ' Member for Medicine,' a member who shall at all times and seasons be watchful over the best interests of the pro- fession, a member who shall keep the House in touch with the true trend of feeling in the profession and help it to discriminate between the real hardship and the hardship that only looks real in a petition — granted all that, but who says that you are the man for the post ? Who says that you 238 An Advocate of General Reform are right in claiming for yourself this proud and representa-^ five position ? " And had Wakley come forward arid invited suffrages as the "Member for Medicine" such questions would have been very hard for him to answer. Clearly he could not claim to represent the whole profession when he was at personal war with many of the leaders and untiring in his criticisms of the Charters by which the different cor- porations were ruled. He would have had to explain that the powerful individuals and wealthy societies on whose methods or morals he had felt it his duty to comment severely were already represented in Parliament, being in a position to make their views known to members of the House, while it was the interests of the profession at large that required protection, which interests he desired to represent. It would have been a fair answer, but not a very conclusive one, so that it is fortunate that Wakley never placed himself in a position where he would have been compelled to make it by claiming to be the " Member for Medicine." It was his aim to promote medical reform in Parliament and it was on account of the work in that direc- tion that he had already done and that he proposed to do, that he felt his political aspirations to be reasonable ; but he saw from the beginning that no such simple electoral cry as " Justice for Doctors " would secure him a seat. There was no constituency in England then, and there is not one now, where the personalities of the medical men or the import- ance of the medical interests are so predominant as to warrant a candidate asking for a seat to represent them. Wakley stood for Finsbury at the fii-st election after the great Reform Bill as an advocate of advanced reform principles, as the supporter of all schemes for the ameliora- tion of the condition of the people, and as the avowed enemy of all monopolies, religious disabilities, and protec-r tionist tariffs on the nation's daily food — a comprehensive, if somewhat vague, programme. The newly-constituted borough of Finsbury comprised the whole of the thickly-populated district extending from Seven Dials in the south-west to Stoke Newington in the The Borough of Finsbury in 1831 239 north-east. It included nearly all the parish of St. James's, Clerkenwell, the parishes of Stoke Newington, Islington, St. Luke, St. George-the-Mart5rr, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and St. George's, Bloomsbury ; the liberties of Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Ely Rents, the Rolls, and the Charterhouse ; Lin- coln's Inn, Gray's Inn, and those parts of the parishes of St. Sepulchre and St. Andrew's, Holborn, and of Furnival's Inn and Staple Irin respectively which were without the liberty of the City of London. The approximate population of this, one of the largest of the boroughs called into exist- ence by the Reform Bill, was 330,000, and it was regarded as among the most important of the metropolitan seats. To this enormous constituency Wakley had become favour- ably known during his four years' residence in Bedford Square. Shortly after he became a parishioner of St. Giles- in-the-Fields and St. George's, Bloomsbury, he subscribed to a fund opened by a Mr. George Rogers, a prominent local tradesman, for remedying the many parochial abuses flourishing under the patronage of the select vestry of the combined parishes. The rents in Bloomsbury were high, but the rates levied were out of all proportion enormous, and Wakley was solicited to take the chair at a public meet- ing of the ratepayers convened to protest against the burdens under which they lay. He consented and filled the post so satisfactorily that his intercourse with his future constituents daily increased and the feeling of interest created in his favour acquired fervency. He was elected a churchwarden in the popular cause, and was commissioned to defend the ratepayers when a Select Committee of the House of Commons had the doings of the vestry under consideration. Here he afforded such further proofs of energy and capacity that he was recognised by his neigh- bours for a man who would be an ideal representative of local interests in Parliament. In addition to his special claims he had the general claim of his record. His work in the " Lancet" as a medical reformer had attracted the atten- tion of all classes. He was a man who had fought the mono- polists of his own profession with unflinching courage and 240 The Support of Hume and Cobbett great success. He had established a reputation as a public speaker not only at the meetings held in advocacy of the cause of medical reform, but at the poll for the office of coroner for Middlesex, a post for which he was a candidate in 1830 under circumstances that will be described later. Here he became known to the general public for the first time as an orator, as one who possessed the magic power of holding a large audience, of carrying it with him in his sentiments and of playing with its finer feelings while dominating its coarser. Finally Wakley was selected by Joseph Hume and William Cobbett as a proper person to fill a seat in the first Reform Parliament, and each had a right to speak on the subject with authority. Hume, the member for Middlesex, had been a consistent Liberal and exponent of reform principles for fifteen years in the House and was regarded by the public as a parliamentary leader in the fight for an extended and purified franchise that had just been won. Cobbett was general of the popular forces without the walls of Westminster, his vigorous, clear, un- scrupulous pen having contributed more to the bloodless revolution of 1831 than any one man's individual efforts. He popularised each step, making it comprehensible by the clarity of his language and reasonable by the convincing ' strength of his arguments, and sent to the poll voters by the thousand educated to understand their new privilege. It was natural that Cobbett, who on the passing of the Reform Bill became a political power, should think of Wakley as a man for whom a seat must be found in Parlia- ment. He had known him intimately for ten years. He had assisted him in the publication and editing of the " Lancet," and having lent him the benefit of his stormy experiences in the battles against the College of Surgeons, it is not surprising that he considered him to have fought those battles upon proper lines. In approving of Wakley and commending him to Finsbury as a reform candidate, Cobbett was promoting the election of a man to whom he had taught the game of constitutional agitation. Hume's connexion with Wakley was later, dating only from the presentation of The Value of Local Popularity 241 the petition of the members of the College of Surgeons to the House of Commons. Hume, in the character of a retired medical man, had been present at the meetings of the members which had their outcome in the petition, and, being on those occasions brought into close contact with Wakley, had been very much impressed with his powers as a speaker and as an organiser, and with the obvious enthusia,sm and sincerity of his actions. Consequently, when, at the end of 1831, Earl Grey came into power pledged to pass the great Reform Bill, Hume, and Cobbett recommended Wakley to the voters of Finsbury, but only at the last moment, and when there were already four candidates in the field — a Whig, the Right Honourable Robert Grant, afterwards governor of Bombay ; Mr. Serjeant Spankie, a Conservative barrister ; and two Liberals, Mr. Christopher Temple, also a barrister, and Mr. Charles Babbage, the inventor of the calculating machine. The Liberal candidates were .not prepared to go the lengths necessary to commend them to Hume and Cobbett, who therefore fell back on Wakley. Then it was that Wakley's local work bore fruit. Immediately upon his name being mentioned a large and influential body of ratepayers, six hundred in number, with Rogers at their head, organised themselves into an election committee and sent him the following letter of invitation : — " We, the undersigned, electors of the Borough of Finsbury, being anxious that our newly-attained franchise should be used as a means of promoting the interests of the great body of the people, and believ- ing that your political opinions are in unison with our own, respect- fully request you to state whether you are willing to become our repre- sentative in Parliament provided you are elected in a constitutional manner. " We on our part pledge ourselves to the endeavour to impress upon our fellow electors the propriety of protecting our representatives from electioneering expenses of every description: and we will ourselves promote that object to the utmost of our power, knowing as we do that in asking you to devote your time and unceasing attention to our interests in Parliament we require of you as great a sacrifice as an honest man can or ought to make. " We invite a public reply to this requisition, and in that reply we Q 242 A Flattering Invitation invite you to declare your opinions on the great political questions which are at this moment so important to all — namely, the extension of the suffrage, the duration of Parliament, the abolition of all property qualifications either for electors or elected, the repeal of the law of primogeniture, the continuance of tithes, corn laws, trade monopolies, stamps on newspapers, and the system of slavery. " We are also anxious to learn your sentiments on the propriety of a complete revisal of the laws, civil, criminal, and parochial, with a view to simplify and condense their enactments and thereby to relieve the community from the enormous expense at present invariably incurred in every attempt to obtain justice. " We shall also be glad to learn from you how far, in your opinion, a representative ought to be governed by the opinions of a majority of his constituents, when made known to him through a pubjic meeting convened for that purpose, and how far he is in honour bound at their request to resign his trust into their hands. " Should your opinions on the above subjects accord with our own, we pledge ourselves to nominate and support you at the ensuing election, and from our knowledge of the opinions and wishes of our fellow-electors we confidently anticipate that our exertions will lead to a successful and triumphant termination." Wakley, on receiving this flattering invitation, at once made up his mind to accept it. He knew the strength of the forces that would be arrayed against him, but none the less he desired to put his fortune to the trial. A Comprehensive Programme 243 CHAPTER XXVII [1832-1834] Wakley's First Contest for thi Borough of Finsbury — The Economy of his Candidature — The Second Contest — The famous Tom Dun- combe — The Third Contest — The Interposition of Mr. Hobhouse — The Fairness of Wakley's Tactics — His Success — Enthusiasm in the Borough. Wakley replied to the questions of the electors of Finsbury in a manner satisfactory to them and in so doing committed himself to a parliamentary programme from which he never swerved. He declared himself to be in favour of an exten- sion of the suffrage, of triennial elections to Parliament, of the removal of property qualifications from candidates, of the repeal of the Corn Laws, of the abolition of slavery, and of the suspension of the Newspaper Stamp Act. He held that as to broad lines of conduct the electors had a right to control the elected and to compel him to ratify pledges given when they entrusted him with their suffrages, for which reason he objected to the Septennial Act and would have parliamentary elections made for shorter periods. He expressed himself strongly, though in general terms, upon the necessity that existed for a thorough overhauling of much of the legal procedure of the country with a view of affording the poor litigant a better chance against a wealthy adversary. He then put the words of the electors promising to pro- tect their candidate from electioneering expenses of every description to a practical test by refusing to take any part in the business of the election. He did not personally canvass a single voter, he entered but one of his committee-rooms 244 The Result of the First Election during the whole contest, and then simply in the desire to remove a wrong impression that he was careless of the issue and blind to the exertions of his committee. He addressed a few meetings of the electors in various parts of his large constituency, but so short an interval — less than a fortnight — remained between his acceptation of the invitation to contest the borough and the day of nomination that he had not time to cover all the ground. The nomination took place at Islington Green on Saturday, December 8th, 1832. The candidates were the Right Honourable Robert Grant, Lord Glenelg's brother, and a Privy Councillor ; Serjeant Spankie ; Temple, a wealthy barrister of good family ; Babbage and Wakley ; and at the show of hands the returning officer declared that the choice of the electors had fallen upon the first and last named. The others demanding a poll, the polling was commenced on the following Monday, and two days later the number of recorded votes for the respective candidates was announced as follows : — Grant .... . . 4278 Spankie .... . 2848 Babbage .... ■ 2311 Wakley .... • 2151 Temple .... . . 787 It should be mentioned in reference to the general position occupied in the first poll of Finsbury by the Radicals that Mr. Grant was an especially strong candidate and received much support from both sides. Although a Whig in politics he was the champion of the movement for the abolition of the civil disabilities df the Jews, a movement which formed a specific part of the Radical programme, and received the support of Macaulay, Hume, and O'Connell. He was a famous scholar, with an almost unprecedented record at Cambridge, had held many legal appointments, and had sat in Parliament for fourteen years ; but these things did not avail him in his candidature of Finsbury so much as his An Economical Campaign 245 untiring support of the Jewish cause, with its implied hostility to narrow clericalism. The election was conducted in a peaceful and orderly mannei", the respective candidates being exceedingly courteous in their demeanour towards each other and evidently friendly in their rivalry. Mr. Spankie in particular went out of his way to refer to the considera- tion he had received at the hands of Wakley and Wakley's committee. Mr. George Rogers, the chairman of this committee, immediately after the contest gave a touch of his quality as the organiser of a real reform campaign, one where the people's minds and not their self-interests dictated their choice. He took complete charge of the pecuniary business connected with Wakley's candidature with such economical effect that the whole expenses of the election in this enormous constituency — including printing, the sums paid to poll-clerks and check-clerks, and the sum paid as a fifth share of the expenses incurred for the erection of five polling-booths — scarcely exceeded j^iso. In a letter to Wakley he stated that the expenses of the successful candidates amounted to "thousands," which is a vague figure supplied by a biassed witness. But the Reform Bill and speeches during its passage through the House had directed so much attention to the enormous expenses that were incurred of necessity by parliamentary candidates that the fact that Wakley's candidature had cost anything like so small a sum led to much discussion and correspondence. Letters poured in upon Wakley and his committee to know how it was possible, the writers not perceiving the difference between the position of the man who approaches his con- stituency because he wants to go into Parliament and the position of the man whom his constituency approaches because they desire him to be their representative. As a result Rogers, not without pardonable pride in his own economy and the excellence of his management — who does not know that honest conceit of the organiser ? — wrote to the " Lancet " to show how it was done, and Wakley in pub- lishing the letter headed it "Exposures at the Finsbury 246 An Economical Campaign Election," a title which was apt enough on the face of it, but which, having regard to the contents, was bound to irritate the returning ofEcer. Rogers allowed, roughly speaking, ;^ioo for individual expenses, of which he gave no account, feeling probably that it was little enough to spend on advertisement of a candidate's virtues in such an enormous borough as one numbering a population of 330,000 and some 16,000 electors. But Wakley also had to pay, like the other four candidates, one-fifth of the expenses of erecting poll-booths and hustings, of securing the attend- ance of poll-clerks, of painting and fixing of notice-boards and printing voting-papers and of sundry other trifling things necessary to the business of the election. The bill for these as rendered in the lump was £^6T), making Wakle^s share £()2, Rogers returned it to Mr. Satchell, the return- ing officer, saying that he could not pay it as many of the charges were illegal. Satchell amended his charges and sent in an account for ;^286, Wakley's share being ^£57. Rogers said that this second sum was nearly double as much as Satchell was entitled to charge, and personally tendered ^^37 12s. in full discharge of all Wakley's separate liability. This sum Satchell accepted under protest, saying that it was not the sum that was due, but that he would take it so as to bring to an immediate close any relations with Rogers. To which Wakley and Rogers retorted that, as the money was not theirs to spend, but belonged to a committee to whom an account of their stewardship would have to be rendered, it was impossible that more than the legal sum should be paid. So Wakley's first attempt at entering Parliament stamped him as a man of his word and a very good pupil of Hume. He adopted a broad liberal policy and placed economy in the front of it, and the result could hardly be other than gratifying to him. In the short space of a fortnight he so cordially recommended himself to the electorate that he polled over 2000 votes, 1400 of which were plumpers. The absence of Mr. Temple from the' poll might and probably would have seen Wakley member for Finsbury at his first attempt. Tom Buncombe 247 His second opportunity followed very soon, and being accepted by him with eagerness again led to failure. But as in the first instance the circumstances under which failure came raised the candidate still higher in the estimation of his committee and of the whole electorate as a patriotic and determined man. Robert Grant was appointed in the spring of 1834 to the office of Governor of Bombay, and Wakley was again called upon by his committee to present himself on the hustings to put forward his and their opinions and solicit suffrages upon them. In a characteristic open letter to the medical profession he begged the medical electors of Finsbury to continue their labours in his behalf, clearly implying that he was especially desirous of being elected as a medical reformer, although he had identified himself of necessity as well as through conviction with the general progressive cause. Unexpectedly, however, a complication again occurred in his candidature. Until the day for nomination was very near at hand there had been only three candidates for Grant's seat — Mr. Pownall, an influential Middlesex magistrate ; Babbage, standing as a Whig ; and Wakley as a Radical. Suddenly there appeared on the scene Mr. Thomas Slingsby Buncombe, a Radical also, and a man of no small importance. A beau, a wit, and a trifler, yet an industrious man of affairs ; an aristocrat, owing all his pleasures in life to the privileges of his birth and position, and a Chartist in politics before the just and unjust discontents of the nation had crystallised into the famous demand for a Charter ; a puritan in public business and the intimate associate of Lords Alvanley, Beei^hurst, and the leaders in the social excesses of the Regency ; careful of the people's welfare and hopelessly prodigal of his own goods, 'Tom Buncombe was the very man to commend himself to the enormous constituency of Finsbury — the very man to turn the hearts of a mixed electorate from a Conservative predilection to an ardent affection for the Radicalism of which he was the humorous and fascinating prophet. There was no central organisation in those days to prevent a multiplicity of candidates presenting themselves 248 The Second Election on the same ticket (to use an Americanism), and it was left to such superabundant wooers of the constituency to arrange among themselves how best the common enemy should be defeated. Duncombe and Wakley came to an arrangement immediately. They mutually agreed that who- ever should poll the larger number of votes on the first day should publicly release his pledged supporters from the onus of plumping, and, further, should warn them that the primary object was to defeat Pownall, the secondary to return their particular favourite of two persons pledged in large matters to vote in the same way. Nothing could have been more graceful than Wakley's manner of falling in with this arrangement. It must have been a great disappointment to him to have had his pre-emption contested, yet he had the admirable sense to see that for a candidate who had openly claimed for the people their right to be served by whomsoever they pleased it would be illogical to object to their exercise of choice. Babbage was always out of the running, his scientific attainments forming no recommenda- tion of him to the constituency, while his poHtics were not sufficiently progressive to render him a true ally of the Radicals. He stood in the Liberal interest, but he was a transcendental mathematician and not the stuff of which popular legislators are made. Duncornbe was different. If a group of Finsbury electors, uncertain of Wakley's complete fitness, liked to invite Duncombe to come to assist them in breaking down the Tory power and replacing the scholarly and aristocratic Grant by a thorough-going Radical, Wakley perceived that he must allow their right to do so. His clear duty was to enter into a compact with Duncombe by which it should be ensured that the better man of the two should also be too good for Pownall. Duncombe's immediate followers were perhaps more numerous. They were cer- tainly earlier in the field than Wakley's, and on the second day Wakley withdrew from the contest. The electors in the reform interest, unpledged to either candi- date, had only been waiting to learn for whom to vote in their solidity. They at once flocked to the poll and returned A Third Opportunity 249 Duncombeat the head with 2514 votes. The figures were as •follows : — Duncombe 2514 Pownall ...... 1915 Wakley • . . 695 Babbage 379 Wakley's figures represented the votes that he received on the first morning only. His conciliatory conduct had its very prompt reward. In January, 1835, ^^ss than seven months after his second unsuccessful candidature, the country was involved in the second general election after the great Reform Bill. The two sitting members, Mr. Serjeant Spankie, Conservative, and Mr. Duncombe, Radical, presented themselves for re- election, and Wakley offered himself in opposition to the former ; but neither Pownall nor Babbage essayed his fortune again. The reform party for the third time was not unanimous in its choice. Mr. Henry Hobhouse, the brother of Sir John Cam Hobhouse, came forward in answer, as he said, to an invitation from the Radical interest so general that he could not help securing the seat for the reform party if the promises made to him were kept. Wakley's faithful committee regarded Hobhouse as a Whig, and therefore a covert foe to reform more to be dreaded than any reactionary Tory, and strongly objected to his being, as they considered it, foisted on the borough. So Wakley was again placed, by want of proper organisation in the Liberal party, in the disagreeable situation of not being perfectly certain whether the electors in general would consider his candidature as tending to the interests of the party or no. Warmly sup- ported by a large body of followers as he was, the violent language of the more immediate entourage of Cobbett and his school, and Wakley's own uncompromising speeches, no less than the sample of his actions supplied by his proceed- ings in opposition to the College of Surgeons, had scared off many of the voters who were willing to espouse the cause of Lord Melbourne generally and Tom Duncombe in parti- 250 A Split in the Radical Party cular. They wanted a Radical, but not an iconoclast, and they were not quite certain where Wakley might stop. Moreover, Wakley's fearless method of conducting the " Lancet" had raised up for him many bitter personal enemies, who, without any patriotic or political object, would still consider it right to oppose such a man in every way and almost excusable to misrepresent him grossly if occasion should offer itself. The split began to look serious, as neither Wakley nor Hobhouse considered it his duty to withdraw. Rogers took the first step. A meeting of the electors of Finsbury was convened by advertisement in the daily papers, at which upwards of 2000 persons attended, when it was resolved without a dissentient voice that Buncombe and Wakley should be supported " as the only candidates entitled to receive the votes of the electors at the poll in the reform interest." Hobhouse, however, persisted, refusing to recog- nise the meeting as a representative one and relying on the promises of what must have been a really substantial pro- portion of the electors, and these were loud in urging that Wakley should again retire rather than split the Radical vote and so allow Mr. Serjeant Spankie to keep his seat. Even so good a friend to Wakley personally and to the causes in behalf of which he stood as Joseph Hume, seems to have taken this view, as the following private letter from him to Wakley shows : — " As the time approaches," wrote Hume, " the conversation I had with you respecting Spankie comes more and more home, and my object is to keep Spankie out at all hazards. I want very much to see you and any two or three of your powerful friends, in order to see whether any arrangement can be made amongst the Reformers to compromise the differences and get in two reformers. The continued differences between Hobhouse and you must let Spankie in, which would be the greatest misfortune possible at this crisis, when all good men must join in keeping down the Tories. Let me hear from you soon for the good of the cause you and I so much advocate — good government." Wakley had, however, issued an election address in which he had promised his supporters to abide by the result of the Success at Last 251 general meeting of electors. This meeting had confirmed him in his intention to stand, and he notified to Hume that he considered it as much his duty as his pleasure to proceed with the candidature. He published a manifesto declaring that he was not guilty of the folly or wickedness of hazard- ing the success of the cause by producing dissensions in the ranks — clearly implying that such folly and wickedness might be attributed to Hobhouse — and recalling to mind his posi- tion at the poll on the first occasion, when, coming late into the field and with four opponents, he received over 2000 votes, 1400 of which were plumpers. Having done nothing to forfeit the esteem of the constituency since, and much to gain its increased regard, he declared himself determined on this occasion to proceed to the poll, convinced that on the last day of the election he should have the honour of address- ing his friends in the proud position of their representative in Parliament. With notable generosity under the circumstances and in proof of his real desire that the men should be returned whom the constituency wished to have as their burgesses he offered to make the same arrangement with his rivals in the Radical interest as had been made at the preceding election. He promised to retire from his candidature on the second day of the poll if he were the last man of the three, and to throw all his influence into their scale if such an arrange- ment were made reciprocal. Buncombe, who favoured Wakley's candidature, at once fell in with the proposal, but Hobhouse refused, and, although he was at the bottom of the poll on the first day, continued to stand and thereby to split the votes in the Radical interest until noon of the second day, when he finally withdrew. The result of the poll fully justified Wakley in persevering, for the figures were as follows : — Buncombe . . ' . . . . 4497 Wakley 3359 Spankie 2332 Hobhouse 1817 252 Enthusiasm in the Borough Wakley's return was received by his supporters in the borough with extraordinary enthusiasm. Buncombe, the Yorkshire squire and cosmopolitan man of fashion, was a highly creditable representative and a vastly popular man, and was carried on the strength of these undefined qualities to the head of the poll ; but Wakley was the people's choice. He lived among them. He had been churchwarden of two large parishes and assiduous in the discharge of his parochial duties. He was personally known to hundreds of the electors as a man who desired to see the people well fed, well housed, prosperous in their health, and cared for in their sickness. He was a speaker after their hearts. His deliberate choice of Saxon English and simple similes, no less than his some- what unbridled exercise of talents for mimicry and invective, enthralled his poorer constituents, while the more substantial voters recognised, in addition to his eloquence, his dauntless courage, his tenacity of purpose, and his chivalry towards friend and foe in all these contests. On the result of the poll becoming known Wakley's horses were taken from his carriage on Islington Green and he was dragged home in triumph. Arrived there the crowd insisted upon hearing him over and over again from the balcony of his drawing- room. Some ten thousand persons assembled in the square, the railings of which were thrown down and considerable damage was done, the enthusiastic demonstration in his favour continuing till a very late hour at night. Elementary History 253 CHAPTER XXVIII [1835] A Bird's-eye View of General Politics — National Poverty and Hunger — The Reform Bill and the Rise of Chartism — The Poor-law Amendment Act and its Influence on the Repeal of the Corn Laws — The Irish Question in 1835 — Wakley's Attitude towards the Three Agitations — The Spirit of the Times. It is not within the scope of this book to enter into constitu- tional history, save where constitutional history and the history of medical reform ase identical, but a few words on the political state of the country at the time of Wakley's election to Parliament, on the aims of political leaders and on the general feeling of the people, are necessary to the com- plete understanding of Wakley's career. These words will form only the briefest summary of their subjects and may be open to the reproach that it is impertinent to the reader's intelligence to recall such elementary historical facts. That, however, is a risk which must be run with the object of telling a clear story. At the close of the war with Napoleon, as marked by the Battle of Waterloo, Great Britain was weighed down by taxation enforced to meet the colossal expenses which she had incurred in behalf of the peace of Europe. In that very year — the year, by-the-by, when Wakley came to London — the land-owners, from which class both temporal estates of Parliament were di-awn, passed an Act having for its object the aggrandisement of their own pecuniary position. The high price of corn, which was one of the direct consequences of the war, pleased their pockets. With a perfectly honest as well as traditional belief that the benefits derived from 254 The Great Reform Bill the soil of the country should be confined by State inter- ference to the possessors of that soil, there being no just necessity that the other fifteen -sixteenths of the population should take aught from the land which did not belong to them, the landlords of Great Britain secured the passage of a measure prohibiting the introduction into the land of foreign corn until wheat had reached the astounding price of eighty shillings a quarter. Speaking sweepingly, but not at random, this meant that the poor were kept permanently hungry. Hence, when other circumstances — wars and rumours of wars, bad harvests, fiscal blunders, and blunders in colonial policy — combined to make the whole nation feel the stress of living beyond its income, the poor became particularly hungry. The results of these exacerbations of their misery were such explosions as culminated in the Peterloo " massacre " and the Cato Street " conspiracy," to take two examples of wide-spread and serious disaffection. This background of poverty, of real and abiding misery, must not be overlooked, for all the political events of the reigns of George IV. and William IV. take their tint to some extent from it. Wakley arrived in Parliament at the time of the great bloodless revolution, at the time which the most powerful and popular Conservative leader of the century denomi- nated the collapse of Dukism. The iniquitous corn-tax remained, although its oppressiveness had been recognised and attempts made to relieve it by a little botching and tinkering with sliding scales. But the franchise had been liberally lowered by the Reform Bill, and with the repre- sentation of the people more fairly distributed towns like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, having immense esteem for the commercial position of the country and no particular respect for the peer or the land-owner, had a voice in the government. Surely, thought the poor, some- thing will be done for us now. Yet within a year it became only too clear that this great measure had not satisfied the people. They might have seen that the repeal of the Corn Laws would almost certainly follow, but they did not Chartism 255 desire to wait, and they wanted other things, the hungry stomach not generally accompanying either the far-seeing eye or the patient spirit. In truth, the great Reform Bill at the moment of becoming law pleased few people. It was a curtailment of the privileges of the land-owners that they could not be expected to welcome in their hearts, even though a land-owning legislature had approved it, and Lord Grey was looked upon by many of his order — the politicians of the Carlton, Brookes's and Boodles' s — as little better than a traitor. On the other hand, the measure was not sweeping enough to benefit the working-man directly. In the form in which it finally received the sanction of the Crown it admitted the middle and lower middle classes to the suffrage, but so far from conferring the same upon the working-man it actually deprived certain tillers of the soil, already enjoying a vote under the peculiar circumstances of some of the ancient boroughs, of their time-honoured and illogical privi- leges. Out of this natural and widespread discontent arose the movement known as Chartism, a movement which aimed at the following radical changes in the Constitution : — (i) universal suffrage ; (2) annual Parliaments ; (3) payment of memi-^rs ; (4) abolition of property qualification for par- liamentary candidates ; and (5) vote by ballot. To three of these innovations Wakley was already to a certain extent pledged by his answers to his constituents when he entered the House, although Chartism did not exist as an entity with a formulated programme, a policy, and an accepted appella- tive until two years later. With regard to payment of members Wakley never expressed any definite opinion ; he disapproved of anything that was likely to interfere with the independence of a member's vote, but he strongly objected also to poverty forming an invincible barrier between an able man and parliamentary service. He was, as a matter of fact, content that members should not be paid under an invariable rule, seeing that in those exceptional cases where a large number of his fellow-citizens desired a man to repre- sent them in Parliament they generally combined to secure their candidate against grave pecuniary loss. Wakley firmly 256 The Poor Law Amendment Act believed in the ballot and supported its introduction into parliamentary elections at all times and with unbounded enthusiasm. His constituents at Finsbury did not make this a test question when bargaining with him for their suffrages ; he voluntarily added it to his programme. Chartism formed only one of the three great agitations which were imminent in 1835, and the attendant storms of which convulsed the unrestful times in which Wakley's political career was run. The other two were the agitation for the establishment of Free Trade, and that for the Repeal of the Act of Union in Ireland ; but it was the permanent misery of the people and their bitter disappointment at the result of the Reform Bill which made all three movements so notorious for the spirit of open rebellion with which they were conducted. Dissatisfaction was not, it must be re- membered, confined to the agricultural labourer. Many manufacturing firms were discharging large numbers of their hands. Improvements in machinery assisted them in their economy, while stagnation in the markets prevented them from quickly disposing of their goods and justified them in a course of retrenchment. So that the distress in the rural districts owing to the price of corn and the pitiful wages current became shared in the manufacturing districts, and the factory hand " out at play," as he euphemistically termed both going on strike and being without a job, was a much nastier and more dangerous person to deal with than his bucolic fellow-sufferer. A union between the ill-treated agricultural labourer and his better educated and worse mannered companion in misery, the factoiy hand, was brought about undesignedly by the new Poor-law Amendment Act. Previously to the passing of this Act in 1834 the management of the pauper was vested entirely in the hands of the local vestry, each parish looking after the poor in its own district. The result of this arrangement was that in-door relief was hopelessly mismanaged, scattered rural districts being unable to support the poor in an adequate workhouse. Out-door relief, on the other hand, was more spontaneous and better directed, The Poor Law Amendment Act 257 the recipients of assistance being personally known to the distributor of the charity, very generally the squire or the rector. But it was to be urged against this that able-bodied men out of woi-k got relief without doing anything in return for it, while loafers multiplied in many districts, and rural immorality became a serious national trouble. In 1832 it was thought necessary to appoint a Royal Commission to look into the matter and advise a remedy. The outcome of this Commission was the Act of 1834, which was framed with philanthropic intent, but which was too much directed towards relieving the owners of land and houses of the burden of their responsibility to be fair or satisfactoiy to the community. Before the passage of the Act of 1834 't was possible for a pauper to become entitled to relief simply by being hired or employed in a parish, or by renting a tene- ment therein, or by apprenticeship, as well as by birth. The amended law laid down that birth should be the only means of obtaining settlement for purposes of relief, unless other means were agreed to by the guardians under the Act in any particular case. This rule bore exceedingly hardly upon the labouring classes. In certain districts where the landlords were selfish or recklessly cruel the cottages on their estates were destroyed in order that the territorial magnates might become exempt from the maintenance of the population. Such was the extreme value of the land that was under tillage that in many places the owners could afford to allow large tracts to go out of cultivation, and they preferred to do this rather than make themselves responsible for the relief of the peasants who should have been resident on the soil and em- ployed in its cultivation. We can imagine the plight of these poor labourers. Their claim to relief from starvation was only to be made good by journeying back from the place to which starvation had already driven them, to a place where there was no roof to shelter them, no work to sustain them, and where the rulers of the district would consider their reappearance an intolerable intrusion. Wherever they went all who availed themselves of their labour were solicitous that they should not become dwellers on the soil, and con- R 258 The Irish Question in 1835 sequently the filthiest corners in the cities became their necessary refuge. Here they foregathered with their com- panions in misfortune, the superseded manufacturing hands, as well as with the frankly vagrant and criminal classes, and out of this ill-omened amalgamation was formed a body of desperate men who were at once the objects of the fear and the hate of the legislative classes of all creeds. The selfish and the ignorant saw in these unfortunate people only impudent rebels trying to emulate in their occasional out- bursts of riot and incendiarism the excesses of the followers of Robespierre. The kindly-hearted and the well-informed saw in them the main obstacle to the practical treatment of all the great questions in philanthropy and economics, inas- much as every movement for the popular good was certain to receive their baneful support and so to be at once unfairly discredited by its involuntary association with them. The Chartists failed to secure any of their objects at the time of demanding them only because of the unbridled violence of the rabble hanging on to the fringe of the movement. And the repeal of the Corn Laws, which proved an immediate relief of the pitiful condition of things that has been briefly sketched above, would not have been secured without even fiercer fighting had it not been that the leaders were determined and patient men, men strong to resist the forcing of their hands by turbulent supporters. The Irish Question in 1835 ^^^ almost at its acutest stage. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had been granted grudgingly — many thought in fear — and the value of the concession had been ruined because of the wide- spread feeling that justice had only been done under compulsion. At the same time the mental descendants of Lord George Gordon found the Catholic Emancipation Act unpardonable and dangerous, and dangerous certainly it was in that it made of the Repeal demonstrations that are associated with O'Connell's name a hopeful effort. The Irish peasant knew that O'Connell had demanded Catholic Emancipation, and that having been refused at first, so far from being abashed, had said that he would compel the Wakley Supports Repeal of the Union 259 English to grant the concession. In the end Emancipation was conceded, and when O'Connell promised later that he would compel the English to give him Repeal of the Union he was naturally and implicitly believed. Wakley could not do other than favour the Repeal party. It was in no way linked to the Liberal interests, O'Connell, as is well known, being equally ready to accept help from Sir Robert Peel as from Lord John Russell, from Lord Melbourne as from the Duke of Wellington, but the election addresses of both Wakley and Buncombe had committed them to the support of the Liberator in his demands, as all genuine promoters of the Reform cause, afterwards named Chartists, were bound to do. The reformers, apart from refinements, really desired governm^t for the people by the people. Their great idea was that the predominant will of the people should form the determining factor in making the laws of the country. This was O'Connell's own rough-and-ready argument for the Repeal of the Union. He had nothing to say against the Union as evidencing the wish of the majority at the time, although he had a great deal to say against the corrupt way in which the majority had been persuaded to wish for what was bad for them. His great point was that the generation which he represented had no part in what their fathers had done, and that the majority of them were distinctly in favour of Repeal. Such reasoning was convincing to Wakley, who entered Parliament ready to consider O'Connell, and, there- fore, the more violent followers of O'Connell, his colleagues in thought. Wakley's attitude towards the three great movements which were engaging the attention of ParHament at the time of his election, and which have been thus cursorily brought before the reader, was simple and consistent. Firstly, he was pledged to the main doctrines of Chartism before the Chartists had actually defined their demands. Secondly, he was strenuously in favour of Free Trade, as the misery that was entailed upon the poor, both agricultural and urban, by the high price of food was well known to him. His relations and the friends of his childhood kept him posted in the con- 26o A Mixed Constituency dition of the labourer on the land, and it chanced that the plight of the West-country labourers was especially cruel. His constituency of Finsbury comprised an enormous area of slums in addition to the wealthy and respectable vicinage of Bedford Square, and the appalling condition of want in which many of the dwellers in Seven Dials were forced to abide had roused in him a generous indignation. He was unable to look upon the question of feeding the poor as a party one, openly declaring in his election speeches that whichever leader would annul the working of the Corn Laws and make it possible for the poor to escape from compulsory starvation would be the proper leader for the reformers to place at their head. These tenets, it may here be said, roused the greatest indignation in the breast of 'VJ/akley's father, Mr. Henry Wakley of Membury. This gentleman was a Tory and a Protectionist as became a land-owner and a practical agriculturalist, and although proud of his son's success he made no secret that he considered his son's doctrines in the matter of Free Trade pernicious. Thirdly, Wakley supported O'Connell in his demands for revocation of the Irish Act of Union, both for party reasons and by conviction. He was not prepared to endorse O'Connell's violent denunciations of all opponents or to believe un- hesitatingly in the impassioned scenes from Paradise which that masterly orator was wont to paint for the encourage- ment of his Celtic audiences ; but with the attempt to secure the repeal of an Act, the national majority in favour of which had been dishonestly secured, and the national majority against which was in the next generation over- whelmingly large, Wakley was in full accord. One thing may be pleaded as an excuse for this obtrusion of a chapter upon elementary politics, and it is this : Party spirit ran so high in the thirties and forties that con- temporary literature is more than occasionally an untrust- worthy guide to the truth. The times were transitional — they were really times of revolution — and various classes of men were so straightly set against each other in politics that they had not time to consider each other's claims to a The Riot of Party Spirit 261 hearing. To an Irish Catholic whoever was not a Repealer was a traitor ; to an Orangeman whoever was a Papist was a Jesuit spy and a political intriguer ; to a land-owner a Free-Trader appeared as a thief ; to many Free-Traders a land-owner was the same ; to the extreme Tories the " People " appeared as savage brutes intent on obtaining for themselves a universal and furious misrule ; while to the extreme Radicals the Tory was not only a person by temperament opposed to every movement that should sweeten life for the poor, but he was a dark intriguer against the Crown, a person with a plot up his sleeve for the abduc- tion of Princess Victoria of Kent or — to plumb the very depths of absurdity — for the establishment of the Duke of Wellington on the throne of England. The refuting of these ridiculous accusations and counter-accusations en- croached so much on the leisure of the various party leaders that they often missed opportunities of comparing views and so ascertaining that in very truth they had many sentiments in common ; while the air was rent with simultaneous shrill cries from such separate quarters that the political health of the country was made to appear pitiful and desperate, whereas it was in fact fairly good and improving by great strides. 262 A Member with a Mandate CHAPTER XXIX [1835] Wakley's Opportunity in the House — The Case of the Dorsetshire Labourers^His Special Fitness to Plead their Catise — His First Great Speech. Wakley was very literal as well as very honest in his interpretation of his parliamentary duties. He was at first an infrequent speaker, although an assiduous attendant at Westminster, but his taciturnity was dictated by the fact that the special causes which he had been instructed by his constituents to plead did not come before the House, nor did matters affecting the medical profession present them- selves. He questioned Sir Robert Peel upon certain new regulations of the College of Physicians of London, and elicited an answer from the leader of the House, revealing that the proceedings of the corporation were quite incom- prehensible to the great statesman, and he contributed a few practical words to several desultory discussions on Poor-law topics ; but otherwise he did not break silence for nearly half a year. His reticence was not dictated by any shyness or gaucherie, for all contemporary historians agree that he dropped readily into the forms of the House and its methods of procedure, but from an estimable intention to take part only in the debates where he could offer an original view or could confirm the opinions of others from his stock of personal knowledge. He had a mandate from his constituency, while he was pledged to the profession and the numerous readers of the " Lancet " to advance in all possible ways within the walls of Parliament the cause of medical reform. When it was his duty towards his con- The Case of the Dorsetshire Labourers 263 stituency or towards his journalistic public to speak he would speak, but only then ; on other occasions he was content to vote with the advanced Reform party to which he had given his adherence. Within six months, however, a great opportunity came for a display of his talents as a speaker, and he was not slow to seize it. The theme was one that raised within him honest indignation and deep pity, while it was also one which a member sworn to champion the rights of the people was bound to bring to the notice of the House. In 1833 England had been greatly stirred by the remarkable exemplification of the harshness of the law relating to conspiracy, as shown by what was known as the case of the Dorsetshire labourers. This case was as follows. Six men — agricultural labourers in a little Dorsetshire village — were arrested and tried for the crime of "unlawfully administering a secret oath." Encouraged by the example of the London labourers and of the factory hands of both Birmingham and Manchester, who had formed unions and paraded the streets with impunity, certain luckless hinds of Tolpuddle, or Tolpiddle, a hamlet near Dorchester, number- ing at that time a little over three hundred souls, combined to resist the reduction of their wages from seven shillings a week to six. And certainly with wheat at eighty shillings a quarter the weekly wage of six shillings was not much for a man to live on, and to the most optimistic land-owner must have seemed a slender pittance on which to support a wife and family. However, their action was treated by the law as a serious one, having almost a political bearing, and to the astonishment of the whole of the country they were sentenced by Mr. Baron WiUiams to seven years' trans- portation. The general stupefaction at the rigour of this sentence had developed during the next two years into a movement not only in the West of England but in many agricultural constituencies all over the kingdom for the free pardon of the misguided men. Wakley was at once seen by the organisers of the movement to be the best possible mouth-piece for a vigorous protest in the House against the 264 Wakley's Fitness to Plead the Case sentences. He had a reputation among the people as an orator ; he was known to be fearless in his demands for the cessation or remedy of abuse ; he was a new man, uncom- mitted to any clique or party faction, around whose words the special interest of curiosity would cling ; lastly, he was a West-country man, and could be entrusted, therefore, with particular fitness to plead the cause of the Dorsetshire labourers. On March 27th, 1835, Wakley presented no less than sixteen petitions, representing over 13,000 persons, for the reprieve of these poor fellows. He urged their cause in a brief speech, revealing the fact that the wives of these men, who, poor wretches, had been reduced to the direst straits of poverty by the transportation of their husbands, had been roughly refused relief on applying to the parish authorities, and finally gave notice that he would move a resolution on that day three months that their sentences should be commuted. On that day (June 25th, 1835) Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary, requested Wakley to postpone the motion he had on the paper on the ground that Government had already recommended a partial remission of the sentences, and the member for the Eastern Division of Dorsetshire spoke to the same effect. But Wakley refused to do this. Sir Robert Peel had gone out of office in the spring of 1835 and Lord Melbourne had just begun his second and pro- longed premiership. As far as Wakley owned allegiance to a party, that party was in power, and ready to listen to a man in whom they had been informed that they would find a valuable recruit. He rose in a crowded House to make his first serious oratorical effort, and the result was of such vital importance to his parliamentary career that the follow- ing transcript of his words from Hansard, though lengthy, is not too long : — " He began by expressing his astonishment that the foreman of the Grand Jury should endeavour, even before the case was heard there, to interpose between the sufferers and the seat of mercy, and he hoped that if any other hon. member was connected with the prosecution he would at least hear the discussion. The member for Dorsetshire was A Great Speech 265 himself the foreman of the Grand Jury, and he, upon an ex-parte state- ment, having found a true bill against the unfortunate men, came If' forward in the House and, before he had made his statement, repeated the evidence given in a Court of Justice. Now,, under what circum- stances were those men prosecuted ? He begged the attention of the House, for if he should fail in his object he could only say that the people of England would hereafter look in vain for justice at the hands of that assembly. He believed that every one in the House well knew that the Trades' Unions were instituted in London in July, 1833. When was the union of Tolpuddle instituted ? In the November of that year, after the Trades' Union had been established in London for four months. Hundreds of men belonged to them, and Government permitted — at least had not interfered with — them. No party was prosecuted and thus, by acquiescence at least. Government gave their sanction to those Unions. It could be proved that in numberless instances police officers in plain clothes belonged to them, and if any one would read the evidence given before a committee of that House it would be at once inferred th&t the information of those police officers was regularly transmitted to the Home Office, The Dorset- shire laboiirers having received notice (pray let gentlemen mark this) that their wages were to be reduced from 7s. a week to 6s. a week, they having wives and families, they wrote to their brothers in London and communicated to them their distressed condition. What was the reply ? ' We have established the unions for our protection here ; we are given to understand that they are strictly legal ; we walk in pro- cession in this metropolis and neither police magistrates, nor the ministers, nor the judges of the land interfere with our operations. We recommend you to do the same.' The men of Dorset, seeing that there was a protecting power in those Unions in the metropolis, immediately set to work to establish one there, and it was not estab- lished in those distant villages until such Unions had existed for four months in London unmolested. He asked the House whether it was possible for them to believe that those men imagined they were com- mitting any offence against the law in establishing such an union ? A member had stated that a placard containing extracts from certain Acts of Parliament relating to Unions was found in the pocket of one of the men. That was true : but when did the poor man obtain pos- session of it ? Why on the Sunday previous to the day of his being taken into custody — ^the individual obtaining cognisance of the nature of his offence (if he had committed any) only after the offence had been perpetrated. These men were actually going to break up their Union in consequence of seeing that paper, but they had not time to accomplish its dissolution. A prosecution was determined on by the magistrates of Dorset, and one afternoon a constable called at the cottages of the men telling them there was a criminal charge against 266 A Great Speech them. So great was their conviction of their innocence that they went with only one oificer all the way to Dorchester under the impression that they were to return the next day. On their arrival they were examined by the magistrates and remanded to the gaol. The next morning the magistrates actually, instead of bringing them into open court, visited them in the gaol, took the remainder of their depositions in private, and made out their commitment in the gaol. Even the witnesses were committed to gaol in order that they might be com- pelled to give the required evidence at the trial of the accused. And who was the chief witness whom it was necessary to imprison in order to secure his testimony ? Why, the son of the gardener who was in the employment of that very magistrate who caused the labourers to be apprehended — in fact the whole matter looked like a conspiracy to entrap the accused. He admitted that societies bound together by secret oaths ought not to be tolerated, but no objection to them in point of law in the case could exist, as combinations for the protection of wages were strictly legal. Besides, he contended that men should not be punished for alleged offences, the law against which had not been clearly deiined and settled. The proceedings connected with their commitment and trial were equally unfair. On the Sunday before the trial an officer connected with the County Court visited Tolpuddle and other neighbouring villages in order to make inquiries relative to the characters of the individuals who were to be summoned as jurors on the trial of the labourers, and the neighbours were asked who would be safe persons to put into the jury box on that occasion. In pursuance of the objects sought to be obtained by this unjust inquisition a tradesman of the name of Bridle, a linendraper at Bere Regis, was challenged by the Crown and turned out of the jury box, his disqualifying offences being that he was not a farmer and that he had occasionally heard one of the Lovelesses, two of whom were among the six convicted men, preach in the Methodist Chapel of Bere Regis. Now, seeing such a determination on the part of the magistrates and the prosecutors, was it likely that the men would have a fair and impartial trial ? The House would imagine what were the feelings of the judge and jury when they heard the charge which was delivered by the former to the grand jury of the county : — " ' Gentlemen,' said Mr. Baron WilUams, ' there is only one other subject on which I shall presume to give you information : it is the case at the conclusion of your calendar — the charge of administering secret or as they are called, and properly called, secret and unlawful oaths. Gentlemen, you are probably aware that the Act 37 George III., c. 123, seems to allude particularly to seditious societies and con- federacies ; but though it does not, it has been decided that the com- bination or confederacy, be it which it may, need not be for a seditious purpose, but that other unlawful purposes of combination are embraced A Great Speech 267 in the Act of Parliament. If, therefore, you should have evidence that a person or persons had administered an oath to bind to secrecy, though there should be no evidence to satisfy you that it was con- nected with mutinous and seditious purposes, yet there can be no doubt that it would come within the meaning of the Act. Gentlemen, having had my attention called to it I cannot refrain from making some observations on the nature and quality of these offences. In the iirst place, it is no light matter to receive an oath in the secret manner alluded to, especially if it should appear to be for illegal purposes, as it is disparaging and bringing into discredit the administration of oaths altogether, thereby affecting that which is essential to the purity of judicial oaths, upon the obligation of which the administration of justice depends. It has been observed by moralists (among whom I may mention Dr. Paley) that a frequent and familiar administration of an oath, even for purposes of justice, is much to be regretted, and, if there be any truth in such an observation, how much more applicable is it where the administration of an oath places the party in so doubtful a state of morality, that a casuist would be puzzled to decide what course the party ought to pursue ? Certainly, in courts of law we could not allow of his acting under that obligation, but how far it would be incumbent on him to disclose anything against his oath is a question of doubtful morality and is one of the baneful effects resulting from the administration of an oath, which puts the party in such a predicament ; openness and publicity of conduct have hitherto been considered the criterion of honesty ; and I fear it would be an evil day for this country if the disposition of such openness should fail ; all secret societies which are self-constituted, self-elected, are calculated to shake the foundations of society and bring the country into extremely perilous circumstances ; the misery of these particular cases is this — that men subject themselves for the irresponsible conduct of others who have no regard for the individuals over whom they exercise this authority ; the unhappy men who have been thus misled are in a state of the most wretched subjection and debasement. Of all the persons affected by it, not even excepting the public, the unfor- tunate persons themselves who are brought into the trammels of these bonds and have had an oath of this kind administered to them are affected the worst. Sure I am that in my own experience I have known that they have been compelled by forced oaths to make out of their scanty means contributions to so large an amount as would not be endured if demanded by Government for the service of their country. The arbitrary demands made on them have, in many instances, exceeded anything before known in this or in any other country ; nor does the evil rest here, for when men unite themselves to such societies the common right of labouring for whom they please is taken from them ; this is undoubtedly a very serious subject, and 268 A Great Speech as far as your influence extends, I doubt not that every means will be used on your parts for the prevention of this great, and I fear prevalent mischief.' " Such was Mr. Baron Williams's charge to the jury selected to try these men. Thus the jury was led to infer that all secret societies are illegal. Now, after such a charge as that, coming from such high authority, it was impossible to expect that the men should have a fair trial, the impression made upon the jury by such language as that, would be that the parties had committed a very heinous offence. Now, what was the evidence to make it appear to the jury that the combination was illegal ? The rules of the Society were laid before them, and there was not one rule among, them which he (Wakley) considered illegal. Yet the illegality of the association was the founda- tion, in all the counts of the indictment, for sustaining the allegations with regard to the illegality of the oath. Had the indictment been framed in accordance with the spirit and the letter of an Act passed in the 39th of George III. — avowedly framed for the purpose of putting down all secret associations, with the exception of the society of Freemasons and two or three other societies therein specifically named — then, indeed, doubts might justly have been entertained whether these men had not offended against the conditions of that Statute, not- withstanding the repeal of the combination laws. " But there was a motive for not prosecuting them under that statute. The poor fellows might then have been proceeded against summarily before the magistrate and been committed to prison for three months for taking an oath not required or authorised by law, whereas under the 37th George III. the judge, upon the conviction of the accused, had the power of transporting them for the term of seven years — a power which he could not exceed, and which, in the discharge of his duty, he exercised to the very utmost. It was true that the society was proved to be secret, but he (Wakley) denied that it was an illegal combination. He called the attention of the House to the Act of 1826, an extract from which he would read to the House, which provided that workmen of the country might legally combine to any extent or in any form they pleased with respect to the trades in which they were engaged without subjecting themselves to any legal con- demnation, and if he should succeed in proving that, he thought no gentleman would say that the merely administering the oath made them illegal. The Act to which he referred was the Sec. 4 George IV. c. 129 ; it said : ' Provided always that nothing in this Act shall subject any persons to punishment, which shall meet together for the purpose of consulting upon the rate of wages, or the prices which the persons present at such meeting shall demand, or upon the time for which the said persons should work, at any manufacture, trade or business.' Now the combination of those men was to protect themselves; they had A Great Speech 269 notice of a diminution of their wages from ys. to 6s. and they followed the example set them in London to protect themselves and their families from a diminution in their scanty earnings, which was to them nothing less than starvation. He would refer to a case in 1816, when the Unions did not create such agitation and excited no such morbid feeling, and he thought from the language then used by Mr. Justice Holroyd, that all parties must admit that he considered the 37th of George III. did not apply to those societies, unless their object was strictly illegal. The combination in that case was one of poachers who went out at night with blackened faces to kill game. He would quote the charge from Carrington's and Paine's reports — the case was tried at Gloucester Spring Assizes, April nth, 1816; the indictment was against sixteen persons for administering unlawful oaths ; the judge summed up as follows. ' If the oath administered by the prisoner to the poachers was intended to make them believe themselves under an engagement it is clearly within the clause, whether the book was the Testament or not. As to the assembly itself, it is impossible that the meeting to go out with faces disguised can be other than an unlawful assembly, and therefore the oath to keep it secret is clearly an oath prohibited by this Act.' That in his opinion decided the question as to the oaths which could only be considered illegal if the society were illegal, but the union of the labourers was legal and the Act under which they were punished did not apply to their case. Under these circumstances was it possible that the country could be justified in demanding the infliction of the sentence upon the men ? He (Wakley) had asked almost one-half of the barristers in the House, and none could tell him under what precise Act those men were condemned or that their conviction had been legal. He therefore appealed to justice for a remission of the sentence imposed on the unfortunate men. " He would now throw aside the question of law and go to the question of facts — to the character and conduct of the men. Was it proved in the court that any of the men had been guilty of threatening their fellow-labourers or in any degree given offence to their neighbours? He had evidence, on the contrary, that six better labourers and more honest men did not exist in the kingdom. Two of them — men who had never been anything in their lives but common labourers — had, by dint of study and application, become so qualified in mental capacity as to be enabled to give lectures in the neighbourhood to their fellow labourers, and had been received into the Wesleyan Conference as preachers. He (Wakley) feared very much that that was their great offence. He feared there was something behind the scenes which would not, but which ought, to come out. The two men had large congregations attending them, and he much feared there was something in their treatment to which he would not then further advert. George Loveless, at the age of twenty-eight, with a salary of 7s. a week, had 270 A Great Speech succeeded in purchasing a small theological library and had studied with so much assiduity that there was no man in the neighbourhood who could compete with him in point of theological knowledge, but he (Wakley) could prove that in political discussions he had taken no part. With the exception of one individual who had been charged when a boy twelve years of age with taking a piece of old iron from a farmyard valued at ^d., not one of the individuals was even accused of the slightest breach of the law. It was admitted, in fact, by all persons acquainted with the characters that six more honest, peaceable, and industrious men were not to be found in the county of Dorset. Four of them were relations, the sister of the two Lovelesses having married Thomas Standfield. Their employers at Tolpuddle bore one and all the highest testimony to their good conduct. He had received a note from a lady who had employed four of the men for several years. That lady said, ' George Loveless, James Loveless, Thomas Standfield, and John Standfield were agricultural labourers of mine for many years. I most willingly comply with your request, and now state that they were all honest and industrious men.' Under date April 28th, 1835. The lady's name was Northover. Who, then, could describe the cruelty of the sentence passed on these meritorious men ? He blushed for the character of his country while he related the particulars of such a barbarous transaction. To show the stamp of mind and the estimable character of George Loveless, he would read an extract from a letter written by him from on board the hulk in which he was confined immediately after his conviction and previous to leaving this country. The letter was addressed to his wife in all the confidence of matrimonial attachment and unrestrained domestic intercourse, never expecting that it would be seen by any individual except the object of his anxious solicitude at home — least of all did he ever expect that any portion of his letter would ever be read in the British House of Commons. He might observe that when he asked Loveless's wife whether she had received any letter from her husband that would enable to judge of his character by the tone and temper of his language she handed to him this letter and it had been in his possession within a few days of twelve months. Never should he forget with what trembling hands she gave him those documents, her countenance denoting almost insupportable agony, scarcely mitigated by an unceasing flow of tears, and her little children witnessing and partaking of the sorrows of the scene. The letter was dated from Spithead, May 28th, 1834, ^-^d was remarkable as containing not one word expressive of indignation or complaint against his prosecutors. It was as follows : ' I thank you, my dear wife, for the kind attention you have ever paid me, and you may safely rely upon it that as long as I live it will be my constant endeavour to return that kindness in every possible way, and hope to send to you as soon as we reach our place of destiny, and that I shall never forget the A Great Speech 271 promise made at the altar; and though we may part awhile I shall consider myself under the same obligations as though living in your immediate presence.' " What member of the House could have expressed himself to the object of his affections in more delicate or refined terms ? How un- dying and unalterable was the force of his attachment to a deeply affectionate wife. In a portion of another letter which he would read ; this virtuous man — stigmatised as a common criminal — was anxious that the moral and spiritual education of his children should not be neglected during his absence. Really, to see such a man as this torn from his wife and infant offspring, dragged from his friends and country on grounds so slight, doubtful, and suspicious, was enough to drive the working millions of this country into madness and revenge. In the letter to which he had referred Loveless says : ' Be satisfied, my dear Betsy, on my account. Depend upon it, it will work together for good, and we shall yet rejoice together. I hope you will pay particular attention to the morals and spiritual interests of the children. Don't send me any money to distress yourself ; I shall do well, for He who is Lord of the winds and waves will be my support in life and death.' Poor fellow, he needed the support of the Lord who ruled over the winds and the waves, for he had found only cruelty and persecu- tion in the decrees of the great men of the earth. Was it fitting, was it just, that such a man as this, for a doubtful offence, should be torn from his loved family and expatriated for the lengthened period of seven years ? This excellent man and his brother were the two selected to be left in New South Wales, while the sentence of the others had been shortened. (This was the remission of punishment already alluded to as having been pleaded by Lord John Russell as a reason why Wakley should defer his motion.) There had not been a just con- sideration shown in this case — no adequate discussion and examination into its merits — no ordinary adherence to the dictates of justice. The prosecution was one uniform and unmitigated act of tyranny. The husband was torn from his wife and the son from his mother, and no distinction whatever was made between the case of a man who had reached the age of fifty-seven years and a boy of twenty. The two Standfields were father and son — the one a man, the other almost a child. 'And hear it,' said the hon. member, apostrophis- ing the House, ' Ye Gentlemen of England who are husbands, fathers, and brothers — who have wives and children of your own. One woman — ah ! poor creature, how painfully is she figured in my mind at this moment — having a husband and six children had taken firom her her two brothers, her husband, and her eldest son all at one fell swoop ; and this, my lord (addressing Lord John Russell), is your boasted England ! This is your country of equal laws and justice, I do appeal to your lordship ' (The Speaker : Order, order !) ' I 272 A Great Speech am aware that I am out of order in addressing the noble lord per- sonally, yet I trust he will receive the appeal personally, for personal it is intended to be.' The cause of the sufferers, continued Wakley, came not within the limits of any ordinary rules, and the pain which it excited was calculated to lead to a divergence from ordinary arrangements. He called upon the noble lord to extend justice — mercy — to those individuals, and if they were allowed to return home he would himself give personal or pecuniary security for the good behaviour of the two Lovelesses. He implored the House, he entreated the noble lord, to take this fitting opportunity of extending mercy to the men, thereby gratifjdng thousands of the labouring classes who had appeared before the House as petitioners. Enough had already been done to deter others from following their example, and there was no longer reason why mercy should not be extended to these poor men. He lamented that the labouring classes had no representatives in the House. He had no desire to press the motion to a division ; he hoped the noble lord would see the propriety of bringing the men back to their country. As to remaining in the colony, the hand of persecution had reached the poor men even there. Would the House believe that the two brothers had been separated, that George Loveless was in a hut 250 miles from the sea- shore, and James was in a part of the country in which the men were actually dying of famine and in want of work ? As long as George and James Loveless were in New South Wales and were confined there against their will they would be neither more nor less than transported men, suffering all the miseries concomitant to a forced separation from the persons whom they dearly loved and whose happiness constituted a part of their existence. The noble lord shall judge whether George and James Loveless would feel their continuance in New South Wales under any circumstances to be less than a forced transportation by an extract which he would read from a letter that within the last fortnight had been received from George Loveless : ' From what I can observe,' he says, ' of this country, it is not such a paradise as is generally sup- posed by the people of England. Bread is uncommonly dear, more than double the price of bread in England, and other provisions in pro- portion. Clothing is dearer than provisions ; thousands of persons are actually starving in this country, as many cannot get employment and many are too idle to work. As yet I see nothing to attract my attention, to make me stop in the country one day after I obtain my liberty and have the means to return ; in fact at present I despair of ever getting money to go to England, and yet nothing would yield me so much satis- faction — nay, nothing in this world will satisfy me until I return to you and the children.' " What mitigation of punishment would that be which was attended with such reservation as a five years' domiciliation in such a country A Great Speech 273 under such afflicting circumstances ? His prayer to the House was for the restoration of all the prisoners to their families. He beseeched them to concede the favour, to gratify the humane wishes of the working people of England, who had implored the House for mercy to their fellow-labourers. The people of England, he could assure the House, felt deeply on the subject. To the working classes especially it was a constant subject of agitation, and unless the men were restored that agitation would continually increase. The society was legal with the single exception of the oath ; and when the object was legal the oath alone could not make the society illegal. He hoped the House would interpose its authority. It was nothing to say there was no pre- cedent ; let them make one as soon as they could, for it was well said yesterday night they did not need one to do right. He had no object in bringing forward the motion but the interests of the working classes. He trusted there would be no misinterpretation of his motives ; he had entered the motion two months ago, in hopes that the men would be restored without his bringing it forward — that the entering the motion on the books would lead to investigation and that investigation would lead to a conviction that the men had committed no offence whatever in a moral point of view. The laws had been vindicated by the trans- portation, the power of law had been displayed, it had been made evident that the unions would be repudiated and condemned, and he was convinced that no evil would arise from the restoration of those individuals to their native country." 274 The Effect of Wakley's Speech CHAPTER XXX [1835] Effect of Wakley's Speech — Release of the Dorsetshire Labourers — The County Coroners Bill — Mr. Warburton's Parliamentary Committee in 1834 — Mr. Guthrie's Evidence before this Committee — The ' Rejection of Mr. Cripps's County Coroners Bill — Wakley Encouraged to Persevere. Wakley's speech in behalf of the Dorsetshire labourers occupied two and a half hours in its delivery, and through- out the whole time he held the closest attention of the House. At no moment did his words provoke any manifestation of dissent, while loud support was frequent and forthcoming from either side of the chamber. When he resumed his seat the general applause was so hearty and unrestrained that he could not but feel that he had achieved a real oratorical triumph and in the most critical assembly in Europe. The motion was seconded by Joseph Hume, who expressed the feelings of the House by his highly complimentary references to Wakley's opening. Lord John Russell supported the action of the Crown in refusing clemency, a view that was also taken by Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the Opposition, and Mr. Serjeant Wilde (after- wards Lord Chancellor Truro). Daniel O'Connell made a characteristic speech. Out of his numberless experiences of similar victories he foresaw that the approval of the House was entirely an academic recognition of Wakley's oratorical powers, and would have no practical result when it came to the telling of votes. He therefore urged Wakley, as a majority could not be hoped for, to withdraw his An Unpopular Cause 275 motion and get up petitions out of doors and thus bring the matter to the earnest attention of Government. Wakley in a brief reply said that he felt it his duty to press his motion "for an Address to the King, praying that His Majesty would be pleased to grant a pardon to, and direct the recall of, the six labourers convicted at Dorchester in the spring of 1833 " to a division. Hume was his co-teller, and O'Connell's prophecy was verified, for only eighty- four members voted with Wakley, and three hundred and ten against. It has not been without design that a verbatim transcript from Hansard of Wakley's first great effort in the House has been given. That such a speech loses much of its effective- ness when reduced to writing need not be insisted upon. It was essentially an impassioned appeal for speedy justice, and without the ring of the orator's voice, without the stir of his gestures and the play of his countenance such per- formances must lose actuality and be lacking in conviction. At the same time there can be read in his words enough to make us comprehend why the delivery of this speech settled at once and for ever his position in the House, and established his i-eputation as a speaker. For two and a half hours he kept the attention of a willing House fixed upon the plight of those poor Dorsetshire labourers. When he commenced to speak the Tories desired to hear nothing of them, for the feelings of the land-owners were utterly averse from the extension of mercy to any agitators against the low rate of agricultural wages ; while the Liberals, his own party, were still more anxious that neither the House nor the country should spend time in discussing'ta miscarriage of justice which had occurred in their previous regime. Lord John Russell, again, was a new Minister and ambitious of becoming, or rather remaining, a popular legislator, therefore he objected to Wakley's estimating the remission of the sentences already proposed by Government as inadequate, and demanding of the House a larger measure of clemency. In addition to these elements of hostility to the speaker on party grounds Wakley had another ordeal 276 Reputation Secured - before him, and one of which he was fully aware. He was not an unknown man in the House. His reputation as a speaker had preceded him, and the House was prepared with some little malice to hear the crude and robustious de- clamations of a demagogue and to class him with Henry Hunt and one or two other mob-orators as a noisy failure. Those who only knew of him as the man of many libel actions, and the leader of a revolt in the medical profession against properly constituted authority, had thoroughly made up their minds as to the fare that such a person wodld present to their palates. The case of the Dorsetshire labourers was an easy one for tub oratory, and to tub oratory they com- posed themselves to listen with what patience they might. What did they hear ? No rush of garish sentiment, no thump of unrestrained gesture, and not a single ill-chosen word. A simple but learned summary of the legal aspects of the case of the Dorsetshire labourers, followed by a determined but temperate demand for justice and a sober appeal for mercy. And all this couched in the clearest possible phraseology, informed with good taste, not without humour, tinged with passion, and most unmistakably from the heart. Wakley rose to make his first great speech a comparatively unknown man, with a record not calculated to win him the good graces of an assembly ever jealous of the manners of its members. He sat down with an un- disputed claim to first-class oratorical powers, and with a recognised position in the House as a fit and proper person for its counsels. Although Wakley lost his motion and in a very decisive manner, his efforts eventually prevailed. The agitation for the release of the Dorsetshire labourers was not allowed to flag because of the temporary check which it had received at St. Stephen's. Hume and Wakley, profiting by O'Connell's advice, solicited subscriptions from the people at large and were soon able to convince the Government that the popular sentiment was also the humane one. On March 19th, 1836, within nine months of his great speech, Wakley elicited from Lord John Russell a reply to a question in the House The Release of the Dorsetshire Labourers 277 to the effect that all the six Dorsetshire labourers had received a free pardon and were to be instantly brought back to their native village at the Government's expense. This result was hailed by the extreme Reform party as a signal triumph — a proof, as Wakley called it, of the sovereignty of the people. On April 25th, 1836, a public dinner was held under the presidency of Wakley at White Conduit House to celebrate the remission of the sentences. Nearly 500 persons attended, and both O'Connell and Wakley met with an enthusiastic reception. The next occasion that Wakley played an important part in Parliament was during the debates upon Mr. Cripps's County Coroners Bill. This Bill would have certainly passed the House as drafted by Mr. Cripps, the member for Cirencester, had it not been for Wakley's earnest opposition. He had criticised many of its clauses in the columns of the " Lancet " when it was first presented to Parliament two years before his election for Finsbury, and he may be said to have been waiting to spring on it should it ever emerge again from obscurity. It did peep forth and received the reward of its temerity, being rejected by a House much better instructed in its meaning and in medical politics as a whole than the assembly to whose notice it had been originally introduced. This enlightenment was due in some measure directly to Wakley's speeches and writings, but in a larger degree to the report of Mr. Warburton's Parlia- mentary Committee on Medical Education, which had been presented to the House in the interval between the intro- ductipn of Mr. Cripps's measure and the postponed dis- cussion thereon. Warburton's Committee was the outcome of a joint endeavour on the part of himself and Wakley to find a constitutional remedy for the many undoubted abuses that were rife in the medical profession. At the date that Warburton moved for the appointment of such a Committee of Inquiry — viz., February, 1834 — Wakley was not in the House, but without his aid the unanimous agreement of Parliament would not have been obtained for the departure. 278 Warburton's Committee on Medical Education It was Wakley's ever-recurring revelations of the extra- ordinary anomalies present in the system of medical education" that, being persisted in for over a decade and being uncontroverted and practically uncontrovertible, finally bore splendid fruit. In fact, Warburton's Committee was the result of Wakley's successful agitation. The dull, feeble exclusiveness of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the tyranny and ineptitude of the Royal College of Surgeons, the pettifogging malice of the Society of Apothecaries — these were his weekly themes, and not bad samples of his weekly phraseology ; and so pungently did he treat them and with such perfect disregard for the private position or importance of the figure-heads in the various corporations that everyone read the articles. They possessed the piquancy of their unstudied insolence and compelled attention from those quite innocent of any desire to see justice done to the rank and file of the medical profession. So that when Warburton asked the House to appoint the Committee he appealed to an alert assembly wherein there was already a general feeling that some such inquiry ought to be made. He obtained what he wanted immediately. In a second way Wakley was largely responsible for Warburton's Committee, inasmuch as it was he who showed Warburton how to secure the evidence, and what evidence to look for. Wakley had dissected the Charters of all three of the London corporations, and he knew what each body could do by law, and what each body could not do by law, as well as what each body had taken upon itself to do by custom. He knew where the law had been evaded, where it had been broken, and where it had been stretched, and in all these practices he knew when the result bore hardly upon the student and the wbrkings of medical education. All this knowledge he placed unreservedly at Warburton's disposal, and its possession enabled that gentleman to act with confidence and to steer his Committee with discretion. On Tuesday, February nth, 1834, Warburton moved for his Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the state of the The Reference of the Committee 279 medical profession. Joseph Hume supported him, holding up to ridicule the anomalies of the Apothecaries Act that have been already detailed, as affording proof of the necessity for some one to be present in Parliament to interpret medical matters to the legislature. The motion was agreed to without a division and an exceptionally strong Committee was appointed. Warburton was chairman, and was sup- ported by, among others. Lord Howick (the late Earl Grey, eldest son of Earl Grey, the Prime Minister at that date and the introducer of the great Reform Bill), Mr. J. Abercromby (elected Speaker of the House of Commons in the following year), Mr. Halford (son of Sir Henry Halford, the all- powerful President of the Royal College of Physicians of London), Daniel O'Connell, Mr. Spring Rice (afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer and raised to the peerage as Lord Monteagle), Joseph Hume, Lord Oxmantown (after- wards Earl of Rosse, F.R.S., of telescope fame), and Sir Robert Peel. The Committee was appointed to take evidence on the following important and diverse subjects : — Treatment of parochial poor ; farming of sick poor ; treatment in institu- tions supported by voluntary, life, and annual subscriptions ; mode of appointing officers of such ; appointments to gaols, asylums, and similar institutions ; regulations of private lunatic asylums ; the proper qualifications for masters in lunacy ; the state of medical practice generally and its sup- posed effect on the public health ; the practices of unqualified persons and quacks as regards public health and reputation of the profession ; the public sale of secret remedies ; the revenues of endowed institutions and the numbers of patients treated in them and the state of those patients ; the mode of appointment of Army and Navy medical officers ; the number of students attached to " chartered " hospitals and fees paid by them ; the qualifications and legal rights of Fellows and Licentiates of the Royal College of Physicians, of Members of the Royal College of Surgeons and of Licentiates of the Apothecaries' Company ; the fees charged at the foregoing institutions and the manner in which such 28o Distinguished Witnesses funds are appropriated ; the system of medical apprentice- ship ; the status of chemists in regard to dispensing ; the actual amount of wealth in possession of each of the chartered medical institutions ; and the appointment of medical professors and courts of examiners at both the corporations and the universities. The following were among some of the witnesses called : — Mr. Caesar Hawkins, Sir "Henry Halford, Sir George Tuthill, Dr. Hume, Dr. Copland, Dr. Elliotson, Dr. Farre, Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. James Johnson, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Morson (chemists), Mr. Guthrie, Sir Astley Cooper, Mr. Charles Bell, Mr. James Wardrop, Mr. Benjamin Travers, Mr. Brodie, Mr. Richard Grainger, Mr. Carpue, Mr. William Lawrence, Sir Anthony Carlisle, Mr. Joseph Henry Green, and Dr. Somerville. The Apothecaries' Company sent six special witnesses, and most of the private teachers, as well as Carpue and Grainger, had an opportunity of addressing the Com- mittee. Professor Macartney came from Dublin, Mr. Hey and Mr. Crosse represented provincial surgery worthily ; Professors Christison, Allison, Abercromby, Poole, Thom- son, and Maclagan were present from Edinburgh. Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews also sent witnesses. All the evidence of these gentlemen was printed by Wakley in the " Lancet " and copiously annotated, so that both the House and the medical profession had a chance of learning the real need that existed for reform, not only from persons interested in altering the existent and corrupt state of affairs, but out of the mouths of those very heads of the profession whose rule had been so bitterly attacked by the " Lancet," and whose rejoinder had been an invariable and stiff-necked assertion that things were very well as they were, and that the disaffected persons were either malicious malcontents striving to be important or their silly hoodwinked followers. Wakley for ten years had made certain statements in the " Lancet." Now was the hour of his triumph, for witness after witness willingly or unwillingly confirmed these state- ments and made it clear to the country that medical reform was really required upon the very lines indicated by the Mr. J. G. Guthrie's Evidence 281 journal which was by solemn agreement on the part of the London surgeons and teachers condemned as hopelessly wrong-headed and prejudiced. The country during the sitting of this Committee was no longer listening to Wakley, but to all sorts and conditions of expert testimony to the accuracy of his words. Mr. Guthrie, for example, speaking in behalf of the College of Surgeons, of which body he had been elected President in 1833, gave it in evidence that he considered that the process by which the twenty existing members of the Council, or governing body, elected the twenty-first man to their body was an absurd plan, and that any other would be most acceptable. Immediately afterwards he added that no other plan would be as satisfactory. He thought that surgeons should not dispense their medicines or practise midwifery, as anyone who gave time to such trivialities would have none left for the acquisition of the principles of pure surgery ; but he admitted that if only the non-dispensers could be chosen on the Council the power would be absolutely in the hands of two hundred pure surgeons to govern eight thousand persons presumably as well educated as themselves — viz., the members. He defended the system by which the ten senior men of the twenty-one Councillors were examiners, in spite of the fact that Councillors were chosen for life and that some of the senior men would therefore presumably be past their work. And he spoke well of the high rate of fees exacted from the London student. His evidence was printed at length in the " Lancet," much to his disgust, and proved in the clearest possible way that Wakley had rjot been exaggerating during the past ten years when he described the Council of the College as " a self-perpetuating junto " and its educational scheme as useless, giving as his reasons, firstly, that pharmacy and midwifery were not included in it, and, secondly, that the examiners were not fit and proper persons. If these facts had been elicited before the Committee from Scotch or Irish teachers jealous of certain of the advantages enjoyed by the London corpora- tions, or if they had been insinuated by Grainger or Carpue, 282 Mr. Cripps's County Coroners Bill sore at the greedy opposition offered by the College pro- fessors to all private tutorial enterprise, or if they had been advanced by Wakley himself — a known foe to the College of Surgeons — the public might have looked with suspicion on the evidence as tainted. But Guthrie was speaking for the College — as the President of the College in fact — in favour of keeping things as they were, and he satisfactorily con- vinced the Committee of the urgent need of reform. It was in a House in full possession of such evidence as this taken before a Parliamentary Committee that Wakley criticised Mr. Cripps's County Coroners Bill from a medical aspect. The House was prepared to believe that in matters of medical reform the honourable member knew what he was talking about. He was listened to with attention and was ableto secure the approval of the members for several amendments, chief among which was that the medical witness should be treated as an expert and should be paid at inquests one guinea for his attendance and another for making a post-mortem examination if directed to do so by the Court. The Bill was afterwards rejected as a whole, but Wakley's prompt and successful employment of the first opportunity that had presented itself to him to watch over the interests of the medical profession in Parliament did not go without recognition at the time, while it led to practical results in the immediate future. He was publicly thanked by several medical associations. He was also begged to renew his endeavours in the next session of Parliament to obtain adequate remuneration for medical witnesses in the coroners' courts. Wakley's Views on the Coroner's Office 283 CHAPTER XXXI [1836] Thi Medical Witnesses Bill — Petitions in its Favour — Daniel Whittle Harvey — Wakley^s Speech in Support of his Motion — Hearty Co-operation of Prominent Lawyers — Permission given to Introduce the Measure into the House — Its rapid Transformation into Law. The flattering manner in which Wakley's amendments to Mr. Cripps's defunct County Coroners' Bill, securing for the medical witness adequate remuneration for his services, had been received by the House and the press, as well as the numerous petitions that had reached him on the subject from his professional brethren, decided him to ask leave to bring in a measure dealing exclusively with the subject. It should here be said that Wakley's views on the coroner's office were very well known indeed to the metropolis, and, for that matter, to the general public. They had become familiar to the House during the debates on Mr. Cripps's Bill, and had been received with respect there, as has been said ; but very little that fell from his lips in St. Stephen's had not been already asserted to the readers of the " Lancet '' and to the free voters of Middlesex in the year 1830, when he offered himself for the post of coroner for Middlesex. On that occasion he made a series of most important speeches on the duty of the coroner, all tending to show that the office ought to be held by a medical man. The arguments that he employed then will be fully stated in dealing with his career as coroner for Middlesex, to which post he was ultimately elected in the year 1839. Their connexion with his views on the position of the medical 284 The Medical Witnesses Bill man as an expert witness is not very close, but the memoi-y of Wakley is so closely bound up with his tenure of the coroner's bench that to dismiss his views on the scope and privileges of the office in any summary manner, when an opportunity might seem to be present for dilating upon them, would come as a surprise unless it were explained. More, then, is not said here because so much more will have to be said very shortly. Wakley's motion that leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for proper payment to medical witnesses at inquests was set down for March 8th, 1836. Before he began to speak to it several petitions were presented in support of his contention. Mr. Wilkes, the member for Boston, told the story of an incident which had occurred in the practice of one medical man, but it was of so typical a nature that it had been put into the form of a petition in favour of Wakley's measure and presented to the House as such. The petitioner had been requested by the coroner of his district to under- take the post-mortem examination of the body of a person who had died under circumstances warranting the supposi- tion that he had been murdered. The petitioner found that to make his evidence worth anything the contents of the stomach must be analysed. As a result of this necessity the inquest was adjourned two or three times for several days, a good many hours of which were employed in carrying out the coroner's instructions. When the petitioner subsequently gave his evidence the coroner and jury unanimously ex- pressed their sense of its extreme value and their approbation of the talent that he had shown in his scientific examination of the viscera. Further, they recommended to the parochial authorities that he should be paid ten guineas for his services. In accordance with this recommendation the medical man approached the parochial authorities, only applying, however, for three guineas, the scale of payment being made on the scale of oiie of Wakley's recently successful amendments to Mr. Cripps's Bill — viz., one guinea for the evidence and two guineas for the necropsy. The answer of the parochial authorities was the one that they felt themselves regretfully The Medical Witnesses Bill 285 constrained to render. They said that they had no power whatever to make the medical man compensation out of any fund under their control. This case was felt by the House to put the matter in a very small compass. Here was a man who, by the expenditure of much time, during which he was employing hardly-won learning and experience, had been enabled to help the cause of justice materially. He had, in fact, filled with success the part now played by the scientific analysts attached to the Home Office. His work was acknowledged by the court and the jury as having materially assisted them in the discharge of their duties. They desired, therefore, to reward him, but found themselves unable to do so. Immediately after this petition was laid on the table another was presented from a group of Surrey medical men, begging the House to take into consideration the difficulties with which medical men had to contest as witnesses at coroners' inquests. Sir John Reid, the member for one of the divisions of the county, who had charge of the petition, added that for his part he considered that no individuals in the social scheme of the day were so badly paid for their labours as the gentlemen of the medical profession — an expression of opinion that was received by the House with cheers. Several other members presented petitions of the same tenor, among which was one signed by eight hundred and twenty-six gentlemen "distinguished for their professional eminence in London," not including " sixty-five professional gentlemen resident in the Borough of Southwark." Among the signatories of this petition, the title of which shows that eminence was rather a usual quality with the metropolitan medical man of the day, may be mentioned Sir Astley Cooper and Sir Anthony Carlisle. It was presented by Daniel Whittle Harvey, and it is probable that the personal influence of this gentleman had something to do with the inclusion of names in its endorsement whose owners would have been unwilling on private grounds to subscribe them- selves as supporters of any movement inaugurated by 286 Daniel Whittle Harvey Wakley. But Daniel Whittle Harvey was in a sort of way a political power, being a speaker of real eloquence as well as unparalleled fluency, and a great favourite with popular audiences. He had started in life as a solicitor, but was removed from the rolls at his own request on determining to join the Bar. The Benchers of the Inner Temple, how- ever, refused to call him for reasons which a Parliamentary Committee afterwards found wholly groundless, and the publicity given to the injustice that he had received increased his popularity. He stood for Colchester in 1818 in the Radical interest, and continued to represent that town until the passing of the Reform Bill, when he was elected for Southwark. He was at this time editor of the " Weekly True Sun " and was one of Wakley's most intimate associates in the House, being always ready to place at the disposal of his brother journalist the fruits of his long parliamentary experience. Some three years later Harvey was appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, when he was compelled by the regulations of his office to retire from the House, but during his political career he was one of the most prominent personalities in the Reform party, and a few words recalling him to the reader's mind are not out of place. Wakley, in rising to bring forward his motion, said that from the very favourable manner in which the House had received the petitions just presented he thought he should not have to occupy the attention of the House for very long. When the County Coroners Bill was brought before the House last year members would recollect that it con- tained a clause professing to provide for the remuneration of medical witnesses at inquests, which clause, however, shared the fate of the whole Bill, the Bill being rejected by the House, and veiy properly so, being perfectly unsuited to the object which it should have sought to attain. He was ready to admit that in some respects medical men might not be more useful, when they attended as witnesses, than other men, but he urged that it should be borne in mind that medical men attended inquests in their pro- The Value of Medical Evidence 287 fessional capacity — they did not attend as casual observers of the event which might have occasioned the inquest, but as professional men, who alone could give information essential both to the ends of justice and as the basis of a true verdict. The duties of medical men were exceedingly important and were very difficult of accomplishment , and very frequently attended "even with'- danger to life. A post- mortem examination was not to be conducted in haste or without knowledge or trouble. Many instances within the speaker's knowledge had arisen where such an examination had necessarily been protracted through a period of eight or ten houj-s, and yet where the medical witnesses who conducted it obtained no kind of remuneration, the coroner having no power to award them the slightest compensation. He went on to assure the House that such a state of things was not so injurious to the [medical profession as to the public at large, in that it defeated the whole object which the public had in view in holding a coroner's inquest. The coroner's office was one of the most important offices in England, and was almost the only office to which the ■people still had the power to elect their own judge. Yet unless this judge was empowered to give compensation to medical witnesses the court had a tendency to become almost useless. When a coroner called a medical witness before him he had not the power to require the witness to make a post-mortem examination, although the result of such examination might be the only means of enabling the jury to return a correct and faithful verdict. Quackery was at the moment producing more victims than it had ever done at any former period. It was fearful to observe the consequences which flowed from the quack advertisements with which the newspapers teemed, and he for one would be glad indeed if His Majesty's Government would resolve on the removal of these disgraceful outrages on society by preventing quack medicines from going forth under the authority of Government stamps. He then alluded to an inquest held a few days previously at Woolwich Barracks on the body of a marine who had died after being flogged. 288 Lord Campbell on Medical Evidence Several medical men had attended, all of them without obtaining any compensation, and had given evidence which had produced in the minds of many of the jury the impres- sion that a most terrible outrage had been committed. Had these gentlemen been selfish or mercenary enough to refuse to attend, or had they withheld their evidence as profes- sional men the cause of justice would have been improperly represented. And how frequently did similar instances occur. Taking into consideration these points, and observ- ing the anxiety of the people to have faithful verdicts recorded, he trusted that the House would not refuse to grant that compensation to medical witnesses which would be ensured by the passing of this Bill. He was sure from what he had observed that the principle of the Bill would be sanctioned by the House, and he did not propose at this stage to enter into details, but merely with these observa- tions to move that leave be given to introduce a measure to provide for the payment of medical men who might attend as witnesses at coroners' inquests. The Attorney-General (Sir John Campbell, afterwards Lord Chancellor) " ventured to believe " that such a Bill would be exceedingly useful. He confirmed Wakley's state- ment that in many cases justice had been obstructed in consequence of competent medical evidence not having been given before the coroner's court, while the niggardly manner in which medical men were treated made the absence of their evidence no just matter for surprise. Juries were either without medical evidence altogether, or, when it was obtained, the injustice of refusing to award a fair and honourable remuneration was committed. He would only advise the mover in framing the Bill that he must be careful lest it should be so worded as to be made the means of a job on the part of the coroners themselves. With this caution he certainly thought that when medical men were called in to assist they ought to be properly com- pensated. Mr. Warburton, in seconding the motion, said that of course the mover would take care in his Bill that medical The Need for Precautions against Jobbery 289 ■witnesses should be paid for their attendance, but he should think that in cases where persons of superior information were called and where their apparatus for analysis was costly the remuneration would fall short of what it ought to be unless account were taken of the heavy expenses involved in the education of such a person. He alluded to the story told by the member for Boston, and considered that in that case the petitioner ought to have applied to the Home Office for payment, lest the ends of justice should be defeated. The Bill was also supported by the Solicitor-General (Sir R. Rolfe), among others, only one objection being expressed to the measure by Mr. Jervis, Q.C., the member for Chester. Mr. Jervis did not object to the Bill, but observed with regard to the existing law that a coroner, if he desired the presence of a medical witness, could issue a warrant to the parochial officers ordering them to send one ; in such a case he contended that the medical man would undoubtedly have a claim upon the officers which he could enforce. Wakley rose to answer the objection of Mr. Jervis. He thought that that gentleman was not quite correct in his statement. True, the coroner might order the overseers to obtain the medical witness, but it was equally true that the witness might, if he pleased, refuse to give evidence. He might say, " I will not open the body ; I will give no testimony respecting a post-mortem examination," and the coroner had no power whatever to compel him to give his opinion as to the cause of death or to commit him for contempt of court. He (Wakley) desired to give the coroner more power, but as a set-off against that power he desired to give the medical man due compensation. He would, he assured the House, take the greatest care to so frame the provisions of the Bill as to make jobbing im- possible. In Ireland much jobbing had taken place under the Coroners Act, but with that example before his eyes he. would take care that nothing of the kind should happen here. Leave was given to bring in the Bill amid the cheers of T 290 Rapid Transformation into Law the House, Its after-history was short and uneventful and its details need not be mentioned. It provided for the pay- ment to all medical witnesses at coroners' inquests of one guinea for their evidence and one guinea for post-mortem examinations, including any scientific analyses that might be deemed necessary by the court. It became law in upwards of three months, not the least discussion on its clauses ever occurring, so entirely was it both in spirit and detail to the mind of the House. The only alteration made to it in Committee was verbal. From beginning to end Wakley's conduct of his measure was marked by tact and thoroughness. He knew exactly what was wanted and was able to explain satisfactorily the meaning of his provisions. A large sum of money was thus annually secured to the medical profession for professional services, while the public received an additional security against the risks of murder the importance of which cannot easily be exaggerated. The Newspaper Stamp Duties 291 CHAPTER XXXII [1836] The Newspaper Stamp Duties — Wakley's Views on a Free Press — Edward Lytton Bulwer's Attitude towards the Question — The Debate in the House — WakUy defers his Motion for Repeal at the Request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer — The Proposals of the Government — Criticisms by the Press of Wakley's Conduct — The Approval of Leading Liberals. " Mr. Wakley gave notice that on March the 8th he would move for leave to bring in a Bill to allow Medical Witnesses their expenses for attending Coroners' inquests ; on March the 15th he would move for the total repeal of the Stamp duty on Newspapers ; on March the 20th he would move for the repeal of the Septennial Act." This short item of parliamentary news, extracted from " Bell's Weekly Messenger " for 1836, shows that Wakley took his position as a reformer very seriously, and that he had no intention of allowing his activity and promises without the House to be followed by idleness and non-performance within its walls. Having safely piloted the Medical Witnesses Bill to harbour he immediately turned his attention to the Newspaper Stamp Act. The taxation of newspapers, an impost that was first levied at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had grown gradually heavier and heavier, until in 1830, when Wakley's interest in politics first became serious and definite, it really amounted to what he and Hume invariably termed it, namely, a tax on knowledge. The first tax on newspapers was imposed in 171 2, when it was enacted that all papers con- taining public news or intelligence were to be taxed at the rate of a halfpenny if printed on half a sheet of paper and a 292 A Heavy Tax on Knowledge penny if on a whole sheet. The same Act imposed a tax of a shilling on any advertisement that appeared in a paper published weekly or more often. In 1776 the newspaper stamp duty was three-halfpence and in 1789 it had risen to twopence. The advertisement duty of a shilling was doubled in 1757, and in 1789 Pitt increased it by sixpence, making the duty half-a-crown on each advertisement. Again, in 1804 the newspaper stamp duty was raised to threepence-half- penny, and the duty on advertisements to three shillings and sixpence. In 1815 the newspaper stamp duty had become fourpence the advertisement duty remaining unabated, while the duty on paper, before printed, varied from three-halfpence to threepence per pound. In 1833, in consequence of agitation within and without Parliament, the advertisement duty was reduced to eighteenpence. Three years later a new and highly successful agitation against the impost was carried on, and with the story of this movement Wakley's name is closely associated. What he and others did at this juncture will now be told : the results of their labours, as seen in the reforms of the next twenty-five years, can be set out in a few words. These results were that on September 15th, 1836, the newspaper stamp duty was reduced to a penny on papers containing 1530 square inches, three-halfpence if above that and under 2295 square inches, and twopence if of the latter size or above. Again in 1853 the stamp duty was reduced to a penny for every sheet under 2295 square inches ; while the advertisement duty was entirely abolished by an Act passed August 4th, 1853. In 1855 the newspaper stamp duty was entirely abolished, and on October ist, 1861, the paper duty was done away with, thus leaving newspapers free. In this story of increasing taxation and gradual remis- sion by far the most important episodes were the two in which Wakley was actively concerned — viz., the agitation of 1833, which produced the reduction in the tax upon adver- tisements, and that of 1836, which resulted in an important and substantial remission of the stamp duty. The taxation had all been on the ascending scale before, but these two The "Trash Act" 293 occasions marked the feeling of the country that a highly- taxed press was not creditable to a free nation ; and on both occasions, within and without the House, Wakley was earnest in his endeavours to obtain remission of the burden upon the purveyors of news and knowledge. His views on the subject were first communicated to the country at large in a speech to his constituents made in the Hall of Science, City Road, one week previous to the date on which he was announced to bring forward his motion in Parliament. The ostensible purpose of the assembly over which Wakley then presided was to organise a petition to Parliament for the total repeal of the stamp duties on news- papers, but the real object that he had in convening the meeting was to make clear to the country the views on the subject of taxation of the press held by the man who was about to move the total repeal of the tax. The question was one that had a certain familiarity for his hearers, because on each of the occasions that the tax had been made heavier the more enlightened of both parties in the country had clamoured against the impost and brought forward argu- ments to show that it was not the fiscal benefit that the various Governments sought for the country in thus taxing the diffusion of knowledge, but really the muzzling a too critical press, a press that was too prone to teach the people things which it was better for an unreformed Parliament that they should not know. Since the passing of the Reform Bill the question of the newspaper stamp duties had been twice before the House. Once it had been brought forward by Joseph Hume, and on the second occasion, which was only a few months previous to Wakley's motion, by Edward Lytton Bulwer, the novelist. Hume's motion was for the repeal of what was known as the " Trash Act," a piece of legislation designed by Castlereagh to check the licence of political pamphleteers, and in moving the repeal of that obnoxious Act, Hume's argument for a free press included a demand for the abolition of the newspaper stamp duties. Bulwer's motion was for a Committee to inquire whether the newspaper stamp duties could not be advantageously 294 Lord Lytton Roughly Handled reduced from fourpence to a penny, and his conduct in bringing forward the motion was severely criticised by the Radical press, whose party had entrusted him with a commission to move the total repeal of the tax. Bulwer did not, however, believe that such a motion had any chance of success, and desired to propose a compromise. This not being agreeable to his party he made his motion for a Committee of Inquiry, to the disgust of the more ardent spirits. "Wakley will not play fast and loose with this subject," said Daniel Whittle Harvey's paper, " as did that sublime humbug, Mr. E. L. Bulwer. This latter gentleman did grossly disappoint and deceive us. Having declared in the House that he would not be a party to any compromise ; that he would hear nothing about reduction, but have the total repeal or none at all — ^he had gained our implicit confidence. The friends of unstamped knowledge, beguiled by his pompous declamations, abandoned the question to his guardianship in the perfect assurance that he would either see the matter finally set at rest — in the only way it can — by a total repeal or else compel the recreant Whigs to incur eternal disgrace by opposing the motion in the teeth of all their past professions. How different the farce he enacted. Well, indeed, may the Whig-Radicals blush for their champion. After all his solemn fanfaronnade — after all his high-coloured pictures of the vices of ignorance and the benefits of knowledge — after his magniloquent boasts that he would not even consent to a penny postage — the fire of his eloquence ends in the smoke of a hypocritical motion for a Committee to inquire whether it was possible to reduce the tax to one penny without injury to the revenue. Such was the sublime Bulwer's finale — just as though the affirmative of the inquiry had not been proved a thousand times over, and as though (were it even not proved) a ques- tion of such moment — one involving the intellectual emanci- pation of millions — ought to be treated as a paltry measure of finance." These were hard sayings, but men did not mince their words in those days. Bulwer's motion was withdrawn and no harm was done to the cause. Wakley's Views on a Free Press 295 It was, therefore, a threadbare topic to which Wakley addressed himself, but it was also a topic upon which the more thoughtful of the community had pondered much. His speech was devoted chiefly to showing very clearly that the reformers, in delegating to him this important motion, would not find in him a second Bulwer, He dwelt strongly on the fact that the fiscal side of the question was simply not worth considering compared with the immense moral benefits that would accrue from the repeal of the taxes on knowledge. If the people were resolved to do away with the taxes by standing on their undoubted right to receive without undue expenditure information upon the laws of the land by which they were judged and condemned, Wakley was certain that sooner or later — and probably sooner — the taxes would be remitted. The taxes brought the Government ^^450,000, and he begged his audience to consider, firstly, how paltry a sum this was to urge as a reason for the necessity of maintaining a tax upon the knowledge of the people, and secondly how self-confessedly feeble must that Chancellor of the Exchequer be who could not see any way of substituting for an odious tax some fairer impost that would bring to the revenue the small sum over which there was so much disposition to haggle. Next, Wakley warned his hearers against listening to any proposal for half-measures. He inveighed against the substitution of a lighter tax and against any measures proposing to include the postage rate in the duty on the paper or on its advertise- ments. Such projects he considered obscured the question at issue, which was — Ought the people to get their informa- tion wholly and entirely free ? and tended to split up the supporters of the general principle into the factious partisans of this or that view. He concluded by warning his hearers against open violation of the law. He deplored the fact that unstamped newspapers had received popular support, saying that if the same measure of support had been given to the legitimate agitation as to the illegal dissemination of unstamped sheets the hands of the reformers would have been immensely strengthened in Parliament and it was 296 Constitutional and Unconstitutional Agitation possible that the people already would have obtained what they wanted. With his closing sentences his audience did not seem disposed to agree. Three men were at this time in prison for the publication of unstamped newspapers. They were Henry Hetherington, the publisher of the "Poor Man's Guardian," a paper whose title-page bore the legend, " Published in Defiance of the Law to try the power of Right against Might " ; John Cleave, the editor of the " Weekly Police Gazette " and the " Penny Gazette of Varieties " ; and James Watson, an intimate associate of the latter. In the eyes of the people these men had suffered for doing what the constitutional agitators had openly approved. Such men as Grote — ^the historian of Greece — and his friends Sir William Molesworth and Charles Buller, James Silk Buckingham — whose pockets had suffered severely from the suppression for political reasons of the " Calcutta Journal," — ^Joseph Hume, Edward Lytton Bulwer, Daniel O'Connell, Daniel Whittle Harvey, and Wakley, were known to hold this taxation of newspapers in abhor- rence. How, then, could it be wrong for Hetherington, Cleave, and Watson openly to revolt by deed as well as word ? Wakley thereupon treated his electors to a few wise words upon the difference between lawless rebellion and constitutional agitation, not the least practical of his asser- tions being that the latter generally obtained its just demands, while the former must stir up enmity to the best of causes among good citizens. Wakley's declaration for a total repeal of the duties — to be obtained, however, by the employment of constitutional agitation only — was hailed with very general satisfaction. The press of the country were satisfied to leave this matter in his hands, and even the most extreme Radical wing of the party, for whom the enterprising editor of the " Weekly Police Gazette" had an heroic appearance as long as he was serving the cause in durance, were content to wait calmly for the issue of Wakley's motion. His reputation for unflinching resolve as well as the public record of his career Mr. Spring Rice Proposes Reform 297 secured him from any imputation of weakness or half- heartedness, though he might deprecate for politic or moral reasons open defiance of the existing law. With what was admitted on all sides to be a good cause, with a thorough knowledge of all the arguments that might be employed against him as well as of those that he might successfully advance, and with promises of substantial support within the House, Wakley confidently expected success for his motion, and this fortunate issue was anticipated by all his friends and co-workers. But the events of March 15th, 1836, did not fulfil these happy hopes. Wakley and Daniel Whittle Harvey having presented numerous petitions on behalf of the repeal of the newspaper stamp duties, chiefly from the metropolitan constituencies, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring Rice, suggested that Wakley should consent to allow him to state what were the inten- tions of the Government in the matter and should defer the discussion on his own motion till such a time as the subject of the stamp duties on newspapers was before the House in the financial statement for the year. Wakley consented to adopt this course, and the House having resolved itself into Committee, the Chancellor of the Exchequer proceeded to explain the views of himself and his colleagues on the Treasury Bench. He said that it was his intention to pro- pose the consolidation into one Act of all the Acts imposing stamp duties of any description, at that time distributed over one hundred and fifty statutes, some relating to England, some to Scotland, and some to Ireland, without order or method, and exhibiting a farrago of legislation by which the most subtle lawyer frequently found himself bewildered. He could not hold out to the honourable member for Finsbury, for whom he entertained feelings of the greatest respect, a promise to come forward with any proposition for a total repeal of the newspaper stamp duty. Such a reform was not in accord with his own feelings and the public service would not be promoted by it. The State undertook the duty of conveying newspapers free of postage to all parts of the country, therefore a certain proportion of the stamp 298 Wakley Accepts a Compromise duty should be regarded as payment for services rendered rather than as a tax. Again, he considered free newspapers would work unfairly towards the dweller in the country who would have to pay carriage-rates to obtain his information, while the urban dweller would be equally posted in the march of events with nothing to pay for the privilege. He intended, therefore, to propose that there should be a stamp duty of one penny on a newspaper instead of fourpence. He promised that he would listen to all arguments from the junior member for Finsbury and would make the best case that he could against the extreme step of a total repeal of the taxes, if the House on their side would go with him to the extent that he had already indicated in an attempt to deal with what he confessed to be a crying evil. He con- cluded by congratulating Wakley on his recent public utterances warning his followers against breaches of the existing law. Buncombe and Wakley both said a few words pledging themselves to continue their efforts for total repeal, while Hume congratulated the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his proposals " as far as they went." Bulwer seized the oppoi'tunity to point out to the House that they were now agreeing with great unanimity to the very reform which he himself had previously advocated, when his action had drawn down upon him continued and bitter attacks for his love of compromise. He had been told that his suggestion constituted a breach of faith with those who had committed their interests to him, and he could not refrain from pointing out that in the hands of the honourable member for Finsbury the proposal for total repeal of the duties had only resulted in obtaining the same concession that he (Bulwer) had asked for. Wakley's conduct was subjected to a very mixed reception by the press. He had pointed out to his constituents and to the public that he would not submit to any compromise. They had entrusted him with a mission — namely, to move for the total abolition of newspaper stamp duties. This mission he intended to carry out. Neither any offer of reducing the duty nor any plan whereby part of the duty Criticism of Wakley's Conduct 299 should be regarded as a carriage-rate would be accepted favourably by him. The various journals written in support of the Reform party, as well as those representing advanced Radicalism, and what is now termed Socialism, had all combined to rely on the firmness of his attitude. They rejoiced with acclamation over the fact that Wakley, the straightforward democrat, had the matter in his charge instead of " the sublime " Bulwer — novelist, dandy, play- wright, and aristocrat. And lo ! the result of Wakley's parliamentary manoeuvres was the securing of an offer from Government containing the identical two measures of com- promise which Wakley had declared that he would on no account agree to. The fourpenny tax was to be reduced to a penny, and the penny was to be regarded not as a tax but as payment for the carriage of the paper. Moreover, the suggestions of the Government were identically those of the maligned Bulwer, who had not omitted to point this out with some asperity in the House. The " Times" was imme- diately up in arms against Wakley, calling him the puppet of Spring Rice and sneering at him as cajoled into accepting a compromise in spite of his professions. The " Dispatch " owned itself puzzled. " Judge our surprise," runs its com- ment, " when, instead of moving (what appeared on the list of notices) for a total repeal of the stamp duties on news- papers, Mr. Wakley moved the order of the day, ' That the House resolve itself into committee on the Stamp Acts.' Gods ! we exclaimed, the man has surely been bamboozled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer." For a few hours it was rife in Tory and Radical circles that Wakley, the in- corruptible member for Finsbury, had shaken hands with Spring Rice, a stiff-necked Whig, over a question involving a tax upon the knowledge of the people. On the other hand, the papers which really understood what had happened — those whose editors were behind the scenes and in touch with the leaders in the movement — were unanimous in praise of Wakley's conduct in acceding to the request of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to defer his motion. Hume wrote to the press to explain that the course which Wakley 300 A Circular Letter to the Press had taken was the right one under the circumstances. The " Political Examiner " spoke strongly in favour of his con- duct, denouncing the short sight of the "Times" and of those who detected in a necessary piece of diplomacy a useless piece of treachery. Cleave, the irresponsible editor, of the "Weekly Police Gazette," whose opinions might be taken to represent the sentiments 6i the more violent and socialistic section of the Radical party, was equally satisfied with the course pursued. Cleave was one of the very persons whose conduct in issuing unstamped papers in defiance of the law Wakley had specifically condemned, but Cleave had sufficient insight into character and motive to understand that Wakley was the last man in the world to play fast and loose with pledges. Public opinion, in fact, was about evenly balanced. Wakley, however, was not a man to allow himself or his actions to be misunderstood for any length of time. Throughout his life he was frank with his pen, and he immediately wrote a circular letter to all the journals of importance in the metropolis and provinces in which he explained his reasons for the course he had adopted. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked him to defer his motion, because Government had a suggestion to make, said the letter, the Reform party in Parliament at once saw that by allowing Mr. Spring Rice to have his way the issue would be considerably narrowed. The Reformers would obtain what the right honourable gentleman promised and still be free to agitate later for a total repeal. Had the total repeal been the motion before the House it might have been lost and nothing have been passed, whereas total repeal could now be moved as an amendment to Mr. Spring Rice's measure of compromise ; and should it not be carried, at any rate the reduction of the duty from fourpence to a penny was secure. Wakley concluded his letter by pressing upon the people at large to sign petitions in every locality in favour of total repeal. Wakley's management of the whole matter gained him the approval of the House for its moderation and wisdom. It • was distinctly to his personal advantage to be brought into The Approbation of Responsible Persons 301 contact with such people as Bulwer, Grote, BuUer, and Molesworth, and that in the honourable position of leader. These men recognised that Wakley's prudence and pliability had advanced the cause a distinct stage. They knew of his promise to the Finsbury electors that he would have no compromise but that he would divide the House on the question of total repeal or nothing. And they appreciated how much more palatable to a man of his disposition it would have been to keep literal faith with his constituents and to have made a stirring appeal to the House for the freedom of the press, even though he should actually retard that freedom by so doing. Appreciating these things they gave to Wakley a generous meed of approbation. They saw that he was not afraid to take the risk of temporary mis- apprehension to gain the end that they all had in view, and they regarded his attitude as entirely consistent and under the circumstances the only one that was likely to be successful. No one doubted that he would seize the first opportunity to defy the Government and to declaim his unappeasable hatred of compromise and his intention to be faithful to the very letter of his pledges to his constituents, but in the meantime such action would have retarded the progress of the very movement at the head of which the Reformers had placed him. 302 Rapid Success in the House CHAPTER XXXIII [1836-1837] Wakley's Position in the House — The Lord's Day Observance Bill — Flogging in the Army — The Publication of Lectures Bill — The Poor-law Amendment Act — Other Reform Measures — An Inde- fatigable Member of the Legislature. The fulness with which Wakley's connexion has been de- scribed with these three prominent movements during his first period as representative of Finsbury in Parliament need not be repeated in recording his subsequent parliamentary career. But his methods in the House of treating these three widely different affairs have been dealt with at length because they were both characteristic and successful, raising him in a few months from comparative political obscurity to a position of influence and popularity. The affair of the Dorsetshire labourers stamped him as an orator ; his conduct of the motion for abolition of the newspaper stamp duties proved him a sound tactician ; while his management of the legislation for the remuneration of medical witnesses showed him to be specially mindful of the needs of his profession, upon which needs he had based his principal right to a seat in the House. In all the other measures before the House Wakley voted as a consistent Radical, thorough-going and passionate enough to co-operate with Daniel O'Connell, yet sufficiently aware of the needs for compromise and of the advantages of circumspection and of taking advice to be admitted by the philosophical Radicals, of whom Grote was the most typical leader, into their intimate counsels. No attempt will therefore be made to register all that was said and done by him in general politics. His frequent speeches Triennial Parliaments 303 . as reported in Hansard were always vigorous, pithy, and humorous ; and their tenour can be deduced readily from the fact that he was a broad-minded and consistent Reformer, insisting largely on the rights of the people, and especially anxious that the people should have, as far as possible, equal chances with the governing classes of getting wholesome food, healthy houses, and adequate education. In some minor measures he took a more individual part. His motion in favour of the repeal of the Septennial Act came to nothing. It was a subject upon which he felt strongly, and in all his addresses at Finsbury he said plainly that he thought members of Parliament should come before their constituencies more frequently to render an account of their doings and to be judged by them. He was not dis- posed to support the foolish demand of the Chartists for annual elections, an innovation which would have made the life of public men an unendurable nuisance, and would have destroyed all chances of individual action ; but he considered that triennial parliaments constituted the logical mean between the existing system and the demand soon to be formulated in the Charter. His motion to this effect never came on for debate in the House, being shelved, in spite of his protests, to make room for more urgent and pressing matters, but he had the courage of his convictions, for he persistently volunteered to offer himself every three years, or every session if they liked, to the electors of Fins- bury, that they might ratify their choice or change their minds. Wakley's avowed disrespect for one element of the British Constitution — viz., the House of Lords — and for such vener- able institutions as the medical corporations, together with his close association in the work of reform with a great number of earnest Dissenters, had given rise to a popular belief that he desired the disestablishment of the national Church and even that he was a freethinker and an atheist. Undoubtedly he was a man with many enemies, for the fact that such was his reputation could only have been due to gross and purposed misrepresentation of facts. He was a 304 The Lord's Day Observance Bill regular churchgoer and had been brought up in strict observance of the ordinances of the Protestant faith. There was not in his life, public or private, one single thing that could have given even colour to the rumour that he was lax in his religious opinions save his attitude towards the Lord's Day Observance Bill. He objected to the entire closing of shops of all kinds on Sunday, and when the question was before the House in June, 1836, during a debate on Sir Andrew Agnew's Bill, prohibiting all open labour on Sunday except works of mercy or necessity, he contended that such universal and compulsory closing of shops was unfair to woi'king men, who, being employed during the whole week, and in those days- up till a late hour on Saturday night, were often unable to do their shopping on pay-nights. The public-houses were open, but at no other mart could a workman spend his money save over the publican's bar. It may with truth be claimed for Wakley that in some degree he was a pioneer in the movement which has been recently brought to a successful issue for opening museums and picture galleries on Sundays for the benefit of those who have no chance of seeing the nation's treasures at other times. Over sixty years ago Wakley inveighed against the narrow Sabbatarianism that thought it wicked to delight the eye and instruct the mind on the seventh day as " only another of the hydra heads of cant, sham, hypocrisy, privilege, and monopoly." He advocated in the House that the British Museum should be open on the days that work- men could visit it, such as holidays and Sundays, and objected to the monopoly of the Fellows of the Zoological Society or the proprietors of the Zoological Gardens, who enjoyed, as they still enjoy, the privilege of a Sunday ticket, while the working man was excluded on the only day when he could be present. It is difficult to believe that views so reasonable, even then so widely held and now so remark- ably endorsed, could ever have been tortured into dis- respect towards the Established Church, but they seem to be the only opinions that he ever held to which an honest section of the Church of England could have objected. Flogging in the Army 305 In the same year — viz., 1836 — the attention of Parliament was drawn to the barbarous practices attendant upon flogging in the army. Wakley was fully conversant with the subject, as the " Lancet " had several times related the horrors which accoinpanied this form of military punishment. Daniel O'Connell, in the course of a debate upon what was known as the Mutiny Bill, pleaded for the entire abolition of flogging. In this view the majority of military men and the parliamentary representatives of garrison towns agreed with him. Wakley protested indignantly against the prac- tice. Was it intended, he asked, to punish insubordination by death ? Surely not. Yet there were numerous cases of men being flogged to death. In short, capital punishment was of frequent occurrence for mere offences against dis- cipline. He challenged any members in favour of this degrading practice to avow their opinions on the subject from the hustings and find out in that practical manner what their constituents felt on the subject. He further commented on the varying severity of the punishment. It was not, he said, necessarily the number of strokes inflicted which regulated the severity of the pain, but also the time occupied in administering a flogging. He quoted the terrible case of William Saundry, who had recently died after being flogged at Woolwich, and demanded that the House should be furnished with an official report of the inquest in this and similar cases. He also used the signifi- cant words, " Ah, had there been a medical coroner ! " — significant because ten years later it was his duty as a coroner to conduct an inquiry into a case where death had followed upon military flogging, and he performed this duty with such determination, eloquence, and furious anger that he roused in the whole nation a feeling that the monstrous custom must no longer exist under civilised laws. The story of the death of Frederick White at Hounslow, as revealed before Wakley the coroner, did what no efforts of his or of O'Connell in the House of Commons could effect, and it may truly be said that it gave Wakley an opportunity for which he had long been waiting. 3o6 The Publication of Lectures Bill A Bill -providing for the publication of lectures passed the House of Lords, also in 1836, without attracting much notice, but Wakley had more than one opportunity in the lower chamber of expressing his opinions upon it. It is certain that no member had a greater right to hold opinions and to express them in the matter, seeing that it was at his action in publishing Abernethy's lectures in the early numbers of the " Lancet " that the Bill was aimed. Wakley said that if the Bill was intended to apply generally to England unless proper amendments were introduced he should divide the House against the motion, for it seemed to him that it was intended, not only to prevent the publica- tion of lectures, but of criticisms on lectures. Again, if it was intended to apply only to private lectures it would be a proper protection, but if it was intended to shield public as well as private lectures he should consider that it ought not to receive the sanction of the House. In the present state of the law no such protection was needed, for it had been laid down by Lord Eldon that private lectures could be protected if it were proved that there was a breach of implied contract between the lecturer and his individual hearers. In the case of Abernethy v. Hutchinson an in- junction was granted to restrain the publication of lectures without any means of discovering whether the lectures in question were original or not — whether .they were, in fact, tit subjects for copyright protection. Subsequently, how- ever, it was proved in Chancery that Abernethy's lectures were public, being delivered on a public occasion and in a public capacity, the consequence of which was to deprive Abernethy of the protection and remedy he asked for. Wakley considered it absurd that such a Bill should pass the Lords without a word of discussion, and unless the Lord Advocate, who had charge of the measm-e in the Commons, assured him that public lecturers were not to be shielded from public notice he should divide the House against the Bill. Although Wakley was speaking here in defence of the principle which had dictated his own actions of thirteen years previously he was not really any longer concerned in a The Poor Law Amendment Act 307 practical manner with the fate of the Bill, for the position of the " Lancet " had now much altered, and so far from hospital surgeons and lecturers issuing injunctions to restrain Wakley from publishing their words his reporters were given every facility, and in most cases the original MSS. were sent to the office before the delivery of the lec- tures. In fact, after the final decision of the protracted case of Abernethy v. Hutchinson, the heads of the medical pro- fession decided to follow the lead originally given by Sir Astley Cooper and to admit the right of the medical public to hear their words. Wakley's protest in the House was made to defend his past conduct, not his present interests. It received no real support, only a few among his immediate colleagues promising to vote with him in favour of an amendment condemning the extension of copyright privi- leges to public lecturers. Seeing how much the feeling of the House was against his amendment Wakley did not press the matter to a division, but in committee he again uttered his protest. It was, however, without avail and the Bill was passed, on the motion of Lord John Russell, by twenty votes. In August, 1836, we find Wakley supporting a motion brought forward by Mr. John Walter, the proprietor and manager of the "Times," and son of the founder of the paper, to inquire into the working of certain clauses in the Poor-law Amendment Act. . Wakley and Walter were friends, and although the " Times " occasionally commented very severely on the acts and sentiments of the member for Finsbury, we find the proprietor of the paper addressing Wakley in a letter as " Dear Friend," and asking him to call at Printing House Square on days that suit him "between four and nine in the evening — tea always at half-past eight." In his speech in support of Walter's motion Wakley quoted instances that had become known to him through the " Lancet " of insanitary workhouses, where the food was bad and the ventilation deficient, and said that the Poor-law Commissioners seemed to him — speaking not without know- ledge of the subject — to desire to treat poverty as crime, and the pauper as a fit subject for penal environment. On 3o8 The Poor Law Amendment Act February 20th, 1837, he seconded Mr. Fielding's motion for the entire repeal of the Act. On this occasion he called attention to the fact that the new law had been put in practice in rural districts where the poor were ignorant and unorganised, but that in large towns its introduction had been delayed. As an example he mentioned the town of Nottingham, where in the preceding winter, according to one of the newspapers of the town, one-fifteenth of the population were on the parish, and ;^5ooo had been raised by subscription to maintain the principle that no out-door relief should be given. Wakley spoke on other occasions against the working of the Act, his special charges against it being that the abolition of out-door relief was brutal to the rural poor, and that the workhouses into which they were driven were ill-constructed and ill-managed. But though he pro- tested much from his place in the House against the Act, his best work in relation to Poor Law was done from the editorial chair. All the arguments that he used in Parlia- ment were used again in the articles which culminated in the establishment of the " Lancet " Commission to inquire into the state of the sick poor in workhouses. Wakley spoke at length in support of a resolution brought forward by Sir William Molesworth in the spring of 1837 to abolish the property qualification of members of Parliament, and he supported Daniel O'Connell on several occasions in his claim for Ireland of the fight to, govern herself, notably during the debate on the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Reform Bill. In July, 1837, there was a general election, and Wakley was able to go to his constituents conscious of having justified their choice and of having established a right to ask for a continuance of their suffrages. For over and above the merits of his individual performances he had worked loyally for the cause of Reform in the most practical manner possible. During the last year, according to a useful little publication entitled "The Parliamentary Vote- Book or Election Guide," there had been sixty-nine princi- pal questions before the House of Commons, " beginning Regular Attendance in the House 309 with the election of the Speaker and ending with the Lords Amendments on the Municipal Corporation Reform Bill." On these sixty-nine questions Sir Robert Peel gave in all but twenty votes, Silk Buckingham gave thirty-two, O'Connell thirty-three, Hume thirty-five, Warburton forty-five, and Wakley fifty-one, the highest number in the book. 3IO Wakley's Second Election CHAPTER XXXIV [1837-1841] Wakley Heads the Poll at his Second Election — Amendment to Queen Victoria's First Speech from the Throne — His Attitude towards Chartism — His Friendship with the Leading Chartists — The Case of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners — Sir James Graham's Vaccination Bill — Extra-mural Burial — Infanticide and Illegiti- macy — General Radical Views — Wakley's Hatred of Lawyers. In July, 1837, Wakley came before the electors of Finsbury for the second time, a new Parliament having been sum- moned on the occasion of the death of King William IV., which took place at Windsor on June 20th. His election address was very brief, consisting only of two or three sentences in which he avowed his intention of steering clear of all profuse expenditure and electioneering intrigue, and protested that he filled the paii of member for Finsbury with the keenest pleasure to himself, and not, he hoped, without profit to his constituents. He concluded by referring to the cordial assurances of support that he had received from all parts of the borough. Opposition, however, came from a place where it was least expected. Mr. George Rogers, who had been the chairman of Wakley's committee in all his previous contests, successful and unsuccessful, for the representation of the borough, and whose efforts in Wakley's behalf had been sincere and exceedingly useful, suddenly announced his absolute hostility to his quondam friend's re-election. The exact cause of this defection does not appear, but that Rogers was in a furious state of anger and jealousy there is no doubt. He had counted for so much in the original Head of the Poll 311 winning of the seat foi" Wakley that Wakley's progress in the House unsupported by him seemed to him to constitute profound ingratitude. He had meant to lead the member for Finsbury on a string, and he found that Wakley never responded to his little jerks. Rogers's opposition took the form of a pamphlet, in which he reviled Wakley as a breaker of pledges and a time-server. He wanted to hear the rant and fustian which he loved, and which Wakley had occa- sionally talked to mass meetings, shouted out in the House of Commons, and he saw in Wakle3^s attitude of moderation and observance of courtesy only sheer sycophancy. Before Wakley entered Parliament, complained Rogers, he had said that " he would glory in standing up alone in the House challenging corruption on its high altar and exposing it to the detestation of the countiy " He had said that " his voice was too powerful to be put down by the ' ya, ya's ' of puny beings whose brains were so pappy as to be unfit for the purposes even of dissection," But when he got into Parliament, so far from " challenging corruption on its high altar," he became " a member of the Reform Club and an associate of corruptionists." Poor Rogers did not effect much by his splenetic circular. He may possibly have caused Wakley a few qualms of regret for some of the more unbridled expressions that had been used by him on former occasions, but that he did not turn the hearts of many voters from their former allegiance was shown by the following result at the poll : — Wakley 4957 Duncombe 4895 Perceval 2470 Wakley thus headed the poll, obtaining a majority of 2487 votes over his Tory opponent, who was Mr. Dudley Perceval nephew of Spencer Perceval, Bellingham's victim. This was the largest majority obtained by any candidate at this general election. In the first Parliament of our reigning Sovereign Wakley's 312 A Revolutionary Motion earliest act was almost revolutionaiy. Never a Chartist either at heart or in profession he moved an amendment to. the first speech of Queen Victoi'ia from the Throne the tendency of which was very similar to that of much of the Chartist literature to appear a little later. His amendment, was a resolution in favour of the ballot and of shorter duration of parliaments, but only twenty members voted with him. Wakley complained that the Ministry (Lord Melbourne's) had forgotten the fact that it had many Radical supporters, and spoke in favour of the ballot as giving working men a fair opportunity of choosing their own members and so of assuring themselves that their interests would be properly guarded. He described himself as a representative of labour having no connexion with any political circle or monopoly, , and he called upon all other members who had secured a seven years' lease of the House through the popular vote to support his amendment. But Lord ijohn Russell, the leader of the Liberal party in the Lower House, declared that he could not countenance any such attempts to re-open the questions that had been settled by the Reform Bill. Wakley was his own teller, and among the twenty who voted with him were Hume, Grote, Sir William Molesworth, and Buncombe. Lord John Russell's declaration was received by many outside the walls of Parliament with open displeasure, for, especially in the manufacturing quarters, the people had been led to believe that the Reform Bill was only the pre- liminary step to further changes to be effected in the im- mediate future. That Lord John Russell was right from a party point of view is very probable, but his speech on this occasion led to developments that Liberal and Conservative leaders alike were soon to find very impatient of manage- ment. A conference was held almost immediately between certain Liberal members of Parliament and the heads of such organisations as were possessed by the working men. At this conference the claims of the working nieii were formulated, the following five things being demanded : (i) universal suffrage, (2) annual Parliaments, (3) payment Wakley and the Chartists 313 of members, (4) abolition of property qualification for Parlia- mentary candidates, and (5) vote by ballot. O'Connell is said to have had the fortunate inspiration of giving this programme the name of "The Charter," and at once the movement was launched that was to lead to ten years of trouble. Wakley's connexion with the Chartists was never close. He was one of the Liberal members present at the meeting when the people's demands were first defined. This was only to be expected, as it was his speech that had led up to the meeting and he was avowedly in sympathy with all popular aspirations towards self-government ; but there his relations with this luckless movement ceased. He acknowledged the right of the people to be discontented, and was ready to be their mouth-piece in giving vigorous expression to the bitter suffering that was rife among artisan and labouring folk alike, but with the methods of the Chartists he could not go. He did not believe that their agitation would come to any practical ends. He thought that the leaders had begun wrongly in stirring up an agitation outside Parliament. His panacea for wide-spread political and social wrongs was proper representation of the people within the House, and he considered that triennial parlia- ments would secure this. By meeting their representatives more frequently and having more opportunities of ratifying their choice the people could ensure having their interests attended to. When a parliament had been chosen in which a majority of honest men was really pledged to the cause of the people the essential demands of the Charter would follow as a matter of course. Wakley considered that the programme of Chartism was overloaded and unpractical. He foresaw the enrolment under its flag of all sorts and conditions of malcontents, and he absolutely refused to take any personal part in the proceedings. No effort was spared by Mr. George Attwood, who presented the petition of the Chartists to the House, and Feargus O'Connor, editor of the " Northern Star " and the most eloquent and hot-headed of the leaders, to secure his presence at some of their meetings, but he was resolute in keeping aloof. He was certain that 314 Wakley and the Chartists the Chartists, by asking too much and in an unwisely dicta- toi-ial manner, would prevent the true sufferers from obtaining their just demands while effecting nothing themselves. At the same time his sympathies were in favour of a constitutional agitation for several of the demands of the Chartists. When Attwood presented to the House the great petition of the Chartists begging for the appointment of a commission to inquire into the Charter Wakley spoke eloquently in its favour. This petition bore more than a million and a quarter signatures, and although drawn up on narrow strips of parchment and tightly rolled is described as having been as big as a large coach wheel. The ponderous document was rolled up the floor of the House by two officials and lay between the benches while Attwood explained its tenor in politic phrases. He toned down the vehement pleadings and party cries, deprecated the use of force among his followers, and disclaimed all illicit armament, incendiarism, and violence. Lord John Russell, representing the Govern- ment, moved the rejection of Attwood's motion and attempted with more or less success to show that the grievances of the masses were overstated. In so doing he referred to the condition of the agricultural labourers of Devonshire, and declared his disbelief in the pictures that had been drawn of their plight, " for he himself was concerned in the affairs of that county." Wakley at once gave some terrible details of privation and suffering drawn from his personal knowledge as the son of a Devonshire farmer. His picture of the lives of some of these field-slaves, who toiled from sunrise to sunset in all weathers for a paltry wage of seven shillings a week, and after long hours of effort under a scorching sun or in a bleak easterly drizzle slept in sheds, barns, and outhouses in the garments they had worn through- out the day, bore the stamp upon it of terrible truth. Disraeli, then sitting in his first Pai'liament as member for Maidstone, and Daniel O'Connell both voted in support of some parts of the petition, but the motion was defeated by a crushing majority. For those leaders among the Chartists whose irregular Wakley and the Chartists 315 advocacy of what they believed to be the just cause of the people brought them within the grip of legal punishment Wakley had a very soft spot in his heart. Their fate was only what he had predicted for them, and their combination against the law had been broken down exactly as he had foreseen that it would be, but he never forgot that many of their tenets were his tenets. When Feargus O'Connor was incarcerated in York Castle on the charge of seditious libel he turned to Wakley for help in his trouble. He was from his own point of view treated with unnecessary severity — in fact, the conditions of his imprisonment seem to have been open to quite as much question as were the conditions of the Kilmainham prisoners in more modern times. Wakley responded at once and proceeded to heckle the Government persistently on the subject, making Mr. Fox Maule (after- wards Earl of Dalhousie), the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a personal as well as political friend of his own, his special victim.. He displayed similar zeal in behalf of Henry Vincent, who was confined in Millbank, and Collins and Levett, who were imprisoned at Warwick. The severity meted out to the latter pair caused the two members for Finsbury to move and second a motion asking for a full and particular inquiry into their cases. Buncombe, who proposed the motion, made in his speech a masterly arraignment of the policy of coercion. Wakley's speech was rather fervid than argumentative, and Disraeli supported the motion, but the result of the division was that only 29 voted for the motion and 1 17 against it. So much for Wakley's connexion with the Chartists. He was sympathetic, and that was all. He considered their methods wrong and foolish, and refused to allow his judgment to be warped by his sympathy. On February 12th, 1838, Wakley spoke on a breach of privilege motion, because the daily papers, in reporting certain petitions before the House, omitted to mention the petition presented by him having reference to certain Glasgow cotton-spinners, a combination of whom having been found guilty of intent to murder in some trades' 3i6 The Case of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners union disputes had been sentenced to seven years' penal, servitude. On the following day Wakley made a vigorous speech in behalf of these men. From the character of the evidence brought forward against them he said that a full inquiry into the nature and doings of the Cotton-spinners' Association must be held. He had given notice of two resolutions which he desired to bring forward ; he would, however, only ask the House to consider one of them — one pleading for delay. To this step he was prompted by mere prudence. He urged the Government not to transport these men until the whole affair had been thoroughly investigated. He expressed an opinion that any high- handedness or severity on the part of the authorities would be taken by the working classes at large as an evidence of hostility and would be fraught with the gravest danger to the institutions of the country. His inteixession at the time led to nothing, but it made him for the next two years the channel for the transmission to the House of numerous petitions in favour of leniency towards the convicts, who were ultimately reprieved in July, 1840. The remission of their sentences was probably due to the uncertainty of the law in respect of trade combination, for however provoked these men may have been by the hard terms of their masters, however inflamed by incendiary speeches, and however innocent of wicked intent, the fact remains that they were found guilty of molesting certain fellow workmen who had accepted terms in opposition to the dictates of the union, one of whom died from his injuries. The crime was not a light one, and the House, well aware of the terrible catastrophes that had occurred in many manufactui-ing districts, in Birmingham notably, on account of collision between the workmen, the masters, and what are now termed the blacklegs, could hardly have been expected to release the convicts immediately. To many it will seem that the seven years' transportation originally allotted to them was not an excessive penalty, and no one will consider the two years that they actually experienced to have been other than their desert. Amendments to Vaccination Legislation 317 During the next three years until the beginning of 1841 purely medical matters were not much before the House, whose attention, it may be readily understood, was sufficiently engrossed by the reactionary wave following the Reform Bill, by the turbulence of the Chartists following that reactionary wave, by the ever-green troubles of Ireland, and by the anti-Corn Law agitation now beginning to assume serious proportions. In June, 1840, Sir James Graham's Vaccination Bill came on for discussion. Speaking on this Bill, Wakley stated that in its existing form the poorer classes had a great objection to such a piece of legislation. They did not approve of the working of the Bill being put into the hands of the Poor-law Commissioners. As the Bill at that time ran, the persons appointed to vaccinate were the Poor-law medical officers and these only. Wakley argued that each person ought to be allowed to employ his own medical man if he so desired ; otherwise this Bill gave too much power to the Poor-law officer. He moved an amendment to this effect, but the division did not altogether encourage him, 39 only voting for the amendment and 56 for the Bill as it stood. Undismayed, however, he main- tained,- when the next clause came up for discussion, that the Bill tended to pauperise the working classes, and this time he contrived to get the words " with medical officers appointed by the boards of guardians or with any other legally qualified medical practitioner or practitioners " inserted. He thus effectually vindicated the right of ordinary practitioners to become vaccinators under the Act. Wakley also secured the necessary support for an amendment making it a penal oflfence to inoculate with small-pox, or to expose persons intentionally to infection. This amendment was accepted without opposition. Early in 1841 several matters of medical interest were before the House, and in each debate Wakley took a pro- minent part, being by this time a person to whose views official position lent much weight. Earlier in his parliamen- tary career, although his tact and unexpected moderation of language, as well as his obvious belief in the views to which 3i8 The Extra-Mural Burial Bill he gave expression, had ensured for him respectful attention, he could only quote experience as the editor of a new and very revolutionary journal. He now spoke in the position of Coroner for Middlesex, to which post he had been elected in 1839, and of editor of a journal that was becoming accepted week by week with increasing uniformity as the organ of the profession at large. Consequently on measures concerning the relations of the medical profession to the public, whenever such relations were under discussion, he could talk with the double authority of a practical man and a man who was in a famous position for theorising. A measure aimed against the burying of the dead in the overcrowded churchyards of the cities was brought forward at this time. In some of the most densely packed districts of London this was still the custom, while a strong pre- judice existed against distant graveyards and suburban cemeteries. The popular sentiment that a man should be buried where he had lived, worked, and died is a feeling that is not extinguished, and one against which the utilitarian will probably war for some time in vain, but Wakley spoke relentlessly against it. His medical knowledge and special infoi-mation as coroner gave a point to his speeches, and he treated the House to some plain speaking against the pro- longation of a system by which the dead poisoned the living. Another subject with which his position as coroner gave him a special right to deal in the House was infanticide in its relation to illegitimacy. Illegitimacy was on the increase in the early forties to an alarming extent. This, he said, was the direct consequence of the misery and distress prevalent among the labouring classes. The peasant or artisan who could look forward with any certainty to secure wages, and wages high enough to enable him to support a wife and family, was, he contended, an unknown person in Great Britain. The consequence of this inability to contract regular unions with any ordinary prudence was necessarily an increase of illegitimacy, and this increase of illegitimacy coincided, as it always must, with an increase of infanticide. General Radical Views 319 This sequence brought Wakley round to his favourite stand- point — ^that laws against consequences must be useless, and must serve only as an irritant of the conditions they would remove. Causes, primal causes, must always be attacked by the thorough-going legislator. General legislation for the working classes, improvement in their wages, the cheapening of their food, and the provision of a sanitary environment in their homes were the only possible means that any rational man would attempt to provide for the prevention of the increase of such a crime as infanticide and such moral delinquency as the illicit propagation of the species. Of the numerous topics during these three years on which Wakley spoke as a consistent supporter of a general pro- gressive programme only the briefest mention need be made. He was a Reformer as he understood the word, and when the topics are mentioned the direction of his vote and the tenor of his speeches may be at once guessed. It is needless to say that he spoke in favour of the equalisation of taxation of property of all kinds and against all sinecures and hereditary pensions. Where such opinions brought the position of the House of Lords or certain members of that House into discussion his remarks on that institution were not laudatory. He does not appear to have held definite views with regard to any reform that he desired to see in the Upper House, but he did not desire its abolition. Indeed, he spoke on one occasion against this radical suggestion, evidently believing that a revising chamber of some sort was necessary to the Constitution, although he did not approve of the one that was set over the deliberations in which he was taking part. He objected to the hasty adjournment of the House over long holidays at Easter and Whitsuntide when public business was in arrears. He inveighed against the way in which political prisoners were treated, considering as political offenders the leaders of the Chartists and Irish Repeal movements. He displayed gi-eat activity on Supply, examining and criticising the votes on Royal Palaces with a fervour learned from Hume, and with a detail which might 320 A Hatred of Lawyers even now be commended to the attention of the senior member for Northampton. He bitterly compared the reck- less expenditure on plumbing at Buckingham Palace with the niggardly way in which the Government considered the wide-spread distress among the labouring poor. Many of Wakley's speeches during this period present one curious feature which should be noticed. They abound with derogatory allusions to lawyers and the legal profession. On July 26th, 1839, shortly after he had been elected coroner, a measure was before the House with regard to the appoint- ment of Metropolitan Police Magistrates. A clause requiring these officials to be " barristers of seven years' high stand- ing" attracted Wakley's attention. " Why," he asked, "should lawyers be of necessity the persons whose duty it should be to inquire into matters of common sense and justice ? There are no men to be met with in society so utterly destitute of common sense as lawyers." A barrister took up the cudgels for his profession and accounted for Wakley's dislike of lawyers by the fact that he was a non-legal coroner and feared that he might be ousted to make room for a lawyer. He also criticised Wakley's attitude towards Lord Chief Justice Best after judgment had been given against him upon the plaint of Mr. Tyrrell* as unbecoming. But this did not deter Wakley from continuing to allude to lawyers in a persistently uncomplimentary strain. In 1840, on the debate with regard to the salary of an Admiralty judge to be appointed to deal especially with Admiralty cases, the Bill (a Government one) fixed the salary for this official at ;^4ooo. Joseph Hume (then no longer member for Middlesex, but the representative of Kilkenny, to which seat he had been elected on the recommendation of Daniel O'Connell) moved that the sum be reduced by ;£iooo. In this economical resolve he was supported by Wakley, whose arguments against the proposed salary were not economic, albeit he described the emolument as " disgracefully lavish," but were based on an assumption of the genei'al incom- petency of the legal profession. " Whatever the skill of the ♦ See Chapter XIII. A Hatred of Lawyers 321 man may be," he said, " no lawyer is, or in my opinion ever will be, worth more than ;^3ooo a year." On April 29th, 1840, we find him speaking in the same vein. He strongly objected to the Juvenile Offenders Bill in the form that it was then offered for the consideration of the House. The Bill provided power of summary jurisdiction for three magistrates ostensibly to save the juvenile offender from the contamination of evil communications when awaiting trial. Wakley did not deem such summary jurisdiction necessary, for he held that a boy of fourteen was entitled to be tried by a jury, " who would be more likely to look upon his case from a humane view than a magistrate." In summing up the character of the countiy justices of the peace on this occasion Wakley employed terms as sweeping as unjust : " A more incompetent body of men can nowhere be found A body of men more characterised by ill- temper, faction, and the most besotted ignorance cannot be found than the magistrates of this country." In the same year he made an important speech in qualified support of the County Coroners Bill, now in charge of Mr. Somerset Pakington, when he protested against the power given to magistrates ; and his numerous speeches during this and the following years with relation to the powers and doings of the Poor-law Commissioners had almost entirely the same bearing. His criticisms were directed against the giving of too much power to these Commissioners and to magistrates. Wakley had been on the whole successful in his legal struggles, and was himself learned in the law, so that his dislike of a lawyer must be regarded as unreasonable though it was none the less strong and sincere. 322 Wakley's Third Election for Finsbury CHAPTER XXXV [1841-1845] Wakky's Third Election — Re-elected for Finsbury Unopposed — His Consistently Liberal Views — The Debate on Lord Mahon's Copy- right Bill — Wakley ridicules the Claims of Authors — Wakley's Personal Appearand at this Time — " Punch " and its Criticisms of Wakley — Tom Hood speaks for Authors — Death of Mr. Henry Wakley of Membury — The Game Laws — A Fracas in the House — Mr. Wodehouse apologises — The great- Courtesy of Sir Robert Peel. In 1841 the long Melbourne Ministry came to an end — an ignominious end, for a direct vote of want of confidence was carried against the Government. Wakley submitted himself for re-election to the borough of Finsbury, and was returned unopposed. He neither canvassed nor issued any lists of his supporters, nor did he, either directly or indirectly, countenance the solicitation of votes for him by others. He signified to his constituency through a small committee of local men his willingness to serve the borough again in Parliament if his services in the past were considered to justify his re-election. Upon being nominated he addressed the constituency in three or four different localities, once in each locality. In the course of these speeches he first pledged himself to be invariably true to the general Radical progressive programme as his constituents had formulated it in their original letter inviting him to become their member. He then pointed out the view that such a general programme would compel him to take of the moi-e important matters impending in public affairs and in the cause of medical reform. Lastly, he recalled to the electors the fact Re-elected without Opposition 323 that he was in Parliament to serve them more especially, though in general politics he was pledged to a general atti-p tude, and he desired to know what their views were, firstly, on such matters as concerned all men, secondly, on such particular matters as concerned the denizens of Finsbury, This confidence in his electorate proved admirable policy, as his seat was never challenged from 1837 until his resigna- tion in 1852, a fact which was most remarkable in 1841, when the muddling and shilly-shallying of Lord Melbourne's Government led to a notable victory for the Tories under Sir Robert Peel. Neither the Tory reaction nor the fact that Wakley had allowed himself to criticise his leaders jeopardised his position with his supporters. During the next ten years, that is, from 1841 until the commencement of 1852, Wakley's attendance at the House was assiduous, while he served on a large number of impor- tant committees. He was, howevei", no longer so frequent a speaker. This was not because he was less ardent in his championship of the causes that he had taken under his particular care, but because the Tory Government of Sir Robert Peel and its successor, the Opportunist Government of Lord John Russell, offended his particular susceptibilities —doubtless now grown a little blunter — less than the Whig Government of Lord Melbourne had done. Many of the topics, to which allusion has already been made as engaging the attention of Parliament between 1837 and 1841, remained in an unsettled condition during the next decade, and deferred Bills or amended Bills dealing with them came before the House with regularity. On various public health matters, such as the establishment of public municipal abattoirs and the prevention of intra-mural burials, Wakley was several times heard. The Chartist agitation was alive, and where the demands of its promoters could be met by constitutional means in the House Wakley's voice was ever ready. He presented numerously signed petitions complaining of the treatment to which the political prisoners, as he insisted upon regarding them, were subjected in provincial gaols, and on one occasion, when supporting Buncombe in a 324 Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill motion for a committee to inquire into the condition of convicts, he inveighed against the persecution of political malcontents. But he remained as resolute as heretofore not to be dragged into any position that could be interpreted as unconstitutional opposition to the laws of his country. He had on more than one occasion to speak in favour of the ballot, and whenever he did so his remarks were worth listening to, for his belief that open voting often resulted in the return of the weaker candidate was very implicit and generally found vent in amusing terms. His dislike to the legal profession was exhibited in such various forms as a speech against the granting of pensions to Lord Chancellors, a disagreement with Lord Ashley (the philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury) whose championship of the rights of children he strenuously backed, on the question of the appointment of legal Lunacy Commissioners, and numerous speeches against the acts and methods of the Poor-law commissioners. On one occasion he stigmatised the average unpaid pro- vincial magistrate as " an incompetent oaf," and at all times and in all places he displayed towards the legal profession the curious intolerance already alluded to. In April, 1842, what is known as Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill came on for discussion in the House. Without men- tioning various small Acts dealing with replicas of sculpture, with dramatic rights, and with the publication of engravings, the copyright law of the kingdom was at that time admin- istered under an Act passed at the end of the reign of George IIL (1814, 54 Geo. III. c. 156). This Act gave copy- right in books for a term of twenty-eight years certain and the residue of the life of the author. Lord Mahon's Bill pro- vided for the extension of the term of cop3rright to forty- two years certain, and proposed, also, to extend it beyond the life of the author should he be living at the end of that term. The measure was substantially the same as Serjeant Tal- fourd's Bill, which had been introduced into Parliament in 1836 by the learned and eloquent author of " Ion," and had for its worthy object the consolidation or amendment of the law relating to literary and artistic property of all sorts, the Ridicule of William Wordsworth 325 extension of the term of copyright in such property, and the provision of penal clauses in protection of the privileges of the legal owners of the same. Serjeant Talfourd's Bill had been shelved, one of the most relentless of its critics having been Wakley, who held that the attempt to protect the author would militate against the interests of the printer, the publisher, and the people without doing the protected producer any good whatever. When Lord Mahon (after- wards Earl Stanhope) Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs undertook the conduct of Serjeant Talfourd's Bill he found in Wakley the same bitter opponent. The Bill came on for second reading on April 6th, 1842, and a protracted debate ensued. The proposer of the motion was followed by Macaulay, who in no very enthusiastic way enforced the claims of authors. Wakley, in the course of a long speech designed to bring the claims of authors into ridicule, recited Wordsworth's most namby-pamby poems, " I met Louisa in the Shade," and the same poet's " Address to a Butterfly." " Give a poet an evening sky, dew, withering leaves, and a rivulet and he would make a very respectable poem always," said Wakley. This remark was greeted with much laughter. " Why, anybody might do it ! " (Laughter and cries of " Tiy it.") " Try it ! Why, he had tried it (great laughter), and there (pointing to Monckton-Milnes) is an honourable gentle- man who has also tried it and is a poet of the first water," and he continued by challenging the first Lord Houghton to disagree with his estimate of much that was written. " I myself could string such compositions together by the bushel. I could write them by the mile." Wakley's speech was really more a running stream of badinage than the unfolding of a serious argument. His general thesis was that authoi"s got quite enough already, but he did not bring forward much logic to prove it. He questioned the worth of the labours of an author compared with thdse of a scientific man. Yet the latter's work was unprotected and freely accrued to the public good. He declared that Milton, Bacon, and Shakespeare had worked and made their greatest efforts more for honour than gain. " Cannot authors of the 326 Macaulay on Lord Mahon's Bill present day," he concluded by asking, "be stimulated to such exertions as had been made by these men without being allowed to thrust their hands into the pockets of the people ? " Monckton-Milnes, in spite of the flattering allusion to him- self, severely blamed the manner in which Wakley had treated the subject in selecting for quotation as samples the weakest works of so admirable a poet as Wordsworth. He considered the tone and manner in which the member for Finsbury had held up Wordsworth to the ridicule of the House in bad taste. Some curious divisions on different amendments then followed, more than one being carried against Lord Mahon. One of the essential principles of the Bill was attacked in an attempt made to amend out of it the principle that copyright should run under certain circum- stances after the author's death for the good of his surviving family. Lord Mahon, defeated on one such provision, pro- posed the insertion of a clause providing for the sanctity of copyright for seven years after the death of the author, should this make up a longer period than forty-two years. The possessor of the copyright was to have protection for forty-two years certain or for life and seven years more, whichever was the longer term. This was opposed by Macaulay, but carried by Lord Mahon by 91 votes against 23. Wakley was, of course, in the " No " lobby. Macaulay himself, however, proposed that the extended term should be " forty-two years certain." This was opposed by Wakley and Villiers, among others, but was carried by 96 to 17. In no less than three of the divisions on this stage of the Bill, Wakley acted as teller, while Gladstone and Disraeli both spoke. Macaulay virtually moulded the Bill. Wakley's view of the copyright question was certainly inspired by his close acquaintance with one side of it only. He had been bitterly attacked for infringing Abernethy's copyright by the publication of the surgical lectures in the " Lancet.'' He had defended his action, successfully as it happened, on the grounds that lectures spoken in public capacity ought to be printed for the public good. He now Wakley's Personal Appearance 327 tried to bring this principle home to all literary and artistic productions, dividing the output of the author and the artist into two classes — the bad, which could not be reason- ably protected, and the good, which reflected such honour upon, and perhaps brought such profit to, its creator that it would be ridiculous to give him a long monopoly in its sale or to bring any hereditary principles to bear upon it, lest either process of protection should debar the public from profit. It can be readily believed that many authors did not approve of the way in which their claims were thus coolly set aside, and the press was very unanimous in finding Wakley's arguments faulty and his attack upon Wordsworth a grave error in manners. " Punch " made immense capital of so inviting a theme. The great satirical journal was founded on July 17th, 1841, and seems to have seen at once in Wakley an excellent object for attack. The reason for this is obvious. Wakley was well-known throughout England by name, but in London, where the " London Charivari " expected to obtain its principal circulation, he was by this time an exceedingly familiar personality. As editor, coroner, political reformer, and energetic vestryman he was known by hearsay to the whole metropolis and by sight to a very large number of persons — to more persons, in fact, than other men of equal distinction in public affairs — for he was not a man who could be passed in the street unnoticed. All who saw Thomas Wakley striding along in the streets in his attempt to keep pace with his over-numerous engagements asked who he was, and once seen his was a figure and face not easily to be forgotten. Tall, erect, square-shouldered, and perfectly proportioned — a man of bulk, but yet of light- ness — ^his frame bore the proofs of his great muscular strength and of his incessantly active life. His clean-shaven florid face was replete with expression, the mouth always critical, whether smiling approval or sternly set in anger or concentrated thought, and the resolute blue eye was alive to all that was presented to its gaze. His golden hair, worn in natural and lengthy clusters nearly down to his coat 328 " Mr. Punch " on Wakley collar, was fine and waved in the little breeze that his energetic and springy gait stirred up around him. To this sketch the detail must be added that he was always elaborately dressed in the fashion of the day, which fashion allowed of some personal splendour. The long surtout with its rolled velvet collar, the low-cut flowered waistcoat, revealing the spotless frills of a shirt got up in the days of country bleaching grounds and manual wringing, the lofty- crowned beaver and the nankeen trousers of a gentleman of the " forties " presented a gorgeous picture which the gentle- man of these more restrained days cannot aspire to emulate, Wakley was undoubtedly in 1841 one of the most widely known men in London, so that in satirising him " Punch " had an easy task, for everyone knew whom the joke was aimed at. Yet it was a tribute to his importance that " Punch " in an initial volume should have chosen him for an object of satire. Save in one instance — the instance of Wakley's views on copyright — " Punch " was not very happy in setting any mark of ridicule upon Wakley. In 1841 Wakley was suspected of leaning towards the Conservatives and especially towards Sir Robert Peel. This was because, as has been seen, in the matter of reform he did not consider that Lord John Russell was prepared to go far enough or Lord Melbourne to move quick enough, while he held that the Chartists desired to go a great deal too far and too quick. This critical attitude offended certain members of each section of the Radical party, who, in hunting about for some stick to throw at the object of their temporary dislike, hit upon a droll accusation that Peel had been approached by Wakley with a view to office. This was the point of " Punch's " joke against Wakley — that, being a well-known Radical, he was at heart a Tory, or prepared from motives of self-interest to become one. Hence we find Wakley described as out of place and inserting an advertisement for any light job in the hope that it may catch the eye of Sir Robert Peel or Lord Stanley. Again, we see him depicted as the seducer of Norma and her fellow-vestal in Bellini's E>tgraveiU>y //'. //. Ei^U-ion./roni a f>aintiiig l-y K. Mcmioivs, Ks.j. " Mr. Punch " on Wakley 329 opera of that name, which had but recently been heard for the first time in London. Lord Melbourne is the deserted Norma and Sir Robert Peel the newer love. These jokes, though neatly made, were unfair, because they grossly mis- interpreted Wakley's political attitude, holding up his very sensible moderation as cynical self-seeking. But Wakley's speech on the copyright question furnished " Punch " with a better opportunity. Here Wakley had evidently blundered. He had dismissed the claims of . authors cavalierly and on insufficient grounds, he had spoken contemptuously of Wordsworth whose years if not his fame should have protected him from such treatment, and, of course in joke, he had suggested that he could write bushels and miles of such stuff himself. " Punch " fastened on the assertion and announced the appearance of " Wakley's Warbler, being Finsbury Fragments by a Coroner," and gave as an imaginary specimen of Wakley's muse the follow- ing lines : — "TO MY LOVE. " The sun upgetting, The dews at setting, The leafy treeses, The murmuring breezes, The kisses glowing. The glances knowing, The girls all crying. The men all lying ; They move the heart so That I can't part so ; And ere I know it I shine a poet. O Amaryllis, Or Rose or Phillis, Or as it may be My Poll or Phcebe, Don't be so cruel. My darling'jewel. Come on not slackly, ***** — Madam, your servant to command, J. (sic) WAKLEY." Tom Hood among authors stood up for his order in one of the latest essays that came from his pen. His kindly reproof of Wakley will be found in a volume entitled " Whimsicalities " which appeared two years before his death. Hood alludes thus to Wakley's facetious claim that he could write such stuff by the mile and string it together by the bushel : — 33° A Rebuke from Tom Hood " Hark thee, Thomas It must often have puzzled editors to account for the deluge of poetry, so-called, which of late years has poured into the Balaam-boxes of the periodicals. Indeed, there is no magazine or literary journal but from time to time has had to announce the utter impossibility of returning such contributions to the authors — just such an impossibility as beset Mrs. Partington when she attempted to send back the Atlantic. For our own part the phenomenon has been a standing wonder, as month after month [Hood speaks as editor of the " New Monthly Magazine "] we found our library table covered with fresh verse-rhyme enough to fill whole magazines. Where could it all come from ? What sort of laborious creatures could thus keep spin, spin, spinning on, without profit and without encouragement, for not a hundredth — no, not a thousandth part obtained insertion. The mystery, however, is solved. The deluge of bad poetry, the rush of rhyme is accounted for, and editors in future will be able to attribute any extraordinary high tide of sing-song to its true source. Astounding as it may seem, considering his multifarious occupations as Member of Parliament, Coroner, and Editor of a medical work, yet by his own confession, during the debate on the Copyright Bill, Mr. Wakley, besides spouting, sitting on bodies, and ' Lancet '-guiding, has actually been composing poetry — not by the page or sheet, but by the standard mile and imperial bushel. It would of course be impossible to trace all the effusions of such a very proUfic versifier ; but personally we are convinced that we have been favoured with at least a few pecks, and rods, poles or perches of the manufacture of this new Thomas the Rhymer. All the anonymous pieces were his, of course, as well as those signed T. or W., and we venture to attribute to the same hand, on internal evidence, a few furlongs of poetry that have been sent under other initials." The following are a few examples of the wide range of subjects on which Wakley considered that he had a man- date to speak in this Parliament, because anyone who aspired to be a typical exponent of progressive Radicalism must have an opinion on each and all of the points in- volved. On the question of enclosing common lands, which was under debate in April, 1842, he was naturally one of those who insisted on the right to enquire into the titles by which many of the territorial class possessed land en- closed by them but really dedicated to the public in former centuries by use and custom. It was a question with the details of which he was familiar, owing to the fact that his father, Mr. Henry Wakley of Membury, had been a Com- Death of Wakley's Father 331 missioner under the Act and a very prompt and thorough- going official. Mr. Wakley, senior, was at this date still alive and, although he had reached the great age of ninety-two, was in full possession of his faculties and able to render practical assistance to his son out of his reminiscences. It may be mentioned here that he died after a very short illness on August 26th of this year. On certain points arising out of the by-laws existent at the Customs Offices Wakley spoke in 1842. He was always anxious that the food of the people should be as lightly taxed as possible, and above all fairly taxed, for it was one of his standing arguments that material happiness led to moral rectitude as surely as moral rectitude led to the keep- ing of the law. He pointed out with a precision of detail unfamiliar to those who had not enjoyed the advantage of being born in a cider county that the dues on apples should not be entirely assessed by bulk. Unripe crab-apples could hardly be considered as equal in value to the same bulk of ribston-pippins, and he thought the House should attend to these matters, which were not such trifles to the poor consumer as they might seem. In 1844 he is found vigoi'ously supporting Buncombe, who presented a petition from Joseph Mazzini protesting against the action of Sir James Graham in opening letters addressed to Mazzini and his friends. The contents of these letters were alleged to have been communicated to Austria and so to have led to the death of certain of Mazzini's fellow-conspirators abroad, and it was felt by many, without need for expression of any opinion upon Mazzini's aspira- tions or tactics, that the proceeding complained of was an unworthy one. On the question of the Game Laws Wakley felt strongly, and in 1845 he spoke in favour of John Bright's motion for the appointment of a Commission to enquire into their working. He presented numerous petitions on the subject, and took part in several rather heated debates, for the land- lords were resentful of any attempt to enquire into their privileges or into the scale of punishment meted out to 332 Wakley and the Game Laws those who infringed those privileges. All his life long Wakley had been an ardent sportsman. He was the son of sportsmen. He had shot much as a boy, and the very first use he had made of his prosperity was to purchase a pro- perty which allowed him to practise his favourite form of sport. At the time of John Bright's motion Wakley was the possessor of a fine sporting estate at Harefield Park in the county of Middlesex on the banks of the River Colne, and four miles from Uxbridge, where he was in the habit of spending every minute that he could spare from his numerous parliamentary, official, and editorial duties, and where he was a strict preserver of game. In supporting John Bright in his attempts to obtain the remission of penalties for poaching Wakley had some difficulty, there- fore, in showing that his attitude was consistent. He was twitted in the House by Lord Robert Grosvenor (afterwards Lord Ebury) with being himself an ardent votary of the sport, which could not be supported without the rigid enforcement of the very laws an inquiiy into the working of which he was prepared to demand. Wakley replied by admitting to the House that he was a preserver of game, but gave at the same time an example of his treatment of poachers. He said that he would not allow anyone to steal his pheasants, but that he would always feed a hungry man, and that the peasantry around Harefield were aware of this and preferred to go up to the house and ask for food to committing a felony. As a matter of fact, though Wakley modestly did not take the House into his confidence, it was quite well known throughout the country-side that he pro- secuted poachers rigidly, but that, also, he invariably sup- ported the wife and family of the married delinquent until that person, having paid the legal penalty, was free to look after his family himself. Nobody is strictly logical, and Wakley's conduct in these matters would certainly not have stood the test of a rational scrutiny ; but at any rate he showed himself to be no hypocrite of Butler's sort, for if he compounded with the sin of game-preserving he damned it at the same time. A Fracas in the House 333 For an aggressive man, which he undoubtedly was, Wakley's demeanour in the House was singularly ingratia- ting. It is easy for a man of colourless views or lymphatic temperament so to order his words and actions that they shall never give personal offence, and it is doubly easy for one who is lukewarm in his convictions. But Wakley was an ardent and thorough politician holding views on many points that were black in hue to the Tory glance, and glori- ously rosy to his own ; consequently he was not without his moments of extreme provocation. But he always kept his temper perfectly under control, and in the only fracas with which he was associated in Parliament he was the justly offended party. In July, 1844, during one of the ever recurring debates on the Poor-law Amendment Act the subject of rural incen- diarism in the eastern counties came under discussion. Wakley tried to point out that these offences usually occurred in parts of the country where the educational standard was low and where squiredom was supreme. He referred especially to Norfolk. Mr. Edmond Wodehouse, a Norfolk man and one of the members for that county, hotly protested against this attack on landlords and said that there were other places where incendiarism was not unknown, as the hon. member for Finsbuiy could tell them himself. Wakley rose and said : " I have been a member of this House for nine years, and during that time I do not recollect that any hon. member has had occasion to complain of any personal remarks made by me upon him. My object has always been to confine myself to the question before the House and never to utter a single word that should give any individual offence. I cannot say that the same conduct has always been ex- tended to me. But when hon. gentlemen permit themselves to descend in the course of discussions on public affairs to refer to the private life of other hon. members and to cast imputations upon them in those relations, that is a course so conti-ary to the honour and dignity of the House that, being pursued, it becomes the duty of the member so referred to to require an explanation in the presence of the House. It has 334 An Appeal to the House for Justice occurred to me in the course of the discussion in Committee on this Bill to make some observations on the state of educa- tion in Norfolk and Suffolk — did I not also (added Wakley stopping and turning to the member sitting on the bench beside him) allude to Middlesex ? For I had no intention to make any invidious distinctions in the matter ; I had no intention in the remarks I made to suggest any reflection upon any individual whatever. Sir, I have had during my life some difficulties to contend with. I came to this town unknowing and unknown. I fought my own battle, not always an easy one, and I have a family of children — sons. The remarks which the hon. member for Norfolk used at the conclusion of his speech were these — I am certain of them, for I took them down at the time — ' No one is more capable of giving an opinion on the subject of incendiarism than the hon. member for Finsbury himself.' Now it seems too horrible to suppose such a thing as that the hon. member intended these words to apply personally to me ; that any hon. member in the House, without being provoked by any remark of mine, should apply such remarks to me. I know that every man who has been engaged in the work of Reform as I have been must be prepared for attacks on his public character ; but I was not prepared for an unfair attack on my private character in this House. I never fought a battle unfairly in my life. There is not an act of my life from the first moment of my existence that I would not court inquiry into. And if any gentleman wishes to go into such an inquiry I will give him eveiy facility in my power for pursuing the inquiry in the most minute details. Sir, these observations were applied to me publicly in this House ; and if I did not dare to ask for an explanation of their meaning and to court investigation of their truth I should not dare to enter these walls again. I could not again presume to face this body of honourable gentlemen. I am therefore quite ready to go into an inquiry into the matter to which it is possible the words of the honourable member may refer. I have nothing to fear from inquiry ; but I have everything to fear from insinuation when An Appeal to the House for Justice 335 insinuation is made the vehicle of the foulest calumny that was ever cast upon the character of any man. At all events, there is but one proper mode in which I should deal with this matter. I do not intend to make this matter the subject for private quarrel or dispute with the hon. member, for I have nothing to fear from publicity. I think I have the right to ask the hon. member what meaning he attached to the words I have read to the House, as applied to me ; and before I call upon him to do so I will state to the House the circumstances to which I believe they were intended to refer. Sir, it happened that I had the misfortune once to have my house burned. I brought an action against the insurance company in which I was insured for the loss. They resisted that action, it went for trial, and the result of that trial was that every farthing which I went against the company for was given me by the jury. The present Lord Denman was my counsel ; Lord Tenterden was the judge who tried the case ; and after the trial one of the jurymen, who was him- self a proprietor in the office, joined with some of my friends who had taken up the matter, and they subscribed the money to pay my expenses as between attorney and client. Sir, these are facts recorded in the papers of the day. I suffered very much then, and I have since suffered from aspersions which have been cast upon me in reference to this case. I have been most shamefully and cruelly used, and I trust that the House will not think that under the circumstances I have unnecessarily ti-espassed upon its time in calling its attention to this matter. I have made this appeal with the greatest possible pain, with the greatest possible reluctance, as you may readily suppose. I believe I mentioned that every farthing was recovered from the office and was paid. I throw myself, therefore, not on the humane consideration of the House, but upon its sense of justice, and I ask the hon. member to state the meaning of the words he used, and which he applied to me ; and I call upon him further, for my sake, if he knows anything of a reproachful nature against my character — if from any source or channel whatever he has heard anything injurious to me — I call upon him not to 336 Two Apologies shrink from declaring it, but, on the contrary, to state it to the House without reservation." Mr. Wodehouse replied that he was glad to have afforded the hon. member an opportunity of giving a distinct explana- tion upon the matter he had alluded to — a subject which had already remained too long in doubt. After that explanation he felt it his duty to tender an apology. He desired to say that the hon. gentleman and his associates were too lavish in accusing landlords of selfishness. He trusted that the House was satisfied with his apology. A dead silence prevailed when the member for Norfolk resumed his seat, and after a momentary interval the Speaker put the question, "That this House resolve into the said Committee (a Committee of the whole House on the Poor- law Amendment Act) on Monday next at 12 o'clock." This being agreed to, the House adjourned. The event occurred on Saturday. On the following Monday Mr. Wodehouse rose and said : " Perhaps the House will allow me to say a few words upon a matter of personal interest to myself. It has been intimated to me that the explanation which I gave the hon. member for Finsbury on Saturday was not as satisfactory as that hon. gentleman had a right to demand. I have no hesitation in saying that I then acted under an erroneous impression with respect to the trial to which I referred. The hon. member for Finsbury appears to me, by the explanation which he has since given, to have had a verdict distinctly in his favour. I therefore feel that as I may have been the instrument of injury to the hon. gentleman, it is now my bounden duty to do my best to be the instrument of reparation. It is a duty which I owe not only to himself in the first instance, but in the next place to all those who are connected with him by relationship, and lastly to all who are connected with him by public representa- tion, to make the explanation which I now make. And I hope the matter will not be permitted to go further, for I tender the explanation as due from one gentleman to another, and am obliged to the House for the opportunity it has afforded me of making this further explanation." The Courtesy of Sir Robert Peel 337 Sir Robert Peel said : " The explicit declaration which has now been made must have convinced everyone that the hon. member for Finsbury is an honourable and innocent man, and I think that hon. gentleman may retire from the House to-night with a full understanding that he has had complete reparation made to his injured feelings." Mr. Wakley then said : " I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude to the hon. member for Norfolk for the kind explanation which he has given and offering my grateful acknowledgments to the House for the handsome manner in which they have treated me on this painful occasion. At the same time I beg to say that I receive the acknowledg- ment of the hon. gentleman with the spirit of frankness with which it has been made, and I feel convinced that he cast an imputation on me which he has not felt himself justified in doing under the circumstances which have since come to his knowledge. In saying this I am bound to state that I consider this acknowledgment will be most satisfactory to eveiy member of my family." This incident furnished Sir Robert Peel with an oppor- tunity for the performance of a very graceful act. Estimating rightly the great pain that this sudden and wanton resusci- tation of a gross imputation upon their father's character would give to Wakley's sons he addressed a long and eloquent letter to the eldest of the three, then a young man of twenty-three, in which he testified to the complete esteem in which Wakley was held by the whole House. The letter was an eloquent eulogy on Wakley as reformer, orator, and parliamentarian, and, coming from the most powerful and prominent statesman in the kingdom and a nominal political foe, formed a remarkable testimonial to Wakley's public merits. 338 Wakley's Fourth Election for Finsbury CHAPTER XXXVI [1846-1852] Wakley's Fourth Election for Finsbury — The Brief Opposition of Samuel Warren — Wakley's Medical Registration Bill — Its Tenor and Provisions — Referred to a Select Committee — Graham, Macaulay, and Sir Robert Inglis — Mr. Rutherfurd's Medical Regis- tration Bill — Its Fate am,d the Reason — The English Homoeopathic Association — The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill — Wakley withdrawsfrom the Representation of Finsbury — An Estimate of his Parliamentary Position. There seemed every probability of a contest for Finsbury at the general election of July, 1846, consequent upon the fall of the Peel Government. Peel, having carried the Free Trade measure through the House, had raised up to himself a large number of bitter enemies — the Protectionists, with Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli at their head. They nominally belonged to Peel's party, but were now deter- mined to get rid of him. An Irish Coercion Bill gave them the opportunity, for the followers of O'Connell, who had supported Peel in the abolition of the Corn Laws, of course voted against him when such a measure was under debate. Lord John Russell formed a Liberal Ministry and Wakley and Buncombe again offered themselves to their faithful electors of Finsbury. Samuel Warren, author of " The Diary of a Late Physician " and " Ten Thousand a Year," suddenly announced his intention of coming forward. The joint committee of Wakley and Duncombe went to considerable expense in the dissemination of election literature, with the result that Warren as suddenly withdrew from his candida- ture on the ground that owing to the season of the year The Opposition of Samuel Warren 339 most of his very influential suppoi-ters would be out of town or abroad. Wakley, in addressing his constituents from the hustings, spoke on behalf of "our friend Tommy," as he affectionately termed Duncombe, as well as for himself, arid attributed Warren's attempt to give trouble to personal motives. He said that Warren had a spite " against himself. It is clear that both the old members looked upon any attempt to unseat them as unwarrantable impudence, and that Wakley intended from the first to show the intruder that he would meet with so vigorous an opposition that if he had any private animosity to gratify he would be wiser to find some easier and cheaper design. Warren, of course, came in for general abuse as a member of the legal profes- sion, too many of whom, in Wakley's opinion, already occupied the benches of St. Stephen's. But it was as an author that Wakley poured contempt upon him. He had at that time produced the two books, by which he is still known, and Wakley roundly stigmatised the lurid inaccu- racy of the one and the sensationalism and forced humour of the other. He disposed of Warren's hint that he had the support of the aristocratic residents of Finsbury, who were naturally holiday-making in July, by saying that if that gentleman had any influential friends abroad they were probably at Botany Bay. This sally was received with unbounded delight and disposed of Warren's pretensions entirely. No one else being hardy enough to oppose such keen fighters as Wakley and Duncombe, they were duly declared re-elected without opposition. As a little matter of curiosity, Wakley was the first man returned to this Parliament in the kingdom. In the same year he obtained leave to bring in a measure entitled A Bill for the Registration of Qualified Medical Practitioners and for Amending the Law relating to the Practice of Medicine in Great Britain and Ireland. This was his greatest parliamentary work, and its indirect results to the medical profession were of incalculable good. Direct results it had not, for it never became law, but it led to the appointment of a Select Committee of sound, shrewd, 34° Wakley's Medical Registration Bill important men, whose deliberations resulted in the Medical Act of 1858. Wakley's Bill was short and exceedingly clear, and the ' gist of it was to ensure that there should be accurate regis- tration of the whole profession, with strong penal powers capable of being set in motion against pretenders. It was, in fact, a Bill against quacks. It provided for the appoint- ment of a Registrar for each of the three divisions of the United Kingdom. It specified that his duties were to make within thirty days of the passing of the Act a list of all the members of the profession properly qualified in his division of the United Kingdom, whether by degree, diploma, certi- ficate, or licence. To this list were to be added as fit subjects for registration all persons who had been in actual practice as apothecaries since 1815, and all surgeons and assistant-surgeons of the Army, Navy, or Honourable East India Company. In accordance with such official lists, which were to be entitled the Medical Registers for England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, certificates were to be issued annually to all the names included at a fee of five shillings. Every person thus registered was to be entitled to practise in that division of the United King- dom where his certificate was issued and to charge for visits and attendance and to recover such charges, as far as they were reasonable, in any court of law, with full cost of suit. He was to be exempt from serving on juries. None but registered persons were to be thus privileged, and clauses were provided for the summary punishment of unregistered prac- titioners, whether detected practising without a qualification or with a qualification obtained by irregular means, while it was also made penal to falsely pretend to possess a quali- fication. The recovery of the penalties was simple and swift. The purification of the register — that is to say, the honour of the profession — was to be left in the hands of the various universities or corporations whose gi-aduates or diplomates composed the profession. The three Registrars were merely officers bound to register persons who pos- sessed certain qualifications and who complied with the Wakley's Medical Registration Bill 341 regulations of the office by proving their ownership of the same and paying their fees. A name once on the register could only be removed by the authorisation of the body from which its owner derived his qualification. The pro- fessional crimes which, if proved, warranted such authorisa- tion were specified as " conduct calculated to bring scandal and odium on the profession by publishing indecent adver- tisements or pamphlets or immoral or obscene prints or books .... or any other disgraceful and unprofessional behaviour." The names of convicted criminals could be erased by the Registrars. With regard to medical education Wakley saw that a Bill which proposed to "distinguish between legally qualified physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries and mere pretenders to a knowledge of medicine and surgery " — as his preamble bluntly put it — must enact that proper tests should be applied to the candidates for a position on the register, lest the distinction between those included in and those ex- cluded from the official lists should be one without a differ- ence. After repealing the enactment requiring five years' apprenticeship to an apothecary (55 Geo. III., cap. 194, s. 15), Wakley's Bill enacted a scheme of uniformity of education, qualification, and fees throughout the kingdom. No details were suggested, the proposer knowing that the various views of the numerous bodies granting medical qualifications would have to be heard on the subject ; but the principle of one portal to the medical profession, by which all practitioners were placed upon one level at the! commencement of their careers, was strongly insisted upon. The duty of keeping the various bodies up to the proper educational standard by inspection and supervision of the examinations was to be confided to one of the State depart- ments. Petitions flowed in at once both for and against the Bill, the majority being in its favour. The better class of the general practitioners saw in the measure an immense raising of their standard, for, should it become law, unfair com- petition between the men who had properly qualified and 342 Wakley's Medical Registration Bill those who had not would cease, many quacks would find their proceedings illegal, while the proposal to make the examinations of similar stringency at all the different examining boards would do away at once with a source of frequent heart-burning within the ranks of the profession. In spite, however, of the popularity of the measure with the class whom it was designed to benefit, Wakley found that he was not able to get his Bill adopted by the Government, he therefore acquiesced in the suggestion that a Select Com- mittee of the House should inquire into the subject. This may not seem a very gi-eat advance on the road towards medical reform. Twelve years ago, as we have seen. War- burton had secured the appointment of a Select Committee with a somewhat similar reference, but no legislation had followed upon the recommendations of that deliberative body. It is true that Sir James Graham had taken charge of a Medical Bill fi-amed to some extent in accordance with those recommendations, but he had been compelled to abandon it, finding it impossible within the scope of one measure to please all the governing bodies of the various institutions concerned as well as all their commonalties, whose interests, unfortunately, were too often not identical with those of their rulers. Still Warburton's Committee had done good work, and had let a flood of light in upon many dark corners, thereby facilitating future reform in every direction. Wakley, ever sanguine and ever practical, refused to look upon the check as in any way a defeat, but wrote hopefully in the " Lancet " that the Select Committee would do their best to arrive quickly at certain unanimous recom- mendations such as could be transformed into law without debate or alteration. The Committee con^sted of twelve persons, among whom the most important, both from their weight in the House and their knowledge of the subject, were Sir James Graham, Macaulay, Wakley, and Sir Robert Inglis. Graham had all the evidence of the last Committee at his fingers' tips ; ■Macaulay was the ablest committee-man of his time, abso- lutely untiring and resolutely critical ; and Wakley was a .Ruthereued's Select Committee 343 model expert upon the subject, for inasmuch as every move- ment towards medical reform had been engineered in his paper while a large proportion of them owed their origin to his brain, he knew exactly which were the true and which were the spiarious grievances, which were the concessions that the governing bodies or the commonalties ought to make, and which were the principles that they must be allowed to maintain. Sir Robert Inglis was the steady, con- sistent, and recognised champion of the Church of England. His presence on the Committee greatly strengthened it in popular esteem. The Committee commenced their sittings on June 4th, 1847, with Macaulay as chairman, by taking the evidence of Dr. John Ayrton Paris, the President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and sat from that date with the greatest regularity tmtil February, 1848, when a new Com- mittee was formed, which included Wakley and Inglis, but not Macaulay. This body sat until July 4th, 1848, under the chairmanship of Mr. Rutherfurd, the Lord Advocate of Scotland. During this time representative members of all qualifying bodies were examined at length, as well as known advocates for reform in these bodies, and those who are curious to read the evidence will find it reported at great length in *1:he " Lancet." The thoroughness of the cross- examination to which many of the witnesses were subjected .is extraordinary, and of all the questioners none was so close as Wakley. Years of writing on the subject from every conceivable point of view had caused him to be conversant with all the doubtful points that might arise in any man's evidence as soon as the explanation of the witness's position made it clear why he had been summoned, and in most cases Wakley knew the true answer to his queries and was, therefore, not to be put off with anything less. He seems at the same time to have been very generous where matters of opinion and not matters of fact were at issue. All the proceedings of this Committee were a personal triumph for himself, and he knew how to behave well in the hour of victory. Had his Bill eventually become law he 344 A Personal Triumph for Wakley would have hardly secured so much prestige in the medical profession as he did by the course which events took. Had his Bill been discussed in the House he would have made certain speeches to defend its principles and many of its details that were sure of attack, but he would have been dealing with laymen. The medical profession, recalling that his attitude towards the heads of the corporations had been antagonistic without variation, would have always desired to know what the other side had to say. Before the Select Committee the other side attended and said what they could, almost every word justifying Wakley's strictures. It has not been given to many agitators to enjoy the supreme pleasure of a triumph like Wakley's, when it became his duty to his Queen and country to cross-examine the Presidents of the London corporations concerning their methods. Twenty- one years previously — Only twenty-one years — Wakley had formulated certain complaints against the College of Surgeons. He had addressed meetings and had ensured the passing of resolutions, but no concessions from the Council to the members had followed. The invariable line of the authorities towards the leader of the movement for reform was one of concentrated contempt. He was expelled from hospitals and spoken of as a self-seeking and libellous adven- turer. Sixteen years before — only sixteen years — he had been violently assaulted in the theatre of the College in an attempt by Bow Street runners to throw him into the road. His offence was that he desired to know what, if anything, those authorities were going to do to remove a certain slur upon the reputation of one branch of their members. Now he sat to hear what they had to say in response to a move- ment for reform in medical education and in the methods taken to protect the material and social interests of the pro- fession. These matters had been left to their care ; and their evidence, while given for the instruction and assistance of the Select Committee, was virtually an account of their stewardship. Wakley could, indeed, afford to couch his questions in an amiable tone, for every sitting that he attended must have reminded him of his rapid passage from The National Institute of Medicine 345 the contempt of these witnesses to their hatred, from their hatred to their fear, from their fear to their respect, and from their respect in many cases to their friendship. The outcome of this Committee was like that of the previous one in direct legislation. On Friday, May 4th, 1849, the Lord Advocate stated in the House that a measure with reference to the registration of duly qualified practi- tioners in medicine and surgery was in preparation and that he hoped to lay it upon the table in eight or ten days. But the Lord Advocate had awkward people to deal with, as poor Sir James Graham had previously found. The corporations and certain bodies leagued together to bring about what each considered to be the one necessary reform, or series of i"ef orms, could not be got to agree, and without some general gratification of the medical profession a Bill having for its object the welfare of the profession was destined to fail. It should here be brought to memory that some six years previously — namely, on September 14th, 1843 — the College of Surgeons had been granted a new Charter, the Charter under which it now exists. This Charter was to many mouths which had opened their lips for bread a veritable stone. The demand for reform had only produced the creation of a superior class within the commonalty of the College — the Fellows, to whom alone, instead of to the members at large, was granted the privilege of choosing the Council or ruling body. The Council could, it is true, be no longer called a self-electing junto, and to this extent the new Charter was an improvement upon that granted forty years previously, but the mass of the College were as far off as ever from having a voice in their own government. This had caused great dissension, greater indeed than ever, because disappointment was now added to a sense of wrong, and a lai-ge number of members joined a body called the National Institute of Medicine, which promised with some pomp " to embrace all persons possessed of any recognised qualification or licence," and proposed later to afford medical education and to examine and grant diplomas. This body, badly managed, with no sufficient reason for its existence. 34^ The Medical Act of 1858 no enlightened leaders, no definite programme, and no scrupulous morality in tactics, objected to Wakley's Bill, which did not provide for the incorporation of its associates, and later objected to the Lord Advocate's Bill for the same reason. The Society of Apothecaries wanted no legislation that deprived them of their monopolies. The Royal College of Physicians of London desired no change at all, its only movement being one of jealousy towards the University of London, whose medical faculty was rapidly becoming important. The College of Surgeons mainly stood out against the foolish pretensions of the National., Institute. With such a set to please it can hardly be wondered at that the Lord Advocate should abandon his Bill. Nor can it be wondered at that ten years elapsed before any real reform took place. When that reform came it came in the shape of the Medical Act of 1858. This Act adopted Wakley's , registration clauses almost entirely, and got over the inherent difficulties of pleasing all the views of all the bodies by the creation of a General Council of Medical Education and Registration whereon each body should be represented. Its penal clauses, however, were not so simply and directly stated as in Wakley's Bill — indeed, at the present moment few men can say for certain what are the disciplinary powers of the General Medical Council — while its aim was more altruistic and broader. Wakley's was primarily a Bill against quackery and for the general practitioner. The Act of 1858 was designed to define and consolidate the interests of the medical profession, and its attitude towards quackery was less an integral part of its claim for attention than were its educational promises and its provision for official and/ administrative routine. ( ^ Wakley's career in Parlikment was now nearly at a close. He spoke in favour of Lord Harry Vane's Coroners Bill in 185 1, the main provision of which was that coroners should be paid by fixed salaries instead of by fees. He also defended his son, Mr. Henry Membury Wakley, the deputy-coroner for Middlesex, from an attack made upon him by Lord JRobert Grosvenor at the instigation of a body known as the The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill 347 English Homoeopathic Association, of which his lordship was the president. Lord Robert Grosvenor wanted the discretion of the coroner to appoint a deputy to be taken from him, because, he alleged, this deputy was incompetent. Wakley hit his old foe without the gloves, denouncing the Association as " an audacious set of quacks " who had only brought forward this trumpery accusation that they might advertise themselves in the House, and as "noodles and knaves, the noodles forming the majority and the knaves using them as tools." He then read a declaration signed by twelve of the jury to the effect that Mr. Henry Membury Wakley had performed his duty on the particular occasion complained of in an able and impartial manner. Hume called attention to the fact that the appointment of Mr. Henry Membury Wakley as deputy-coroner had been duly confirmed by the Lord Chancellor, and the matter was allowed to drop. In the game of political manoeuvring played round the question of ecclesiastical titles in the latter part of 1850 and during the whole of 185 1 Wakley did not take a prominent part. He followed Lord Stanley as far as Lord Stanley took a lead, but he was not the sort of man to be whirled off his balance by shouts of " No Popery," any more than he was the sort of man to condone in the Pope or any other foreign ruler, temporal or so-called spiritual, acts of aggression that could not be laughed at as meaningless pretence. Lord John Russell treated the appointment by the Pope of Cardinal Wiseman to the Roman Catholic See of Westminster as a serious menace to the British Constitution and sorely tried his followers by so doing. His language inflamed the people and gave them a right to expect an immediate measure forbidding the practice of naming Roman Catholic Sees with English names, while his party position in the House did not allow him to feel sure of being able to pass any measure of practical use that would prevent the Roman Catholics from doing as they liked. The day of religious persecution was gone by, and, just as all thinking people had recognised the fact. Lord John Russell, with the authority lent him by his 348 A Break-down in Wakley's Health premiership, introduced an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill which looked like a piece of contemptible persecution. Wakley followed in the lead of Tories and Peelites alike and denounced the measure as idle and out of date. One of the loudest voices on the same side was that of John Sadleir, who, by virtue of his unrestrained and furious denunciation of the anti-Catholic party, earned for himself the unthinking confidence of a section of his countrymen. This confidence he utterly betrayed, and sought death at his own hand rather than face those whom he had defrauded and ruined. At the inquest Wakley as coroner was confronted with the body of his old political foe and there and then formally recognised it as the corpse of John Sadleir, about which primary point there was some uncertainty. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was the last question of prime importance in the political world upon which Wakley spoke in Parliament. Lord John Russell, after being de- feated in the House, returned to office because no one else was in a position to form a Government ; but during that uncomfortable twelve months of sufferance Wakley only said a few words on general Reform topics. In 1852 Lord John Russell resigned and Lord Stanley, now Earl Derby by the death of his father, was sent for by the Queen. Wakley refused to stand for Finsbury again. He never gave any reason to his constituents save that his time was too much occupied to allow him to have the honour to represent them ; but he had a very good one. The terribly laborious life that he led as coroner for Middlesex, as regular attendant at the House of Commons, and as editor of the " Lancet " was telling seriously upon his health. For fifteen years he had worked with ixlentless energy. He had spoken and written volumes, he had driven literally thousands of miles to hold courts. His family and his friends alike pointed out to him that it was impossible for him to continue such a career of persistent over-pressure without incurring a risk that amounted well-nigh to a certainty of break-down. He was reluctant to listen to their suggestions for his retirement, which in the first instance was only designed to be tem- A Successful Parliamentary Career 349 porary, but a serious collapse awoke him to a sense of the value of the advice that had been given him, and he issued a short farewell letter to his constituents, begging them to return another Radical in his place, and thanking them for their loyal support during eighteen years of political life. His announcement was received with loud regret by his con- stituents, and by the general Reform party whose policy he had so emphatically and unswervingly supported and not infrequently helped to dictate, while by many political foes his retirement from parliamentary life was alluded to on the hustings as a distinct loss to public affairs and to the domestic life of the House of Commons. Wakley's career in Parliament was an unmitigated success. It was never crowned by office, but this he never expected, having openly declared that he would serve no party, but only his conscience and the constituents who had chosen him to represent them. This sort of independent member rarely turns out worthy even of comment. He is almost invariably a political crank, an unmanageable and difficult man, one who, in his anxiety to escape being an accessory to the selfishness of party, erects into a fetich, with much more exclusive selfishness, every little idea of his own. Wakley had nothing in common with such aggressive nuisances. He was the most adaptable and obliging private member that it is possible to imagine about all small things. In large things he followed a very clear and well-defined policy of the Radical sort, moulding his actions upon the notions of useful reform that had been developed in him by his early intolerance of the hapless condition of the medical profession when he first joined it. As then all his plans and movements were designed to help the rank and file against the oppression of their rulers, so later in Parliament every public act or word of his had for its object the betterment of all classes who were unable to better themselves. Grievance- hunter he might be called, agitator he certainly was, but in general and medical politics alike he was always on the side of those whom he conceived to be oppressed, while his methods for their relief at the same time displayed enthusiasm 350 An Out-spoken Appreciation and sincerity, tempered with good sense, knowledge of the world, and general sympathy. If the story of his parliamentary career has been rightly told it should need no summary to help in its comprehension. Wakley can be absolutely judged by his words and deeds. But the evidence of an eye-witness and contemporary thinker may be with advantage added, that the reader may learn what was the opinion of thoughtful men of Wakley as an orator and a democratic force, and may decide how far the tale as it is here told bears out the estimate formed fifty years before. " Mr. Wakley as a speaker in the House of Commons is more dis- tinguished for shrewdness and common-sense than for any of the higher accomplishments of the orator. A plain, simple, blunt, down- right style disarms suspicion and bespeaks confidence, even at the outset of his address. A manly frankness both in his bearing and delivery, precludes the idea of any preparation or of any design to entrap by means of the ordinary tricks and contrivances of the practised debater. He has a brief, conversational manner, as though his thoughts were quite spontaneous and not the result of preparation. He seems to be thinking what he shall say next, as if the subject came quite fresh to his mind and he were, by a sort of compulsion, drawing as much truth out of it as he could. This gives both freshness and vigour to his speeches. By his singular shrewdness and common-sense, his perfect command of temper, his good-humoured irony, his store of information, available at the moment on almost all subjects, he has acquired an amount of influence in the House disproportioned to the demands of his position. He has inspired much confidence in his judgment, and by an original, because an unfettered, turn of thinking he contrives to strike out new views of the subject before the House and to supply materials for thinking or debating out of what seem to be threadbare themes. This is the consequence of the original turn of his mind and the independence of his position. " He has no party ties ; he has received no training ; he has no class prejudices such as obtain influence in the House of Commons ; but has been a shrewd and constant observer of human nature in all grades and is not burdened with an overpowering sense of immaculate purity of public men. Still, you never hear from him those coarse charges of personal corruption against individuals which will often fall from Mr. Duncombe, notwithstanding his gentlemanly manners and superficial refinement. Broad as his insinuations sometimes are, there is a degree of delicacy in the phraseology in which they are clothed ; and though he often indulges in a sarcastic humour it seldom An Out-spoken Appreciation 351 or never carries a venomous sting. Although a very harsh and un- compromising popular advocate, determined in his exposure of public abuses and still more in his championship of the neglected poor; he shows a gentlemanly respect for the forms and restraints which experience has rendered necessary in debate and a forbearance to press charges to useless extremities of personality. If he has not quite conquered the prejudices entertained towards Ultra-Radical intruders by men of birth and station he has at least made them feel his intel- lectual power and acknowledge his moral equality. In this respect he has done more to advance the interests of the millions by making their advocacy respectable than have many more flashy and showy popular leaders. His style of speaking is the most simple and unaffected. He has been too busily engaged in the hard work of life to have had much time to bestow on oratory. The structure of his speeches is quite inartificial, and the language usually the most simple and colloquial of every-day life. It is plain, even homely, without being inelegant; a manliness of sentiment and a quiet self-possession in the speaker imparts a kind of dignity to the most ordinary expressions. There is breadth and force in his argument and declamation ; and a rough pathos in his descriptions of pauper suffering which is often far more stirring and affecting than the most accomplished eloquence of more finished speakers. Mr. Wakley does not so much make speeches, as deliver the thoughts which burden his mind on any given subject with frankness and sincerity. Even hard words d6 not come offensively from him, such is his good humour and the amenity of his disposition. He constantly displays great shrewdness of perception, unmasking the motives of opponents with a masterly power and, at the same time, with an avoidance of coarse imputation. Yet he can be sarcastic when he chooses ; but his sarcasm is more in the hint conveyed and in the knowing look of face and tone of voice than in any positively cutting expressions. He handles the scalpel with delicacy and skill, never cutting deeper than is absolutely necessary. Some of his points have, from time to time, told remarkably well ; such, for instance, as that in which he described the Whig Ministry as being made of ' squeezable ' materials. That one expression contributed considerably towards gaining for him the position he holds in the estimation of the House of Commons. " Mr. Wakley has extraordinary energy both physical and mental. To see him bringing up his portly, bulky frame along the floor of the House of Commons, with swinging arms, and rolling, almost rollicking gait — ^his broad fair face inspired with good humour, and his massive forehead set off by light, almost ilaxen hair, flowing in wavy freedom backwards around ^his head, and the careless ease of his manly yet half-boyish air, as though he had no thought or care beyond the impression or impulse of the moment ; to watch the frank, hearty 352 An Out-spoken Appreciation goodwill with which he greets his personal friends as he throws him- self heedlessly into his seat, and interchanges a joke or an anecdote, or perhaps some stem remark on the passing scene, with those around ; then, in a few minutes afterwards, rising to make, perhaps, some important motion, laying bare some gross case of pauper oppression, or taking up the cause of the medical practitioners with all the zeal of one still of the craft ; to witness the freshness and vigour with which he throws himself into the business before him, you would little guess the amount of wearying labour and excitement he has already gone through during the day; yet he has perhaps been afoot from the earliest hour, has perchance presided at more than one inquest during the morning, listening with a conscientious patience to the evidence^ or taking part with an earnest partisanship in the case ; then off as fast as horses could carry him down to the committee-rooms of the House of Commons, there to exhibit the same restless activity of mind, the same persevering acuteness, the same zeal and energy ; and after hours, perhaps, spent in this laborious duty, rendered still more irksome by a heated atmosphere and the intrigues of baffling opponents, returning home to accumulate the facts necessary for the exposure of some glaring abuse in the Post-office or the Poor-law Commission, or to manage the multifarious correspondence which his manifold public duties compel him to embark in. Yet such is often the daily life of this hard-working man : he is absolutely indefatigable ; nothing daunts him, nothing seems to tire him." This description of Wakley in the House of Commons from the pen of Mr. G. H. Francis appeared in " Eraser's Magazine," and was afterwards published with similar essays in a volume entitled " Orators of the Age." It is an out- spoken appreciation which, if not entirely complimentary, is still one which any man might be proud to have earned and which bears the imprint of truth on every line. The Old-fashioned Coroner's Inquest 353 CHAPTER XXXVII [1827-1831] The Coroner's Inquest Sevmiy Years ago — The " Lancet " and Medical Coroners — Examples of Foolish Verdicts — Wakley stands for the Coronership of East Middlesex — A General Meeting of the Freeholders — John St. John Long — The Terrible Case of Catherine Cashin — Wakley as Prosecutor before the Coroner — The Praise of Dr. Roderick Macleod — Wakley Defeated at the Poll — Trial of Long for Manslaughter — Conviction and Acquittal — The Testi- monial of Dr. Ramadge — Ramadge v. Wakley — Verdict for Dr. Ramadge, Damages One Farthing. Wakley the coroner is better known to memory than Wakley the Radical politician or Wakley the medical reformer. His parliamentary course came to a close when he was in his fifty-seventh year, but he retained the coronership until his death ten years later, while in his earliest efforts towards a public career it was to the coroner's bench that he aspired and not to a seat in the House of Commons. To begin at the beginning it is necessary to retrace our steps some twenty-four years, and take up the tale of Wakley's life in 1827. One of the earliest regulai* tenets which the readers of the " Lancet " were expected by Wakley to hold was that the office of coroner should be vested in a medical man. Almost from the commencement of his editorship, certainly as soon as he felt that he had a following willing to be educated to his ideas, he commenced to familiarise the notion, then quite novel, that the coronership was a medical post. He considered the coroner's inquest to be a most valuable institution, and if properly conducted a safeguard 354 The Old-fashioned Coroner's Inquest to the public second to none ever devised by a civilised legislature. But its utility he held to be greatly limited, and in many instances entirely defeated, by the inefficiency of the individuals who at that time — it was about the year 1827 that he began writing voluminously in this strain — filled the office, and by the sordid environment of the court. The taint of the tavern-parlour vitiated the evidence, ruined the discretion of the jurors, and detracted from the dignity of the coroner. The solemnity of the occasion was too generally lightened by alcohol or entirely nullified by the incompetency of the judge. In short, the tribunal designed by Edward I. to be one of the most important in his kingdom, whose presidency was to be held by a knight " of the most meet and most lawful men of the county," had been univer- sally degraded to a dreary farce, stage-managed by a foolish beadle, where the legal administration was ignominiously known as " crowner's quest law " — a thing proverbially to be laughed at, and where the majesty of death evaporated with the fumes from the gin of the jury. The harmonic meeting- room of the Sol's Arms was no exaggeration, and Dickens probably drew little Swills from life. Wakley perceived at once that half the evidence given at these courts was unnecessary, and that on numerous occasions testimony most vital to a thorough inquiry into the cause of death was not forthcoming, and that both the superfluity and the scarcity were due, as a rule, less to the legal in- competency of the coroner than to his ignorance of the elements of medicine. Leaving entirely out of his argument the discretionary powers vested in a coroner, in the exercise of which every whit as much as in his exercise of his judicial functions it was necessary for him to be guided by medical knowledge, Wakley commenced a series of articles deeply regretting that so important an institution as a court of first instance appointed to inquire solemnly into the cause of all doubtful or unexplained deaths should be so constituted that no cause ever was explained from a medical point of view, except where it explained itself publicly. The procedures of the court, also, had fallen into universal and well-merited The Need for Medical Coroners 355 contempt. For both these regrettable conditions he saw one remedy — the appointment of medical coroners. To the medical coroner the viewing of the body was not a repulsive piece of pretence, for to him the appearance of a corpse might tell much in support or contradiction of the statements shortly to be affirmed on oath before him. To the medical coroner the evidence of friends, physicians, nurses, and eye- witnesses as to injuries or previous illnesses had a very real meaning, and in addition its relation to any undisputed facts before the court must be clear to him in a way that it could not be clear to persons ignorant of medicine. The medical man alone could know the dose of a given drug that must be held a poison, the extent to which an indulged habit became a risk, or what depth of wound in a certain place would or would not account for a fatal issue. Against the advantages of having an expert in the judge's seat were to be set the apparent disadvantage that the training of the medical man, being what it was, unfitted him for a post where evidence had not only to be received, but sifted and weighed. Here, it was claimed, the medical man gave way to the lawyer. Wakley never conceded this point, asserting roundly that any man could learn in two hours all the law that it was necessary to know to be a competent coroner, while the appreciation of evidence at its proper value was a task that every uneducated juror was invited by the British Constitution to undertake, and that there was nothing in the medical curriculum to unfit a man for the task. " The statute of the 4th Edward I., which comprehends nearly all the law relating to the office of coroner," wrote Wakley in 1828, " is a short Act of Parliament, which any man who runs may read and understand. Any man of ordinary understanding who has read this statute and who has served occasionally as juryman or witnessed a few trials so as to acquire some general information as to the common rules of evidence is competent, as far as legal qualifications are concerned, to discharge the duties of the office of coroner. But the medical qualifications which would enable a coroner to discharge with efficiency the duties of his office are of a far higher order, and can 3S6 The Lapses of Legal Coroners hardly be expected to be possessed by any man not a member of the medical profession." From the time of the appearance of the article containing, these words until his election as coroner for Middlesex in 1859 the " Lancet " was full of proofs of the accuracy of his words. Cases were collected regularly where the coroner Gould not possibly do his duty as a judge of a court held to inquire into the cause of a death on account of his funda- mental ignorance of the sort of things that would cause death. Medical evidence could be given at an inquest in the same way that it could be given in a high court, but the coroner was placed at a disadvantage by comparison with a learned judge. In other courts the cause of death was but one issue of a suit. If it were by chance the vital issue thorough medical evidence was at once forthcoming and counsel specially instructed attended for the purpose of weighing and sifting that evidence. If it were not the most vital issue, the judge, taking 3 broad view, relegated the question to its proper sphere of importance. But in the coroner's court the cause of death was not merely the most vital issue — it was the only issue ; while the coroner had no power to remunerate special medical evidence and neither he nor his jury derived the benefit of lucid explanations. Post-mortem examinations were but infrequently ordered, so that many of the verdicts arrived at were necessarily the result of haphazard and ignorant guidance. Some of the examples that wei^e printed in the " Lancet " during 1828, 1829, and 1830, in illustration of the view that an inquest confided to the supervision of a non-medical coroner presented so many obvious opportunities of error that it ceased to be a public safeguard, are undoubtedly very remarkable. To mention a few, there is the story of a case of poisoning by prussic acid in which the jury were clearly misdirected. They brought in a verdict of " Suicide during tempoi^ary derangement." There was not only no evidence pointing towards suicide or insanity, but the probability of an accident having occurred, and the possibility that the accident was due to the carelessness of some person other The Lapses of Legal Coroners 357 than the deceased, would have occurred to anyone who knew, as the coroner apparently did not know, what was the poisonous dose of prussic acid and what the therapeutic use of this deadly remedy. Again, an inquest is discussed at some length where a verdict of manslaughter was given against an operating surgeon whose procedure had been perfectly correct, while the fatal injuries he was supposed to have caused might have been the natural— that is, patho- logical — lesions due to the patient's condition, or might, at any rate, have been the natural sequels of such lesions. Only a medical man, Wakley insisted, could have interpreted the medical evidence to the jury in such a way as to ensure justice being done. In a third case a jury brought in a verdict of — " Died by the visitation of God and not in con- sequence of the neglect of any person or persons," where it was perfectly clear to any medical man reading the evidence that the luckless baby, whose death was the subject of the inquiry, had been poisoned by overdosing with mercury and had been, in addition, neglected by the medical atten- dant. The coroner knew nothing of mercurial salivation, the only medical evidence forthcoming was interested, and as a result a miscarriage of justice occurred that would have been impossible if a medical coroner had presided. Another case, where the pious but meaningless verdict of " Death by the visitation of God " was given by the jury at the express direction of the coroner, and where all the evidence pointed to the most human agency in the mattei^, was a wholesale catastrophe due to arsenic poisoning. A family circle having partaken of a particular pie, two died at once, a third some twenty-four hours later, and a fourth was exceedingly sick. The remnants of the pie were thrown into the yard, and some fowls who ate it died there and then. The bearing of all this totally escaped the coroner, who obtained from his jury the verdict that he desired. Wakley used this case more than once as a most striking example of the necessity for medical coroners. The bodies were afterwards exhumed and the cause of death was then found to be arsenic poisoning. 358 Wakley Stands for a Coronership At the time that Wakley began printing these lapses on the part of legal coroners he had no other object than the disinterested one of securing to the medical profession a popular right of entry to compete for the honourable post of coroner, with its responsibilities, position, and emoluments. He was convinced absolutely that only a medical man could make a good coroner, and he desired to benefit the public as much as the profession by getting medical men to come forward as candidates. But in August, 1830, the death occurred of Mr, Unwin, the coroner of East Middlesex. Wakley lost no time in urging upon the profession to select a medical man and to combine in persuading the freeholders of the county, to whose hands at that time the appointment was confided, to vote for their candidate. The fact was immediately pointed out to him, though he can hardly have needed the information, that he was the member of the profession most fitted to take the field, seeing that he was well versed in the arguments proving that the coronership should be a medical appointment,, that he had as a newspaper proprietor unrivalled opportunities of appealing widely to the profession and the electors, and that, lastly, he was not hampered by the ties of private practice. To this Wakley responded by offering himself as a candidate for the vacant post* On August 24th, 1830, a meeting of the freeholders was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, to consider the claims of the first medical candidate for the coroner- ship of East Middlesex. Some four hundred voters were present and the proceedings were enthusiastic. Not all the speeches betrayed the knowledge of the subject which might have been expected from such convinced partisans j but in truth the cry against the monopoly of the coronership by attorneys, which in Wakley's numerous articles had only formed a minor point, found such enthusiastic echo in the breast of the medical profession that the earlier speeches to the meeting were rather of the nature of tirades. One gentleman could not have done Wakley's cause much good by his violence, but a sentence from his arraignment of the Rhodomontade 359 legal profession deserves quotation. He is not meaning to abuse lawyers, or, rather, he is not meaning to assert their unfitness to be coroners. On the contrary, he is pointing out the necessity that the coroner should have legal know- ledge. He is imagining the wicked counsel pleading before a coroner who, having no legal knowledge (query, because a lawyer) and a heart fraternally inclined towards his brother in corruption, listens, acquiesces, and misdirects : — " For, suppose that some lawyer, a bad man, a Satan of his species j with a seared, cold, blighted heart, who had spent the whole course of his life in defamation, in one continuous struggle, to crush truth, to beard honest men, to blast with faint praise, or sicldy innuendoes, the evidence of every worthy witness, and this to screen the murderer, to pander to the adulterer, to assist the secret poisoner, in order that he might sop his crust in the dripping-pan greased by their unhallowed gains, in order that he might clutch at a livelihood which all honest men had denied him, — suppose such a man were to be employed by one of his patrons to go to an inquest, to beard and dictate to the coroner, to be insolent to the jury, to tell them they were fools, to twist and contort evidence so as to confuse the reporters, to tear the con- solation of public respect from the fretted bosom of the relations, by allusions which had no reference to the case ; suppose, I say, such a man were being successful in all, or even in one of these base and accursed objects, is it not desirable that the coroner should possess legal information sufficient to know how to put down the impudent effrontery of such a wretch as this ? sufficient knowledge of human nature to know that this man would himself be the first to snap the cord of all principle, to undermine the foundations of all society, to use poison, or treachery (that mental poison), or anything to gain his end, and, therefore, to defend the jury from fearing him, to point out the odious and too evident nature of his mission ? " Such rhodomontade as this did not advance Wakley's candidature, the marvel being that it was received with applause and not with open ridicule, but fortunately speakers with more command over their adjectives followed. By these Wakley's great interest in all questions of medical jurisprudence was insisted upon, as well as the fearlessness and freedom from prejudice that were revealed by the atti- tude that he had adopted towards the Council of the College 360 John St. John Long of Surgeons and the authorities of the metropohtan hospitals. With reference to any doubts whether the discharge of the coroner's duties in Wakley's hands while gaining in medical efficiency might lose in legal, one speaker summed up amidst loud cheering the claims of the can- didate to a sufficient knowledge of the law. Referring to the sensational case of Bransby Cooper v. Wakley, he said : — " I ask the freeholders of Middlesex, Do they want a man learned in the law ? If so, much as I may pity their want of judgment and taste, I can supply them to their heart's content, for the man who could defeat Sir James Scarlett in his own court and browbeat the lawyers must surely have law enough to satisfy the blindest lover of perplexities and forms." The result of the meeting was very satisfactory to Wakley. He received numerous pledges of support, while his theory that, apart from his own personal claims, the office of coroner should be held by a medical man received considerable endorsement from the press. The " Morning Herald," the " Examiner," the " Spectator," the " Morning Advertiser," and " Bell's Life in London " supported the man or the theory, or both, and so numerous were the personal pledges received that Wakley, who had at first not seriously believed that his chances were good, began to look forward with confidence to the outcome of what promised to be a close struggle. That confidence was not lessened by the events arising out of a terrible tragedy which occurred in London at this very juncture. For it was in the month of August, 1830, and in the same week that Wakley made public his intention of seeking the suffrages of the freeholders for the vacant coronership of East Middlesex, that John St. John Long, one of the most notorious charlatans of this century, was found guilty of manslaughter by a coroner's jury, and it was by Wakley's personal exertions that the righteous verdict was secured. John St. John Long was an extraordinary man. Born in an Irish village and of humble extraction — his father was a John St. John Long 361 basket-maker and he himself was apprenticed to the trade — he became " a pupil," probably the sort of pupil that cleans out the studio and washes the palettes, of a certain Daniel Richardson, a Dublin painter. He started on his own account as a portrait-painter in the year 1821, for the following advertisement appeared in a Limerick paper, published on February loth of that year. It spoke more for the enterprise than the culture of its author : — " Mr. John Saint John Long," it ran, " Historical and Portrait Painter, the only pupil of Daniel Richardson, Esq., late of Dublin, proposes during his stay in Limerick to take portraits from Italian Head and whole length ; and parson desirous of getting theirs done in historical, hunting, shooting, fishing, or any other character ; or their family, grouped in one or two paintings from life-size to minature, so as to make an historical subject, choseing one from history."* He met with some success among his easy-going com- patriots and then turned to London as a larger field for his talent and ingenuity. Here he obtained work from certain of the anatomical lectm-ers, whose scarcity of human subjects whereon to instruct their pupils by actual dissection com- pelled them to fall back upon coloured charts. Long picked up the rudiments of medical science by preparing these drawings and copying the letterpress, and then, with the audacity of his class, started as a physical saviour of man- kind, his stock-in-trade being a liniment, an ointment, and a few scraps of topographical anatomy. No quack ever had quite such brilliant success, but to no quack, perhaps, ever came quite such a brilliant idea. Long's liniment was not only curative but preventive and diagnostic. Placed upon the skin over a healthy organ no reaction occurred, but placed upon the skin over a tuberculous lung or a podagric joint rapid ulceration followed. This ulceration was, so he alleged, nature's process : it represented the healthy rejection by a tissue that desired to be sound of the mischievous elements previously present in its meshes. Long claimed " A Book about Doctors," by J. Cordy Jeaffreson. 36? John St. John Long an infallible eye for incipient phthisis and suppressed gout. He cultivated society assiduously, as became a man of good birth — for as such he was received in London drawing* rooms ! — ^good presence, artistic talent, and unrivalled scientific prescience. In society he met his earliest and most faithful dupes. He did not wait for his patients to come to him. His method was simpler. He prophesied approaching death for apparently healthy persons within hearing of the relations or friends of those persons. The terrible rumour went round the salon, and on the following day the victim would arrive at 41, Harley Street, Long's house, and demand an explanation of the grim vaticinations. Then Long pro- duced a bottle and applied to the foot or the shoulder or the breast of the doomed person a few drops of its blistering contents, and, lo ! ulceration appeared. " You were sicken- ing for this or that," cried Long, " but you have taken it in time." The sore was then kept open by an irritating oint- ment for such period as the patience of the victims or their purse warranted, and was finally allowed to heal. The sums that were made by Long surpass belief. A writer in the " Gentleman's Magazine " mentions that from July, 1829, to July, 1830, this surprising adventurer's pass-book displayed a series of credit payments due to a single year's operation amounting to no less than ;^i3,4oo. This year marked his zenith, for at the end of it came his great rebuff. Hitherto his method had proved infallible. It was the regular quack method, only dignified by the good mannei-s, plausibility, and real talent of an utterly unscrupulous man. Very bad cases were refused because the malady was too far advanced. The remedy, although styled absolutely infallible, was only, it appeared, for those in whom disease had not committed serious ravages. In cases that were treated with no satis- factory i-esults the failure was attributed to the fact that the patient had not employed the treatment with sufficient per- severance. This was a most usual occurrence, seeing that lavation and inunction with vitriolic preparations have no inherent enticements of their own, and that the patient who found no commensurate improvement was apt to weary of The Case of Catherine Cashin 363 the recurring agony. Friends doubted, the regular medical practitioner was called in, and Long washed his hands of a person of little faith. Cases that started in health returned after a time to health, having enjoyed the privilege of some weeks', or it might be months', torture at a price which made even the most stoical of these imaginary invalids wince. But in the summer of 1830 a catastrophe occurred in the practice of John St. John Long which aroused an uproar throughout the kingdom. Two Irish girls, Cashin by name, called upon him, the younger being in delicate health and seeking advice. Long pursued his usual tactics, the crafty tricks that had brought so many to his net. For the sick girl he prescribed a harmless inhalation, but seeing in the healthy girl an opportunity for a brilliant cure he prophesied to a third person, the girl's own mother, that unless she underwent treatment by the application of his fluid she would infallibly fall into a rapid consumption. The rest is sheer horror. The luckless girl submitted her perfectly healthy body to the manipulation of this callous brute. This was on August 3rd, 1830. For the next ten days she suffered agony. On August 14th she was in a condition of extreme pain and exhaustion. An enormous and unhealthy ulcer had been created upon her back, and she was perilously ill and vomiting continually. On the following day Long saw her, and relying presumably upon her stamina, assured her that in a short time she would be in better health than she had ever been in her life. On the next day, August i6th, her friends sent for Sir Benjamin Brodie. But it was too late. Mortification had set in, and on August 17th Catherine . Cashin died at the age of twenty-four, having passed from perfect health through unspeakable torture to the gi^ave in exactly one fortnight. The " Lancet " having enlightened such of the public as would consent to being enlightened, a loud uproar arose throughout England. An inquest was held, which Wakley attended at the request of the relatives of the deceased. Wakley was at first unwilling to appear personally, urging 364 Wakley Prosecutes Long that as a candidate for the vacant coronership of Middlesex his intei-ference might be deemed to be due to a desire to advertise his claims for the post, and that having denounced Long as a quack in the columns of the " Lancet " his opinion might be considered biassed and his advocacy do more harm than good. The Cashin family would, however, take no denial. They were friendless in London and knew of Long's immense influence with his fashionable clients. Unless Wakley would espouse their cause they believed that the murderer of their lost relative would escape the hands of justice. Wakley appeared before the coroner as the repre- sentative of the Cashins, and Mr. Adolphus, Q.C., represented Long. Undoubtedly, Long would have got off scot-free had it not been for Wakley's interference. All sorts of excuses were made for him, and influential persons 9f every degree strained their power in this direction and that to accomplish his acquittal. Wakley, however, having undertaken the pro- secution, went through with the task in characteristic manner. He brushed aside the sophistries of ' Mr. Adolphus, who would have persuaded the jury that all the medical pro- fession was jealous of Long, and that the error of diet committed by the unfortunate victim in assuaging her feverish thirst with plums was responsible for her inability to resist Long's healing treatment and so for her sudden decease ! Wakley pointed out to the jury that the facts before them did not allow of any interpretation but one, and that one was that Long had killed Catherine Cashin by rubbing her back with corrosive substances. A verdict of manslaughter against Long was obtained, but the issue of the warrant for his apprehension was scandalously delayed, and had it not been for Wakley's persistency it is probable that the wretched pretender would have escaped punishment after all. By his conduct of this matter Wakley was seen to possess in a remarkable manner the qualities that fitted him for the coronership. The people and the press applauded the verdict against Long, and attributed that verdict to Wakley. His old opponent. Dr. James Johnson, said in the hostile The First Election for the Coronership 365 columns of the " Medico-Chirurgical Review " that Wakley had " acquitted himself both ably and judiciously. True, he had justice, popularity, and some of the best feelings of our nature on his side ; but then he was opposed to a lawyer whose practice at the Old Bailey and engagement in cases declined by the respectable members of the Bar rendered him capable of using all kinds of mean artifices and personal insults for the purpose of browbeating his antagonist. Yet Mr. Wakley set him down repeatedly, and that by coolness of temper and strength of argument. Galled and foiled and irritated to fury by a medical man uneducated to the Bar, and whom he hoped to crush by his Newgate ribaldry, he at length appealed to the coroner to prevent Mr. Wakley from opposing him at all. These attempts showed the extremities to which he was driven, and the sentiments of the jury as well as of the spectators were often and unequivocally evinced in favour of his antagonist." Other papers followed in the same enthusiastic strain, and Wakley's chances of obtaining the coronership became very good indeed. Enor- mous meetings were held in his favour in Islington and Clerkenwell, and the candidate's personal speeches were received everywhere with enthusiastic applause. A universal suffrage would have given him the appointment, but the final issue showed that whatever the people might think the freeholders were not sufficiently familiar with the new idea that it was possible for the coroner to be a medical man. Mr. Baker, a solicitor, who, by the way, was earlier in the field than Wakley, obtained a larger number of votes, but the contest was very severe, Wakley being in a minority of only 136 on a poll of 7204. As in his first attempt to enter Parliament, so in his first attempt to obtain a coronership Wakley was beaten, but on each occasion the defeat was so narrow as to form certain promise of future victory. It will be well here to finish the story of John St. John Long, as Wakley's hostility to the quack involved him in a libel action with a member of the medical profession. Long, pursued relentlessly by Wakley's pen, was placed in the dock 366 A Disgracefully Lenient Sentence of the Old Bailey on October 30th, 1830, charged with the manslaughter of Catherine Cashin. Counsel for the prose- cution took the same line that Wakley had done before the coroner. They demonstrated to the satisfaction of the jury that Catherine Cashin had died from injuries due to certain applications sold to her by John St. John Long, a person practising as a medical man but possessing no degree or diploma, and they warned the jury against having their attention diverted from this the real question into con- sidering whether Long's remedies had ever done anyone else any good on other occasions. Long's counsel put a marquis, a marchioness and her daughters, and the heir to one of the oldest earldoms in the kingdom into the box. These persons — one of whom during the course of the trial sat by the judge's^ side and chatted with him — testified to their belief in Long's treatment and his humanity, but did not persuade the jury to think highly of their own wisdom. The jury found Long guilty, and Mr. Justice Parke fined him ;^25o, which sum the convict extracted from his pocket and paid there and then. Scarcely had the loud outcry at the disgraceful leniency of this sentence died away than a second of Long's victims perished, and a second coroner's jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter against him. He was again placed in the dock at the Old Bailey, and the facts revealed a denser ignorance and a more atrocious insensi- bility to suffering than in the case of Catherine Cashin, but the medical evidence was so shaky that the judge gave the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. It will be thought that by this time Long was sufficiently discredited. A few might still be his dupes at heart, and a few more might pretend to continue in their belief rather than publicly write themselves down as credulous asses, but Long could not have expected at this season many compli-» mentary letters upon his skill in diagnosis or his ingenuity in treatment. Yet precisely now — that is to say, in March, 1 83 1 — he received such a testimonial, a lengthy one, one indited apparently out of the fulness of the writer's heart, and actually signed by a medical man, a Doctor of Medicine Ramadge v. Wakley 367 of Oxford University and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. It was a certain Dr. Francis H. Ramadge who thus leapt to fame in the columns of the " Sunday Times," where Long published the effusion. In his letter, which Dr. Ramadge alleged had not been written with a view to publication, Long's treatment of the two murdered women was commended, while he was commiserated with on the unfortunate issue of his therapy and the unmerited obloquy that he had incurred. Sir Benjamin Brodie and a medical man named Vance, who had given halting evidence against Long in the course of the two trials, were severely handled, and Long was consoled for any ignorance he might have of anatomy by the information that, at any rate, he knew more than many hospital officials. Wakley published this extra- ordinary letter in the " Lancet," and said that if Dr. Ramadge wrote it he must be considered to have placed himself at once outside the pale, and he recommended him forthwith to abandon the ranks of a profession which he had dis- graced. Dr. Ramadge replied to the " Lancet," acknow- ledging the letter as emanating from himself, and maintained that he had a right to his private opinion. The Medical Society of London expelled Dr. Ramadge from their body on the ground that by writing such a letter he had improperly and shamefully advocated empirical practice and cast unjust aspei'sions upon his medical brethren. As a result of this position of affairs a medical man some few weeks later refused to meet Dr. Ramadge at a patient's bedside, alleging that his conduct had been found to be such that no medical man of respectability ought to consult with him. The patient's friends sided with the second medical man, whose treatment, as it turned out, did more for the patient than Dr. Ramadge's methods. An account of this case, which certainly placed Dr. Ramadge in the doubly unenviable light of a disreputable man and also an ignorant man, appeared in the " Lancet." Dr. Ramadge brought an action for libel. Wakley defended his conduct in person, and commented with much severity on the plaintiff's want of medical skill and unjustifiable advocacy 368 Damages One Farthing of John St. John Long, who was in the court and had the pleasure of hearing himself alluded to casually as a quack and a felon. He maintained that to hold Dr. Ramadge up to contempt was justifiable, and indeed the only course open to an honest medical journalist. After a few minutes' consultation by the jury a verdict was given for the plaintiff for one farthing. Ill-considered Verdicts 369 CHAPTER XXXVIII [1831-1839] More Cases of Ill-considered Verdicts — Wahley's Claims on the Coronership — A Vacancy for West Middlesex — Wakley's Pre- carious Pecuniary Position — He resolves to Compete — The Boundaries of the West Middlesex District- — The Opposition of the Middlesex Magistrates — A Hollow Victory for the Medical Candidate, During the next ten years Wakley kept his contention that the pecuhar fitness of medical men for the post of coroner must end in the medical coroner being a very usual officer in every county persistently present in the minds of his readers. A lai-ge quantity of correspondence detailing in- stances in which coroners' verdicts had been improperly returned through failure to provide adequate medical testi- mony or failure to appreciate such testimony when offered was inserted in the " Lancet," and each communication of this nature received caustic comments from the editorial pen. " Incapacity of an attorney," " Gross case of mis- direction to a jury," and " Verdict in the absence of medical testimony" were frequent headings to notes and even lead- ing articles, and this is not surprising when some of the examples of the verdicts returned at inquests are examined. In an inquest, for example, held on the body of a woman who had died from cholera, the jury, under the direction of the coroner, returned a verdict of manslaughter. The testi- mony of four medical men who had examined the body availed nothing against that of three children, one of whom stated that the deceased was " knocked over " an iron rail- ing, while a second asserted that she was "pushed against " 37° Ill-considered Verdicts an iron r^,iling, and a third, omitting the railing, swore that the victim was simply knocked about. Again, a youth fifteen years of age had been " knocked against a wall, struck very violently right and left on the head, then dashed upon the pavement, and kicked by his assailant, an active, strong man, several times. On struggling to his feet he was again knocked down." The after-history of the case was very clearly given on sworn evidence. The lad went home, vomited blood, and during the next week complained of pain in the head and stomach. He continued to vomit frequently for the next month, and four weeks and five days after the assault died under the care of the parish medical officer. The necropsy revealed considerable laceration of brain substance and the commencing formation of an abscess in the left ventricle. The jury after hearing the evidence were anxious to bring in a verdict of manslaughter. They were over-ruled by the coroner, who informed them that if they did the parish would be put to an expense of ;^ioo to £^S°) ^^'^ probably the man would be acquitted after all. A verdict therefore was returned of " Died from extravasated blood in the brain, but the jury are not satisfied that it arose from natural causes." Again, a woman who was known to have fractured her second and third cervical vertebrae was said by the coroner's jury, unassisted by any medical evidence, to have died from apoplexy. Any one of these cases would have gone far to prove that Wakley was right in talking of the coroner's inquest as held by too many coroners as a meagre, miserable, and worthless institution. He was known to be hunting for such cases ; but discount- ing all his weighty bias in the matter, their very existence proved that the coroner's inquest was not the safeguard that it should be. That Wakley collected his examples of mal- praxis was quite well recognised, and that they formed but a fraction of the inquests which were properly con- ducted and which, after due deliberation, ended in the return of a correct verdict was known to all, but the fact that one such case of gross error could occur proved the coroner's inquest to be no very real security to the piublic. Wakley's Claims on the Coronership 371 In Middlesex, at any rate, Wakley made certain of the popular vote for any future occasion by the publication of these cases, generally with full names and dates. In other directions his claims to the next vacant coroner- ship, if he cared to apply for the post, grew very manifest. He had fought a gallant fight in his attempt to obtain the coronership of East Middlesex. He had resisted on his election to Parliament several obnoxious measures dealing with the privileges of the coroner, and in 1836 he had framed and caiTied the Medical Witnesses Remuneration Bill. Until the passage of this measure it had been open to disputants of his theory that the medical man made the best coroner to retaliate that medical men often might attend inquests and throw valuable light on the cause of death and thus strengthen the hand of the non-medical coroner, but that they wriggled out of these duties because there was no provision made for their remuneration. This could not be contradicted because the " Lancet " contained records of cases where the coroner had been unable to charge his jury properly since he could not find anyone to make a necropsy for him. In country districts where the medical man and the coroner were well known to each other it was deemed by many coroners not only to be no slight but a piece of kindly consideration not to summon a medical witness. He could not be paid, therefore why ti-ouble him ? Wakley's Act removed the difficulty under which both coroner and medical man laboured. The coroner would no longer have any scruple about summoning a medical witness, and the medical man would receive some return for his services to the court. According, then, to persons of the opposite way of thinking to Wakley, matters after 1836 should have gone perfectly smoothly. Wakley's own Act should have nullified the necessity for medical coroners by providing an adequate supply of paid medical witnesses. But nothing of the sort occurred. Wakley's Act put large sums of money into the pocket of the medical profession, but it did not save the non-medical coroner from his blunders. Cases where no medical men were called as witnesses were just as numerous 372 A Vacancy in the West Middlesex District as before, but whereas the previous absence of medical evidence may have been partly due to voluntary abstention of the medical profession, it was now due to economy on the part of the coroner. The county authorities when audit- ing the county accounts were apt to refer very strongly to the payments made to medical witnesses, saying with the positiveness that goes hand in hand with ignorance that when the cause of death was very evident it was absurd to put the public to expense in ascertaining the cause from a medical man. Many lay coroners listened to these grumblings with too open ears and preferred to risk misdirecting a jury to submitting themselves to the blame of the county authorities, and as a result some of the cases which occurred in the courts of lay coroners, after Parliament had made provision for proper expert evidence, were as flagrant as those that had been the frequent cause of previous scandal. And nothing, Wakley urged, would ever stop these cases save the appointment of medical coroners who would summon medical evidence where it was required with a practical knowledge of the occasion and uninfluenced by motives of parsimony or politeness. His second opportunity to try his chances with the free- holders of Middlesex did not come until Januaiy, 1839, when the death of Mr. Stirling on the 17th of that month caused a vacancy in the coronership of West Middlesex. Wakley was at once urgently desired by a great number of the electors from all parts of the county to become a candi- date for the vacant office, and with apparent alacrity he accepted their invitation. It may be thought strange that he required to be invited before coming forward. Since his near defeat ten years previously he had resolutely stood his ground, pleaded the cause of the medical coroner, and refuted or flouted the arguments of all who were opposed to him. In his attitude during this decade he appeared to be waiting for a chance to pounce on the next vacant coroner- ship. But in truth this was not so, and when the chance came again it found him at fii'st doubtful of his course. His hesitation was entirely due to his pecuniary position. Wakley's Pecuniary Position in 1839 373 Money was at this time a serious qviestion with Wakley. His conduct with regard to financial matters had always been supremely careless. Receiving money with one hand he threw it away with the other. Ever since the " Lancet " had proved a success he had received large sums and spent lai-ger. Always in difficulties, he was always hopeful and always lavish. But at this particular time — that is during the years of 1837 and 1838 — he was seriously embarrassed by the frequent and heavy calls upon his purse. The contest for the office of coroner was an exceedingly expensive affair. The times were corrupt and election work was conducted throughout by agents, of whom there were a large number employed on both sides and to whom money was given by the principals without question, only the position in the final poll being regarded. His first contest for the coronership had cost Wakley a very large, nay, an enormous sum of money. He really never knew the exact figure, but the total he believed to be over ^7000. This sum had been raised through the good nature of his friends and relations in part, in part by pawning the profits of the " Lancet " to certain persons who had nearly from its com- mencement been associated with him in its conduct and were therefore cognisant of its large and increasing circu- lation and its substantiality as a source of revenue, and in part from the trustees of his marriage settlement. He proved unsuccessful, and all the money appeared to have been thrown away, leaving him with a burden of debt that would have frightened a man more concerned about his pecuniary position from day to day and less obstinately reliant on his own abilities and fortunate stars. He had resolutely set to work to wipe off the debt and had in part succeeded when his three attempts to represent the borough of Finsbury in Parliament interfered with his projects of economy and raised his liabilities again to the point which they had reached in 1830. Then came success in Parlia- ment, and hand in hand with this success came increase of income through the ever improving circulation of his journal and increase of expenditure through the purchase of the 374 Wakley's Pecuniary Position in 1839 lease of Harefield Park, the more important and luxurious style of living in Bedford Square, and the support and education of a family. His father-in-law often assisted generously, particularly in discharging any liens upon the " Lancet," as he foresaw that it would be a terrible day for Wakley when the control of that property which he had created, and which his individuality and prowess had made valuable, should pass from him. His father-in-law had also helped Wakley in his parliamentary campaign. He gave him the land which allowed him to satisfy the law with regard to property qualification before offering himself to the borough electors, and he subsequently lent him or gave him considerable sums. But Wakley could not go for ever to him, so that it can be understood that he had to give the matter some little thought before accepting the invitation of certain of the free voters to be their candidate again for the vacant coronership. On the one hand, he desired the position, while the annual income, never less than £iS°° or ;^i8oo, was a strong inducement to him to compete. On the other hand, a large sum of ready money had to be found immediately, while a failure to attain his object for a second time would plunge him into embarrassment that would seriously jeopardise the " Lancet " and his position in Parliament. The fortune that had been spent in the previous contest, however, decided Wakley's friends again to help him. That money was irretrievably wasted if Wakley did not come forward again, whereas if he did come forward and win, it could be regarded as having conduced to his success. It was made easy for him to mortgage his wife's income for ^£2000, which he did. He stood for the coronership and was overwhelmingly suc- cessful. There were about 9000 freeholders in the county of Middlesex, not including the cities of London and West- minster. The western division of the county contained more than half of these — i.e., 5000 odd ; but all the free- holders had the right to vote for both divisions, a curious and anomalous state of affairs which met with Wakley's The West Middlesex District 375 approval. The division between eastern and western Middlesex, speaking roughly, was the Great North Road. West Middlesex, for which Wakley now became coroner, was bounded on the west by Buckinghamshire, the follow- ing places on the border marking the extreme points of his jurisdiction : Harefield Park (his own country residence) ; Uxbridge, four miles south of this ; West Drayton, Coin- brook, and Staines. On the eastern boundary, which was not a very direct straight line, were situated Barnet, Hornsey, Highgate, and the commencement of the Great North Road where it joined the City Road. On the north lay Hertfordshire, the bounding localities being Rickmal^s- worth. Pinner, Stanmore, Elstree, and Mill Hill. The southern boundary was formed by the north bank of the River Thames from Staines to the precincts of the City of Westminster, the places on that bank being Shepperton, Sunbury, Hampton, Teddington, Twickenham, Isleworth, Brentford, Hammersmith, and Fulham. The division between West Middlesex and Westminster followed roughly the course of Piccadilly, the northern side being Middlesex and the southern Westminster. The division between West Middlesex and the City followed the line of the Farringdon Road. Anyone who will allow his mind to dwell on the size of this vast constituency — it comprised over three hundred square miles and contained 200,000 more persons at that time than the eastern division of the county — and will at the same time imagine it scoured from end to end by competing agents during a poll that lasted a week will understand that the contest was one from which an impecunious man might well shrink. Wakley, however, having accepted the invitation of the freeholders, dashed for victory with characteristic ardour. He had better cards in his hand than on the previous occasion, not the least telling being his unlooked-for success in Parliament. Also, since 1829 many medical coroners— upwards of twenty— had been actually appointed in various parts of the kingdom entirely owing to his writings, and their successful administration 376 A Mean Move by the Magistrates compai-ed favourably with some of the lapses reported in the " Lancet " as occurring in the courts of their lay brethren. Before the polling began Wakley said that he was absolutely certain of success, and by Februaiy yth the Middlesex magistrates, the county authorities to whom the coroner would look for payment of his fees, appear to have thought so also. For they made an attempt to diminish the value of the prize now within Wakley's grasp that was as bold in its conception as it was ludicrous in its failure. They suddenly represented to the Lord Chancellor, at the request of fifteen freeholders, that the duties of the coronership for the county of Middlesex were so over- whelmingly arduous that two men should not be asked to undertake them. The magistrates therefore prayed the Lord Chancellor to supersede the writ that he had issued for the election on February i8th and to appoint that two coroners should be elected to fill the vacancy in the coroner- ship of one division of Middlesex. The action of the magistrates was not creditable to their sagacity. Tories to a man, they dreaded the employment of a Radical, and in particular of a Radical who had spoken evilly of the unpaid justiciary. Wakley's only serious opponent, a solicitor named Adey, was much more after their heart. When it was seen that Mr. Adey was certain to be worsted the magistrates hoped to secure his return for half the district if they could persuade the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cottenham, to appoint two coroners. But the personal and political prejudices leading to their action were recognised by the press, and the move was stigmatised by, among others, the " Globe,'' the " Examiner," the " Morning Chronicle,'' and the " Lancet " as unworthy and disingenuous. The latter it certainly was, for the work had previously been done to the apparent satisfaction of the magistrates by Mr. Stirling single-handed, and Mr. Stirling was a practising solicitor, clerk to these very magistrates, and ninety-four years of age ! The Lord Chancellor curtly answered the memorialists that he saw no reason for acceding to their request. On February i8th polling began, and by the evening of the Success at the Poll 377 same day Wakley had polled 1824 votes, against 471 given for his opponent. On Wednesday Adey had still not regis- tered much more than a quarter of the number of the votes that had been given for Wakley, and on the evening of that day he retired. Strong pressure had been put upon him by Wakley's personal and political foes to contest the election to the end of the seventh day, which would have meant an enormously increased expense to Wakley, but he had the sense to refuse to accede to such malicious advice, which, moreover, would not have had the desired effect of depleting Wakley's purse, as the freeholders themselves formed a com- mittee to defray all Wakley's future charges by subscription. The " Morning Chronicle " said in recommending such a fund to the public : " This is not the battle-ground of Reformer and Tory, and we should deprecate its being made so. The man best able to discharge the duties of coroner is the man who ought to be elected. The freeholders of the county are manifestly in favour of Mr. Wakley ; and his opponents say by their thus vexatiously carrying on the con- test, ' If we cannot beat him by votes we will ruin him by expense.' " Other papers wrote in a similar strain concern- ing any prolongation of opposition to Wakley's election, and a fund was rapidly raised large enough to make Adey's supporters decide to abandon further resistance. The final result of the poll was — Wakley, 2015 ; Adey, 582 ; and on February 25th, 1839, Wakley became coroner of West Middlesex. 378 Reform in the Coroner's Court CHAPTER XXXIX [1839] WakUy's Reforms as Coroner — Their Cold Reception — His Instructions to the Constabulary of Middlesex — Accusation of holding too frequent Inquests — A buse in the Political Journals — The Case of Thomas Austin — The Censure of the Middlesex Magistrates — The Report of their Committee appointed to Inquire into the Proceedings of the Two Coroners — Complete Exoneration of Wakley — The Meaning of certain of his Instructions to the Constabulary. Wakley immediately began his work as coroner upon the Hnes that he had, with a reiteration that would have been wearisome had it not been so necessary, declared to be the only proper ones. Every death the reason of which was not apparent upon ^he face of its circumstances was made the subject of an inquiry, and in every inquiry where the facts demanded medical elucidation or where the court required medical advice a qualified practitioner was summoned, and if necessary a post-mortem examination was made. The juries that were provided by the energy of the beadle did not escape scrutiny, with the result that Wakley's first move was to supersede that functionary altogether and employ a servant of his own — a sort of informal coroner's ofHcer — upon the difficult and unpleasant task of collecting from twelve to twenty-three capable citizens to act as jurors. The beadle was too prone to look complacently upon the defection of such of the persons whom he summoned as were able to reward him for his amiable disposition, with the result that his juries had not as a rule a high tone, nor could they be said to be largely composed of responsible or Irritation Caused by the Innovations 379 well-educated citizens. Wakley declared that he would not have his court made a mockery by the quality of his juries, and his officer was instructed to summon fit and proper persons and to take no denial. Again, he was determined that all inquests conducted by himself should have the dignity, or at any rate the decency, due to the importance of the tribunal and the solemnity of the occasions upon which its deliberations were held. He was resolute that no trace of the ribaldry or tipsy familiarity that had disfigured proceedings at inquests all over the kingdom should appear in his district of West Middlesex. He insisted upon a sober jury as well as a respectable one, and he was no less determined to have orderly proceedings. Counsel, solicitors, and witnesses — ordinary and expert, medical and lay — were made to under- stand that contempt of court was as serious a crime before a coroner as before a judge or even a chancellor. Reasonable as all these innovations were, they did not meet with the approbation of everybody. There were beadles and jurymen who were insulted and who were not slow to bare the wounds in their self-esteem to the sympathetic gaze of Wakley's enemies, never weak either in numbers or quality. Solicitors, naturally sore at the violent language that Wakley invariably used both in Parliament and in the " Lancet " to describe their professional methods, were prompt to prophesy the impossibility that so prejudiced a man should become an unprejudiced judge. Here and there an inquest was held which seemed to the relatives of the deceased to be unneces- sary, and which, they were informed, would never have been held in the days of that regretted nonagenarian, Mr. Stirling. These families naturally felt very much aggrieved. The authorities at hospitals, lunatic asylums, and poor-houses were also opposed to the new coroner. Wakley had been unsparing in his criticisms of the administration of these places, and it was confidently supposed that he would take the opportunity of revenge offered whenever an unfortunate inmate died, and would hold an inquest at which he would act rather as public prosecutor than judge, hale those responsible for the manage- ment of the institution before him, and direct the jury to find 380 Instructions to the Constabulary them guilty of having caused, or at least contributed towards, the fate of the deceased. Such was the ridiculous view that people, who ought to have known better, took of Wakley's honest efforts towards reform. And all this simmering dis- conterSTound^Tts^wayTontEe ears of the Middlesex magis- trates, whose hostile attitude towards Wakley's pretensions to the coronership had not abated a whit on seeing these pretensions remarkably ratified by the freeholders, and who would seem to have been waiting for an opportunity to censure an officer whose general politics they detested and whose particular merits they were blind to. Wakley soon gave them the very opportunity that they desired. In September, 1839, he issued certain instructions to the constabulary of West Middlesex which roused excitement throughout the county and led to a special meeting of the Middlesex magistrates and later to a parliamentary inquiry. These instructions, which were issued above his signature, were as follows : — " I have to request that after the 29th day of the present month of September, 1839, all applications relative to the holding of inquests may be made to me at 35, Bedford Square, London. " QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED WHEN APPLYING FOR A WARRANT:— " On applying for warrants for the taking of inquests in the Western Division of Middlesex the constable or beadle is desired to answer such of the following questions as may concern each particular death. " I. When did the death happen ? " 2. When was the body found ? "3. Was the deceased a male or a female — an infant, a lunatic, or a pauper ? " 4. What is thought to have been the cause of death ? " 5. Is the body in a fresh state or a decomposed state ? "5. If it be supposed that poison was the cause of death, what was the poison ? " 7. If any medical practitioner was in attendance before death, what is his name ? " 8. If the death was sudden, was there any previous illness, and for what length of time ? "9. At what public-house or other place is the inquest to be held ? " 10. How far is the body from that public-house or other place ? Instructions to the Constabulary 381 " NOTICE IS TO BE GIVEN TO THE CORONER BY HEAD- BOROUGHS, POLICE, PARISH CONSTABLES, AND BEADLES IN ALL CASES:— " I. When persons die suddenly. " 2. When persons are found dead. " 3. When persons die from any acts of violence or any accident. " 4. When women die during labour or a few hours after delivery. " 5. When persons are supposed to have died from the effects of poisons or quack medicines. " 6. When persons die who appear to have been neglected during sickness or extreme poverty. " 7. When persons die in confinement, as in prisons, police offices, or station houses. " 8. When lunatics or paupers die in confinement, whether in public or in private asylums." Now certainly these instructions do not in themselves read as very inflammatory. Firstly, they were not, it will be seen, to be applied rigidly in every case. The officials had dis- cretion in following them. Secondly, they were designed to facilitate the coroner's work by preventing unnecessary inquests ; for if the coroner received a full and satisfactory report from the constable, one which tallied with a common- sense view of the case as well as with the view of an official investigator who was also a medical expert, no inquest would be held, to the economy of the public funds and of the investigator's time. In the third place, the universal rule that all deaths in gaols, lunatic asylums, and places where the proper working of the Poor-law might have obviated the catastrophe should be made the subject of inquiry formed an excellent guarantee to the public that the public departments were managed with due care and efficiency. Lastly, the provision to inquire into deaths where, on the face of it, unqualified medical practice seemed to count for something in the unfortunate issue was intended to pro- tect the public against the dangers of quackery. Of course, Wakley had gone too fast, particularly in this last direction ; but it is astonishing, reading them now, to understand the excitement which these instructions, having 382 The New Coroner Baited for their object reform in the procedure of his own coroner's court, created in the public mind. To begin with, it was assumed by the public that it was Wakley's object to hold as many inquests as he could, quite regardless whether the public weal demanded such multiplications of scrutiny. It is difficult to say who started this rumour, but it received at once very wide credence. It had a certain air of probability about it and was industriously spread by Wakley's enemies, and indeed, by all those whose comfort was likely to be interfered with under the new regulations. Whoever could foresee trouble for himself in the future made haste to discount it by imputing to the new coroner's energy the vulgar motive of fee-grabbing. The political newspapers — such as the " Times," the " Morning Advertiser," the " Morning Herald," and the " Observer " — wrote leading articles in opposition to Wakley's new regulations, entirely based on the supposition that it was his intention to increase the number of inquests immoderately and autocratically. Politics soon began to play a part in the frequent denun- ciations of the unfortunate coroner. When Wakley saw the storm that was gathering around him he addressed one of his juries in defence of his new regulations. He pointed out that the coroner was the people's judge, the only judge whom the people had the power to appoint, while the office had been specially instituted for the protection of the people, and declared his belief that all the baiting to which he was now being vexatiously subjected came from " certain persons in authority who had been, and wished to continue to be, free from observation and control," and who were now " becoming apprehensive of the prospect of having the atten- tion of the public directed to their conduct." He refen-ed, of course, by these expressions to the Government officials in charge of gaols and of the administration of the Poor- law, and to the owners and managers of lunatic asylums. A correspondent in the "Morning Herald" commented gracefully on Wakley's address to the jury by saying that he had " obviously resolved to combine his electioneering with The Case of Thomas Austin 383 his official labours and had converted, in fact, the coroner's court, into a district committee pro tern This is the secret of all Mr. Wakley's palaver. It all tends to the hustings. This villainous iteration 2ihoui the people, thepeople, the people, has very little to do with the crowner's quest, but it has a vast deal to do with the next election for Finsbury." Hospital officials followed the suit of Government employes and political foes, declaring that Wakley's new regulations contained a deliberate insult to the medical profession. Inquests were to be held, forsooth, on all persons who had died during labour or a few hours after delivery ! What meant this intolerable intrusion upon a mourning household except that Wakley desired to sit in judgment on his brother medical men, protected by his position in the coroner's chair ? The profession was warned through the medium of that section of the medical press whose interests were opposed to Wakley's that the coroner's inquest under the new rules would certainly be used as an instrument of terror over them exactly as the " Lancet " had attempted to terrorise those in charge of hospitals by gross abuse of all concerned in the administration. And just as the excitement was at its highest occurred a case which gave colour to much that Wakley's enemies were saying and writing, though that coincidence did not deter him from doing exactly what he conceived to be his duty in the teeth of all opposition. On September 30th, 1839, exactly twenty-four hours after the new regulations came into force, there died in the Hendon Union a pauper aged seventy-nine years named Thomas Austin. The immediate cause of death was not in dispute : he fell into a copper in the laundry and perished of the scalding that he received. No notice was given to the coroner and Austin's body was duly buried in Hendon churchyard by order of the guardians. Wakley heard of the accident and its fatal result, and attended at the union to hold an inquest. He there learned that the body of the man had been interred. He immediately sent a requisition to the vicar and churchwardens demanding the exhumation 384 A Formal Complaint of the body. His request was refused peremptorily by a churchwarden, whom Wakley declared to have been guilty of a gross piece of contempt of court for which he could be summarily punished. Ultimately the opposition gave way and the inquest was held, a verdict of accidental death being returned with a rider to the effect that there had been contributory neglect on the part of the workhouse authorities in not placing a railing round the copper. The master of the workhouse, resenting this and hoping to embarrass the coroner, exclaimed with triuniph when the verdict was given : " The jury have found a verdict, but have not identified the body." Wakley, however, had the last word, and blandly inquired : " If this is not the body of the man who was killed in your vat, pray, Sir, how many paupers have you boiled ? " The case offered an excellent opportunity to Wakley's enemies to take serious steps — more serious than the strongly worded attacks which they had inspired in the daily press. A meeting was held at the Clerkenwell Sessions House on October loth, 1839, at which the Rev. Theodore Williams, the vicar of Hendon, who was a magistrate, attended and formally complained of Wakle^s conduct in no measured terms. He even went so far as to suggest that not only should Wakley's fees be refused, but that a requisition should be made by the bench to the Lord Chancellor to remove him from his position of coroner. A long discussion ensued, in which Wakley did not find one stipporter among the magistrates so completely did prejudice occupy their minds. Without going to quite the lengths to which the vicar of Hendon desired to commit them they gave proof of the bent of their minds by their unjust action with regard to the coroner's fees. The accounts for August had been audited and passed by the finance committee, but notwith- standing that circumstance a motion was made to refer back those accounts to that committee on the ground that they were not accompanied by the required vouchers. That motion, conveying as it did a severe censure on the coroner in the form of an imputation on his honesty, was carried The "Morning Herald" at Fault 385 without one dissentient voice, while at the same time another motion was adopted for the appointment of a committee of magistrates " to inquire into the cause of the increase of inquests since the enactment of the ist and 2nd Vict., c. 68 (Wakley's Act securing remuneration to medical witnesses), and to reconsider the schedule of fees now paid under that statute and to report generally." Great was the jubilation among Wakley's enemies when the result of this sitting of the Middlesex magistrates became public. The anonymous venom of private and political opponents had received the official endorsement of a bench of magistrates, affixed presumably after due deliberation, and not only had Wakley been found guilty of having held unnecessary inquests, but so certain were the bench of this that they had taken the extreme step of withholding his fees. The " Morning Herald " led the way in showering abuse upon Wakley, but was pulled up sharp when at a full and congenial gallop of vituperation by a threat of legal pro- ceedings, Wakley having discovered that a very fine example of "an inquest .... got up for the sake of securing a fee" (to quote the words of the libel), which had been published in the columns of that paper under the heading, in large capitals, " Mr. Wakley's Coronership," had occurred under the coronership of the late Mr. Stirling exactly ten months before Wakley's election to office ! This little slip gave pause to the " Morning Herald," but other journals kept up the cry, and so persistently that for the honour of journalism it must be believed that in popular opinion Wakley was really guilty. He was known to be a man with great ex- penses. He had openly allowed that his income was a small one compared with these expenses. What more likely than that he did hold unnecessary inquests, seeing that the more inquests he held the more money he would receive ? And what more likely than that he had designed his new regula- tions with the express intent of enabling him to hold an increased number of inquests ? The cynical and probable answer to these questions, the only answer that would satisfy the public mind, into which suspicion had been 2 B 386 An Accusation of Venality thoroughly instilled, was — Nothing could be more likely, Wakley, in fact, stood convicted of having prostituted his public calling to his private needs unless he could actually show that the assumption made throughout against him was a false one, and that the number of inquests during his term of office had not increased and was not likely to increase. The public, reading the new instructions, had taken it for granted that inquests would be much more frequent, for they looked at Wakley's regulations only to discover the openings therein indicated for the holding of a coroner's inquiry. They entirely omitted to grasp how many situations which under a less orderly and well- informed coroner would have led to an inquest, would by the aid of Wakley's regulations be revealed as perfectly natural. The public had followed the lead of the press and the magistrates had followed the lead of the press and public. It would have been in vain for Wakley to explain his new regulations further. Nothing would clear him immediately save a fiat contradiction of the statement that the number of inquests had increased. Within three weeks this contradiction was forthcoming, and it was furnished by the report of that very committee of magistrates which had been appointed to inquire and report generally upon the subject at the meeting held on October loth, when Wakley's accounts were insultingly referred back to the finance committee. On October 22nd Wakley received a letter inviting his attendance at the Sessions House to give an explanation as to the necessity of holding inquests in certain cases, a list of which was sent to him. Wakley waited upon the magistrates because, as he explained to them, he was willing cheerfully to give all explanation of his conduct and courted a complete examination of his procedure as coroner, but inasmuch as the magistrates had no legal right whatever to summon him before them he handed in a formal protest against the proceedings, with a request that it should be attached to the minutes of the meeting. Mr. Baker, the coroner for East Middlesex, had also been summoned, as had Mr. Bell, Wakley's official An Explicit Contradiction 387 clerk, who had for fifteen years acted in the same capacity for Mr. StirUng, and whose clerical efficiency was now in question, seeing that he was responsible for the accounts which the magistrates had refused to settle. The magistrates made a thorough but very courteous inquiry, and the three officials answered with fulness and readiness. As a con- sequence of this unexpected cordiality — for Wakley made no secret of his own belief that he would not obtain fair treatment — the report was ready for the magistrates on the last day of the month, or just three weeks from the appoint- ment of the committee. To say that it was received with astonishment by the public hardly expresses the feeling created. The findings of the committee were briefly as follows, as far as Wakley was concerned : — (i) Wakley had held a less average number of inquests than his predecessor, Mr. Stirling ; (2) a less sum of money had been paid for the attendance of medical witnesses ; (3) a less sum of money had been paid for post-mortem examinations ; and (4) Wakley's disbursements for the expenses of inquests were considerably lower than those of Mr. Baker in the adjoining division, being, in fact, ^^i os. 3^. for each inquest against £1 iis. 2|c/. (The figures did not include the coroner's fee of ^i is.) There had been an increase in the number of inquests held in some directions, but a great decrease in others, and Mr. Bell testified to the numerous occasions on which Wakley had refused to issue warrants, being satisfied by the answers to the preliminary inquiries that the death in question was perfectly natural. Mr. Bell also testified that the accounts which had been repudiated as irregular had been rendered in exactly the same shape and style as the late Mr. Stirling's, whose demands had always been satisfactorily settled. The committee read and approved Wakley's famous instructions, merely saying that he was not justified by law in holding inquests on every case of sudden death, as thus deaths from " fever or other apparent visitations of God " would become the subject of the coroner's inquest, which had clearly not been intended by the statute of 4th Edward I. 388 Wakley's Intentions Made Clear The whole report was a complete triumph for Wakley, whose sole fault was found to be that he differed from the views of the first Edward upon Providential design. And the debate which followed upon it confirmed the good im- pression that had been made, for the magistrates found that Wakley's conduct in the Hendon episode was right and according to law, and that the Rev. Theodore Williams's view was entirely wrong. It was now seen that the instructions to constables and others had a very real meaning and that they acted in the direction of checking unnecessary inquests. The public also perceived that Wakley's declared intention of holding inquests upon all those who died in prisons, asylums, or poorhouses was dictated by a proper and humane desire to make the coroner's court a protection for the people. Gross cruelties were undoubtedly perpetrated in these institutions, and it was his intention to prevent them at any rate in West Middlesex. On less obvious points in the meaning of his regulations Wakley explained himself now that the great reaction in his favour gave him an audience who would, for the first time, listen to an explanation. He pointed out that he had not declared an intention of holding an inquest upon every sudden death, but had only desired that notice should be given to him of all such deaths, when he would decide by the answers obtained to his preliminary inquiries whether the event had been natural or not. This, as a medical man, he could do and feel certain that his judgment was right. With regard to the regulation that the coroner should receive notice of all cases where women had died during labour or within a few hours of delivery it has been said that Wakley went a little too fast here. He certainly should have made his meaning more clear, as he ran a great risk of estranging the sympathies of the medical profession, in whose particular interest he had been acting throughout, as was very apparent by the allusion to quack medicines. The sugges- tion that he desired to sit in judgment on his brother practitioners was a subtle and plausible one and in certain quarters received credence. His real object was to The Mischief of "Covering" 389 stop unqualified practice in the interests both of the public and the medical profession. He was aware that it was the habit of many medical men to keep assistants to attend their obstetric cases for them, and he knew that the majority of these assistants were unqualified and that some were un- doubtedly ignorant. He was far-seeing enough to detect the mischief that such " covering " would work in the pro- fession twenty years before the General Medical Council existed and fifty years before it acted ; and he intended in all cases where a woman had died in childbirth under circumstances that pointed .to neglect or ignorance on the part of an unqualified man to fix some responsibility for the death upon the shoulders of both employer and assistant. It was notorious, also, that it was the habit of dirty, stupid women to attend upon their pregnant sisters unsupervised by medical men, and that their ministrations resulted too often in unspeakable misery to the patients and sometimes in a terrible spread of disease. The suppression of this practice as well as the termination of the scandals arising out of the employment of incompetent assistants had been aimed at by Wakley in the best abused of his instructions to the constabulary of Middlesex. To protect the public against unqualified practice and the medical profession against unfair competition was, in short, his double and doubly praiseworthy object in framing the regulation on account of which he was denounced as a callous violator of all decency, a person in whose estimation the sanctity of ^rief weighed nothing in comparison with a coroner's fee. 390 The Injured Dignity of the Magistrates CHAPTER XL [ I 840-1 846] Wakhy accused of usurping Magisterial Functions — Indignation of the Middlesex Magistrates — The Appointment of a Parliamentary Committee to Inquire into the Middlesex Coronerships — The Evidence of Baker, Wakley, and other Witnesses — The Findings of the Committee — Wakley's Prolonged Struggle with the Magistrates — The " Ingoldsby Legends " and Wakley — The Composite Dis- trict of West Middlesex — Three Specimen Medical Inquests — The Hounslow Flogging Case. This triumphant issue of Wakley's first serious encounter with the magistrates of Middlesex did not at once establish amicable relations between him and that body. Almost immediately an attempt was made to discredit his authority and judgment by an indignant criticism of certain proceed- ings which had occurred at one of his inquests, strong expressions of censure being made use of regarding his conduct. These should never have been employed by the. magistrates, w^ho held a commission to administer the law and should have remembered that Wakley's position in the public eye was more important than their own even when considered legally. The inquest itself was not especially interesting either from a medical or a forensic point of view. A fish-hawker of Uxbridge had been stabbed in the abdomen by a lad aged fifteen years under circumstances which led to a verdict from the coroner's jury of " Wilful Murder." Wakley instructed the constable in charge of the case to take the lad direct to Newgate upon a warrant made out by himself. The case had been previously before the Middlesex magistrates, who had adjourned their inquiry The Injured Dignity of the Magistrates 391 until the completion of the coroner's inquest. The result of Wakley's action was that when the magistrates again met there was no prisoner before them. They were excessively annoyed at being placed in a position in which they con- ceived that Wakley had exceeded his powers at the expense of their dignity. They rebuked the constable for carrying out Wakley's orders and gave an impetuous freedom to their speech in registering their opinions of the coroner's behaviour in taking an important duty out of their hands. •They conceived that Wakley had committed the boy solely out of an idea that by so doing he would make them look ridiculous. It was as much as to say, "You excellent gentlemen can deliberate over the boy's case if you like, but any opinion you arrive at will be only interesting to your- selves and not of any practical value to the public, for I have committed him to Newgate, whence he will be taken before your superiors." As a matter of fact Wakley had been actuated by no such stupid and vulgar motive, but only by what he conceived to be prudence and a regard for the public time. A similar case had occurred in a neigh- .bouring jurisdiction and Wakley, feeling that his brother coroner had been right on that occasion, followed the pre- cedent. The magistrates, however, believed that they were a deeply insulted body, and a movement was set on foot for the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the whole question of the Middle- sex coronerships. Other factors soon took their part in keeping the movement going. The vicar of Hendon, in the suddenly assumed character of an energetic magistrate, had not forgotten the official snub that he had received as the result of interfering with the exhumation of the body of Thomas Austin, and was glad to learn that a further oppor- tunity would be given to discuss that case before a new tribunal. The magistrates as a body had another grievance against Wakley. During the winter he had held an un- usually large number of inquests by deputy, and they were uneasy as to the legality of his action in so doing. Three sets of charges were thus formulated against Wakley : — 392 Parliament and the Middlesex Coronerships (i) that he had overstepped the jurisdiction of his office and trespassed upon that of the magistrates by committing the Uxbridge prisoner to Newgate ; (2) that he had held un- necessary inquests, notably in the case of Thomas Austin ; and (3) that he had allowed an unusually large number of inquiries to be conducted by deputy. On these grounds the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee was sought. Wakley, true to his previously expressed desire that his public duties should always be subject to the scrutiny of the public, so far from offering any opposition to its appoint- ment, spoke in its favour, and on March 17th, 1840, certain members of Parliament were commissioned to report upon the whole matter. Their reference was "to inquire into any measures which have been adopted for carrying into effect in the county of Middlesex the provisions of the Act I Victoria, c. 68, and also into any proceedings of the Justices of the Peace in relation to the office of coroner in the said county." The Committee was a strong one and consisted of these fifteen persons, : Lord Teignmouth (chairman), Colonel Thomas Wood, Mr. William Williams, Mr. Mac- kinnon, the Solicitor-General for Ireland, Mr. Cripps, Mr. Thomas Duncombe, Sir James Duke, Lord Eliot, Mr. Aglionby, Sir Thomas Freemantle, Sir Benjamin Hall, Mr. Gaily Knight, Sir George Strickland, and Wakley himself. Of these, five were to form a quorum. After a preliminary discussion upon their mode of pro- ceeding the first meeting for hearing evidence was held on May 29th, 1840, Lord Teignmouth being in the chair, and the first witness called was Mr. William Baker, who for nine years and eight months had been the coroner for the eastern division of the county. Mr. Baker, in the course of his evidence, expressed his opinion that the scale of payment to witnesses, both medical and others, under the Act was fair, but thought there should be some fee to the jurymen — an opinion that is now gaining ground rapidly. On the question of deputy coroners he said that Wakley's pre- decessor frequently held inquests by deputy, as also did his own predecessor, Mr. Unwin, although he had never done Parliament and the Middlesex Coronerships 393 duty by deputy himself. This evidence was very valuable to Wakley, as showing that the qualms of conscience which had ■ overtaken the Middlesex magistrates in the matter of deputy coroners were of recent origin, being, in fact, con- temporaneous with his election to office. Mr. C. Wright, clerk to the committees of the Middlesex magistrates, was examined next, particularly on the question of the holding of too frequent inquests. He stated that forty-eight inquests had been held in the county the expenses of which were dis- allowed by the magistrates ; of these, thirty were in Wakley's district ; and subsequently the expenses in forty-seven of the cases were allowed, those in one only being refused. The deputy clerk was examined next upon the incidental expenses of the two coronerships of Middlesex, using the figures which had already been prepared for the committee of Middlesex magistrates. He deposed that between August 14th and September 14th, 1839, forty-seven inquests were held by Wakley, who paid out of pocket ;^49 9s. 6d. — a fraction over £1 for each inquest. During the same period Mr. Baker held thirty-nine inquests and paid expenses out of pocket ;£6o is. — a fraction over £1 los. for each inquest. Mr. Thomas Bell, clerk to Wakley, deposed that he was for fifteen years clerk to Wakley's predecessor, Mr. Stirling, during which time the accounts were made up in the same way as they were at present. In Mr. Stirling's case there had been no obstacle or objection to the payment of such accounts, although there had been several since Wakley's appointment to the office. Mr. Bell had never heard of any objection being made by magistrates to the employment of deputy coroners till Wakley was appointed to the office. Sir Peter Lawrie, one of the Middlesex magistrates, was examined next, and from him it was elicited that one of the magistrates who greatly objected to the payment of the present coroner's accounts was the implacable vicar of Hendon. Sir Peter Lawrie said that his attention had never been drawn either to the coroner's accounts or to the practice of holding inquests by deputy before Wakley's appointment ; and he also added that previously to the 394 Wakley's Evidence before the Committee fracas arising out of the disinterment of the body of Thomas Austin, the vicar of Hendon had not as a justice of the peace given any special attention to the county finances, but that on the morning of the next quarter sessions he had told Sir Peter Lawrie he was "going to attend for the express purpose of objecting to the coroner's accounts." On June 30th Wakley's examination commenced, for in the proceedings of this Parliamentary Committee to inquire into his own behaviour he occupied the Gilbertian position of criminal as well as judge. His examination turned chiefly on the alleged want of accord between the local justices and the coroner. He was questioned closely upon the case where he had himself made out a warrant for the committal of a prisoner to Newgate on the charge of murder. The constable, Wakley admitted, said that he had been directed to take the prisoner back to Uxbridge, so that he might go before the magistrates, but he (Wakley) insisted on his being at once removed to Newgate, a coroner's verdict in esse being of more importance in his eyes than a magisterial decision in posse. Subsequently the magistrates met to investigate the case, and he knew that there was no prisoner forthcoming. But he learned also that his proceedings were made the subject of severe censure, and that the unfortunate constable, who only acted under his orders, was also severely rebuked. With regard to the Hendon case Wakley related the whole story over again, pointing out that it was his undoubted duty to hold the inquest, and that he was therefore compelled to ask the vicar and churchwardens of Hendon to disinter the body. They had refused to pay any attention to his warrant, and he had consequently been compelled to hire labourers to perform the task and to pay them himself. Wakley was followed by Mr. Serjeant Adams, who was examined on July 3rd with respect to the same case. He remembered a complaint being made at the Quarter Sessions held the previous October of indelicacy on the part of the coroner for the western division of the county in having the body of a pauper raised and exhibited to view whilst the vicar was performing the funeral service The Findings of the Committee 395 over another body in the churchyard — " but no one doubted Mr. Wakley's right to disinter the body." Much of the learned Serjeant's evidence was in the form of a discussion as to whether the phrase "duly held," as applied to an inquest, signified that the inquest had been necessary, but he was unable to help the Committee to any definite conclu- sions. The Committee reported on July 27th, 1840, and agreed to eleven resolutions, of which the seventh, eighth, and ninth had reference to Wakley personally, namely :■ — 7. That the magistrates in disallowing the fees for inquests held by deputy acted in conformity to the law, but that Mr. Wakley, in appointing a deputy during his temporary illness, followed the practice of his predecessors, and that by 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 105, coroners in case of illness or unavoidable absence were empowered to appoint their own deputy officers. 8. That with reference to an inquest held at Hayes the proceeding of the magistrates in committing an individual to Newgate on a charge of manslaughter after the jury had found a verdict of wilful murder was strictly legal. (This was the case upon which Wakley had relied as a precedent for his conduct in the matter of the Uxbridge lad, but the Committee did not take the same view. They considered that at any rate the magistrates were within their rights in committing the prisoner in what terms they pleased and in disregarding the coroner's jury, who had taken a more serious view. 9. That in reference to another inquest, the coroner having committed an individual to Newgate, and it being alleged that the magistrates had censured the coroner and rebuked the constable, the Committee having no distinct proof of the terms or form of such censure abstain from expressing any opinion thereon. 10. The tenth resolution was to- the effect that any interference of individual magistrates with the coroner for Middlesex had been over- ruled by the general court, and that the magistrates as a body showed a disposition' to uphold the authority of the coroners and to work well with them. The result of the Parliamentary Committee was satisfactory 396 Mr. Baker on Coroners and Magistrates "to Wakley, but not quite so satisfactory to Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker was an admirable official, as good a living argument for the legal coroner as Wakley was for the medical. The magistrates designed to do him honour at the expense of his colleague by inquiring into the conduct of the coronerships, and they succeeded in effecting the reverse. That he did not appreciate their attentions may be read in the following passage from his book on Coroners' Law, which was published in 1851, and remained the best text-book on the subject as Jong as the law continued unaltered : — " Considering the useful and important functions which justices of -the peace and coroners are reciprocally called upon to perform in penitentiaries, gaols, unions, workhouses, lunatic asylums, and other places," wrote Mr. Baker, " it seems quite clear that such public officers should stand with regard to the exercise of their duties in a perfect state of independence relative to one another, more especially as by the Poor-law Act all justices of the district in which a union is established are ex-officio guardians of the poor ; and that in calling into action the judicial functions of the coroner that officer ought not -to be fettered by the apprehension of a personal or vexatious exercise of authority by individuals on whose conduct he may be called upon to adjudicate It is much to be regretted that a disposition on -the part of the magistrates of some counties prevails to exercise too rigid an economy with regard to the payment of fees and expenses of inquests out of the county rates ; and by laying impediments in the -way of the coroner, and imposing restrictions upon him which the law never contemplated, they indirectly attack the efficiency of the office."* From this time forward, although the relations between himself and the Middlesex magistrates did not at once become smooth, no more trouble was experienced by Wakley about his conduct of inquests. He had proved to the public, to the magistrates, and to the House of Commons that none of the charges against him would bear even the flimsiest investigation ; while he had demonstrated in addition to the magistrates a fact that other opponents had found out * " A Practical Compendium of the Recent Statute Cases and Deci- sions Affecting the Office of Coroner." By William Baker, one of the Coroners for Middlesex. 1851. The Magistrates Continue Antagonistic 397 before — namely, that he was an awkward man to attempt to confine or coerce. He was quite ready to meet the views of persons able to express them in a reasonable manner, but he was not to be browbeaten. Moreover, he was an old hand at a newspaper war and entered into the spirit of it, so that the unfair and even libellous criticisms upon him instead of making him amenable only made him more determined to- conduct matters in his own way. For several years the- Middlesex magistrates put him to great trouble concerning^ his fees, which does not appear as a very dignified or worthy- attempt at reprisal. His disbursements were often very heavy in the aggregate, even though the individual inquests- were economically conducted, for his district was so enormous. The county consequently would frequently owe him large sums of money, which it would have been ex- ceedingly agreeable to him, living in the expensive style that he did, to obtain quickly, but which he never could extract from them without delays and formalities which, under the circumstances, were almost impertinent. The chief items in his claims against the county were for " mileage " — that is, for money allowed to the coroner for expenses and calculated at so much a mile, a shilling being the usual figure, from his residence to the place of the inquest. The magistrates com- plained that by taking up his abode at Harefield Park, on the extreme confines of his district, he had made the mileage- expenses as heavy as possible. Now, to begin with, this- contention was beside the point. Having no legal force it could only have been employed vexatiously. There was no- dispute that Harefield Park was within the district, and as the law said nothing of any necessity that the coroner should live in the centre of his district this objection to payment of Wakley^s claims was quite untenable. Wakley's reply,, however, took no legal grounds. He simply said that he had resided at Harefield some years before he was elected coroner, and that in a district so large if he lived in the centre of it he would almost invariably have a long way to- drive to each inquest, whereas by residing half at Harefield Park and half at Bedford Square he gave the county a 398 The Magistrates Continue Antagonistic double chance that he would be near the scene of action. In calling attention to the fact that his claim for mileage must of necessity be high because of the number of inquests that it was his duty to hold, he was always able to refer to the admittedly arduous nature of his work, so arduous that the magistrates themselves had petitioned the Lord Chancellor to appoint two people to do it. After a time this bickering over accounts ceased, and the magistrates were content to put up with a man who would not acknowledge their authority, yet whose duties towards the county which they and he served were always rigidly, and even enthu- siastically, discharged. But although peace was ultimately made Wakley never forgave the bench for their bitter and sustained opposition to him at the beginning of his ofificial relations with them. He resented the attempts to personally humiliate him, which were marked, and openly declared that their original design had been to drive him from the coronership. But more than his personal grievances he deplored the publicity that his quarrels with the magistrates received, because of the harm that he feared might thus be done to the future chances of medical men becoming coroners. He thought that the relations between himself and the Middlesex magistrates might be taken by the people as typical of those that would result from the choice of medical men, whereas the opposi- tion to him had been in the first instance wholly political and unconnected with his profession. Whether future elections of medical coroners were endangered or not there are no means of judging, but certainly these two years of quarrelling earned Wakley an unfair public reputation as a difficult man. His high opinion of the dignity and utility of his office which led him to assume an antagonistic demeanour towards all who attempted to lower the one or lessen the other was very generally treated by the press as a manifesta- tion of fussiness, until time proved Wakley right in his views, and a much suaver man than his early actions promised. The following lines from the " Ingoldsby Legends " reflect the erroneous estimate of him very distinctly, and probably Wakley in the Ingoldsby Legends 399 were written with the identical Uxbridge case as a text, although they did not appear till some years later — not indeed until Barham was dead and public opinion of Wakley as a coroner had completely veered round : — " They sent for the May'r and the Doctor, a pair Of grave men, who began to discuss the affair. When in bounced the Coroner, foaming with fury, ' Because,' as he said, ' 'twas pooh-pooh ! ing his jury.' " Then commenced a dispute, and so hot they went to't, That things seemed to threaten a serious Smeute, When, just in the midst of the uproar and racket. Who should walk in but St. Thomas k Becket. " Quoth his saintship, ' How now ? Here's a fine coil, I trow 1 I should like to know, gentlemen, what's all this row ? Mr. Wickliffe — or Wackliffe — whatever your name is — ' And you, Mr. May'r, don't you know, sirs, what shame is ? ' " * The records in the coroner's court of such a jurisdiction as that over which Wakley held sway would make curious and interesting reading. His inquests averaged fifteen per week, and the cases which came before him presented a variety that must have been almost peculiar to his district. A large metropolitan area supplied catastrophes of all the usual and unusual urban varieties, and questions of the liability of employers, the adequacy of hospital administration, the management of reformatories, and the sanitation of house property among others were offered to well-selected juries for their consideration. A large country area, on the other hand, brought its tale of rural woe. There were spots on the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire borders whose primeval ignorance and deep poverty seemed incredible recalling that the inhabitants were within a day's walk of the largest city in the world. Here the death of the miserably paid, under-fed labourer in his dirty hut, of the wayside tramp in the ditch, of the gamekeeper and the poacher, provoked investigation into the Corn Laws, the * " The Brothers of Birchington, a Lay of St. Thomas k Becket." The Ingoldsby Legends. Third Series. 1847. 400 A Primitive Jury Poor-law Amendment Act, and the Game Laws ; while occasionally some bucolic crime, terrible with the blind savagely of the primitive man, would come before a jury- so primitive themselves that the particular note of horror would fall upon deaf ears. On one occasion it was found that the jury who had been summoned to an inquest to be held in a hamlet near Harrow had divided among them- selves the raiment of the body, contributing their rejected rags to protect it from nakedness ! Many of the inquests held by Wakley were reported in the "Lancet," but only when there was a strong medical interest attached to some of the evidence. Wakley was before all things a medical coroner, and firmly convinced that a good coroner without medical knowledge could not be. Whenever he had a case before him where scientific knowledge came into play he gave that case full publicity, that it might form an argument for the future election of medical coroners. The early reports were written by George Ireland Mills, afterwards deputy-coroner for West Middlesex, the second of the Mills brothers whose early and intimate friendship with Wakley has already been recorded. Many of the cases so reported are also to be found in the "Annual Register," a publication which has always given a generous proportion of its space to the chronicles of horror and crime, and among them a few cases may be mentioned which in particular during the first seven years of Wakley's coronership drew attention to the utility that a medical coroner might be to the com- munity. A deaf lad who had gone to a certain Dr. TurnbuU of Russell Square, an oculist and aurist of note about the beginning of the present reign, died in the medical man's consulting-room during an operation. The evidence showed that the deceased had received from Dr. TurnbuU or his assistant some sort of bellows, with directions how to use them. He died whilst forcing air up his nose. TurnbuU was an able, inventive man and properly qualified, but his methods were reprehensible. He boldly held out hopes of cure to the incurable, magnified small mishaps into Dr. Turnbull of Russell Square 401 constitutional conditions requiring his exceptional skill for their remedy, was heroic in the application of treatment, and, generally speaking, played a part towards the public which a self-respecting practitioner would not have done. His practice was so enormous that on more than one occasion his neighbours in the quiet square had complained to the police of the obstruction to the traffic on the pave- ment caused by Turnbull's gratuitous patients assembling without his house at certain hours, and once at least this fortunate man had to appear in a police-court to be fined for his popularity. The irregularities in Turnbull's methods, despite this great public favour, were well known to Wakley, who saw in the death of the lad their possible result. It chanced also that a fatality had occurred but a few days before in Mr. Baker's jurisdiction, sudden death having followed the use of these same bellows for deafness. Wakley, therefore, ordered a post-mortem examination to be made, when certain appearances were described to the jury which Mr. Savage, the lecturer on anatomy at West- minster Hospital, attributed to the injection of cold air into the Eustachian tubes ; while Liston, the great surgeon, ascribed the boy's death to shock following on the same treatment, although he was not so positive in his evidence that the physical signs discovered post mortem had the significance that Mr. Savage gave them. Wakley ex- pounded this evidence to the jury, with the result that Turnbull was cautioned, by a rider to the verdict, never again to trust his instrument in unprofessional hands. Another case which caused much popular sensation was that of a cabman who had been plied with raw spirits by one of his fares with a view of ascertaining how much alcohol the poor wretch could carry. The cabman collapsed and died, and Wakley had considerable difficulty in per- suading the jury that the cause of death had been the imbibition of spirits, for they one and all refused to believe that raw spirit of potable description was a virulent and rapid poison if taken in sufficiently large doses. Wakley's little lecture on physiology enlightened the public. Another 2 c 402 An Extraordinary Coincidence case which occurred in Wakley's district was remarkable, firstly, by its medical bearings, and, secondly, because of the extraordinary coincidence that it formed. A well-known member of the Bar, a serjeant-at-law and leader on the Midland Circuit, was found in his study deluged with blood, the belief of those who found him being that he had cut his throat. No medical evidence being offered, Wakley ordered an adjournment to allow of a post-mortem examina- tion being made, when it was discovered that the haemor- rhage had proceeded from the lungs, and not from any external wound, self-inflicted or other. The coincidence lay in the fact that several years before the case occurred Wakley had given as an example of the necessity for medical knowledge in the coroner the supposititious instance of a death from pulmonary haemorrhage being mistaken for cut-throat. He pointed out that many people believed it to be wrong, dangerous, and impedimental to the course of the law to touch a corpse until after the inquest ; that, conse- quently, such a case unless medical evidence was provided might be I'eported to the jury as a suicide upon unchallenged testimony and a verdict obtained in accordance. The sup- posititious case as put by Wakley was considered exceedingly far-fetched, so that it was extraordinary that a very similar one should have occurred in real life in his own experience within a few years. The publication of these and other cases served to impress on the public mind the feeling that with a medical coroner the inquest was a safeguard that it never could be where the coroner was a lawyer. And that some such general impression was created is shown by the extraordinary out- burst of public sympathy that greeted the action of the coroner of West Middlesex in the most sensational inquiry that it was ever his duty to hold. When in August, 1846, in accordance with Wakley's direction, a jury found that Private White, of the Seventh Hussars, had died from the effects of a flogging administered according to the ordinaiy regula- tions then existing in the Army, the anger of many woiihy and influential people -as well as of military martinets would The Value of Popular Support 403 have seriously jeopardised Wakley's position had it not been for the strong public credit which he enjoyed by that time as a fair judge, a shrewd man, and a logical interpreter of medical evidence. There was judgment as well as humanity behind the endorsement that Wakley's conduct then re- ceived, and the popular confidence which he enjoyed enabled him to carry through a bitter struggle with consti- tuted authority before which a weaker man or a man less reinforced by public opinion would have almost certainly succumbed. A righteous cause has strength, but the solid front of a great public department does not collapse before mere righteousness. 404 The Death of Private White CHAPTER XLI [1846] The Death of Frederick John White — The Report to Sir James M'Grigor — The Action of the Vicar of Heston — Wahley holds an Inquest — Adjournment for Assistance of Mr. Day— Second Adjournment for Assistance of Erasmus Wilson — The Evidence — The Verdict — Public Opinion and the Disputes that arose — Wakley''s Attitude criticised — The Fortunate Result of the Inquest. On June iSth, 1846, at the Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow Heath, a private of the Seventh Hussars named Frederick John White received one hundred and fifty lashes with the cat-o'-nine tails, administered by two regimental farriers in pursuance of a sentence pronounced by a district court-martial held to inquire into a sudden assault made by him upon his sergeant. White took his flogging manfully in the presence of his colonel and Dr. Warren, the surgeon of the regiment, and walked to the station hospital, of which he continued an inmate until July nth, the day of his death. During the weeks that elapsed between his entry into the hospital and his end he was at one time apparently convalescent, the external wounds on the back having healed. Suddenly he manifested serious symptoms of cardiac and pulmonary mischief. Pleurisy and pneumonia developed, followed by complete exhaustion and paralysis. On the occurrence of these symptoms a com- munication was made by Colonel Whyte, the colonel of the regiment, and Dr. Warren to Sir James M'Grigor, the Director-General of the Army Medical Department, for the scandal that would ensue if Private White died in the hospital, where he had been sent to recover from the effects The Official Report on the Catastrophe 405 of a military flogging, was clearly foreseen. Sir James M'Grigor instructed Dr. John Hall, a first class staff-surgeon, to proceed to Hounslow and to report to headquarters upon the condition of Private White and the circumstances of his illness. Dr. Hall arrived in time to see White die. He reported to the Director-General that on July 6th, the very day upon which it had been intended to dischai^ge White from the hospital as convalescent, he began to complain of pain in the region of the heart ; that from that day he went downhill rapidly, and that it would be difficult to ascertain the cause of death without making a careful post-mortem examination. On July 13th a post-mortem examination was accordingly made by Dr. Hall, Dr. Warren, and an assistant staff-surgeon, Dr, Reid. The result of this examination, as reported to Sir James M'Grigor, was briefly as follows : — That the parts upon which the punishment had been inflicted had healed and that the discoloration to be seen on the back of the corpse was due to the gravitation of the blood to the parts. White having been strictly confined to his bed for the last days of his life. A portion of the integument from between the shoulder-blades, over the part where the punishment had been most severe, having been removed, was found to be natural and, with the exception . of the dis- coloration already noted, quite healthy. There were signs of old pulmonary and cardiac, mischief and of recent pneu- monia, pleurisy, and endocarditis, and the liver was found to be considerably enlarged. The certificate of the cause of death, " drawn up for the satisfaction of the officer command- ing the Seventh Hussars," to use the signatories' own phrase, ran as follows : — " Having made a careful post-mortem examination of Private Frederick White of the Seventh Hussars, we are of opinion that he died from inflammation of the pleura and of the Hning membrane of the heart ; and we are further of opinion that the cause of death was in nowise connected with the corporal punishment he received on the 15th of June last. (Signed) "JOHN HALL, M.D., Staff Surgeon First Class. J. L. WARREN, M.D., Surgeon Seventh Hussars. F. REID, M.D., Assistant Staff Surgeon." 4o6 An Inquest at the Barracks The death was registered at Isleworth on Dr. Warren's certificate as having occurred from inflammation of the heart, and on the same day the regimental sergeant-major informed the Rev. H. S. Trimmer, the vicar of Heston, in which parish the Hounslow Cavalry Barracks were situated, of the intention of the authorities to bury the deceased on the following day, and further added that the death was the result of "liver complaint." The discrepancy between the reason assigned by the surgeon to the regiment and that assigned by the sergeant-major for the death of White led to inquiries, in answer to which the latter frankly stated that the deceased private had been flogged in military fashion five weeks before his death. The vicar said that under those circumstances he should require to have the authority of the coroner before permitting the funeral to take place, and communicated with Wakley, who issued the usual warrant for an inquest to be held on July 15th. Accordingly, on July 15th an inquest was held at the barracks. After the coroner and the jury had examined the body the three surgeons who had made the post-mortem examination for the information of the Director-General and the satisfaction of the colonel of the regiment presented themselves to give evidence. It became known, however, that their report to Sir James M'Grigor and to Colonel Whyte had been made without any examination of more than a portion of the skin of the back. They had not looked at the spine or the muscles covering it or even beneath the skin. This was the more extraordinary because the man had been paralysed in his lower extremities for two days before his death and had lost control over his bladder. The signifi- cance of the omission was pointed out by Wakley to the jury, and on his advice they nominated a surgeon uncon- nected with the persons interested in the case to complete the examuiation of the body. Mr. Horatio Grosvenor Day, a surgeon residing at Isleworth, was nominated by the jury to make an independe:;it examination, and Wakley having made out the requisite order for this gentleman adjourned the inquest until the 20th of the month. But at the Extraordinary Evidence 407 adjourned inquest it was elicited that Mr. Day also had not considered it necessary to make any examination at all of the back and spine of the deceased, having clearly mistaken the object for which he had been asked to give his assistance. Wakley considered the omission very unfortunate, as the inquiry could not proceed until a fresh necropsy had been made with special reference to the matters upon which information was required by the court. The jury requested that before Wakley adjourned the inquiry again he would appoint some London surgeon unconnected in the remotest way with the circumstances of the case and of undeniable position in his profession to make a thorough examination of the body and give the court and jury the benefit of his views. The coroner appointed Mr. (afterwards Sir) Erasmus Wilson and issued a warrant for the disinterment of the body, adjourning the inquest for the second time until July 27th. On this day, and also on August 3rd — for the length of the proceedings compelled a third adjournment — the medical evidence was at last given completely. It now appeared that the unfoi^tunate White had received no food for seventeen hours before his punishment, and that after he had been flogged and had walked over to the hospital he hatd requested the sergeant to give him a basin of tea as he felt very faint, which request the sergeant had refused. From the notes in the hospital ward-book and from the medical register, which were both produced, and from statements in the course of Dr. Warren's evidence, it seemed that the patient when he entered the station hospital immediately after the flogging had been inflicted was medically examined, and his back was found to be lacerated and covered with blood, while between the shoulder-blades there was a wound about six inches long and four or five inches wide. He was said to be " severely punished from the neck to the loins." Fomentations of lukewarm water wei-e employed until June 22nd, and from that date until June 25th the dressing was a cetaceous lead ointment. On June 25th a number of small boils appeared on the patient's back. Dr. Warren said that the poultices 4o8 Extraordinary Evidence were ordered to be applied immediately, but in the ward- book dated June 28th it was stated that the poultices were ordered for another patient. At any rate, White did not get them on the 25th. On the 28th the medical register said that the boils were discharging but much inflamed. After this some little discrepancy was revealed between the register for which the medical officer was responsible and the ward-book kept by the hospital orderly. On July ist the register reported that the back was nearly well, " only for the small boils that have not cicatrised over," but the hospital orderly's report showed that the poultices were still being applied to cover four or five boils. From July ist to July 4th the medical register was silent, but the ward-book told of purges and poultices. On the latter date the patient was much better, volunteered to clean an outhouse, and actually did half an hour's work. But on July 5th he com- plained of pain in the right side, and on the 6th the medical register spoke of a pain that was located in the region of the heart and aggravated by inspiration. On the 7th he was obviously in pain and ill. On the 8th the symptoms of pleurisy and pneumonia were mai^ked, and this condition was treated by purgatives and the abstraction of thirty-two ounces of blood. On the 9th a note recorded the great relief which had followed the bleeding. On the loth he was removed from the surgical to the medical wards as paralysis was found to have supervened in the lower extremities. On the nth the register recorded the patient's death. He had totally lost motion and sensation in the lower limbs and control over the bladder. He had a rapid, irregular pulse, a cold skin, and was throughout the day in a condition of stupor or collapse. He died in the evening, three-quaiiers of an hour after Dr. Hall's arrival. Such was the general gist of the examination of Dr. Warren as medical officer of the regiment, of hospital orderlies, sergeants, and certain other patients in the hospital. Dr. Warren, who was not sworn, gave more particular medical evidence. He deposed that he had examined Private White most carefully to ascertain if he was fit to undergo Conflicting Medical Testimony 409 corporal punishment or imprisonment and had certified in the affirmative. He stated that the injured back was nearly well at the end of a fortnight, and that he had intended to discharge the patient from hospital on July 6th, and had told him so on the previous day. When for the first time the patient complained of internal pains he was examined with the stethoscope, and from that time until his death he was treated for inflammation of the heart and pleura. Dr. Hall, who was sworn, described the results of the post-mortem examination made by him in company with Dr. Warren and Dr. Reid, his presence being due to the command of Sir James M'Grigor. These were in accordance with the view, already expressed in the joint certificate, that the deceased had died from inflammation of the pleura, the lung, and the lining membrane of the heart. Dr. Hall had made no examination of the muscles of the back or of the parts below the skin, a piece of skin which had been dissected from the back having been examined and found healthy. He did not believe that the condition of the internal organs had any connexion with the injuries received during the flogging. Dr. Reid gave evidence to the same effect, merely explaining at length what were the exact post-mortem appearances of the heart. Mr. Horatio Grosvenor Day then deposed that he first examined the body of the deceased on July i6th at Hounslow Barracks by the order of the coroner. He then came to the conclusion that death had been produced by pleurisy and pneumonia. He had been hampered in his examination by the fact that the body had pi'eviously been examined by the three military surgeons, so that many of the viscera were out of place and the contents of the chest much decomposed. He made no examination of the muscles of the back or of the spinal cord. He was present at such an examination made on July 22nd by Erasmus Wilson in Heston churchyard, the body having been exhumed by the coroner's order, and had signed with that gentleman a state- ment of the appeai^ances that were then present in the tissues of the back. Erasmus Wilson, consulting surgeon to the St. Pancras Infirmary, lecturer on anatomy and physiology 4IO Erasmus Wilson's Theories at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and author of works on those two subjects and on cutaneous diseases, gave evidence next. He said he had examined the back of the deceased on July 22nd by order of the coroner. He had examined the back only, the other parts of the body not being in a state to be further scrutinised. Upon raising the muscles over the region of the ribs and spinal column he had found the deepest layer in a state of disorganisation. Between the sixth and seventh ribs the muscles were in a pulpy state, and in the groove between the ribs and spine they were in a similar condition. The contents of the spinal canal were in a state of decomposition. Erasmus Wilson considered that two questions arose out of the foregoing facts : (i) How did the pulpy disoi"ganisation of the muscles originate ? and (2) Could their state have influenced the organs of the chest ? He considered, firstly, that the pulpy softening of the muscles was due to their excessive contrac- tion during the agony of punishment which had produced laceration and inflammation of the substance. Regarding the second question, he had no doubt that these causes were responsible directly or indirectly for the inflammation of the contents of the chest. Cold and moral depression might have had their influence, but the influence of laceration and decomposition of muscles closely adjacent to the lining membrane of the thorax would certainly have produced the same effect. In this case he pointed out that the morbid changes in the pleura took place on the same side as the disorganisation of the muscles. It was his opinion that Frederick John White would be living had not the punish- ment been inflicted. He had no doubt whatever on the point. On August 3rd the medical witnesses made additional statements. Dr. Warren and Dr. Reid, having heard the depositions of all the medical witnesses, said that they did not believe the death to have been in any way due to the punishment inflicted. Mr. Day, who had assisted Erasmus Wilson to make the post-mortem examination upon which that gentleman had based his opinions, considered the cause of the change in the muscles a matter of conjecture. That A Sensational Verdict 411 they were changed was certain, but the curious appearances might have been due to putrefaction. The flogging might have indirectly caused the disorganisation. A paper signed by him and by Erasmus Wilson was put in proving that, whatever the pathology or causes of the development of this pulpy disorganisation of the muscles of the back might be, the condition had actually existed and was witnessed by both experts. Mr. Day added that the softening of the muscular fibres had been noticed in the external intercostal muscles but not in the internal intercostal muscles, and could not, there- fore, be in close proximity to the pleura, so as to account for a spread of mischief to that membrane. Erasmus Wilson having heard the additional statements in court, as well as the depositions of all the witnesses, gave it as his opinion that death had been due to the flogging and its effects. The painful laceration of the skin had, he argued, affected the internal organs, and in support of this he quoted the well-known connexion between superficial burns and visceral lesions. He pointed out as an anatomical fact that there are no internal intercostal muscles in the particular region in question, so that Mr. Day's remai'k must count for nothing. If one layer of muscles was affected in that situa- tion it must have been in contact with the pleura. The coroner having summed up the evidence the jury returned the following voluminous verdict : — " That on July i ith, 1846, the deceased, Frederick John White, died from the mortal effects of a severe and cruel flogging of one hundred and fifty lashes which he received with certain whips on the 15th day of June, 1846, at the Cavalry Barracks on Hounslow Heath, at Heston ; and that the said flogging was inflicted upon him under a sentence passed by a district court-martial composed of officers of the Seventh regiment of Hussars duly constituted for his trial. That the said court-martial was authorised by law to pass the said severe and cruel sentence ; and that the said flogging was inflicted upon the back and neck of the said Frederick John White by two farriers in the presence of John James Whyte, the Lieutenant-Colonel, and James Low Warren, the surgeon, of the said regiment ; and that so and by means of the said flogging the death of the said Frederick John White v?as caused." 412 Public Excitement Aroused In returning their verdict the jury made use of the strongest language in an appended rider, wherein they expressed their horror and disgust that the law of the land provided that the revolting punishment of flogging should be permitted upon British soldiers ; and they implored " every man in the kingdom to join hand and heart in forwarding petitions to the legislature praying in the most urgent terms for the abolition of every law and order and regulation which permits the disgraceful practice of flogging to remain one moment longer a slur upon the humanity and fair name of the people of this country." Upon the announcement of this verdict the great excite- ment which the proceedings had caused in the public mind became evident. The newspapers teemed with allusions to the inquest, generally of an uncomplimentary nature towards the Service. This was due not so much to the merits of the humane side of the question as to the curious blundering of the military authorities. Such minor points as the fact that the first necropsy had been made, not for the satisfaction of justice, but " for the satisfaction of the Colonel of the Seventh Hussars " ; that the sergeant-major had reported the case to Mr. Trimmer as one of liver complaint, and had exaggerated the interval between the flogging and the death ; and that the patient a few hours before his death had been moved from his ward to give an appearance of a break in the con- tinuity of his disease, gave colour to the popular view that attempts had been made to baulk honest inquiry. The in- humanity of flogging the man after a seventeen hours' fast, and refusing him a cup of tea after he had paid the penalty of his insubordination, also prejudiced the popular opinion profoundly against White's judges. The subject was inci- dentally noticed in the House of Commons, when Wakley was found to be prepared to combat the statements of his critics, for the political journals had warned him of the tone which the comments upon his behaviour as coroner would take. He knew that he would be accused of partiality, for in 1836, in the debate upon the Mutiny Bill, he had, as has been recorded, protested strongly against the flogging A Question in the House 413 of insubordinate soldiers, and had stated that the brutal punishment had been followed by death. Feeling certain that he would be reminded that he could not have been free from prejudice while conducting the inquiry, he had pro- vided himself with three letters — one from the solicitor who had watched the case on behalf of the officers of the Seventh Hussars ; one from Mr. Trimmer, the vicar of Heston and a Middlesex magistrate, whose public spirit and acumen had led to the inquiry being made ; and one from an independent spectator, a barrister and retired Indian judge. The third letter was an enthusiastic encomium of Wakley's behaviour ; but the other two, which were couched in soberer terms, declared that his conduct of the inquest had been fair and impartial, and that in his summing-up the coroner had laid no special stress on the arguments of either side. The first two of these Wakley read aloud to the House, in answer to a formal question, and from that moment routed any plans on the part of his political foes to make insulting reflections. Some quarrelling, however, over the verdict was inevitable. The counti"y was so strongly in favour of the humane rider appended by the jury that all who took the other side, whether from honest conviction or from reasons of con- venience, were stung into justification of their attitude. A triple course was then open to them — ^they could abuse the judge as biassed, the expert witness for the other side as ignorant, or the jury as foolish. The jury were let alone. They were drawn from the people, and their verdict was popular, and to say that they had been imable to follow the reasoning of the case would have been exceedingly bad policy. In political circles Wakley had taken care of himself by reading to the House remarkable testimony to his impar- tiality, while he was always an awkward subject for abuse, as he had an inconvenient habit, when he seemed most care- less, of turning suddenly and rending his abusers. There remained Erasmus Wilson, at this time only thirty-seven years of age and by no means the important figure in medical science or politics that he was twenty-five years later. He was simply a rising young man. Wilson had against his 414 The Cause of Death Remains Disputed views the views of Mr. Day and of the three military surgeons. The evidence of the latter was considered by the public to be tainted. No doubt they had earnestly desired, for the sake of their department and their duties in that department, that the death of White should be found to be unconnected with the punishment he had received. But there was no reason to suppose that they did not speak with perfectly honest conviction, and on reading their evidence after the lapse of fifty years it can be well understood that many should have been of their way of thinking and that they themselves should have been entirely certain that Erasmus Wilson and the jury had erred. That White died from pneumonia, pleurisy, and endocarditis there was no doubt. That the punishment he had received might directly cause these terrible sequelae was just conceivable. The probability of the con- ception was increased when the subject, from constitution, from previous damage to structure, or from ill-regulated habits of life, had a predisposition to readily break down, and all these factors were present in White's case. So that in arguing that the flogging had no connexion whatever with the death the military surgeons had a very difficult task when the indirect effects of stich treatment were taken into account. The punishment that White had undergone would certainly lower his whole vitality and leave him more susceptible of any malign influence either existing in himself or present in his environment. It was allowed by all that the connexion between flogging and pleurisy with pneumonia and endo- carditis was difficult to trace, while the connexion of two at any rate of these pathological conditions with cold was obvious. But how far the effects of cold would be rendered additionally mischievous where the resistance of the subject had been already annulled by physical torture was another matter. The military surgeons had been in fault in giving their definite opinion that flogging could have had nothing to do with White's death before making a thorough post- mortem examination, and without remembering how difficult- it would be to prove that no indirect injury had accrued to White from so serious a punishment. Theory, Fact, and Sentiment 415 Mr. Day's evidence was perfectly honest and straight- forward, but it really amounted to nothing at all. His first necropsy was admittedly made upon the parts of the body that had already been examined by three other medical men, under circumstances that precluded him from forming any judgment, and his further examination of the body con- sisted in looking on while Erasmus Wilson discovered the pulpy condition of the muscles of the back. The position of Erasmus Wilson was not an easy one. He found a pathological state for which he could give no very definite reason, and one which, indeed, was unknown to science. That he found the condition admits of no doubt, firstly, because, like others, he had no object in giving evidence except that of establishing the truth ; and, secondly, because Mr. Day, who did not agree with the general view of the case, also . recognised the pulpy state of the muscles, and explained it by saying that the changes were possibly putre- factive. With this condition of the muscles, for which he admitted he could find no scientific precedent, Erasmus Wilson tried to connect the michief in the pleura, lungs, and heart — a direct sequence of pathological events ending in death. But the reasoning was not cogent. The analogy drawn from the fact that large surface burns are frequently followed by visceral lesions possessed some point, but was only an analogy. The assertion that the changes could not be putrefactive because they had taken place in the deep structures while the more superficial planes of the body remained unaltered was only an assertion of a probability. All these arguments were thrashed out in the " Lancet," to which Erasmus Wilson contributed several earnest and elaborate papers in explanation of his evidence, but it is doubtful if either side ever convinced the other. What, however, is not doubtful is this — that the public entirely repudiated scientific evidence in the matter. It was not Erasmus Wilson's able scientific arguments which accounted for the verdict of the jury with its pathetic rider. It was his broad and comprehensive assertion that, whatever might be the pathological details, had it not been for the flogging the 4i6 The Abolition of Flogging in the Army man Frederick White would be alive, which obtained from a jury of Frederick White's countrymen a verdict affixing the stain of blood-guiltiness upon the regulations of Her Majesty's Army. The jury felt that they represented the feelings of Great Britain. Flogging in the Army must be abolished, and they were doing their best towards that end. Here they had a case in which directly or indirectly a man's death was due to the horrible practice. Let others settle the possibility of the directness, or the measure of the in- directness, the verdict must be one of manslaughter against the regulations. Such is the story of the famous Hounslow inquest, which not only aroused more public interest, probably, than any inquiry ever held in a coroner's court, but certainly placed a national veto upon the inhuman practice of flogging in the Army. Great modifications were almost immediately intro- duced into this method of punishment, so great that when in 1881 the Army Act formally abolished the practice few knew that it was still sanctioned by the law of the land. A Stupid Libel 417 CHAPTER XLII [1846-1861] The " Medical Times " and the Hounslow Inquest — Three Success- ful Libel Actions against Healey and others — Peace on the Coroner's Bench — Some Inquests between 1846 and 7861 — The Case of John Sadleir — Charles Dickens as Juryman — His Testimony to Wakley's Humanity. One dissentient voice alone was found amid the public con- gratulation that was evoked by the verdict in the Hounslow flogging case. The " Medical Times," a paper started in 1839 in opposition to the " Lancet," could find no words too hard for Wakley, and could frame no accusations against him sufficiently enormous or unlikely. He had been an advocate and not a judge. He had adjourned the case when he saw it going against his wishes and had " used the interval in instructing his friend Wilson, a man formerly his own servant, to get up his set-off testimony to the marplot truths of regular and well-informed science The judge took refuge in a hireling witness and a hugger- mugger autopsy There was something absolutely execrable in the coroner's farcical impersonation of judge- ship Coroner Wakley seemed like a man compro- mised to infamy or worse — personal unhappiness — if it should be proved that White died without murderous guilt in some survivor He suggests, insinuates, applauds, encourages, assails, twists, twirls, and manoeuvres in every shape, form, and direction to conjure up against an honest practitioner a fictitious semblance of murder ! . . . . Why this needless display of ingenuity to get up against Dr. Warren, or, failing him. Colonel Whyte, or, failing him, the 2 D 4i8 Actions Against Healey and Others farrier, a colourable semblance of murder ? There is, of course, but one reply — Wakley wants a public sensation to help his fortunes in a forthcoming election." And so on, and so on. Some of these libels were published while the jury were still sitting. Wakley at. once moved in the Court of Queen's Bench for a criminal information against the proprietors of the paper, a certain Healey, who was also editor, and a man named Cooke. A rule nisi was obtained, but was subsequently discharged by the Court, for reasons which it is difficult for the lay mind to appreciate, seeing the coarse and evident nature of the libels. Wakley had defended himself against Healey's slander in a speech made at Exeter Hall and had then used retaliatory terms which the Court considered to justify the refusal to him of the exceptional assistance of a criminal information. Healey cherished a deep hatred for the editor of the " Lancet." As early as 1843 the " Medical Times," with this man as editor, had begun to libel Wakley in a particularly offensive and audacious manner. Healey made no statements, but he was prolific of the darkest insinuations against Wakley's private morality and political honesty. For the most part what he said was so obviously ridiculous and inspired by personal spite that Wakley was content to let the public judge between his slanderer and himself. When Healey termed Erasmus Wilson " a man formerly Wakley's servant " because Wakley's son had been Wilson's pupil and later his demonstrator of anatomy, the extent to which he was pre- pared to distort the truth placed him without the range of respectable controversy. Wakley's words in the "Lancet" addressed to the profession on the subject were : "We have sometimes been asked why we omit to notice the libels against the private character of the editor of this work, which we were informed often appeared in the leading articles of the ' Medical Times.' Our answer always has been that we did not believe that such a trashy production was read by the members of the profession ; and, secondly, that the motives of the slanderer were so palpably obvious and his stupidity so thoroughly apparent that if the rogue Actions Against Healey and Others 419 were allowed rope enough he was sure to cheat the execu- tioner at the Old Bailey." To this policy of silent contempt Wakley rigidly adhered for two years, but in February, 1845, at the instance of his Finsbury constituents, he suddenly turned round upon the foe and instituted civil proceedings against the proprietors of the publication, one of whom was Healey, the editor, and the other, at that time, a man named Weathers. Healey and Weathers allowed judgment to go by default and were fined ^£150 damages and the costs of the action, their conduct being made the subject of severe stricture by Chief Baron Pollock. The printers of the "Medical Times," Messrs. Kelly and Co., called on Wakley, apologised for the attacks that had been made upon him, and stated that they had refused to publish the " Medical Times " for the future. Healey, however, persisted in his course ; indeed, the unlucky man made it the object of his life for many years to injure Wakley. He continued to publish the libellous state- ments and added a reflection upon the Chief Baron's judicial integrity implying that Sir Frederick Pollock had leant towards Wakley's side because "he had been a fellow member of Parliament." He called for public subscriptions to pay his damages and help him to persevere in his great work of exposing the medical member for Finsbury. Wakley brought a second action against Healey, with whom in this instance was associated Cooke as publisher. On this occasion the jury found for Wakley with damages £tJS ^-nd costs of the suit. The defendants then issued a writ of error, and at this time occurred the Hounslow inquest. So that at the time when the violent onslaughts upon Wakley as coroner were made, both Healey and Cooke had been found guilty of libelling him, the former having had double experience of the inconvenience of his conduct. Wakley's failure to obtain a rule for criminal information caused delay in the proceedings of the third suit against Healey, the writ in which was issued immediately upon the refusal of the rule. The case was not heard until November 13th, 1849. In the meantime the writ of error in the second suit. 420 Peace at Last which was to have been argued in the Exchequer Chamber, collapsed. No counsel appeared for the defendants, and judgment was given for the plaintiff, the costs and damages of this suit amounting in all to ;£362. The third action against Healey was tried before Chief Baron Pollock and a special jury, and a verdict was returned for Wakley with damages ;^35o. Against this verdict the defendants Healey and Cooke appealed alleging misdirection and excessive damages. A court consisting of the Chief Baron and three other judges found that there had been no misdirection and that con- sidering the nature of the libels the jury might undoubtedly have awarded a much larger sum. The small sum had been fixed because it had been stated that Healey was not in a position to pay more, which was possible, for he never paid even that. When the stormy developments which ensued upon the Hounslow inquest finally were set at rest Wakley had peace in his coroner's seat. Many of the Middlesex magistrates had on this occasion supported his authority and borne evidence to his impartiality, and thus an understanding between him and the bench was at last established, which, although it never amounted to cordiality, remained the respectful neutrality of persons who have no reason to think lightly one of another. Attempts were made both within and without the House to prove that Wakley had prostituted the office of coroner to his desire to achieve popularity among his constituents, but the thorough manner in which his duties were discharged and the great practical utility of many of his suggestions were easier of appreciation by the people than were the underhand schemes which were credited to him by his detractors. As a consequence the general feeling was, firstly, disbelief in the everlasting stories of his manoeuvring ; and, secondly, indifference to the question. Wakley was a good coroner — ^that could not be gainsaid ; and whether his virtues in office had their origin in a rrioral desire to do right or a political desire to get on did not concern the community. His right to employ The Value of a Medical Coroner 421 a deputy had been legally recognised, and the charges made against him of excessive expenditure had ended in his com- plete vindication. With regard to his enthusiasm for his work there had never been any question. All had allowed that he was remarkably energetic ; and now his critics, who had hitherto pointed out that his energy was misdirected and due to improper motives, were reduced to silence, convinced either that they had been in error or that it was dangerous to record further slanders. Among the inquests held by Wakley between the year 1846 and the year 1861, when his health compelled him to leave England, many, as might be expected, presented points of medico-legal interest. In such cases a synopsis of the evidence and the result of the necropsy were frequently inserted in the " Lancet." Wakley's deliverances from the bench in these cases were often well worth hearing. They were intended to form a regular vindication of the right of a medical man to the coroner's position, and to prove to demonstration that a medical coroner alone could be capable of interpreting the value of medical evidence to a jury. On such points, therefore, as the extent to which homoeopathic treatment could be held accountable for an untoward result ; as the proper interpretation of the physical signs of death or of separate existence ; as the quantity of prussic acid con- tained in apparently innocuous solutions like almond water and the poisonous doses of prussic acid and other deadly drugs ; as the workings of the Poor-law Acts ; and as the value of immediate medical assistance in cases of emergency — on all these and numerous cognate subjects his words attracted attention for they were instinct with good sense. Now and again his medical views, based on the knowledge of his day, would hardly meet with acceptance at this end of the century. The. spirit which Wakley inculcated was, for example, right when he reproached a well-known physician in uncompromising terms for bleeding and not cupping an apoplectic patient, ridiculing the excuse that he "had not his cupper with him " as a reason for inactivity. The over- weening sense of personal importance which placed the 422 Inquest on John Sadleir health of the patient lower in the scale than the dignity of the physician was deserving of rebuke ; but we know now that cupping is practically useless in such cases, whereas the bleeding which had been performed by the physician might in some cases, if heroic in quantity, have proved salutary. Wakley was particularly watchful over children, and several of his inquests were held because there had been a reasonable impression abroad that the treatment of the parents had contributed to the death of the child. One such case occurred in the neighbourhood of his own house, namely, in Prince's Street, Fitzroy Square, the inquest being held on November 28th, 1848. A child aged fourteen and a half years had been tied up to a bedpost by her mother and the room locked, while the mother went out for the day. On the mother's return the child was found to be dead, having apparently been strangled in an effort to sit down, whereas the rope had been so adjusted that she was unable to ease her irksome position. Wakley told the woman to consider herself in custody and administered the usual caution before taking her evidence. He then committed her for manslaughter, of which crime she was afterwards found guilty by a jury ; but an amiable judge considering that she had acted more through ignorance than from premeditated cruelty sentenced her to one year of hard labour only. Before bringing the account of Wakley's coronership to a close, mention must be made of two more inquests, one because of the temporary importance of the victim and the extremely sensational nature of the episode, and the other becavTse Wakley's conduct during the inquiry has been handed down to eternal fame. These are large words, but accurate in this connexion, for Charles Dickens chanced to be on the juiy and wrote his recollections of the circum- stances. The first was the case of John Sadleir, to which allusion has already been made. John Sadleir was member of Parliament for Sligo county and had held the post of Junior Lord of the Treasury in Lord Aberdeen's short-lived fcoalition Ministry, when Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Palmerston Home Secretary. Sadleir had Inquest on John Sadleir 423 sprung into prominence among his Irish comitrymen as a violent opponent of that anti-Catholic movement which was brought to a crisis by the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill and Lord John Russell's indiscreet behaviour. A body was found behind Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath under circumstances that pointed to suicide distinctly but not quite conclusively. The clothes were undisturbed, but a hat was found at some distance from the body. By the side of the body was a bottle labelled " Essential Oil of Almonds " ; a silver cream-jug was discovered also close at hand, which had evidently been the receptacle of the poison, for it still smelt strongly of the essence. A case of razors lay near. At the inquest a surgeon deposed that he had found a considerable quantity of oil of almonds as well as some opium in the stomach of the deceased. Wakley himself identified the body for the information of the jury as that of John Sadleir, M.P., who had been well known to him in the House of Commons. From the evidence of Sadleir's butler it appeared that the deceased had told a servant to procure some essential oil of bitter almonds the evening before the discovery of the body. At this point the coroner seemed disposed to close the inquiry, when it was given in evidence that the deceased had left three letters in the hall of his house in Portland Place. These letters proved to be of a highly sensational character, revealing the story of enormous frauds. Sadleir's countrymen had trusted him, not only with their suffrages but with their money, and he had been entirely unworthy of the con- fidence bestowed on him, being simply a cruel audacious swindler. In these letters he accused himself of "most infamous villainy," and mentioned that " no torture could be too much for such crimes. But," he said, " I cannot live to see the tortures I have inflicted on others." He spoke in a similarly repentant strain in a letter to a fellow Irish member. The letters and all the facts pointed to deter- mination on the part of Sadleir to kill himself, and the jury omitted the usual formula and agreed that the deceased had clearly known the meaning of the action when he killed 424 Inquest on John Sadleir himself, and was not suffering from temporary derange- ment. It was an important circumstance that Wakley should have been able personally to identify the body as that of Sadleir, for no sooner did the news of the death reach the public than an astounding rumour was spread and gained wide support that Sadleir was still alive and had escaped to the Continent. The rumour gave details. A pauper's body had been bought by Sadleir, who saw that the day when he must fly with his ill-gotten wealth had arrived. This body he had exposed on Hampstead Heath attired in his own clothes and under circumstances that should leave no doubt that it was himself who had perished. The servant who swore that the body was his master's, and who volunteered the information concerning the purchase of the poison, was said to be Sadleir's accomplice. Had Wakley not been able from personal knowledge to assure himself and others that the body on which the inquest had been held was undoubtedly that of Sadleir an exhumation might have been necessary, so firm a hold on the popular imagination had the story of the substituted corpse taken. In fact, in spite of the coroner's additional testimony, many people persisted in believing that Sadleir had escaped with his booty, ^^200,000 being the sum he was reputed to have secured. Twelve years later Miss Braddon used the rumours concerning Sadleir in the plot of one of her earliest sensational stories, entitled "The Trail of the Serpent"; and only recently a London newspaper revived the canard and treated it seriously. The inquest which Dickens has immortaHsed occurred much earlier in Wakley's career. The subject of inquiry was the death of an unfortunate infant, whose mother had committed either murder or the minor offence of conceal- ment of birth. It was to decide this point that a jury was empanneled, and how Dickens came to be of that jury he tells in his own inimitable manner, smartly hitting off at the commencement an abuse which altogether disappeared in Wakley's court when the beadle was dispensed with and a special coroner's officer employed to summon the jury. Charles Dickens as Juryman 425 " The beadle," says Dickens, " did what melancholy did to the youth in Gray's Elegy — he marked me for his own. And the way in which the beadle did it was this : he summoned me as a juryman on coroner's inquests. In my first feverish alarm I repaired 'for safety and for succour ' — like those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no previous reason whatever to believe in young Norval, very prudently did not originate the hazardous idea of believing in him — to a deep householder. This profound man informed me that the beadle counted on my buying him off, on my bribing him not to summon me, and that if I would attend an inquest with a cheerful countenance and profess alacrity in that branch of my country's service the beadle would be disheartened and would give up the game. I roused my energies, and the next time the wily beadle summoned me I went. The beadle was the blankest beadle I ever looked on when I answered to my name, and his discomfiture gave me courage to go through with it." The inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and Dickens, who was ah-eady famous to the world as the author of " Sketches by Boz," " Pickwick," and " OHver Twist," notes his impression that he was unanimously received by his brother jurymen "as a brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance." He proved himself by his own confession to be no fit occupant of the jury-box, being crammed with prejudice in favour of the humaner verdict. From the moment that he gathered the outlines of the story he set himself to work to get the poor girl acquitted. His great opponent was, he says, "a broker who had lately cheated me fearfully in the matter of a pair of card-tables and was for the utmost rigour of the law." The evidence showed that the miserable girl, who was present during the proceedings seated on a chair and looking very weak and ill, had given birth to a child but a few days before, and had cleaned her mistress's doorstep immediately afterwards. Dickens recalls the lack of sym- pathy of the workhouse nurse, who stood beside her, the brutality of the mistress, and the utter solitary misery of this orphan maid-of-all-work. He proceeded to cross- examine the mistress in the interest of the girl. " I took heart," he says, '-to ask this witness a question or two which hopefully admitted of an answer which might give a favourable turn to 426 Dickens's Eulogy of Wakley the case. She made the turn as little favourable as it could be, but it did some good, and the coroner, who was nobly patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look of strong encouragement in my direction I tried again and the coroner backed me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him, as I do now to his memory,* and we got another favourable turn out of some other witness, some member of the family with a strong prepossession against the sinner. I think we had the doctor back again, and I know that the coroner summed up for our side and that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss our verdict and get ourselves into great difficulties with our large chairs and the broker. At that stage of the case I tried hard again, being convinced that I had cause for it, and at last we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth." Dickens did not abandon his advocacy of the poor girl when he had got the kinder verdict of concealment of birth registered, but with characteristic thoroughness ensured that she should have certain comforts in prison and retained at his own expense counsel for her defence, the result of which powerful advocacy was that the poor girl met with lenient treatment for her weakness. " I regard this," said Dickens, in conclusion, " as a very notable uncommercial experience, because this good came of a beadle. And to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief it is the only good that ever did come of a beadle since the first beadle put on his cocked hat." With Dickens's estimate of Wakley as a coroner this section of his life is fitly closed. Wakley himself would * The inquest took place in 1841, when Dickens was living in Devon- shire Terrace, Regent's Park, but the account did not appear until more than twenty years later, just after Wakley's death. Dickens has one other allusion by name to Wakley as a coroner. It occurs in a whimsical letter written in 1840 to Mr. Thomas J. Thompson, the father of Lady Butler, the artist. Dickens describes himself as " raving with love for the Queen," then a bride, and expresses a wish that in the event of his early death, he should be " embalmed and kept (if practicable) on the top of the Triumphal Arch at Buckingham Palace, when she is in town, and on the north-east turrets of the Round Tower, when she is at Windsor." He signs himself Mr. Thompson's " distracted and blighted friend," and begs him in a postscript not to " show this to Mr. Wakley, the coroner, if it ever comes to that." Dickens's Eulogy of Wakley 427 have desired no other critic, and having earned Dickens's praise would have considered that no higher eulogy could possibly be bestowed upon him. And, indeed, that the man to whom officials of all sorts were hateful, from Mr. Bumble to Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, from the Worshipful Mr. Nupkins to Mr. Justice Stareleigh, should praise the official in Wakley, and that the most powerful friend that the poor and suffering have ever known should praise the patience and humanity in him, constitute a tribute to his memory transcending in force and conviction any words from other Hps. Dickens as a judge of practical politics or polite manners might not be considered in the place most fitted for him ; exception might be taken to his opinions. But Dickens as a judge of how the official should behave to the poor, and of how a popular court should be conducted, is ideally situated ; and the man whom he has commended in such relations need not fear the judgment of posterity. 428 The Limits of This Biography CHAPTER XLIII Two Sections of Wakley's Life Completed — Further Notice of Wakley as Journalist — The Growth of the "Lancet" — Wakley s Personal Influence ever Present — His Views on Educational Devel- opments and their Foresight — The Charter of the College of Surgeons in 1844 — The Medical Act of 1858 — The Study of Anatomy at the Beginning of the Century — Burke and Hare — Bishop and Williams , — The A natomy A cts — A Brief Summary of Forty Years of Reform. The career of Thomas Wakley has now been nearly told. His rise from the position of youngest son of a gentleman farmer to that of senior parliamentary representative of the largest borough constituency in the kingdom and coroner for Middlesex has been traced step by step. The influence that he exercised upon the administration of law and justice in the coroner's court still abides. His work in Parliament has been chronicled with such fulness as the scheme of this biography allowed, and if a disproportionate amount of space appears to have been allotted to minor measures or matters of no distinct public importance, it is because the intent has been to write the life of Thomas Wakley and not an account of the first twenty-five years of her present Majesty's reign or the reigns of her two predecessors — a task which the chronicler hastens to add he would be quite unfit to undertake. Where Wakley was the moving spirit or leader the circumstances which led up to his acts and their outcome have been given in full. Where he simply followed others it has been considered sufficient to mention the fact, assuming that the parts played by such men as Peel, Cobden, the fourteenth Earl of Derby, Brougham, Melbourne, Macaulay, Joseph Hume, Gladstone, Bulwer Lytton, Benjamin D' Israeli, and many others whose names have been scattered up and The Growth of the "Lancet" 429 down these pages, are familiar to the reader, forming as they do the national history of the first half of the nineteenth century. To avoid continual breaks in different parts of Wakley's career, whereby great difficulty would have been caused to the reader or many cross-references necessitated, this life has been written in separate sections. Firstly, Wakley's journalistic career has been described ; secondly, his parliamentary career ; and thirdly, his career as coroner. The latter two sections are now complete ; to the first we must return, merely premising that the real Wakley is seen in a consideration of all three sections, blended as his triplicate work was in one inextricable, often incoherent, but always resolute and passionate, struggle to attain the objects of general and medical reform as he understood them. The detailed story of the " Lancet," its work and its aims, was broken off in the year 1834 (when it became necessary to describe the editor's parliamentary career) with a sum- mary of the work of the paper during its first decade, showing how it passed, in the opinion of the profession, through every phase of appreciation from contempt to repute. Until 1836 it continued to be published in Bolt Court. But in this year the business department of the paper had so much increased in importance that Wakley took new premises in Essex Street, Strand, and for six years was his own publisher — in reality, if not in name. Diffi- culties, however, arose which Wakley had not contem- plated, and for the next five years Mr. John Churchill, the founder of the well-known firm of medical publishers, undertook the responsibility from his place of business in Prince's Street, Leicester Square. In 1847 Wakley again resolved to be his own publisher, and the present offices of the " Lancet " were taken. From this time until Wakley's death in 1862 the future of the paper justified his fondest hopes. He treated it as. an inexhaustible gold mine and more than once seriously jeopardised its material prospects thereby ; but if the paper was true to his implicit belief in its prospects he also was true to his ideal of what the paper should be. Conducted strictly on the lines laid down by an 43° The Growth of the "Lancet" inexperienced and hot-headed youth, it established for itself a secure and enormous success. And from those lines the " Lancet " has never deviated. Alterations in circumstances caused it to expand considerably in most directions, to contract in a few, and to be modified in many. But the various departments of the paper at the present day were all inaugurated by him or were the natural outgrowth of his parental scheme, while the death of the abuses on which he had so much to say was the natural outcome of his words. After 1833 the "Lancet" was no longer a weekly diary of its editor's hopes of, and aims towards, medical reform. For the first ten years of its existence the paper was Wakley's life, and every word of it must be considered by anyone who would tell the story of that life. The leading articles were his personal impressions on medical politics ; he inspired the reviews and made the jokes. Hospital reports were obtained by him, and from their consideration he proved to the hilt the accuracy of many of the numerous allegations which he made against the medical charities of the metropolis. Legal proceedings decorated the pages of the paper frequently, and in a large proportion of these trials Wakley was either plaintiff or defendant. But as his life broadened a medical paper could no longer form even an expanded diary of his doings ; while as the " Lancet " grew and waxed strong the necessity for constant justification of its words and sentiments went. Success justified both it and its founder, and the extremely personal nature of much of the earlier writing became uncalled for. The " Lancet" no longer required to be an apology for the life of Wakley. It became more entirely a fulfilment of the promise conveyed in its later sub-title, " A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine, Physiology, Surgery, Chemistry, Criticism, Litera- ture, and News." In it were to be found, as would be expected from this title, the lectures, official and otherwise, delivered by the great masters of the sciences, and reviews of all important books falling under its comprehensive heading. The best teachers at the schools sent contribu- tions ; the articles on professional politics were written by Last Charter of the College of Surgeons 431 men within the ruling circles of the different bodies ; and the news was contributed from numerous centres by persons pecuniarily interested in making it copious and up to date. Wakley's spirit, however, presided over all. His views were prominently put forward in the leading articles and his plans for reform continued to be as religiously carried on in his large and successful journal as ever they were in the bygone days of persistent struggle. The subjects on which he continued to write himself were medical education, medical pohtics, the canker of quackery, and the professional welfare of the medical man. Most of the outspoken leading articles upon these topics which appeared in the " Lancet " between the years 1834 and 1850 were from his pen, and they display not only courage and sincerity, but a really remarkable prescience. For example, in 1843 a concession was made by the Royal College of Surgeons of England to public opinion and a new Charter was applied for and obtained under which the Council should no longer consist of twenty-one persons perpetually entitled to elect their successors and endowed with absolute power over the com- monalty. Under the new Charter the Fellows of the College were created and electoral and political privileges confided to them — a body practically unlimited in numbers. Wakley detected at once that the reform did not go far enough in oxie direction and that in others it was no reform at all. The Charter abolished the inherent right of the members of being appointed to the governing body and by implication to the office of President, while it set up an invidious class distinction within the ranks of the profession which was certain sooner or later to breed trouble. That trouble is with us now — fifty years later. The language of modern contention is moderate, but no one can mistake the fact that beneath the civilly worded resolutions of the different associations for collegiate reform there lie a very real sense of injustice and a lively determination to obtain redress. The arguments that are being used now are Wakley's arguments of fifty years ago. Again, in 1858 came the great Medical Act under which the General Council of Medical 432 The General Medical Council Education and Registration of the United Kingdom was constituted. The Act was a reform, but in so far as it represented the practical outcome of the patient and strenuous efforts of Wakley, Warburton, Hume, and one or two others it was not a complete success. " After a struggle of thirty years," wrote Wakley, " it is something to have advanced a single step in the right direction ; it is an impor- tant one, and only the first. As a beginning, however, we hail it as a great boon ; but we only regard it as the com- mencement of a series of important changes." He then proceeded to point out the viciousness of the principles upon which the members of the Council were chosen in terms which nowadays would all be covered by the phrase that he demanded a more direct representation of the body of the profession. The method in which such representation could be made more direct he indicated by reference to the representative of the College of Sui-geons upon the General Medical Council, saying that if this gentleman is chosen by a council — that of the College of Surgeons — not itself elected by the members, he is no representative of the members. This very argument was used in the campaign of one of the candidates for a seat upon the General Medical Council at the election in 1896, and will be so used again. The establishment of the General Medical Council was a triumph for Wakley, in that some such council had been urged ceaselessly upon the country by him as a means of protecting the public from quacks, and of regulating the education of the profession. The measure of security enjoyed by the public under its auspices, and the high level of medical education now maintained, are the outcome of those struggles against abuses in which Wakley played the foremost part. Similarly the new Charter of the College of Surgeons was an answer to Wakley's untiring abuse of the system by which a score of gentlemen governed the College autocratically, chose the lecturers, appointed the examiners, selected their successors and, for the most part, neglected their duties. But neither reform satisfied him, for neither went to the root of the evil. The General Medical Council Burke and Hare 433 •was not representative of the profession ; and the invention of a higher diploma was no reply to the appeal of the commonalty of the College of Surgeons for justice. When Wakley said these things half-a-century ago, they attracted but little attention ; if any one thought about them he would have regarded them as an ungracious inspection of gift- horses. Now all are aware that the General Medical Council has not the confidence of the whole profession, and that the members of the Royal College of Surgeons of England are not enamoured of their Charter. Wakley was as fortunate in his prognostication of good as of ill, as is shown by the part that he played in the passage of the Anatomy Acts. Allusion has been made to the position of hospital students in Wakley's day as regards anatomy and the difficulty of obtaining bodies for dissection. This difficulty and the institution of the vile trade of the resurrectionist which followed as a natural consequence upon the scarcity of subjects were recognised on all hands as matters requiring amendment. The large sums paid by students to obtain materials wherefrom to learn practical anatomy, and the poor substitutes of plates and diagrams with which they had too often to be contented, were grave blots on a system of medical education to the darkness of which the horrors of rifled churchyards added in no small degree. Suddenly a tremendous element of terror was introduced into the situation by the tragedies in Edinburgh with which the names of Burke and Hare are for ever associated in infamy. The facts of the tragedies are too well known to call for a detailed description. Suffice it to say that these two men, frequently with the assistance of a woman named MacDougal, were during the years 1827 and 1828 engaged in carrying on a ghastly traffic in human bodies. Their plan was to induce strangers, preferably lads or women, to accept the shelter of their roof. The victims, having been stupefied by drink, were deliberately smothered and their bodies sold to certain Edinburgh surgeons for dissection. Hare gave evidence for the Crown and admitted 2 E 434 A Committee on Anatomical Education having been implicated in a series of these frightful crimes, and his evidence so incriminated Burke as to lead to a sentence of death being passed on that monster. Burke afterwards made a confession admitting his guilty knovi^ledge of murders extending over quite a long period. The result of the excitement caused by these revelations effected what no amount of sober representation on the part of the managers of anatomical schools had been able to obtain. A Parliamentary Committee was appointed to inquire into the study of anatomy as practised in the United Kingdom and into the best method of obtaining bodies for the purpose. Mr. Henry Warburton, whose name has often been men- tioned as a practical champion of the true interests of the medical profession in Parliament, was appointed chairman, and the sittings began on April 28th, 1828. The first witness was Sir Astley Cooper, who, after pointing out the necessity of practical anatomy for the proper education of a surgeon, wrent on to say that teachers of anatomy were completely " at the feet of the resurrection men." Subjects for dis- section were obtained almost exclusively by exhumation, with the exception of the negligible quantity which were handed over by executioners in pursuance of the sentence of a criminal court. It was the fact that the bodies of executed murderers were the only legal subjects of dissection in the kingdom that caused such difficulty in obtaining corpses for the medical schools ; the relatives of the dead would not allow the bodies of their friends to be treated in a manner that was by law reserved for the utterly criminal and dis- graced. As to the question of price. Sir Astley Cooper said that in his student days subjects cost two guineas, but that now ten guineas were not uncommonly given. When asked how the price was kept up he said that one resur- rection man would spoil bodies he did not want so that a rival body-snatcher should not get them and thus glut the market. He said that sextons were nearly always in the pay of resurrectionists, who were often " persons of property." Among the other witnesses were Brodie, Abernethy, and Joshua Brookes. These all gave evidence as to the necessity Wakley's Forcible Evidence 435 of dissection, and the last named, whose school in Blenheim Street was one of the largest in London, deposed that he was so much at the mercy of resurrection-men that he had recently been subjected to outrage for not giving a douceur of ^5 to certain of them at the beginning of each session. The ruffians had obtained several highly decomposed bodies and had laid them or strewed parts of them in the streets adjacent to his dissecting-room so as to enrage the populace against him. In his student days Joshua Brookes added that he had given two guineas per body, but recently he had had to pay as much as ^^16. Wakley was called as a witness in recognition of the powerful articles in the early numbers of the " Lancet " dealing with the inadequacy of the medical education of the day. After the usual evidence as to the necessity for dis- section he said that in 1815 and thenceforward until 1822 bodies had been sufficiently plentiful for the wants of London students. But in 1823 the College of Surgeons drew up a by-law under which the Council declared that they would not accept certificates of dissection except for work that had been performed in the winter season. The obvious effect of this was to increase the demand at that season and to raise the price. Wakley considered the dis- secting-rooms during the winter to be much overcrowded with students and under-supplied with bodies. He laid the whole blame on the objectionable by-law of the College of Surgeons, which limited the number of recognised institu- tions and ruined the private schools. He said that the increased influx of pupils brought about by these by-laws had been the cause of the suddenly increased demand for subjects and consequent running-up of the prices. He went on to show that seven hundred bodies per annum would be ample to supply the wants of London, and that more than one thousand unclaimed bodies were buried by parish authorities in the metropolis yearly. During the next year Warburton introduced his Bill, the gist of which was " that men and women, males and females, who died in workhouses or who had the misfortune to die 436 Bishop and Williams in hospitals without being claimed within a certain time of death should be sold for dissection." This Bill was not clear about licensing anatomy schools, nor did it provide for the Christian burial of the remains after dissection. With slight modifications it passed the Commons, but when Lord Calthorpe introduced it in the spring of 1829 into the Upper House it was opposed by a group of peers headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and withdrawn. Soon after the withdrawal of the Bill a new tragedy — ^this time in London — called attention to the absolute necessity for the legal regulation of the study of anatomy. An Italian boy, aged about fourteen, who made his living by exhibiting tame mice in the streets, was enticed by two ruffians — Bishop and Williams — to their den in Bethnal Green one autumn night in the year 1831, where he was murdered by being thrust head foremost into a shallow well. When his struggles ceased his teeth were extracted, and the two murderers, with an accomplice named May, set out to dispose of the body. Some suspicious circumstances, however, attracted the attention of Mr. Partridge, the demonstrator of anatomy at King's College, to whom the body was offered, and the murder came to light, both men being convicted and executed. As the result of the popular sensation Warburton thought the time had arrived to introduce a second Anatomy Bill. This, although it met with some opposition in the Commons, passed both Houses without much alteration and became law in 1832. In the debates the same arguments were used as had been previously employed. They were founded on the medical evidence of Astley Cooper, Wakley, and others,, and on the revelations of the Edinburgh and London tragedies, and amounted to an assertion, which was not contradicted, that if bodies were not forthcoming by legal methods murder would ensue. The following is briefly an account of the provisions : — " An Act for regulating Schools of Anatomy, by which (after abolish- ing the former practice of the dissection of criminals after their execu- tion) it is provided that the executor or other person having lawful Warburton's Anatomy Act 437 possession of the body of a deceased person, and not being entrusted with it for interment only, may permit the body of such person to undergo anatomical examination, unless in his lifetime the deceased shall have expressed, in such manner as in the Act specified, a wish to the contrary ; or unless the surviving husband, or wife, or known ■relation of the deceased shall object ; and further that the Secretary of State for the Home Department may grant licences to practise anatomy to any Members of the Royal College of Physicians or Surgeons, or to any graduates or licentiates in medicine, or to any professor of anatomy, medicine, or surgery, or to any student attending any school of anatomy, the appUcation for such licence being countersigned by two justices of the peace ; and persons so licensed may receive or possess for anatomical examination, or examine anatomically under such licence and with such permission as aforesaid any dead body; but no anatomical examination is to be conducted save at some place of which the Secretary of State has had a week's notice, and the Secretary of State may appoint inspectors for all such places, who are to make <}uarterly returns as to the dead bodies carried in for examination there." To the value of this Act Wakley often bore testimony in the " Lancet," but at the same time he saw blemishes in its working to which he alluded in terms that might almost have led his readers to suppose that he considered the defects to overshadow the advantages. Wakley found fault with Warburton's Act because it put no restraint on the parochial authorities with regard to the unclaimed dead, but left them free either to dispose of the bodies to their own advantage or to bury them as they pleased. He desired to compel the parochial authorities and the superintendents of hospitals and asylums to forward notice to the Inspector of Anatomy whenever a dead body should be in their posses- sion under the circumstances described in the Act, and he further desired that the Inspector should distribute such bodies not only to the schools recognised by law but to those schools in proportion to the number of students. He did this to defeat the manoeuvring of the big hospitals against the smaller ones and against the private schools. The wealth of the big institvitions enabled them to obtain bodies to the exclusion of rivals who frequently offered better tuition at lower fees, and as an indication of the fact that Wakley 438 Forty Years of Reform was right may be quoted the conduct of the treasurer of Guy's Hospital three years after the passage of War- burton's Act. This gentleman undertook that his institution should receive all the sick paupers of the Southwark Union and all incurables without the usual weekly subsidy from the guardians on condition that every body available should be sent to his school and no other ! Wakley's general praise of this Act was as well bestowed as his general blame of the Charter of the College of Sur- geons granted in 1844, or of the Medical Act of 1858. The latter Acts he foresaw had not settled the points they pur- ported to deal with, so that future controversy was inevitable. The former he believed to have virtually abolished terrible dangers to the community — ^the danger of uneducated sur- geons and the danger of stealthy assassination. The faults which he found in the Anatomy Act have since been removed, some by time and some by legal amendment. It is open to an institution to make a private bargain to ensure to itself a supply of bodies, but all such bargains are known to the Inspector of Anatomy, who distributes the subjects strictly in proportion to the number of students. If an institution has a private supply of its own, so many the fewer subjects does it require, and does it obtain, from the public supply. The Act has provided, as Wakley said that it would, an adequate number of bodies for the teaching bf anatomy in the medical schools, and has abolished the trade of the resurrectionist, with its daily routine of impiety and its occasional divagations into murder. There now only remain to be considered a few scattered passages in Wakley's life, such, for example, as his attitude towards quacks, towards the Poor-law, and towards adul- teration of food. But before passing to these subjects it is right to look back and recall what was accomplished mainly by him during his career as a medical reformer. This can be summarised in a few words. In 1823, when the " Lancet " was founded, there was no Medical Act either protecting the public or regulating the medical profession ; Forty Years of Reform 439 nepotism was the one prevailing force at the metropoHtan hospitals ; favouritism determined all official appointments and elections ; the horrible trade of the resurrectionist was thriving ; and the provisions for medical education were disgraceful. Within forty years the hospitals of London had resolved that the first qualification that a member of their staffs must have was merit ; the Anatomy Act had abolished the resurrectionist ; the Medical Act had met many of the crying grievances of the profession ; and the London medical student was receiving a magnificent educa- tion. To obtain this education he had no longer to pay exorbitant fees ; and to become in turn a teacher and a hospital official himself he had to buy out no predecessor. In the fight for all these reforms Wakley led the way . 440 Quacks CHAPTER XLIV Wakley's Attitude towards Quacks — Chaberi, the "Fire King" — Wakley's Public Exposure of him — Dr. Elliotson — His Experi- ments in Animal Magnetism at University College Hospital — Knave or Dupe ? — The Exposure of the O'Keys by Wakley — Elliotson's Resignation of his Posts. The pages of the "Lancet" offer numberless examples of Wakley's "shortest way with dissenters" from orthodox medical faith. He had a genuine horror of quacks and was keenly alive to the wrongs which the medical profession suffered then, as it suffers now, from the lying statements and impudent pretensions of charlatans. The avowed quack, possessing no medical qualifications and glorying in, or affecting to glory in, their absence, who promises the public all sorts of cures for all sorts of diseases upon methods unknown to tliat hide-bound victim of formulae, the educated practitioner, found in Wakley a relentless foe. He never tired of ridiculing the claims of such persons, and had an inexhaustible vocabulary of contempt wherewith to describe their methods and their drugs. With the more insidious quack — he who works from within the ranks of the profession and employs illicit means of treatment apparently for the benefit of his patients, but really for the gratification of his own vanity or greed — Wakley was equally severe, pointing out that whether honest or no in his departure from accepted medical tracks the result would be the same. He would fill his pockets at the expense either of foolish dupes who are ever seeking some new thing or of despairing sick groping blindly for the remedy which honest men have told them does not exist at the present time for their hopeless plight. Against these two unamiable classes Wakley was Chabert, the "Fire-King" 441 always ready to fight to the end. He examined their systems, analysed their nostrums, and roundly abused the public for their credulity and the State for its apathetic attitude towards mischievous or criminal persons. As good examples of his methods the exposures of Chabert the " Fire King " and the O'Keys, Dr. Elliotson's mesmeric mediums, may be mentioned. Chabert was a blatant quack, a fire- eater, a prussic acid swallower, and an obviously vulgar impostor, whose rightful sphere in life was the booth of a country fair. Dr. Elliotson was one of the most distin- guished physicians of his time, a man generally accepted, not only in his profession, but among the public at large, as an acute and profound thinker. But to both Wakley meted out the identical treatment of complete exposure as soon as their methods appeared to him to endanger the reputation of medicine, or the health of the suffering public. Chabert he ridiculed as a common cheat, while Dr. ElHotson received always the respect due to a man of great perform- ance in his profession. But this distinction was not carried further. In each case Wakley, having discovered trickery, warned the public that they had been gulled. M. Chabert flourished in London at the end of 1829. He was said to be a discharged chef de cuisine, and he appeared nightly at the Argyll Rooms in the character of a " Fire King," when he went through some sort of a per- formance in support of his professions of ability to endure enormous heat. He swore that he could withstand the temperature of an oven at cooking power and that he could drink with impunity and even relish oil raised to 350° F., boiling water, and molten lead. Nor was this the limit of his talents. Not only did he claim for his corporeal system a remarkable security from the attacks of heat, but he also pretended that he was organically protected from the action of certain poisons — for example, prussic acid, arsenic, and phosphorus — which lethal substances he pretended to swallow in the presence of his dupes. He asserted that he had an antidote to their actions. , Such rudimentary trickeiy would not in our days be considered worthy of the notice of a 442 The Exposure of Chabert serious scientific paper — though whether this silent contempt for chicanery is not giving the charlatan an unfair chance at the expense of the public is an arguable point — but sixty- five years ago the level of general knowledge was lower and Chabert's assumptions were accepted with equanimity by responsible persons. Among them, surprising to say, were to be found several members of the medical profession. Wakley, therefore, announced his intention of exposing the " Fudge King," as he called him. He challenged him to drink boiling water in public concerning the temperature of which a proper jury of spectators was satisfied. With regard to Chabert's ability to swallow prussic acid Wakley said that he would attend the wizard's performances and would invite him to administer his prussic acid, with or without the antidotes, to certain dogs, the insinuation being clear that it was not prussic acid at all that the " Fire King " was in the habit of swallowing publicly, but some innocuous fluid. Chabert ignored this challenge save by a ridiculous offer to accompany Wakley into an oven at a temperature of 600° F. or join him in quaffing oil at 350° F. Wakley, not, as he said, feeling disposed for public immolation, and having put forward no claims to a knowledge of the trick, simply reiterated his request that Chabert would allow him to attend a public performance with two dogs and a small supply of prussic acid of whose purity he was himself con- vinced. Chabert and one of the dogs were to drink a por- tion of the prussic acid in view of the public, and then receive the benefits of the antidote, when, according to Chabert's professions, they should feel no ill-effects. The other portion of the prussic acid was to be given to the second dog, which not being treated with the antidote would die, as a visible proof to the audience of the genuineness of the poison which Chabert had swallowed. In pursuance of his design Wakley made a grim application to the magis- trates of Bow Sti-eet to inquire into his own position supposing he should induce Chabert to drink a genuine prussic acid, "which," said Wakley, "will infallibly kill him at once." The magistrates, in answer to this startling The Exposure of Chabert 443 question, said that although they felt it right that Chabert's pretensions should be stringently tested in the interests of the public, Wakley must beware of urging the man towards self-murder. They considered that the responsibility of any untoward accident would fall upon Wakley's shoulders. Wakley pointed out that he was not going to administer the prussic acid himself, but should simply take care that real prussic acid was forthcoming. Then if Chabert persisted in his claim either to immunity from the effects of that poison or to the possession of an antidote he would ask that the experiments should be performed with a substance of un- doubted virulence. It would be Chabert's own act if harm accrued to him. Accordingly on Saturday, Februaiy 4th, 1830, the Argyll Rooms were crowded from floor to ceiling, a large number of scientific and medical men being present in addition to the usual crowd, in the expectation of seeing Chabert respond to Wakley's challenge. Chabert opened the ceremony by a quaint speech in broken English, in which he tried to shuffle out of the consequence of his stupid boasts. He asserted that he had never said that he would swallow prussic acid himself, but that he would give it to dogs and then cure them with his antidote. On this so prolonged were the shouts of ridicule from the spectators that Chabert's manager had to come to his assistance by supporting his statement. This w^as a foolish proceeding, as the printed bills actually outside the Argyll Rooms at the time flatly contradicted both the wizard and his manager. In answer to loud calls from the audience Wakley then rose to speak. He denounced the subterfuges of Chabert, and produced a small vial of prussic acid from his pocket which he proceeded to offer to the " Fire King," assuring him at the same time that he knew it to be out of the question that any antidote could save him if he drank it. " You will give one gasp and be dead in ten seconds," said Wakley, tendering the vial with a smile. The poor charlatan tried in vain to interrupt Wakley's relentless words and, while refusing the poison, to get a hearing from his excited audience. But in vain. The general feeling was wholly 444 Dr, John Elliotson against him, and at last he fairly fled from the platform shouting promises to give passes to the audience entitling them to be present at an uninterrupted stance at a future ■date. In the front of the hall, however, he was caught by the crowd and roughly handled, and finally fled in a dishevelled condition to the friendly shelter of a neigh- bouring coal-cellar. The other person whose detection in quackery forms an excellent example of Wakley's methods of dealing with imposture was Dr. Elliotson, the popular member of scientific and literary society, whom Thackeray depicted under the name of Dr. Goodenough, and to whom he dedicated " Pendennis." Elliotson was the senior physician on the staff of University College Hospital, a staff second to none in Europe for brilliancy, comprising as it did Samuel Cooper, of the Surgical Dictionary ; Liston, the most marvellous operator of his day, certainly the boldest and probably the most successful surgeon London has ever seen ; Richard Quain, the author of " The Anatomy of the Arteries '' ; Anthony Todd Thompson, author of " The Dispensatory " and a mine of pharmacological lore ; and Robert Carswell, the most learned pathologist in England. He was co-professor at the medical school of University College with these, with Robert Grant, the zoologist, author of " Outlines of Comparative Anatomy '' and Huxley's predecessor as Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution ; and with Sharpey, the profound physiologist, and the autocrat of the elections of the Royal Society. In this splendid company Elliotson more than held his own. A comprehensive lecturer in the class-room, a most acute physician in the wards, and an original, unconventional thinker in every capacity of life, he was respected and admired by his colleagues, much consulted by the public, and immensely popular with the students. Being such a man as he was, the story of his connexion with animal magnetism and of his experiments in a kind of black art conducted at University College Hospital, forms one of the most extraordinary pages in the medical history of the Baron Dupotet's Therapeutics 445. century. And at the outset of the story it should be said that Elliotson was believed by all who knew him to have acted in perfect good faith — to have been, in fact, a dupe and not a rogue. He was a great experimenter and prided himself on his receptivity and readiness to learn. He had made many valuable observations in the uses of drugs, and he was wont to stimulate his classes by pointing out that in the domain of therapeutics the student had open before him a virgin country waiting the explorer. Anatomy and surgery as then taught appeared more or less finite subjects. The enormous developments that physiology and pathology would experience as a result of the study of micro-organisms were not foreseen, and Elliotson, a sanguine, imaginative man, looked about him in vain for some outlet for his inventive mind. As bad fortune would have it he came across at this juncture a certain Baron Dupotet, who had experimented in Paris with mesmerism. He obtained for Dupotet permission to make a trial of his methods of healing in the wards of University College Hospital. Elliotson's own association with these experiments was at first that of an interested spectator. Avowedly on the look-out for departures in therapeutics. Baron Dupotet's claim to relieve, and in some cases cure, epilepsy by the production of the mesmeric slumber seemed to him to fall within the range of legitimate inquiry. Had he stopped here all would have been well. Had he been content with a simple attempt to benefit the sick, of whose desire to recover there could be no- doubt, and whose only collusion would have consisted in a reasonable endeavour to play into the hands of the physician by faithful obedience to orders, no one would have objected — at any rate, no one would have had a good case on which to found their objections. But, unfortunately for Elliotson, he was led to employ mediums of whose good faith he had no proper guarantee, and by their pretended powers and revelations to see in mesmerism a new force for good or ill in the world. Everything that is or has been meant by the terms hypnotism and hypnotic suggestion,. Perkinism and animal magnetism, transferred vision^ 446 Trouble at University College Hospital exoneurism, and telepathy, seems to have been put in practice by ElHotson in conjunction with his two mediums, Elizabeth and Jane O'Key, while his initial intention to use the new force, whatever it might be, as a therapeutic measure was entirely lost sight of. These two hysterical girls being thrown into slumber were invited to tell the time by watches applied to their elbows or navels ; were asked questions as to the proper medical treatment of themselves and other patients ; and were apparently twisted into convulsions by passes made at them from a distance by Elliotson or by contact with certain fluids or metals which had been previously charged with " magnetism " by being held in Elliotson's hand. The performance was mystical and inconclusive, for no certain results were ever obtained. It, moreover, showed a tendency to degenerate into indecency, while the only therapeutic innovations that resulted from it would have given effect to the dangerous precedent of allowing patients to prescribe for themselves and even to interfere with the prescriptions of their fellow-sufferers less marvellously gifted. It was no wonder that the hospital authorities were much exercised in their minds at Elliot- son's behaviour. Two camps were quickly formed. The governors were opposed to the continuance of performances which were gaining the institution much unfavourable notoriety and cheap ridicule. Certain of the students, headed by Listen, supported the governors' view. On the ■other hand, Elliotson had a grand argument and a great following. The argument was, of course, that all innovators are deemed mad or dishonest by their slower-witted coaevals and that the wild impossibility of to-day becomes the trite routine of to-morrow. The following consisted of the majority of the students, who were personally attached to Elliotson, who could bear witness to his wisdom and sincerity in other things, who were content to believe what he believed, and who were, moreover, fascinated by the atmo- sphere of occultism. The " hospital of all the talents," as it was called in recognition of the all-round scientific excellence of its staff at the time, was thrown into absolute disorder. A Test Performance 447 The attention of Wakley was naturally directed to the situation, and he immediately wrote in the " Lancet " that the solution to the trouble lay entirely in the answer to the question whether the O'Keys were or were not honest and trustworthy. If they were trustworthy — and in no walk in life would the words of hysterical epileptic young women placed suddenly and by accident in a position of enormous public notoriety be considered worth any attention at all — then Elliotson, Dupotet, and their disciples had made a discovery. But if the O'Keys were impostors, what were Dupotet and Elliotson ? Clearly dupes or rogues. From this inference articles in the " Lancet " allowed no escape. Elliotson accepted the challenge with a willingness and alacrity that certainly vouched for his good faith. He offered to bring his mediums to Wakley's house in Bedford Square and there exhibit their powers of prophecy, trans- ferred vision and clairvoyance, and extraordinary sus- ceptibility to certain metals and fluids. Accordingly on August 16, 1838, a performance — for no other name describes the proceedings — was given in the drawing-room of 35, Bedford Square, for the benefit of ten persons, five chosen by Wakley and five invited by Elliotson. Among those invited by Elliotson to be present was Mr. J. Fernandez Clarke, at that time and for many years a member of the staff of the " Lancet " and the author of some interesting autobiographical recollections of the medical profession. Mr. Clarke was regarded by both sides as a friend, and although he was present by Elliotson's request was willing to further Wakley's intent to arrive at the truth. Accordingly, at a particular experiment an arrangement was made between them to test the honesty of one of the mediums, Elizabeth O'Key. Of this girl it was alleged by Elliotson that she would fall into convulsions upon being touched by a piece ■of nickel, but would remain placid under contact with lead. Discs of these two metals were then given by Elliotson ^' charged with magnetism " to Wakley, who was seated in front of the girl, a screen of pasteboard being set between them. Wakley immediately gave the nickel, unperceived by 44^ The O'Keys Proved Impostors Elliotson, to Clarke, who put it in his pocket and walked to the other end of the room, where he remained during the experiment. Wakley now having nothing but the lead in his possession, to which metal the medium was supposed not to react, bent forward and touched the girl's right hand. As he did so a bystander by arrangement whispered audibly r " Take care that you do not apply the nickel too strongly ! " Immediately the medium fell into strong convulsions, much to the gratification of Elliotson, who said that " no metal but nickel had ever produced these effects " and that " they pi-esented a beautiful series of phenomena." Wakley at once pointed out that no nickel had been used, and upon Dr. Elliotson's indignant protest Clarke came forward and explained the trick that had been played, producing the nickel from his own waistcoat pocket. Wakley now said that his point was made and that the girl was proved an impostor, but Elliotson was persistent that some error had occurred. He considered it possible that in some unex- plained way " the power of nickel had been present." The experiments were consequently persevered in both on that day and on the following day, with the result that the behaviour of the muddled mediums became entirely at variance with that which was expected of them. Not only did they fall into convulsions on contact with the unexciting' lead, but they remained impassive when rubbed with the influential nickel. They drank water which had been " mesmerised " — this was Elliotson's word, and the process consisted in the owner of the master mind placing his finger in the fluid for a few minutes — without a spasm, when it should have rendered them rigid ; while water straight from the pump produced opisthotonos ! " Mesmerised " gold from Elliotson's hands had no ill-effect on them, while- sovereigns non-impregnated with the magnetic fluid and emanating from the trouser-pockets of sceptics produced' neurotic results of a marked character. Wakley denounced the whole thing in the " Lancet " as a pitiable delusion. He made no reflections upon Elliotson, who was a personal friend of his own, and had been a. Dr. Elliotson Resigns 449 wi-iter in the " Lancet " from the inception of the paper, but he told the whole story of the experiments to the public, and no one who read the account could fail to see that Elliotson had omitted proper precautions, that his so-called scientific experiments were parlour jugglery indifferently stage-managed, and that he himself had imported into the question a degree of personal interest which had unbalanced him and unfitted him for the responsible posts of senior physician to the University College Hospital and professor of medicine in the medical school. In December of the same year the Council of University College passed a resolution to the effect that the hospital committee were to hold themselves instructed to take such steps as they should deem advisable to prevent the practice of mesmerism or animal magnetism in future within the hospital. Dr. Elliot- son considered this resolution personally offensive to himself and at once lodged his resignation of the posts of physician to the hospital and lecturer to the medical school with the Council of University College, at the same time making an appeal to the students to demonstrate in his favour against the limitation which had been put by the Council upon the i^ange of legitimate scientific inquiry. The students at an exciting meeting, and by a slender majority, ratified the action of the Council, resolving that they " sincerely regretted the circumstances which had necessarily led to Dr. Elliotson's resignation." On the same day Dr. Elliotson's resignation was accepted by the Council. 2 F 450 Life Assurance and the Medical Referee CHAPTER XLV The Position of the Medical Referee Fifty Years ago — Wakley takes up the Cudgels for the Medical Profession — Good Companies Mend their Ways — The Establishment of the New Equitable Life Assurance Company — Its Immediate Success — The Outcome to the Medical Profession. At the present time, if a man desires to insure his life the assurance office which he may happen to select for the purpose will almost certainly instruct him to be examined by its salaried medical officer, and in many cases the salary is by no means a bad one. In addition to this the office will want a report from the applicant's own medical man, in which case it will pay a fee for the service rendered to it. In good companies this fee is from one to two guineas. There are provident and semi-charitable institutions which afford livelihood for an executive staff, but which do not find themselves able to pay the medical man from whom they seek valuable assistance more than half a guinea, but these institutions are on a different footing. All medical men know that they will obtain fair treatment from first-class life assurance offices. But this was not always the case. Fifty years ago the medical man derived nothing from the life assurance companies at all, save from two or three honourable and exceptional institutions. The appli- cant for a policy was told by the office that before he could be insured he must get his medical man to report upon his life. The name of the medical man being given to the office an application was sent to him to answer certain questions. In careful offices the questions were numerous and search- ing. Sometimes to answer them honestly a physical exami- Life Assurance and the Medical Referee 451 nation of their subject was necessary. But if this was not required, at all events the medical man who had a proper sense of his responsibility in the matter was compelled to render a careful written report of the state of the health of his patient, to compile which he had to consult case-books as well as to rely upon dearly bought knowledge and expe- rience. For this he was not paid by anyone. The office declared that it was no business of its. It would not accept the life without the report, but at the same time it was the applicant's duty to furnish it. The applicant said that he did not want the report, but that the office insisted upon his having it. He would not pay for it and he did not desire the medical man to do more than write him a general kind of testimonial for which there would, of course, be no charge. If the medical man wanted a recommendation of any kind from one of his patients he would not expect to pay for it. To pay would be to make of an ordinary courtesy a venal transaction, and the offer of a fee would be an insult. Similarly the public considered that the medical man who had attended them knew the state of their health and that he ought, therefore, to be so obliging as to say to the office what this state of health was. If the medical man was paid for such information his good faith in the matter became at once a subject of doubt, but if his report was spontaneously made its honesty would not be called in question. Some saw a little difference between " mutual " offices, meaning offices where all profits were divided annually among the insured in the office, and " proprietary " offices, meaning offices where all profits were divided among shareholders not necessarily policy-holders also. In the first case they considered that the medical man should be paid by the assurance office to send reports, for the office represented the assured en masse, and it would save trouble if all the payments were made by the assured collectively, as represented by the office, instead of by each policy- holder individually. In the second case they considered that the applicants for assurance should pay for the report of the medical officer, inasmuch as it was they who desired 452 Short-sighted Economy the benefits of assurance. The profits belonged to the shareholders and could not be squandered on medical fees. This was the state of affairs in 1840, when Wakley first took up in the " Lancet " the question of the attitude of the life assurance companies towards the medical man. He attacked the grievance with all the vigour and ardour that distinguished his earlier efforts in behalf of the medical profession, those made, for example, to obtain remuneration for medical witnesses and an independent medical press. Article after article flowed from his pen, outspoken, to the point, and occasionally abusive. The policy of the com- panies in withholding from medical men the remuneration to which their services clearly entitled them was denounced as suicidal and also mean. The finest safeguard that an office could have against the risk of accepting a bad life at first-class prices must be the honest opinion of the applicant's private medical man. The officer of the company would see the applicant for a policy but once. He necessarily must make his examination upon a stereotyped plan, for in a good office he could not otherwise get through the work ; but it would often occur that his plan, while working well to meet the necessities of rapid summary judgments would not provide for the detection of less obvious features in the physical condition of his subject, such, for example, as the sequelae of old disease, or the weaknesses due to hereditary predisposition. Upon such matters the only proper person to advise the company was the applicant's family atten- dant. Why should such advice be rendered gratuitously? Further, seeing that candour to the company might in conceivable instances cause the medical man to lose his patient, how could the companies always expect from a class whom they treated with meanness and contempt voluntary and valuable assistance ? And if they did expect it, said Wakley, let them expect it in vain : withstand all temptation to be obliging and the victory must come to the medical man. The medical man was not paid, or very grudgingly paid, by the applicant for the policy simply because the A Strike of Medicine Referees 453 companies by hook or crook had been able to obtain as much assistance as they wanted without putting their hands into their well-replenished coffers, yet not enough assistance to enable them to carry on their business with proper absence of risk. But only let the medical man make it clear that he would not answer the questions of a life assurance office unless he was properly paid by that office for his trouble, and the companies would, sooner or later, and probably sooner, make advances towards him. Following this advice many medical men refused to give the assistance demanded of them by the companies, a proceeding which was denounced by a section of the papers of the day, medical and lay, as an illicit combination of the profession against the public, but which was commended by other journals as a | reasonable measure of self-protection. In five years — that is to say, by the year 1850 — Wakley was able to report con- siderable progress in the movement. All over the United Kingdom he had stirred up medical men to demand payment from the |ife assurance offices before rendering assistance, with the result that out of a list of one hundi-ed and two companies given in the Post Office Directory for that year, forty-eight, and these of the highest standing, had given in to the demands of the profession — or, in Wakley's words, " had come over to the side of honesty and liberality." But Wakley desired to go quicker than this, and while doubhng the force and frequency of his contemptuous allusions to the policy pursued by those companies which still maintained their parsimonious attitude, he began to foreshadow an ideal office worked by medical men for medical men, where the general practitioner should take the place of the solicitor as agent and referee. An ever-green subject with him was the profuseness with which the public seemed ready to reward the solicitor as compared to the medical man, and when he was able to treat the question of the relations of the life assurance offices with the medical profession from that point of view he was on familiar and favourite ground. 454 The New Equitable Life Assurance Company " We have before us," he said in one article, " the receipt for the annual policy on a life insured in a proprietary office some years since, at the age of thirty-four, for ^f looo. The annual premium is £i(i ids. This office is one that refuses to pay medical fees, but pays the ordinary commission to solicitors and agents. On this policy lo per cent, on the premium was paid to the solicitor through whom the assurance was effected for the first year, and 5 per cent, for every succeeding year. The probable mean duration of a healthy life at thirty-four years of age, according to the calculation of Mr. Farr, is thirty-one years. Supposing the assurer to live the average time of a person in health the solicitor will have received no less a sum than £i^i, 8s., besides interest, while the paltry single payment of £\ is. to the medical referee was refused. The medical referee wrote a responsible report. Positively the only trouble incurred by the solicitor was in writing a letter to the secretary to inform him that the party in question was about to insure in the office. Is this justice ? " This question Wakley proceeded to answer by asserting that justice would not be done until medical men were able to enter into negotiation with a company that would not only recognise the justice of their claim to some remunera- tion, and that at a fair scale, but would also make of medical men the agents of the company and, in short, treat them in the same way that solicitors were treated by the offices. Accordingly, in February, 1851, the New Equitable Life Assurance Company was started, the main reason of its existence being the intention on the part of Wakley and a few enthusiastic friends to show that an office where the medical profession obtained their rights would be more prosperous than those offices which withheld from the pro- fession their rightful fees. " The directors of the New Equitable," said the first prospectus, " have determined that all medical questions shall emanate from, and the answers be directed to their own medical examiners, by which course of proceeding should any proposed assurance be declined, no statement of particulars will be necessarily made to the board, the replies being deemed strictly professional and confidential. After duly considering the important position of medical practitioners with respect to life assurance, the trouble imposed on them, and the valuable nature of the information which it is in their power alone to supply, the directors of the New Equitable have resolved to award a payment of two guineas to every legally qualified medical practitioner for every The Prosperity of the New Scheme 455 official report rendered by him to the medical examiner of the company. .... The directors will invariably recognise every qualified member of the profession whom they may consult not only as the referee of the party whose life is proposed for assurance, but as their own medical adviser in the case, on whose written and well-digested report they must mainly rely in forming their decision It has long been the practice for several of the most respectable of the assurance offices to allow to solicitors and attorneys a commission of lo per cent, on the first year's premiums paid by parties introduced by them, and 5 per cent, annually afterwards so long as the policies remain in force. The directors of the New Equitable have resolved to allow commissions of equal amount, under similar circumstances, to members of the medical profession.'' The company got to business without delay and met with success from the first. The medical profession gave the scheme hearty and spontaneous support, and letters arrived daily at the office containing offers of assistance in making known the value of the new scheme, applications for agencies and shares, and proposals for life assurance. A firmly established conviction of the soundness of the under- taking, as well as a strong feeling of indignation against the offices which had previously denied to the medical practi- tioner his just rights, commended the New Equitable to all the readers of the " Lancet," and once more Wakley was to see a departure planned by him sail straight into popularity. The first annual report showed that the infant institution had made wonderful headway in so short a period as one year, and was already able to court comparison with the most successful life assurance Offices in the kingdom. The directors had issued during the first year of the company's existence 355 policies covering insurances to the extent of ^^168,765, the annual income of these policies amounting to over ;^6ooo — figures which meant a remarkable success forty-five years ago. Indeed, the published accounts of several of the oldest and best companies in the kingdom showed that the prestige and the wide advertisement due to an ancient history had not enabled them to transact so much business during the year 1851-52 as had been trans- acted by the New Equitable Company. The pleasure of 456 The Prosperity of the New Scheme this success was enhanced for Wakley, who was one of the directors, by the knowledge that the principle put forward by the New Equitable as the sole reason of its existence — namely, the recognition of the services of the medical referee — must now be adopted by all the companies that desired to hold their own against the sturdy growth of the infant office. In particular he rejoiced over the fact that the wealthy company in which so many medical men held policies, the Clerical, Medical, and General Life Assurance Company, had fallen in with his views after an obstinate rejection of them for very many years, for in January, 1852, the directors of this company promised a fee of one guinea to the medical attendants of persons proposing to assure in all cases in which the board had sought from them advice or information. The second annual report showed a continuance of the public favour. From one client alone the office accepted a proposal to assure for ^^50,000, and this client was introduced by a medical man. The sum was re-assured in other offices by the directors of the New Equitable, who considered their company too young to run such risks, and who were thus enabled to approach their oldest and strongest rivals in the character of patrons. The entire number of proposals received from the date of the first policy in February, 1851, to December 31st, 1852, was 834 for assuring £24^,122. The number of policies actually issued was 677 for assuring the sum of ^278,855, and the income derivable from these policies in premiums amounted on the whole to ;^io,652, the average amount of each policy being £^ii. These figures showed substantial patronage, while others in the report showed able and watchful management. For instance, the expenses incurred during 1852 by the New Equitable Company were but ;£37oo, although ;£882 had been paid as fees to medical referees. Other companies not doing so large a business or receiving the same amount in premiums had returned their expenditure for the year at ;^7ooo, although they had in many cases been unable to afford to pay for medical advice concerning the risks that they had accepted. The moral The Prosperity of the New Scheme 457 drawn by the directors of the New Equitable, who had only been called upon to satisfy one claim during the first twenty-three months of the existence of their company, was that the unbiassed reports of medical referees obtained by just payment formed the greatest safeguard that an assur- ance office could have. An office that was protected by such information took no risks, and could, therefore, afford to be generous. As a consequence of these figures, and of the strict confirmation of Wakley's assertions thus furnished by the directors of the New Equitable Company, thirty- eight more companies joined the forty-two who were on the side of justice, eighty offices in all beginning in 1853 to advertise their willingness to pay medical men for their valuable services and to show respect where they had formerly inflicted insult. The report of the work done by the company during 1853 showed further progress. During the year 463 proposals to insure the sum of £i9i2,']']o had been received. Out of these proposals 348 policies had been issued, assuring the sum of ;£i 34,930. The annual premiums payable on these new policies amounted to ^£5227. The fourth annual report continued the satisfactory tale. It showed that the total number of policies issued by the office up to the end of 1854 had increased from 1025 to 1282, and that the premiums payable on them amounted to an annual income of ;^i8,75o. The next annual report, that for 1855, stated that the number of policies issued had reached 1604, the annual premiums due thereon making in the aggregate a sum of £'^■1, ']■},'},. So far the records of the company showed uninterrupted progress. But in 1856 the directorate decided to make a great departure. A proposal for amalgamation was entered into with the Medical, Legal, and General Life Office, the board falling in with the proposal by the narrow majoi^ity of one. The unanimous consent of the shareholders of both com- panies given at meetings specially convened for the pm-pose seemed to justify the course that had been taken, and a Bill for the complete unification of the two concerns obtained parliamentary consent during the year, while as a tribute to 4S8 An Unfortunate Amalgamation the fortunate career of the younger venture it was agreed to call the joint company the "New Equitable." Wakley, although he remained on the directorate, did not approve of the amalgamation of the New Equitable office with the Medical, Legal, and General office. The New Equitable had been started in defence of a principle, that principle being the due recognition of the services that medical men were able to render to life assurance offices. By amalgama- tion with the Medical, Legal, and General this principle was lost sight of. The joint company trading under the title of the "New Equitable" became directly comparable in scheme to other offices. It proposed to pay its medical referees — an innovation which all respectably conducted companies had by this time begun to sanction — but its special connexion with the medical profession was gone. Wakley recognised that the amalgamation had been made in response to a forward movement, and that the figures went to prove that double the amount of business would be done at less than double the expense, but he saw that the indi- viduality of the original company would be lost. Remark- able success had attended its early career, and Wakley attributed this success to the idiosyncrasy of its constitution as a life assurance company to be managed by doctors for doctors. Events not long after Wakley's death proved him to have been right in his surmises, for the New Equitable fell upon evil days. As far, however, as Wakley's personal share in it went it was a success. Until the amalgamation with the Medical, Legal, and General its position was an honourable one and a remarkable one considering its youth and the fact that it had been started in opposition to traditional wisdom. Its prosperity did not wane until its peculiar character was gone, while its institution established the unquestioned right of medical men to be properly paid by life assurance companies for their services and the extreme value of those services. What the aggregate sum paid in the United Kingdom at the present moment to medical men as referees in life assurance matters may be it would be idle to guess ; it is The Debt of the present Generation 459 doubtful whether there is sufficient evidence before the public to enable an expert statistician to hazard a reasonable estimate. But two things are certain : firstly, that the sum is very lai-ge and not decreasing ; and, secondly, that it is to the establishment of the New Equitable Life Assurance Company in 1851 that the receipt of this sum by medical men of the present day is due. 460 "A Task large enough for Governments" CHAPTER XLVI The "Lancet" Analytical Sanitary Commission — The Editorial Definition of its Scope — The Inquiry into the Adulteration of Coffee. In 1 85 1 Wakley commenced in the columns of the " Lancet" the most useful agitation in favour of legislative reform that ever engaged his attention, alert as he had shown himself during twenty-five years of public life to learn where the popular wi'ong lay and to propose a practical and effective remedy for it. It was in this year that he decided to issue the results of microscopical and chemical analyses of the food-stuffs, solid and fluid, in general consumption by the nation. The idea was not a new one — in fact, it had been present in his mind ever since his first election to Parliament — but the gigantic labour of such an inquiry, if worked with proper thoroughness and security from error, had hitherto prevented him from embarking upon it : he knew the grave responsibilities that it would involve. " We have undertaken," he said at the commencement of the inquiry, " a task large enough to engage the attention of the Govern- ment of this country. With the exception of officers to observe and report upon diseased meat or fish, the public authorities take no cognisance of the adulteration and poison- ing by the slower but equally sure mode of adulteration of food and drinks. We will bring the microscope and the test-tube to bear with unerring truth upon things hidden and secret enough to the unaided senses for the protec- tion of the public, the advantage of the fair trader, and the ultimate exposure and punishment of the fraudulent one." This sentence formed a general introduction to the new inquiry. The special introduction to the series of articles The "Lancet" Analytical Sanitary Commission 461 which were issued under the generic title of " The ' Lancet ' Analytical Sanitary Commission " defined the scope of the proposed inquiry, which was to form nothing less than an attack upon prevalent methods of adulteration and sophisti- cation of food so thorough and uncompromising that it would on the one hand frighten individual evil-doers into better behaviour and on the other open the eyes of Parlia- ment to the absolute necessity for State interference. The special introduction ran as follows : — "THE ANALYTICAL SANITARY COMMISSION. " RECORDS OF THE RESULTS OF MICROSCOPICAL AND CHEMICAL ANALYSES OF THE SOLIDS AND FLUIDS CONSUMED BY ALL CLASSES OF THE PUBLIC. " ' Forewarned, Forearmed." " Uncontaminated air and pure water are now universally regarded as necessary to the maintenance of healthy existence, and to obtain them we have appointed ' Boards of Health ' and ' Commissions of Sewers.' That unadulterated Food, the bone and muscle of the body, is not less requisite, will be readily allowed, and it will appear on reilection as somewhat remarkable that the interests of the public in these important particulars should not hitherto have been watched over and protected by any authorised body or commission. " That the various articles of consumption differ greatly in quality and are subject to numerous adulterations must be evident to all from the slightest consideration and examination of the subject ; and if any general proof were required to establish the truth of this position it would be found in the low and unremunerative prices at which many commodities to be genuine are now commonly sold. That, therefore, there is much relating to our food and drinlc requiring exposure and remedy cannot be doubted. " We propose, then, for the public benefit to institute an extensive and somewhat vigorous series of investigations into the present con- dition of the various articles of diet supplied to the inhabitants of this great metropolis and its vicinity, and probably the inquiries will be extended to some of our distant cities and towns. " One especial feature of these inquiries will be that they are aU based upon actual observation and experiment ; the microscope and test-tube throughout these investigations wiU be our constant com- panions. We shall borrow but little from the writings of others, pre- ferring to labour and think for ourselves and to work out our own conclusions in an independent manner. 462 The Scope of the Commission " A second feature will consist in the introduction of faithful engravings illustrating all the more important points and particulars of each article. " A third and highly important feature will be the publication of the names and addresses of the parties from whom the different articles, the analyses of which will be detailed, were purchased ; the advantages of such a course of proceeding require no explanation. " Experience has shown that any merely general exposure of the nature of the adulterations practised on the public through their food is not sufficient to deter from a repetition of them, and that the only way in which it can be hoped that such fraudulent practices can be stayed and the public protected is by such proceedings as will entail personal discredit and probable loss. " Now although we are fully and firmly determined to protect the interests of the public, we at the same time do not desire to inflict injury on any one, as a proof of which we shall refrain from giving the names of adulterators for the space of three months from this date, and shall at present, in connexion with the analyses, merely indicate the street or place in which each vitiated commodity subjected to examination was purchased. " Notwithstanding that we should be perfectly justified in at once making known the name of the tradesman and merchant who is dis- honest enough to adulterate the article which he vends, and although to such a proceeding he could raise no sufficient objection, nor hope for the sympathy of the public, yet desiring to avoid all appearance of harshness, we shall refrain, as we have stated, from doing so at present, but give him the benefit of this distinct warning. " That the public at large will be greatly benefited by these inquiries is obvious, and many of our colonists (at least such as import any article of food into this country). That the revenue itself will be largely the gainers, might be very easily and satisfactorily proved. "The honest tradesman or merchant will also be benefited ; he has nothing to fear but, on the contrary, much to gain, for while he will be able to secure fair prices for a genuine commodity, his name also will be made known to the public, and he will be upheld in his true light and character as an upright and honourable tradesman. " Who, then, will fear the disclosures it will be our duty to make ? Fraudulent dealers — whether they be wholesale merchants, knavish manufacturers, dishonest brewers, or adulterating retailers — ^they alone will have cause to fear, but none whatever rightfully and legally to complain of the consequences of their own unprincipled proceedings. "The urchin who filches a bun, a penny-piece, or the value of one, breaks the law and is liable to punishment, and even imprisonments- is it to be supposed, therefore, that the cunning and systematic adulterator of our food and drink, who robs us not only of our money, The Scope of the Commission 463 but sometimes even of our health and strength, is less guilty ? that he is to be allowed to violate the law with impunity in bis daily dealings and not only to go unpunished, but to carry about with him, as at present he commonly does, in his intercourse with his fellows, the undeserved reputation of an honest man ? That the law, while it rigorously punishes the trivial offender, should allow the greater criminal to go at large unscathed is an insult to common sense. " But the question is not merely one of honesty and dishonesty, of profit and loss, it is also sanitary, one of health, and even in some cases of life itself, of which many proofs might be readily adduced. " Thus the physician, having carefully planned the diet of his patient, too often finds his well-grounded hopes frustrated through the nefarious practice of adulteration. " In one case he orders arrowroot and isinglass — the first is very commonly adulterated with potato or some other farina, whilst for the second is substituted some ill-prepared form of gelatine. " In another case he prescribes strong coffee or tea, it may be to counteract the effect of some narcotic poison. The one is adulterated with a large quantity of chicory, and the other consists of exhausted tea-leaves re-dried. " Examples like these, affecting strength, health, and sometimes life, might be multiplied to almost any extent ; but these few observations are sufficient to show the vast interests involved in the consideration of the subject of the adulteration of the food and drink consumed by the public. " In treating the several subjects which will come under our notice we do not intend to confine ourselves to any very strict order of arrangement, but shall probably from time to time turn aside from our regular course to take into consideration such subjects as may happen to be possessed of peculiar or temporary public or professional interest." In accordance with this introduction the following articles of food were then made the subjects of microscopical and chemical examination : coffee, sugar, arrowroot, London water, chicory, mustard, bread, cocoa, farinaceous foods, oatmeal, tea, milk, isinglass, vinegar, spices, curry, bottled fruits and vegetables, anchovies and potted meats, sauces, jellies, and jams, lard and butter. Two substances not food- stuffs, but counting for much in the comfort of humanity — tobacco and opium — were added to the list. The method of treating the first article — coffee — was the plan followed in all the subsequent inquiries and will be detailed for that reason. It formed a good example of 464 The Adultekation of Coffee thoroughness ; it left no loophole for offenders and allowed no possible cavil on the ground of any doubtful honesty of purpose. There was, in fact, no shrinking on the part either of the editor or of the expert Commissioner, who was, as is now well known, the late Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall. The scheme upon which the examinations were made was due to the joint invention of Wakley, Sir William Brooke O'Shaugh- nessy, a very old and regular contributor to the " Lancet," and Dr. Hassall. The first article appeared on January 4th, 1851, and commenced by boldly stating it to be a fact that coffee was largely adulterated. To obviate all possibilities of contradiction it was pointed out that, whereas between certain dates the population of Great Britain had increased and the greater use of the commodity was vaunted by dealers and by the promoters of the temperance cause, the amount imported under the name of coffee had decreased. In 1849 the amount derived by the Exchequer from the coffee duties was said to be ;^709,632 3s. iid., and in 1850 it amounted to only ^^642,5 19 IDS. gd. One of two things had happened : either an increased demand for coffee was being fraudulently met, or the people, having discovered the beverage as sup- plied to them by sophisticating dealers to be nasty and non- nutritious, were deserting it. Another significant fact was that chicory was being cultivated in large quantities in this country, and yet little or none of it was retailed to the public under its own name. Next careful descriptions with illustrations wpre given of the microscopic appearances of a section of the unroasted coffee berry, of the roasted berry, and of the investing membrane of the berry. These appearances were contrasted with illustrations of roasted chicory root ; while the minute structures of the farinse of various grains and fruits were pointed out, the differences between corn-flour, potato-flour, and bean-flour on the one hand and ground coffee on the other being elaborately distinguished. The ground being thus cleared the Commissioner went promptly to the root of his work. He gave the results of the microscopic examination of thirty-four different coffees of all qualities The Adulteration of Coffee 465 and prices which were being sold under such attractive titles as, to mention a few, "Fine Old Turkey Coffee," "Fine Jamaica Coffee," " Finest Berbice Coffee," " Finest Java Coffee," " Delicious Family Coffee," and " Deli9ious Drink- ing Coffee." The result of this examination was little short of sensational. It justified every word that Wakley had predicted when he promised to publish investigations into the food of the people in his columns and virtually made an alteration in the law necessary. The thirty-four coffees were with three exceptions adulterated, and the three exceptions all occurred in samples of coffee retailed at a high price. The cheap and popular beverages were uniformly impure. Chicory was present in thirty-one instances, roasted corn in twelve, and bean-flour and potato-flour in one case each. In sixteen cases the adulteration consisted of the substitution of chicory for coffee only, in the other fifteen the coffee had undergone additional treatment with bean-flour, potato-flour, or roasted corn. In many instances the quantity of coffee present was very small, actually more than four-fifths of the bulk of some of the samples being formed by alien substances. The gross aggregate of the adulterations detected amounted to more than one-third of the entire bulk of the quantities pur- chased, from which the startling calculation was drawn, that the revenue had been defrauded during the year 1849 of no less a sum than ;^3oo,ooo, the figures for that year being used as a basis of calculation. The results of a second or confirmatory examination were then appended. Here twenty samples of various coffees had been purchased at the establishments of different metro- politan grocers and tea and coffee merchants, and in every single case the coffee was found to be adulterated, in sixteen the tampering being of the grossest character. To defend the honest trader from his fraudulent competitors the names and addresses of the two dealers from whom the three pure samples had been purchased were printed at full, and the names of the adulterators were promised at a later date unless subsequent examination of their wares showed them to have profited by the warning. 2 G 466 A Stupid Treasury Minute The results of the first Analytical Sanitary Commission published by the " Lancet " created the excitement that its editor expected. The daily press reprinted large portions of the article and was outspoken in praise of the enterprise of those who had undertaken it and the admirable work that was foreshadowed by it, declaring it to be the duty of the legis^ lature immediately to adopt effective measures to secure the public against such frauds. Accordingly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Charles Wood), in the Budget which he presented to the House in the early spring of 1851, made a statement upon the subject ; but it did not tend to allay the widespread feeling of distrust and indignation of the public, and produced much dissatisfaction among the owners of coffee estates and respectable wholesale dealers. Sir Charles Wood justified the mixing of chicory with coffee — a pro- ceeding which, it should be clearly understood, had been legalised by a Treasury minute — on the ground that the former was a cheap and nutritious root, the addition of which to the expensive berry resulted in a fragrant blend which could be sold at a price within the reach of the purse of the poor. To this Wakley replied that, firstly, chicory should not be sold as coffee ; if the poor desired to buy chicory they should at least know that when they asked for coffee a mixture containing chicory is what they would obtain, in varying proportions, but seldom or never under 25 per cent. Secondly, he pointed to the gross injustice that was being done to colonial importers. These were at that date protected to a certain extent, the duty on colonial coffee being ^d. a pound and that on French coffee 6d. ; but they derived no benefit from the protection, for they could not compete against home-made messes compounded of potato-fiour and colouring matters ; while a proposal to do away with this measure of protection was among the sug' gestions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thirdly, he pleaded the cause of the honest traders. If adulteration by chicory was made illegal— i.e., if the offending Treasury minute was expunged — he believed that the poor would be properly catered for and a pure beverage prpvided for theni The Adulteration of Chicory 467 at moderate prices, and that the straightforward dealer who scorned to sell sophisticated goods under lying titles would have an equal chance with his less scrupulous rivals. On March 15th, 1851, Dr. Hassall immensely strengthened the position taken up by the " Lancet" with regard to coffee by making an analytical examination of chicory which disposed of the pretension possessed by the now notorious shrub to valuable dietetic qualities. Dr. Hassall found it neither wholesome nor nutritious, and not a particularly easy substance to obtain pure or cheap. Of thirty-four samples of chicory purchased at the establishments of different metropolitan grocers, or supplied as samples from wholesale dealers, fifteen were foimd to be adulterated, the substituted matters being roasted corn or acorns, while the price of undoubtedly pure chicory was so comparatively high as to make it unlikely that this form of adulteration alone would be employed by unscrupulous traders. On April 26th, 1851, a second report was made by Dr. Hassall upon coffee and its adulteration, and on this occa- sion the expressed determination of publishing names of adulterators was carried out, for the full addresses of all the persons from whom the samples had been purchased were appended to the results of the analysis. "We are fully aware," ran the opening sentences of this report, " that in following this course we incur immense responsibility We know that we expose ourselves to abuse, threats, legal proceedings, and to misconstruction and misrepresentation of our motives and intentions ; but strong in our cause we will not allow these considerations to deter us from fearlessly pursuing the course we deem necessary to effect our objects." Forty-two samples of coffee were purchased at different metropolitan establishments for the purposes of the second examination. In spite of the publicity that had been given to the ways of the adulterator, thirty-one samples were even now found to be adulterated with chicory. In two cases only was any other adulteration than that with chicory observed ; in one the added substance was presumed to be horse-chestnuts, while in the other it appeared to be some 468 Canister Coffee amorphous colouring matter, in all probability a constituent of bad chicory and not owing its presence to any special malignity of the shopman towards his customers. Some of these adulterated samples were purchased under assurance that the coffee in question contained no chicory, while many of them were described by their retailers as coffee of unprecedented strength and fragrance. The chief deduction to be drawn from this second inquiry was that the diminished ratio of adulterators to honest tradesmen showed that some i-etailers, in consequence of the exposures made, or threatened to be made, had abandoned the use of chicory entirely. Others, who had adopted a middle course and who were selling the genuine coffee and the legally adulterated coffee as separate articles, were commended for their frankness save where no care had been taken in the purchase of the chicory ; but as it was now an open secret that chicory was itself an article, subject to adulteration of crude and pernicious sort the Commissioner did not hold a trader quit of corrupt practices if he added what he had bought elsewhere as chicory without taking proper precautions against the sub- stitution of acorns or horse-chestnuts. If the retail grocer was satisfied to buy any powder that was offered to him as chicory he would certainly purchase pulverised rubbish specially prepared to meet the willingness of the English poor to purchase a coffee that was not genuine. A third inquiry was held later in the same year into the sophistication of the coffee of commerce, and on this occa- sion the subject of Dr. Hassall's investigation was canister coffee. This coffee, it had been asserted by the " Lancet " at the commencement of the inquiry, was more generally adulterated than loose coffee, and the result proved the accuracy of the statement. Of twenty-nine packages, canisters, and bottles of coffee submitted to analysis, twenty- eight were adulterated, the adulteration in every case con- sisting of chicory, to which in five instances other substances such as roasted wheat farina and powder resembling crushed mangel-wurzel and pounded acorns had been added. Brown and Lump Sugar 469 CHAPTER XLVII The "Lancet" Analytical Sanitary Commission (continued) : An Inquiry into various Food-stuffs — Mr. Scholefield's Act and Sub- sequent Legislation. The method employed in dealing with the analysis of coffee was followed in the analyses of other substances which appeared in the columns of the " Lancet " during the next ten yeai^s, so that it will be sufficient to illustrate the task that Wakley set himself if not much more than the bare results of the different investigations are related. The second substance dealt with by the Analytical Sanitary Commission was sugar. Having described the macroscopic and microscopic appearances of sugar, both cane and grape, and detailed the foreign bodies — such as lime, lead, sawdust, starch, and acari — commonly found in impure specimens, the Commissioner gave the results of the examination of thirty-six brown sugars of different qualities and prices. Acari were present in thirty-five of the samples. Grape-sugar was detected in every sample, usually a proof of sophistication, for most of these sugars purported to be the much more powerful sweetening agent, cane-sugar. Stony particles or grits were observed in eleven samples, and woody fragments in thirteen. In four samples a variable quantity of flour had been introduced, evidently for the purpose of adulteration. Fifteen samples of lump sugar were then examined, and the results were found to compare very favourably with the results of the examination of moist sugar, for there were no acari, no grape-sugar, and no grits. Samples of moist sugar were then purchased in different parts of the metropolis, and every single one contained dele- terious material, while two had been adulterated with flour. 47° Arrowroot The next article which fell under the Commission was arrowroot. The name " arrowroot " had been made, by dealers in the first place and in the second place by the general public, to cover almost every fecula bearing any resemblance to the true Maranta arundinacea, no matter how dissimilar the original plant might be. As a result there were several powdered substances in the market varying in price from a few pence to two or three shillings per pound, none of which were Maranta, but all of which had the valid claim of custom to the appellation <' arrowroot." The Commissioner decided to get over this confusion by stating in his analyses the name of the plant from which the arrow- root was derived, to which end he examined specimens under the following names — Maranta arrowroot ; Manihot arrowroot, or tapioca ; Tacca arrowroot, a pulped tuber from Otaheite ; Curcuma arrowroot ; Arum arrowroot, the tubers of cuckoo-pint ; and British or potato arrowroot, which was, frankly, potato-meal. The adulterations to which arrowroot was found to be commonly subjected were (i) the mixing of other tubers in varying proportions with true Maranta, (2) the substitution of an inferior for a superior root, or (3) the addition to one of these genuine " arrowroots " of some fecula not generally recognised as arrowroot at all. The most common sophistication in the trade was the addition to the genuine Jamaica arrowi'oot or Maranta root of potato-flour or tapioca in varying propor- tions. A second form of adulteration was the substitution of sago or potato-meal for Maranta. A third was the addition of potato-flour to an inferior root such as tapioca. The net result of the examination of fifty samples differing in quality, price, and appearance was instructive. Of the first seventeen samples, all highly priced arrowroots varying from IS. 8d. to 3s. 6d. per pound, ten wei-e found to be unadulterated and seven adulterated, four to an extreme extent. Of the next twenty-eight samples of lowly priced arrowroots varying from IS. to IS. 6d. per pound, seventeen were found to be unadulterated and eleven adulterated, five of the latter very grossly. In one of these adulterated specimens a few grains Pepper 471 of genuine Maranta arrowroot were detected by the micro- scope, but three samples consisted of a mixture of potato- meal and sago-flour, while a fourth proved to be potato-meal only. The last five samples were articles sold in canisters which bore the dealers' warranty setting forth the very superior and unusual quality of the article and challenging observation and scrutiny. Of these one was marked " Superfine West India Arrowroot Warranted Genuine " ; this was heavily charged with potato-flour. A second was " Recommended by the Faculty " as the most nourishing of all foods for children and invalids ; this was entirely tapioca save a few grains of Maranta arrowroot. A third was "Warranted Free from Adulteration " and was merely potato- flour. The fourth and fifth were labelled " Arrowroot " and consisted of nothing but potato-flour. Pepper next engaged the Commissioner's attention, with the result that he discovered that more than half the pepper purchased previously to certain convictions secured by the Excise officers was adulterated, but that subsequent to the enforcement of the law by the Excise authorities with regard to this particular condiment adulteration in an extensive form had ceased, forming a remarkable example of the practical effect of a little of the legislative interference which it had been Wakley's chief aim to make general by the institution of the Analytical Sanitary Commission. The next inquiry was larger in scope and of a different character. Its subject was the water-supply of London, and it was dealt with in a fearless and uncompromising manner. The nature of the various impurities of water was first explained, and the action of the reservoir or cistern in favouring such impurities was discussed. A number of experiments were recorded dealing with the action of water on lead and iron, and the sources of the London water- supply at that date were investigated. The summary of the investigation ran as follows : — "The waters at present in use in this metropolis are all hard, and have all the disadvantages of hard waters ; they are, moreover, river waters, and for the most part contaminated to a great extent with 472 Mustard, Bread, Cocoa organic matter, dead and living; add. to these points tiieir further deterioration by contact with lead in cisterns and by the accumulation and growth of animal and vegetable productions which take place in those receptacles, and the case is proved against the whole of the present supplies of the metropolis." From big. to little — the next investigation concerned mustard. Here the Commissioner succeeded in demon- strating that genuine mustard, whatever the price paid, apparently was not to be obtained in the year 1851. Of forty-two samples submitted to examination every one was adulterated, and in every case the adulteration was the same in kind, varying only in degree, and consisted of the admixture of wheat-flour and turmeric as a colouring agent. Bread came next and formed the subject of a thorough investigation. The first report dealt merely with the chief constituents of bread as made from wheat, barley, oat, rye, rice, or Indian corn-flour. The diseases of cereal grasses were detailed and the microscopic appearances of ergot and the different smuts, rusts, and mildews were described. Next the results of the chemical and microscopical examina- tion of forty-four samples of wheat-flour purchased from different corn-chandlers and bakers residing in the metro- polis were given, to show that in no instance was there any other farina than wheat observed. This satisfactory result was attributed to the repeal of the Corn Laws, but it also pointed to the fact that the millers and corn-dealers were honest folk and that the bakers must be considered to bear the responsibility for anything other than wheat-flour found in bread. Twenty-four samples of bread having been purchased at random at the establishments of bakers in the metropolis, the result of examination was that every sample was found to be adulterated with alum. Cocoa was analysed on precisely similar lines to those employe'd when dealing with coffee, and the result was that of fifty-six samples examined, many of which were warranted pure and possessing all sorts and kinds of charm- ing qualities, eight only were found to be genuine. Sugar The Excise Act and Spurious Tea 473 was pi-esent in forty-three samples, its amount varying from 5 almost to 50 per cent., and starch was found in forty-six samples, its amount varying also from 5 to 50 per cent. The starch was derived from wheat-flour, potato- flour, sago-flour, or a mixture of these in varying pro- portions. Passing over the inquiries made into the purity of opium, tobacco, and certain invalid foods as being hardly germane to an inquisition held upon the food-stuffs of the people, we come to tea. Tea formed the subject of a vei-y lengthy and exhaustive examination. The leaves of the common willow, oak, sloe, hawthorn, elder, beech, elm, and an inferior sort of camellia were depicted side by side with illustrations of the genuine leaf of the tea-plant. Thirty-five samples of black tea bought at random in London shops were then analysed. Out of this ordeal the popular beverage emerged satisfactorily by comparison with the results found in the cases of coffee, arrowroot, and cocoa. In all thirty-five samples no other leaves but those of genuine tea were found. Twenty-three only, however, were perfectly pure, twelve having been treated with blacklead, indigo, turmeric, and mica, these last iridescent particles being added to give a sort of glaze to the leaves. No grosser adulterations were detected, but lest these reassuring results should blind the public to the possibihty of the same being practised an account was added of the trial, instigated by the Excise, of a man and his wife for the manufacture of spurious tea. In this case the inspector under the Excise Act found the prisoners on premises at Clerkenwell busily engaged in their nefarious trade. There was an extensive furnace in one of the rooms, before which was suspended an iron pan con- taining sloe leaves and " spent " tea leaves which had been purchased from coffee-shop keepers. On searching the place an immense quantity of these spent tea leaves and bay leaves were found, as well as every description of ingredient likely to be employed for the purpose of illicit manufactur- ing of tea — such, for example, as gum, copperas, and black- lead. There was a very large quantity of spurious tea in 474 Isinglass the room of the exact appearance of genuine tea, and in another room were nearly loo lb. of re-dried tea leaves, bay leaves, and sloe leaves spread out to dry. The practices revealed in this case were commoner, Wakley considered, than would appear probable by the results of the analyses of the Commission. He believed that such wicked fabrica- tion was very extensively practised, old leaves purchased from coffee-houses and restaurants being the chief stock-in- trade. These leaves were treated with gum and mica to give richness and bloom to the appearance of the mess and sulphate of iron was added to make the decoction astrin- gent. Chestnut leaves and sloe and bay leaves were occa- sionally used to give bulk. In the course of this investiga- tion, it may be added, twenty specimens of green tea were examined, when it was found that the whole of them were artificially coloured. In twenty-six samples of milk fourteen were adulterated, the addition being simply water. It was not found that any more complicated form of adulteration was practised, such as the simulation of creaminess by the addition of sheep's brains or flour. Isinglass and gelatin were examined, with the result that each was found to be sold to the public for the other, in spite of the fact that they possess different qualities and that as a rule isinglass is better than gelatin. Thirty-three samples of vinegar were examined and the amount of acetic acid contained in them was found only in twenty-three cases to reach the standard laid down by the " Lancet " as necessary to constitute a good vinegar. The addition of i part in looo of sulphuric acid was permitted by law, but many of the specimens exceeded the legal limit in this direction. Spices next engaged the attention of the Commissioner, and out of twenty-one samples of ground ginger fifteen were found to be adulterated, the substances detected being sago-flour, potato-starch, wheat-fiour, ground-rice, cayenne pepper, mustard husks, turmeric, or any combination of these. In whole cinnamon of twelve samples seven were found genuine, while the other five were examples, not of Spices, Bottled Fruits, Anchovies 475 adulteration, but of calm substitution, for in each case the thing sold as cinnamon proved to be the vastly cheaper cassia. In powdered cinnamon of twenty samples six were genuine ; three consisted entirely of cassia and ten were adulterated with baked wheat-fiour, sago-flour, and arrow- root. It is significant to note from Maculloch's Commercial Dictionary that the heavy duty on cinnamon caused the consumption of cassia in the United Kingdom to rise to treble its former amount between the years 1820 and 1840. Examination of eighteen samples of nutmegs, despite fables of Yankee astu1|pness in manufacture, showed them all to be genuine. Mace, cloves, and allspice came out of the ordeal in a similarly handsome manner. Of twenty-one curry powders nineteen contained ground-rice, flour, salt, and colouring matter— red lead, for example — in varying propor- tions. Thirty-four samples of bottled fruits and vegetables were all artificially coloured with copper. Of twenty-eight samples of anchovies seven were not anchovies at all, two contained some genuine among the spurious fish, while the brine of twenty-three samples was charged with Armenian bole or Venetian red. Various potted meats and fish and sauces were examined and in many of them colouring matter was found to have been introduced. Of thirty-five samples of preserves and jellies thirty-three were found to contain coppei", but it was suggested that the copper saucepans in which they were prepared were responsible for this. Many of these examinations — for example, those on such important commodities as coffee and bread— were repeated from time to time, and their results as given showed that matters greatly improved in London after the i^evelations of the "Lancet" Commission. In 1857 the investigation was carried into certain provincial towns. Among others, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds were visited, and the results of investigations in these cities led to the conclusion that London was worse supplied with the neces- sities of life than the large provincial towns ; but in 1858 adulteration did not exist to more than one-tenth the extent 476 The Result of the "Lancet" Commission that it had done at the opening of the Commission. Despite the success of his undertaking, however, Wakley declared that he had no intention of abandoning the subject until effective legislation had been secured. He had not long to wait, and the "Lancet" Commission was a prelude to all our present laws in respect to the adulteration of food. The popular excitement created by the revelations of the Commission transcended even Wakley's enthusiastic expectations and made legislation against such abuses a matter of immediate importance. A Select Parlia- mentary Committee was appointed and eutered upon its labours in 1855. It examined as far as possible all those likely to have any special knowledge of the known adultera- tions, the methods necessary to detect them, their injury to the public health, and their effect on the national revenue. The evidence given before this Select Committee confirmed the researches of the " Lancet " Commission, not only in spirit, but in detail, and as a result the first general Adultera- tion Act was drafted and became law in i860. This is known as Mr. Scholefield's Act. Its fii'st section enacted that every person knowingly selling food or drink mixed with any ingredients injurious to health, and every person selling as pure any article of food or drink which is adul- terated, should for every such offence on summary convic- tion pay a penalty not exceeding £^ with costs. Wakley was but moderately satisfied with this Act. The measure dealt with adulteration in but one of its aspects — namely, as it affected health ; it did not touch upon the broader ques- tion of fraud. Wakley doubted if the small pecuniary penalties proposed to be inflicted by the Act would be deterrent, and pointed out that the appointment of analysts was left by the Act entirely optional. As the district boards and town councils empowered to make the appointments were largely composed of the very class of tradesmen who were the chief gainers from the practice of adulteration, he thought it probable the power would not be used. Future legislation, he said, v.-as imperative, and his words were confirmed some ten years after his death. A second Act The Sale of Food and Drugs Acts 477 was passed in 1872. A second Select Committee sat in 1874 to inquire into the working of the two Acts, Mr. Schole- field's and that of 1872, under which many technical diffi- culties had arisen, and the result of this second Committee was the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts of 1875 and 1879. All this train of legislation was the direct outcome of Wakley's Analytical Sanitary Commission. 47B Early English Poor-laws CHAPTER XLVIII The Poor-law Amendment Act of 1834 — Wahley's Hatred of it, and the Reasons — The Treatment of the Sick Poor in Work- houses — Wakley threatens an Immediate Inquiry — The "Lancet" Enquiry undertaken Three Years after Wakley's Death. In dealing with Wakley's parliamentary career his extreme dislike of the "New Poor-law" or the Poor-law Amend- ment Act of 1834 was noticed, but to make plain his real attitude in the matter it is necessary to state briefly the provisions of the Act. Until the year 1834 the Poor-laws of England had been mainly framed against vagrancy, " sturdy " mendicancy, and " valiant " pauperism. The first variation from these generally repressive measures is to be found in a compulsory levy in support of the sick and aged made in different parishes early in Queen Elizabeth's reign, the compulsion, partly legal and partly spiritual, being supplied by the bishops and the justices of the peace. Later in the reign of the same monarch came a celebrated statute (43 Eliz., c. 2) taxing every parish for the support of its poor in a defined manner and with drastic authority for giving effect to the provisions. To all intents and purposes this was the law to the amendment of which Wakley so strongly objected, for the system inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth's Act remained in operation for two hundred and thirty- three years — or between 1601 and 1834^ — without material modification. But a laxity towards the able-bodied loafer gradually crept in. As a result the condition of the pauper became in many places so comfortable and so superior to that of the self-supporting labourer that a large proportion of the inhabitants of a village would demand State aid. The evidences of serious moral deterioration of the lower orders The Poor-law Amendment Act 479 soon became clear, and in 1832 a Commission of Inquiry was appointed to report upon the whole subject. The great source of abuse was then found to be the out-door relief afforded to the able-bodied poor or their families and given in kind or money. This form of charity was made the subject of all sorts of fraudulent claims. In some villages the eleemosynary assistance took the form of money in aid of wages, and in^ some the pauper obtained his house rent, or part of it, free, and those who were not ashamed to become pauper members of the community enjoyed a prosperity that was denied to their independent fellows. The in-door relief as furnished by the workhouse of the time was also found by the Commission of Inquiry to be badly administered and expensive. Upon such a report legislative interference was clearly bound to follow, yet the opposition to amendment was very strong — strong on the part of the pauper, with whom the world went very well under a system by which his scanty wages were supplemented by comparatively large and unearned additions, strong on the part of the employers of pauper labour, and strong on the part of the numerous owners of cottages or apartments inhabited by the poor, the rents being paid by the community. But the Commission of Inquiry had done more than expose a bad state of affairs. It had proved that progress from year to year was taking place towards a worse state. It had proved that a pauperised peasantry meant a vicious peasantry, and fear prevailed where reason had not been so effective and procured the passage of the Act of 1834 (41 s.. Will. IV., c. 78). The main directions in which this Act altered the existing state of affairs in England — the only division of the kingdom contemplated in the Act — were two. Firstly, out-door relief except as medical attendance was abolished. All relief for the future was to be given in the workhouse. Secondly, a uniform method of administration was established for all England, so that there should be no inducement for paupers to wander from rigorous to more kindly districts. To this end a central board was appointed to regulate the working of the Act, to make it symmetrical, and decide in what 480 The Poor-law Amendment Act districts and at what time out-door relief was to cease. Permanent officials were appointed to work under this board, this being the only way of securing good administra- tion, for the framers of the Act clearly saw that many things would have to be done by the officials that would be so unpopular in the different localities that the tenure of their appointments must not be determined by annual election or popular vote. The central board was empowered to cause any number of parishes which they might think convenient to be incorporated for the purpose of workhouse manage- ment. Such " unions," as they were and are termed, swept away numberless old landmarks in the country, but were necessary to the proper administration of the Act. In fact, within the four years succeeding 1834 three hundred and twenty-eight unions had workhouses complete, each provided with auditor, chaplain, medical officer, relieving officer, master and matron of the workhouse, schoolmaster, schoolmistress, and porter. The Act met with the greatest possible practical success. An enormous number of paupers became self- respecting and self-supporting labourers, many parishes were relieved of ruinous rates, and for numerous though round- about reasons public morality improved. What, then, had Wakley to object to ? For that he did object to the new law most vigorously both the leading articles in the " Lancet '' and his speeches in Parliament go to prove. The whole of Wakley's attitude on the Poor-law question shows remarkable intuition and good fortune. The intuition was displayed in his immediate appreciation of the fact that numberless persons would be tried very severely by the working of the Act, in spite of the great success with which its operations were attended at the outset. His good fortune was that while his early estimate of the new piece of legis- lation was sentimental and inspired by bad information, he later found cause for most serious criticism and was able to remain a consistent foe to certain portions of the Act while acquiescing in the benevolence of other portions. There is no doubt that many poor of many districts found the working of the Poor-law Amendment Act harsh. The law Wakley's Hatred of the Act 481 of settlement was particularly severe in its working towards people who had been accustomed to regard residence and employment and not only birth as constituting claims upon the local rates. The workhouse test of poverty, again, was very drastic. The new poorhouses were often far from the parish where the pauper lived, although built as much as possible in the centre of the union. To people accustomed to unlimited assistance from wealthy neighbours while living in a rate-paid tenement among their friends it was intolerable that before they could obtain charity they should be forced to go afield at all. They considered that to do so was to surrender their whole independence, and submit to a discipline and rigour that savoured of prison routine. At first Wakley took entirely and uncompromisingly the pai't of the outraged poor, as he conceived them to be. He attacked the Act on every conceivable point and spoke of it with a scorn and fury that had no bounds. Workhouse relief was always represented as a particularly cruel form of imprisonment ; to deny the poor indiscriminate alms at their own homes was represented not as a simple method of protecting the industrious from the lazy and the community from chantage but as a deliberate persecution of the poor by the rich ; the necessary appointment of a central board of administration became "the payment of a pack of lazy, underworked, overfed officials, from the public purse " ; there was nothing whatever about the Act that was not horrible, vicious, inept, and malignant. Much of this rather loose and badly distributed abuse arose from two causes. The first was Wakley's real sympathy with the ojipressed, and he conceived, as Dickens did, that the poor were oppressed under the new Act. Dickens was never able to get the idea out of his head, for exactly thirty years after the Act came into force he wrote as follows* : — " My Lords, gentlemen, and honourable boards, when you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of pretentious failure you must off with your honourable * " Our Mutual Friend," Book iii., Chapter viii. 2 H 482 The Prejudice of Dickens coats for the removal of it For when we have got things to the pass that with an enormous treasure at our disposal to relieve the poor the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance This boastful handi- work of ours which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy breaker of windows, and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to the deserving and unfortunate." This apostrophe of the Poor-law Commissioners upon the death of Betty Higden depicts precisely Wakley's original views of the Poor-law Amendment Act. They did honour to his heart rather than to his head, and were due, as has been said, to two causes. The first was sentiment, the second was his impression that the Act proposed to deal unfairly with the medical profession. Believing this, he could find no stick too heavy with which to beat it, and his desire to champion the cause of the poor was eternally kept alive by the feeling that all opposition to the Act meant assertion of the rights of the medical man. Here Wakley, with his unrivalled knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the medical profession gathered from ten years' editorship of the " Lancet," was able to put his finger at once upon a blemish in the Act. There was no proper provision for the medical attendance that was so freely promised by the Act. The Act was one of economy. It was one designed to make the able-bodied work, to make those in full wages save against a rainy day, and to make the well-paid of a family help the ill-paid. In no case were those in good health to be assisted by the State save as a last resort. As a result the medical man became a very important factor in the working of the Act. It rested upon his decision whether an indi- vidual should be helped or should not, and although the Act was one of economy the medical man must be paid properly. But this was not generally done. The care of the sick pauper was thrown upon him in many places in return for a pittance. When this became known to Wakley, as it did very soon from his editorial letter-bag, his indigna- tion at the regulations concerning the medical care of the The Sick Poor in Workhouses 483 sick poor spread to the whole Act, and his early denuncia- tions of its working must be taken to represent his par- ticular resentment of the sweating of medical men as much as his general sympathy with the poor and down-trodden. When Wakley began to concentrate his attention upon the treatment meted out to the Poor-law medical officer he was close on the heels of the great reproach under which the working of the new Act lay — namely, that its provision for the sick poor was totally inadequate and conceived in an ignorant and barbarous spirit. By 1840 his ideas had become a little less sweeping. The humanitarianism of his views was not quite so wholesale, and the existence of a real scandal in the working of the Act was thereby made apparent. This scandal was the fact that the workhouses were badly built, badly administered, death-traps to those admitted, and foci of disease to those without. " We know of no fact in statistical science,'' wrote Wakley in April, 1841, " so firmly established as that of the excessive mortality in the present workhouses. The Poor-law Commissioners themselves will admit that a ^rimd-facie case has been made out. According to the returns of their own officers it appears that out of 12,313 poor people in workhouses two thousand five hundred and fifty-two perished in one year 1 .... It is not, however, our duty, or the duty of those who support the system of out-door relief, to prove that the workhouses increase the mortality of the poor. The onus probandi lies with the apostles of the new system. They are bound to prove that the work- houses do not increase the mortality and sufferings of the destitute. But this they have never attempted. The Commissioners have, on the contrary, circumspectly withheld the most decisive information and have kept the Government, the House of Commons, and the public in the dark. They have never even stated in their reports the number of deaths in the workhouses under their administration. .... The question is simply this : If the feelings of the poor were consulted, and tiiey received an equal amount of relief at their own homes, would as many die as now perish in the workhouses ? Do 3552 in 13,313 paupers perish annually out of doors ? The Poor-law Commissioners might have furnished data for a direct answer to the question. They are fond of experiments. Why did they not give out-door relief exclusively in a certain number of unions and count the number of deaths among the recipients? There would have been nothing in- humane or revolting in this experiment. In the absence of the direct 484 The Sick Poor in Workhouses observations which should have been furnished to the Secretary of State and to Parliament we submit the following facts to pubhc atten- tion: — In 1837 3552 paupers died -out of 12,313 in workhouses; 382 persons died out of 12,313 persons in the district of St. Giles's, London. How is this enormous difference to be accounted for ? The age of the inmates will account for a part of the difference. The proportion of old persons is greater in the workhouses than in the unhealthy district of the metropolis. But the mortality of persons in England above the age of sixty is 7I per cent., according to Mr. Edmonds, and if none of the 12,313 inmates of workhouses had been under sixty years of age the deaths should not have exceeded 936 I . . . . "Are the paupers sick at the time of their admission into the destructive workhouses ? A certain number are admitted in a state of sickness, but the proportion is not much greater than in the general population. About 6 in 100 are constantly sick in St. Giles's district, and we have deduced the following results from a table published by the Poor-law Commissioners in their last report (p. 10), professing to show the number of paupers relieved in 178 unions during the quarters ending Christmas, 1838, and Christmas, 1839. According to this table, of 67,497 persons who received in-door relief 4117 persons were relieved ' on account of sickness or accident.' Only 6 in 100 received into the workhouses were relieved ' on account of sickness or accident.' The diseases which prove so fatal, therefore, assail the poor after their entrance into these ante-chambers of the grave. "The number constantly sick in the 110 workhouses was 1407 in 12,713, or nearly 11 per cent.; the number stated to be infirm was 36 per cent. ; but this evidently included the infirm from age as well as the infirm from lameness, blindness, and chronic diseases of various kinds. The mortality among the infirm pensioners on the list of the East India Company's labourers in London was 16 per cent., annually (MacuUoch's Statistics of the British Empire, art. : Vital Statistics) ; it is at least as high among infirm out-door paupers in the metropolis. But the mortality of young able-bodied adults and the aged or infirm taken together was 29 per cent, in the ten metropolitan workhouses 1 " As will be gathered from these quoted words, Waldey did not abandon his early position. He only modified it. He ceased to seek arguments in favour of out-door relief, though he continued to regard the workhouse test of poverty as cruel and faulty. But he reserved his chief energies for denunciation of the workhouse treatment of the sick. To this subject during the last fifteen years of his life he constantly recurred* He did not lose sight of other An Enquiry into Workhouse Administration 485 points in Poor-law administration that fell within the scope of his work as member of Parliament, coroner, or editor. On the contrary, he spoke several times in the House on the causes of excessive mortality in rural districts, on the treatment of the insane pauper by the State, and on the scanty remuneration of the Poor-law medical officer ; while he proposed a scheme for pensioning that officer upon his superannuation not unlike the one that has come into force under the Act of last year. But in the front of all his interest in Poor-law matters he ever placed the urgent necessity that existed for improving the accommodation of the sick in workhouses, asserting and re-asserting that here at any rate existed a blot upon the Act which its most ardent admirers could not conceal, and which the most ingenious economists could not excuse. He never, how- ever, took any more practical steps towards exposing the evils of whose existence he was so certain. He threatened more than once, as in the words just quoted, to make the matter one for immediate inquiry ; but the opportunity never arrived. Probably he trusted a little too much to the power of his pen and hoped for a bloodless revolution — a reform that should follow upon denunciation. But three years after his death his words bore splendid fruit. His successor as director of the fortunes of the " Lancet," Dr. James Wakley, had always considered that to make a complete investigation into the treatment of the sick poor in workhouses had been confided to him as an editorial legacy from his father. When, therefore, two tragedies in rapid succession — one occurring in December, 1864, and the other early in 1865 — called the attention of the public to this very topic in an urgent and even heartrending manner. Dr. James Wakley seized on the psychological moment and instituted an inquiry. He appointed as Com- missioners the late Dr. Francis Edmund Anstie, afterwards editor of the " Practitioner," the late Dr. Carr of Green- wich, and Mr. Ernest Hart, and published in the " Lancet " the results of their investigations. Dr. Anstie took the largest part in examining the London infirmaries, and to 486 An Enquiry into Workhouse Administration his able pen was due the genei-al summary of resuUs and recommendations which prefaced the reports of the parti- cular inquiries of the Commission. To tell what followed would be to go distinctly beyond the scope of this biography, but it is in no way far-fetched to claim for Wakley the credit of having thoroughly prepared both the public and the medical profession for terrible revelations. He had pro- mised that the " Lancet " would make these revelations, and the son who succeeded him kept the father's word. A Few Family Details 487 CHAPTER XLIX A Few Family Details — Hospitality at Harefield Park and Bedford Square — The Pressure of Work between 1839 and 1852 : a Day's Routine — Letter to Douglas Jerrold — The Breakdown at last — The Progress of Disease — A Sojourn at Madeira — Death. Wakley as a family man has not made any appearance in these pages, the reason being that although he possessed pronounced family instincts he was never sufficiently at leisure to do them justice, so that his attentions to his immediate domestic circle were necessarily fitful and capri- cious. Throughout his maiTied life he was engaged in the arduous struggle of working out his public career, and his home life had been merely a quiet background for the incidents that have been chronicled. His wife was an affectionate, retiring woman unfitted to be the mate of a public man to this extent that she had the strongest possible dislike to the causes which dragged her husband from her side to play his ever busy part in the world. She deeply regretted his entry upon a parliamentary career — so deeply that the sentiment of sorrow quite overshadowed that of legitimate pride in the success that had attended his several electioneering campaigns. Over and above the certainty that she felt that in the turmoil of public life there would be but little respect for family ties, she knew the grave expenses in which such a life would involve a man of Wakley's dis- position. The heavy drain upon his purse contingent on his position as editor of the " Lancet " ought, considered his wife, to have been sufficient responsibility even for so sanguine a man as he ; while surely the quarrels that arose from his journalistic enterprise should have sufficed to keep him from seeking another arena for disputes. The 4^8 A Few Family Details " Lancet " had received in her eyes a very valuable stamp of approval in that her father had seen in it a road to success for her husband at a time when his fortunes were at their lowest, and had persuaded and encouraged him to persevere in his literary venture, not only by words of approval, but by loosening his purse-strings. The editorship having become in itself a career, was it necessary to imperil the profits accruing therefrom by ventures in the stormy waters of general politics ? Mrs. Wakley held very strongly that it was not and took no active part in her husband's public life, which she considered to have divided him from her. A kindly, generous gentlewoman, she did not share his ambi- tions ; while she had for him what he never had for himself — a fear of the future. Mrs. Wakley died at Brighton in 1857 after a long illness. Wakley's family consisted of three sons and one daughter. The daughter died when a child, but of the three sons the two elder are alive at the present time, Mr. Thomas Henry Wakley, the senior proprietor of the " Lancet," and Mr. Henry Membury Wakley, a barrister and at one time deputy coroner for West Middlesex under his father. Towards his sons Wakley was an indulgent parent. He was ambitious for them, but he was not at all the kind of martinet in the family circle that might have been expected, seeing how masterful a person he was in public life. Anyone who has gathered a rightful idea of Wakley's work during the period corresponding to the passage of his three sons from baby- hood to manhood — that is from 1823 to 1852 — will understand that he had but little time to devote to them personally ; but they were very much in his thoughts. He trusted them largely and made them handsome allowances and always spoke of the " Lancet " as having been created by him with a view to forming a property for their future support. This was not strictly accurate, for the " Lancet " owed its origin to Wakley's determination to organise plans for the reform of the medical profession ; but the fortunes of the paper grew step by step with his children, and he came to regard its pecuniary future and theirs as inextricably bound Hospitality at Harefield Park 489 up. His schemes for his sons' careers were not exactly ful- filled, for he originally destined his eldest for the Church, while the second was to succeed him as coroner, and the third was to edit the " Lancet." The eldest who found that life in conservative Oxford was not without its drawbacks to the son of a prominent Reformer, was withdrawn from Wadham and the classics in favour of London University, and natural science. The second made no serious attempt to sit on the coroner's bench. Dr. James Goodchild Wakley, the youngest son, succeeded his father as editor of the " Lancet," a post which he filled for more than a quarter of a century until his death in 1886, his eldest brother being associated with him in the management. On the death of Dr. Wakley, Mr. Thomas Henry Wakley and his son Mr. Thomas Wakley, junior, became the editors, a third genera- tion being thus introduced. If Wakley's absence of leisure caused him to be but little with his family it did not prevent him from being an excel- lent and generous host both in Bedford Square and at Harefield Park. He and his three sons were great sports- men, being in particular devoted to shooting, and Harefield Park, where game was plentiful and strictly preserved — as was laughingly pointed out in the House of Commons — was the scene of many merry r/imions. Catholic in his tastes, popular in many walks of life, and contemptuous of class distinctions, Wakley was able to collect round him at Hare- field Park and equally at Bedford Square men of the most varied grades of social standing and shades of political opinion. Eminent colleagues in the House of Commons and aristocratic Whigs from the Reform Club foregathered round his table with the humbler members of the Liberal party and with its supporters in the Borough of Finsbury, with the staff of the " Lancet," with the county neighbour- hood from Harefield, and with numerous well-known and more or less distinguished personages in the literary and artistic worlds. Count D'Orsay and Baron Liebig, Charles Dickens and Professor Broussais, Douglas Jerrold and Robert Liston, Duncombe, Attwood and Francis Place the 49° Twelve Years of Incessant Toil tailor, Feargus O'Connor and Erasmus Wilson, Brougham, Joseph Hume, and Daniel O'Connell are a few names that can be recalled of men who must, in many instances, have been surprised at finding themselves beneath the same roof. It was at the busiest period of his life that his hospitality was most profuse and that his table became a meeting-place for persons of such widely different social standing and moral aim. For between the years 1839 and 1852 — the twelve years when he was editor, coroner, and member of Parliament at the same time — he was daily brought into contact with all sorts and conditions of men, and whenever he desired to see more of anyone he straightway asked him to dinner. He was so over-occupied that in no other way could he cultivate the acquaintances towards which he felt drawn or devise plans for future development of work. Conversation at the dinner-table was possible. Conversa- tion whilst presiding at an inquest, sitting upon a Parlia- mentary Committee, or writing leading articles against time ' was not. For during these twelve years his toil was inces- sant and gigantic. Under each separate division of his life he has appeared in these pages as a busy man, but what the aggregate amount of labour he demanded of himself amounted to is difficult of conjecture. As editor his management of the " Lancet " was not nominal, but very real. Until the last two years of his life he was the absolute dictator of the policy of the paper and the most powerful and impressive leader-writer on the staff. He spared no pains in amassing his material or verifying his details. The invariably contentious nature of his articles made it neces- sary for him to be careful that they should be accurate, while it was not in him to speak half-heartedly upon any of the numerous subjects in which his perso 139 ; caree'of, 146 ; verdict in favour of, 151 Cooper, Samuel, 444 Copland, Dr. James, editor of the "London Medical Repository," 97, i6s Copyright Bill, Lord Mahon's, 325 ; par- liamentary debate on, 326 Copyright in Lectures, Lord Eldon's views on, 92, 99 ; Bill to define, 306, 307 (see Abernethy, lectures of) Coroners Bill, of Joseph Cripps, 277, 282 ; of J. S. Pakington, 321 ; of Lord Harry Vane, 346 [see also Medical Witnesses Bill) Coroner's inquest, on Thomas Austin at Hendon, 383 ; on a manslaughter case at Uxbridge, 390 ; on a patient of Dr. Tumbull, 400 ; on the Hounslow flogging case, 404; on John Sadleir, 422 ; Charles Dickens at a, 425 Coroners, old-fashioned inquests before, 3S3i 3S4 ; arguments for medical men as. 3SS. 402 ; lapses of legal, 356, 357, 369, 370 ; reform in the courts of, 378 Coronership of East Middlesex, Wakley's unsuccessful candidature for, 358, 359, 365 ; Parliamentaiy Committee upon, 392 Coronership of West Middlesex, 375 ; Wakley's election to, 377 ; reform in the courts of, 379; the public and, 382 ; Pariiamentary Committee upon, 392 Cottenham, Lord, 376 Cotton-spinners, the Glasgow, 316 Coulson, of Henley-on-Thames, Wakley apprenticed to, 7 Cripps, Joseph, 277, 392 Crosse, John Green, of Norwich, 186 Dalhousie, Earl of, 315 Dalrymple, William, of Norwich, i86 Day, Horatio Grosvenor, 406 Denman, Lord, counsel for plaintiff in Wakley v. Hope Fire Assurance Com- pany, 62; counsel for plaintiff in Wakley v. Johnson, 163 Denman, Thomas, or Desman, Timothy, the case of, 116 Dermott, George Darby, private anatomy' school of, 17 ; criminal proceedings against, 220 Index 505 Dickens, Charles, on the medical student, 19 ; an account of a coroner's inquest by, 425 ; praise of Wakley from, 426 ; on Poor-law Amendment, 481 Disraeli, Benjamin, and the Chartists, 314, 315 ; and the Com Laws, 338 Dissection, subjects for (see Anatomy) D'Orsay, Count, 489 Dorsetshire labourers, case of the, 263 ; Wakley's speech in behalf of, 264 ; pardon of, 277 Drama, Wakley's love of, 104 Duke, Sir James, 392 Duncombe, Thomas Slingsby, 247 ; mem- ber for Finsbury, 249, 251 Dundas, Sir Da rid, 177 . Dupotet, Baron, and mesmerism, 445 Earle, Henry, 79, 173 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 347 Eldon, Lord, and the Cato Street con- spirators, 41 ; premature judgment of, on copyright in lectures, 92 ; satirical stanzas on, 93; second judg- ment of, in Abernethy's suit, 99 Eliot, George, 498 Eliot, Lord, 392 Elliotson, Dr. John, 444 ; experiments in mesmerism by, 445 ; resigns his posts at University College Hospital, 449 Erichsen, Sir John Eric, 501 Excise Act and adulteration of tea, 473 Extra-mural Burial Bill, 318 Finsbury, the borough of, in 1831, 239 ; Wakley's first contest in, 244 ; his second contest in, 247 ; his third and successful contest in, 249 ; second election for, 311 ; unopposed return for, 322 Fire Assurance Company, Hope, 52, 62 Flogging in the army, 305 ; fatal case of, at Woolwich, 305 ; and the death of Private Frederick White, 404 Food and Drugs Acts, 477 Forster, Thompson, 177 Francis, G. H., on Wakley's Parlia- mentary career, 350 Freemantle, Sir Thomas, 392 Game Laws, and Wakley, 332 Gardiner, William, pamphlet by, relating to the Argyll Street outrages, S4 -Garland, Henry, 213 Gerard's Hall, Wakley's residence at, 34 Gladstone, Mr. W. E., 326 Glasgow cotton-spinners, the, 316 Goodchild, Mr., of Hendon, 32 ; Wakley's marriage to daughter of, 36 ; evidence of, regarding Argyll Street outrages, $4 ; reconcihation of, with Wakley, 232 Grabham, Dr. Michael C, 495 Graham, Sir James, 317, 331, 342 Grainger, Edward, 15, 17 Grainger, Richard, 16, 17 Grant, Professor Robert, 444 Grant, Robert, member for Finsbury, 244 ; Governor of Bombay, 247 Green, Joseph Henry, surgeon to Guy's Hospital, 15 ; witness in Bransby Cooper V. Wakley, 149 Grey, Earl, 255 Grosvenor, Lord Robert, 332, 347 Grote, George, 296, 301 Gurney, Russell, Q.C., 62 Guthrie, George James, 281 Guy's Hospital, nepotism at, 15 ; mal- praxis at, 133 Halford, Sir Henry, 234 Hall, Dr. Alfred, 495 Hall, Dr. John, 405 Hall, Sir Benjamin, 392 Harefield Park, 332, 489 Harrowby, Earl of, 41 Hart, Mr. Ernest, 485 Harvey, Daniel Whittle, and the Medical Witnesses Bill, 286; and the News- paper Stamp Duties, 296, 297 Harvey, Sir Ludford, 177 Hassall, Dr. Arthur Hill, as Analytical Sanitary Commissioner, 464 Healey, T. P., 418 Hetherington, Henry, 296 Hey, William, of Leeds, 186 Hobhouse, Henry, 249 Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, 149 Hodgson, Joseph, of Birmingham, 186 "Hole-and-corner Surgery," iii Home, Sir Everard, lecturer at the Great Windmill Street School, 17 ; and the Hunterian MSS., 196, 197 Homoeopathic Association, English, 347 Honiton Grammar School, 4 Hood, Tom, 27, 330 Hope Fire Assurance Company, Wakley's action-against, 62 ; verdict, 68 5o6 Index Home, William, 92 Hospitals, abuses at, 107 ; criticism of administration at, 127 ; reports of proceedings at, 130 {see vmder respec- tive titles) Hounslow flogging case, 404 Howick, Lord, 279 Howitt, William, 500 Hume, Joseph, supports the London College of Medicine, 222 ; recom- mends Wakley to the electors of Finsbury, 241 ; and the Newspaper Stamp Duties, 293 Hutchinson, Gilbert Linney, 73, 89 Huxley, Professor, 444 Illegitimacy, in its relation to infanti- cide, 318 Incledon, Mr. , of Taunton, 6 Inglis, Sir Robert, 343 " Ingoldsby Legends" and Wakley, 399 Inquests (see Coroners' inquests) Irish Question in 1835, 258 Ivatts, Mr., of Gerard's Hall, 34 jEAFFRESO.v, J. Cordy, 361 Jerrold, Douglas, 489 ; a letter from Wakley to, 493 Jervis, John, Q.C., 289 Johnson, Dr. James, editor of the " Medico-Chirurgical Review," 112, 160 ; attacks on Wakley by, 163 ; Wakley's action against, 163 ; flatter- ing allusion to Wakley by, 365 Jowett, Benjamin, 135 Juvenile Offenders Bill, 321 KeatE, Robert, quibbling by, 214 Kelly, Sir FitzRoy, counsel for defendant in Tyrrell v. Wakley, 117 ; counsel for defendant in Bransby Cooper v. Wakley, 140 ; counsel for plaintiff in Wakley v. Johnson, 163 Key, Charles Aston, surgeon to Guy's Hospital, IS ; witness in Bransby Cooper V. Wakley, 148 King, Thomas, 213, 220 King's College Hospital, 99 Knight, Gaily, 392 Xnox, G. F., dentist, 230 Lambert, James, 144 " Lancet," foundation of paper, 72 ; original purposes of, 75 ; work of the first ten years of, 81, 227 ; early staff of, 229 ; Analytical Sanitary Com- mission established by, 460; inquiry into the condition of workhouse infir- maries commenced by, 485 Lane, S., Private Medical School of, 17 Lawrence, Sir William, lecturer at the Aldersgate City School, 17 ; a medical reformer, 185 ; defection of, from the reforming party, 209 Lawrie, Sir Peter, 393 Lectures, copyright in, 306, 307 Liebig, Baron, 489 Life assurance, medical referees and, 450 Life Assurance Company, the New Equitable, 454 Listen, Robert, 401, 444, 446 London College of Medicine, 221 ; Joseph Hume as chairman of, 222 ; failure of, 224 " London Medical Repository," 97, 165 Long, John St. John, the quack, 361, 363 ; exposure of, by Wakley, 364 ; lenient sentence upon, 366 Lord's Day Observance Bill, 304 Loveless, family of, 270 Luke, Dr. , 61 Lund, Dr., 497 Lynn, William, 177 Lytton, Lord, and Newspaper Stamp Duties, 294, 298 Macaulay, Lord, views of, on Copy right, 326 M'Grigor, Sir James, 404 Macleod, Dr. Roderick, editor of the " Medical and Physical Journal," 157 ; action of, against Wakley, 160 Madeira, Wakley's sojourn in, 496 Mahon, Lord, Copyright Bill of, 325 Malleson, Samuel, 64 Martineau, Philip, of Norwich, 186 Mazzini, Joseph, 331 Medical Act of 1858, 346 Medical Council, General, of Education and Registration, 346, 432 ' ' Medical Gazette," 166 " Medical and Physical Journal," 157 Medical Registration Bill, Wakley's, 340, 341 Medical schools, private, 16, 17, 18 Medical student in 1815, 18, 19 "Medical Times" and the Hounslow flogging case, 417 Index 507 Medical Witnesses Bill, 284; petitions in favour of, 285 ; supported by Sir John Campbell, 288 ; rapid transformation into law, 290 Medicine, National Institute of, 345 " Medico-Chirurgical Review," H2, 160 Melbourne, Viscount, 323 Membury, Wakley's birthplace, i Mesmerism, experiments in, 445 Metropolitan Police Magistrates, the status of, in 1831, 218 Middlesex Coroners, Parliamentary Com- mittee concerning, 392 Middlesex Hospital, malpraxis at, 133 Middlesex Magistrates, and the Coroner- ship of East Middlesex, 376 ; opposi- tion of, to Wakley, 384, 386, 390, 397 Mills, Alexander Dickson, 229, 493 Mills, George Ireland, 229, 400 Mills, Jowett, and Mills, printers of the "Lancet," 135 Mills, Rev. James Basnett, 229 Mills, Samuel, 229 " Mirror of Hospital Practice," 105 Molesworth, Sir William, 296, 308 Molesworth, William Nassau, 499 Monckton-Milnes, Richard, 325 Museums, Sunday opening of, 304 Mutiny Bill, 305 Naval Surgeons, an insult to, 212 New Equitable Life Assurance Company, 454 Newbury, Mrs., Wakley's sister, 8 Newspaper Stamp Duties, 291 ; history of, 292 ; agitation against, 293 ; Lord Lytton's position with regard to, 294 ; Wakley's views upon, 295, 296 ; Wakley's conduct in the House con- cerning, 298 O'CONNELL, Daniel, the Liberator, 258 ; and the Dorsetshire labourers, 274 ; and the Chartists, 314 O'Connor, Feargus, 313, 315 O'Key, Jane and Elizabeth, 446 O'Shaughnessy, Sir William B., and the Analytical Sanitary Commission, 464 Oxmantown, Lord, 279 Pakington, John Somerset, the Coroners Bill of, 321 Paris, Dr. John Ayrton, 343 Parke, Mr. Justice, 366 Parker, Samuel, deposition of, regarding Argyll Street outrages, 58 Parker, Tom, the "resurrection man," 46, 49. 50 Parkins, Sheriff J. W., letters from, regarding execution of the Cato Street conspirators, 47 Partridge, Alderman, of Colchester, 143 Partridge, Richard, Demonstrator of Anatomy at King's College Hospital) 27; the accuser of Bishop and Williams, 436 Peel, Sir Robert, and the Cato Street conspirators, 41 ; a graceful tribute to Wakley by, 337 Perceval, Dudley, 311 Phelps, Mr. , of Beaminster, 7 Physicians of London, the Royal College of, 9 Place, Francis, 489 Politics in 1835, 253 Pollock, Chief Baron, 62, 140, 419 Poor-law, development of, in England, 478 (see o/m Poor-law Amendment Act) Poor-law Amendment Act, 257, 479, 480 ; Walter's motion regarding, 307 ; Wakley's speeches against, 308, 481 ; sentimental views of Dickens and Wakley concerning, 482 Poor-law infirmaries, treatment of the sick at, 483, 484; an enquiry into the management of, 485 " Poor Man's Guardian," 296 Potter, Sandford and Co., Messrs., 52 Power, Mr. D'Arcy, 168 Pownall, Fairthorne and Co., Messrs., 52 Publication of Lectures Bill, 306, 307 " Punch" satirizes Wakley, 328, 329 Quackeey, Wakley's war against, 440 Quain, Richard, 444 Queen's Speech, Wakley moves an amend- ment to, 312 Ramadge, Dr. Francis Hopkins, and John St. John Long, 367 ; action of, against Wakley, 368 Reform Bill, 254 Reid, Assistant Stafif-Surgeon, 405 Richardson, Daniel, 361 Rogers, George, 239; chairman of Wakley's Election Committee, 245-, quarrels with Wakley, 311 Rolfe, Sir Robert, 289 So8 Index Russell, Lord John, and the Dorsetshire labourers, 275 ; and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 348 Rutherfurd, Lord Advocate, Select Com- mittee of, on Medical Education, 343' Sadleir, John, and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 348 ; suicide of, and inquest on, 422 St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Abernethy's lectures at, 89 St. George's Hospital, malpraxis at, 132 St. Mary's Hospital, 99 St. Thomas's Hospital, Wakley attends practice of, 15 ; nepotism at, 15 ; Wakley excluded from, no ; malpraxis at, 133 {see also United Hospitals) Sanitary Commission (see Analytical Sanitary Commission) Saundry, William, 305 Scarlett, Sir James, counsel for plaintiff in Bransby Cooper v, Wakley, 140 Scholefield's Act, 476 Sharpey, Professor, 444 Smith, Henry, the editor of the "Cam- bridge Chronicle," 229 Society of Apothecaries, the, 12, 236 South, John Flint, 168 Spankie, Serjeant, 241 ; member for Finsbury, 244 ; loses his seat, 251 Spring-Rice, Thomas, 279; and the Newspaper Stamp Duties, 297 Stanley, Lord, 347, 348, 428 Strickland, Sir George, 392 Surgeons of England, the Royal College of, position 05 in 1815, 12, 24; Wakley becomes a member of, 30 ; indictment of, 129 ; constitution of, 168 ; objec- tionable by-law of, 171 ; James War- drop's anonymous letters on, 173, 179; receipts of, 180, 208 ; first public meeting of members of, 183 ; William Lawrence and reform in, 185 ; ad- journed meeting of the members of, 190 ; oflficial refutation of, 193 ; revolt of members of, 200 ; petition in Par- liament against, 206 ; Sir Robert Peel's defence of, 207 ; Wakley's attacks upon, continued, 211 ; demon- stration in the theatre of, 213 ; serious fracas in the theatre of, 216, 217 ; criminal proceedings against Wakley commenced by, 220 ; creation of Fellows of, 34S. 431 Talfoued, Serjeant, 325 Teignmouth, Lord,. 392 Temple, Christopher, 244 Tenterden, Lord, 139 Thackeray, W. M. , 444 Thistlewood, Arthur, conspiracy of, 40 Thompson, Dr. Anthony Todd, 444 Thompson, George, deposition of, regard- ing Argyll Street outrages, 57 Thurlow, Lord, and the College of Sur- geons, 170 Trash Act, 293 Travers, Benjamin, surgical operations by, 108 ; action of, towards " Lancet " reporters, 130 Triennial Parliaments, Wakley's advo- cacy of, 303 ; revolutionary motion in support of, 3x2 Trimmer, Rev. H. S. , 406 Turn bull. Dr., 401 Tyrrell, Frederick, lecturer at the Alders- gate City School, 17 ; " the real Simon Pure," 115 ; action of, against Wakley 117 ; and reform in the College of Surgeons, 186, 190 United Hospitals, Wakley's student- ship at, 13 ; nepotism at, 15 ; abuses at, 133 University College Hospital, foundation of, 99 ; the distinguished staff of, 444 ; experiments in mesmerism at, 445 Vaccination, Wakley's amendments to legislation concerning, 317 Vane, Lord H. , Coroners Bill of, 346 Vaughan, Serjeant, counsel for plaintiff in Tyrrell v, WaJdey, 117 ; counsel for defendant in Wakley v. Johnson, 164 Villiers, Mr. C. P., 326 Vincent, Henry,- the Chartist, 315 Wakley, Henry, of Membury, 3 ; a Protectionist, 260 ; death of, 331 Wakley, Henry Membury, deputy-coroner of West Middlesex, 347, 488 Wakley, Dr. James Goodchild, and work- house administration, 485 ; editor of the "Lancet," 489 Wakley, Michael, 24 Wakley, Thomas, birth of, 2 ; early edu- cation of, 4 ; joins the medical profes- sion, 13 ; marriage of, 36 ; murderous Index 509 attack upon, 37 ; founds the " Lan- cet," 73 ; enters Parliament, 251 ; re- tires from Parliament, 349 ; is elected coroner for West Middlesex, 377 ; summary of work of, as a. medical reformer, 438 ; family life of, 487 ; psrsistent labours of, 490 ; fails in health, 494 ; death of, 497 Wakley, Mr. Thomas, junior, joint-editor of the " Lancet," 489 Wakley, Mr. Thomas Henry, joint-editor of the " Lancet," 489 Wakley, Mrs., 65, 66, 487, 488 Walker, George, 215, 220 Walter, John, 307 Warburton, Henry, presents petition to Parliament of members of the Royal College of Surgeons, 206 : Parliamen- tary Committee of, on Medical 'Educa- tion, 279 ; Anatomy Bills of, 435, 436 Wardrop, James, the aneurysm operation of, 159 ; letters of, in the " Lancet," 173. 179 Warren, Dr. James Low, 404 Warren, Samuel, 338 Watson, James, 296 Webb Street, Anatomy School, 15, 177 Westminster Hospital, 98 Wetherell, Sir Charles, counsel for plain- tiff in Abernethy v. Hutchinson, 92 White, Private Frederick John, 404 Whyte, Colonel John James, 404 Wigan, Arthur L., 188 Wilde, Serjeant, 163 Williams, Baron, 266 Williams, Dr. C. J. B., 49s Williams, Rev. Theodore, 384 Williams, William, 392 Wilson, Erasmus, medical evidence of, in the Hounslow flogging case, 410, 415 Wiseman, Cardinal, 347 Wiveliscombe Grammar School, 6 Wodehouse, Edmond, Wakley's quarrel with, in the House, 333 Wood, Sir Charles, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 466 Wood, Colonel Thomas, 392 WooUaston, Archdeacon, 64 Wordsworth, William, the poet, 325 Workhouses, death-rate in, 483 {see Poor- law Amendment Act) Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &= Co. London &* Edinburgh H Classifieb Catalogue OF WORKS IN GENERAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. • 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.G. 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, and 32 HORNBY ROAD, BOMB/ CONTENTS. BADMINTON LIBRARY (THE). BIOGRAPHY, PERSONAL ME- MOIRS, &c. CHILDREN'S BOOKS CLASSICAL LITERATURE TRANS- LATIONS, ETC. COOKERY, DOMESTIC MANAGE- MENT, &c. EVOLUTION, ANTHROPOLOGY, &c. - ■ FICTION, HUMOUR, &c. FUR AND FEATHER SERIES HISTORY, POLITICS, POLITY, POLITICAL MEMOIRS, &c. LANGUAGE, HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF LONGMANS' SERIES OF BOOKS FOR GIRLS PAGE 10 7 26 18 28 17 21 26 MANUALS OF CATHOLIC PHIL- OSOPHY MENTAL, MORAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY - MISCELLANEOUS AND CRITICAL WORKS - MISCELLANEOUS THEOLOGICAL WORKS POETRY AND THE DRAMA POLITICAL ECONOMY AND ECO- NOMICS POPULAR SCIENCE SILVER LIBRARY (THE) SPORT AND PASTIME TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE, THE COLONIES, &c. VETERINARY MEDICINE, &c. WORKS OF REFERENCE - INDEX OF AUTHORS AND EDITORS. Abbott (Evelyn) ^-^ (T. K.) - (E. A.) - Acknd (A. H, D.) Acton (Eliza) - Acworth (H. A.) Adeane (J. H.) . iEschylus Ainger (A. C.) - Albemarle (Earl of) - Alden (W. L.) - Allen (Grant) - Allmgham (W.) Anstey (F.) Aristophanes Aristotle - Armstrong (G. F. Savage) — (E.J.) - 7, Arnold (Sir Edwin) - ■-— (Dr.T.) - Ashley (W. J.) - Astor a. J.) ■ - Atelier du Lys (Author of). - - - Babington (W. D.) - Page 3.18 - 14, 13 14 24 18,29 21 18 14. 18 19 19,29 8, ig 3 i6 21 26 Page Bacon - - - 7, 14 Baden-Powell (B. H.) 3 Bagehot (W.) - 7, 16, 29 Bagwell (R.) - - 3 Bain (Alexander) 14 Baker (Tames) - # 21 (Sir S, W.) 8 Balfour (A. J.) Ball (J. T.) - Baring-Gould (Rev. S.) - - - Barnelt (Rev. S. A. & Mrs.) - - - 16 Baynes (T. S.) - - 29 BeaconsBeld (Earl of) 21 Beaufort (Duke of) - 10, 11 Becker (Prof.) - Beesly (A. H.) - Bell (Mrs. Hugh) Bent (J, Theodore) ■ Besant (Sir Walter)- Bickerdyke Q.) Bicknell (A. C.) Bird (R.) - - - 31 Black (Clementina) . 21 Blackwell (Elizabeth) 7 Boase (Rev. C. W.) - 4 "i3l 3 ■ 27,29 18 3 II, X2 Page Boedder (B.) - 16 Holland (W. E.) 14 Bosanquet (B.) - 14 Boyd (Rev.A. K. H.)7, 29, 31 Brassey (Lady) - 8, 9 (Lord) 3, 8, 12, 16 Bray (C. and Mrs.) - 14 Bright (J. F.) - - 3 Broadfoot (Major W.) 10 Brbgger (W. C.) - 7 Brown (J. Moray) - 11 Browning (H. Ellen) g Buck (H. A.) - - 12 Buckle (H. T.) - 3 Bull(T.) - 28 Burke (U. R.) - 3 Burrows (Montagu) 4 Butler (E. A.) - - 24 (Samuel) - 29 Cameron of Lochiel Cannan (E.) (F. Laura) Carmichael (J.) Chesney (Sir G.) Chisholm (G. G.) Cholmondeley-Pennell (H.) - - - Christie (Nimmo) Cicero Clarke (Rev. R. F.) - Clodd (Edward) Clutterbuck (W. J.) . Cochrane (A.) - Comyn (L. N.) Conington (John) - Conybeare (Rev. W. J.) & Howson (Dean) Coventry (A.) - Cox (Harding) Crake (Rev. A. D.) Creighton (Bishop) - Crump (A.) Cuningham (G. C.) - Curzon (Hon. G. N.) Cutts (Rev. E. L.) - Davidson (W. L.) - Davies (J. F.) - De la Saussaye (C.) - Deland(Mrs.) - Dent (C. T.) Deploige - 14 INDEX OF AUTHORS AND KniTORS—eontinued. Page De Salis (Mrs.) - 28, 29 De Tocqueville (A.) - 3 Devas (C. S.) - 16 Dickinson (G. L.) 4 Dougall (L.) 21 Dowell (S.) - 16 Doyle (A. Conan) 2Z Dreyfus (Irma) - 30 Du Bois (W. E. B.V 4 Dufferin (Marquis of) 12 Dunbar {Mary F.) - 20 Ebrington (Viscount) 12 Egbert (J. C.) - - 18 Ellis (J. H.) 13 Ewald (H.) 4 Falkener (E.) 13 Farnell (G. S.) - 18 Farrar (Dean) - - 16, 21 Fitzwygram (Sir F.) 10 Florjan - - 19 Follett (M. P.) - 4 Folkard (H. C.) 13 Ford (H.) - - 13 Fowler (Edith H.) 21 Francis (Francis) - 13 Freeman (Edward A.) 4 Frotbingham (A. L.) 30 Froude (James A.) 4, 7, 9, 21 Furneaux (W.) - 24 Galton (W. F.) - 17 Gardiner (Samuel R.) 4 Gerard (D.) - - 26 Gibbons (T. S.) - 11, 12 Gibson (Hon. H.) X3 Gill (H. J.) - 22 Gleig (Rev. G. R.) 8 Goethe - - 19 Graham (P. A.) - 13, 21 ■ (G. F.) - 16 Grant (Sir A.) - - 14 Graves (R. P.) - 7 'Green (T. Hill) 14 Greville (C. C. F.) 4 Grey (Maria) 26 Grose (T. H.) 14 Grove (F. C.) - 11 (Mrs. Lilly) 11 Gurney (Rev. A.) - 19 Gwilt Q.) - 30 Haggard (H. Rider) 21 Hake (O.) - - - 12 Halliwell-PhillippsQ.) 8 Hamlin (A. D. F.) - 30 Harding (S. B.) 4 Hart (Albert B.) 4 Harte (Bret) - 22 Hartwig (G.) 24 Hassall (A.) - - 6 Haweis (Rev. H. R.) 7, 30 Hayward (Jane M.) - 24 Hearn(W. E.)- - 4 Heathcote (J. M, and C. G.) - - 12 Helmholtz (Hermann von) - - - 24 Henry (W.) - 12 Herbert (Col. Kenney) 12 Hewins (W. A. S.) - 17 Hillier (G. Lacy) - 10 Hodgson (ShadworthH.) 14 Holroyd (Maria J.) - 7 Hope (Anthony) 22 Hornung (E. W.) 22 Houston (D. F.) - 4 Howell (G.) - - 16 Howitt (W.) - 9 Hudson (W. H.) 24 Hueffer (F. M.) 7 Hume (David) - 14 Hunt (Rev. W.) - 4 Hutchinson (Horace G.) 11 Ingelow (Jean [efferies (Richard) Jones (H. Bence) - Johnson (J. & J. H.) Jordan (W. L.) Jowett (Dr. B.) oyce (P. W.) - Justinian - Page 19, 26 30 25 30 16 17 4 ■4 Kalisch (M. M.) 32 Kant (I.) - - - 14, 15 Kaye (Sir J. W.) 5 Kerr (Rev. J.) - 12 Killick (Rev. A. H.) - 15 Kitchin (Dr. G. W.) 4 Knight (E. F.) - 5, 9, 12 Kostlin (J.) - 7 Ladd(G. T.) - - 15 Lang (Andrew) 5, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 30 Lascelles (Hon. G.) - 10, iz Laurie (S. S.) Leaf (Walter) Lear (H. L. Sidney) - Lecky (W. E. H.) - Lees (J. A.) Lejeune (Baron) Lester (L.V.) - Lewes (G. H.) - Lindley 0.) - Lindsay (Lady) Lodge (H. C.) - Loftie (Rev. W. J.) ■ Longman (C. J.) 10, 13, 30 (F. W.) - (G. H.) Lowell (A. L.) - Lubbock (Sir John) Lucan Lyall (Edna) - Lyttelton (Hon. R. H.) 10 Lytton (Earl of) 19 MacArthur (Miss E. A.) 17 Macaulay (Lord) 5, 6, MacColl (Canon) ■ 6 Macdonald (George) 20, 32 Macfarren (Sir G. A.) 30 Magruder (Julia) Mackail (J. W.) 18 Mackinnon (J.) 6 Macleod (H. D.) - 16 Macpherson (Rev. H. A.)i2 16 5 17 7 30 7 32 13 Munk (W.) Murray (R. F.) Hansen (F.) Nesbit (E.) Newman (Cardinal) O'Brien (W.) Ogle(W.)- - Oliphant (Mrs.) Oliver (W. D.) Onslow (Earl of) Orchard (T. N.) Osbourne (L) - Page 7 Maher (M.) Malleson (Col. G. B.) Mandello{J.) Marbot (Baron de) Marquand (A.) - Marshman (J. C.) - Martineau (Dr. James) Maskelyne (J. N.) "' ■ ;Bra " Matthews (Brander) Maunder (S.) - Max Miiller (F.) 15, 16, 30, 32 (Mrs.) - - 9 May (Sir T. Erskine) 6 Meade (L. T.) - - 26 Melville (G. J. Whyte) 22 Merivale (Dean) - 6 Merriman (H. S.) Mill (James) (John Stuart) Milner (G.) Miss Molly {Author of) Molesworth (Mrs.) - Montague (F. C.) Moore (T.) (Rev. Edward) - Morris (W.) - 20, 22, 31 (Mowbray) - 11 Mosso (A.) - 15 Mulhall (M. G.) - 17 25 15 15, 16 30 26 26 6 S5 14 Palmer (A. H.) 8 Park (W.) - 13 Parr (Mrs. Louisa) - 26 Payne-Gallwey (Sir R.) ,- - -11,13 Peary (Mrs. Josephine) 9 Peek(H.)- - - I? Pembroke (Earl of) - 12 Perring (Sir P.) 19 Phillips (M.) - - 32 Phillipps-Wolley(C.) 10,22 Piatt (S. & J. J.) - 20 Pleydell-Bonverie (E.G.) 12 Pole (W.) - - - 13 Pollock (W. H.) - II Poole (W. H. and Mrs.) - - - 29 Poore (G. V.) 31 Potter 0-) - 16 Prevost (C.) - 11 Pritchett (R. T.) - 12 Proctor (R. A.) 13, 24, 28, 31 Raine (Rev. James) - 4 Ransome (Cyril) 3 Rhoades (J.) - - 18, 20 Rhoscomyl (O.) 23 Rich (A.) - - - 18 Richardson (Sir B.W.) 31 (C.) - - - 12 Richman (I. B.) 6 Rickaby (John) 16 (Joseph) - 16 Ridley (Annie E.) 7 (e.) - - 18 Riley O-W.) - 20 Roget (Peter M.) - 16, 25 Rokeby (C.) - 23 Rolfsen (N.) - 7 Romanes (G. J.) 8, 15, 17, 20, 32 (Mrs.) - - 8 Ronalds (A.) 13 Roosevelt (T.) - 4 Rossetti (M. F.) 31 Russell (Bertrand) 17 Saintsbury (G.) 12 Sandars (T. C.) 14 Seebohm (F.) - - 6, 8 Selous (F. C.) - 10 Selss (A. M.) - - 19 Sewell (Elizabeth M .) 23 Shakespeare - - 20 Shand (A. I.) - - 12 Sharpe (R. R.) - 6 Shearman (M.) - 10 Sheppard (Rev. Edgar) 6 Sinclair (A.) - - 12 Smith (R. Bosworth) 6 (W. P. Haskett) 9 Soderini (Count E.) - 17 Solovyoff(V. S.) - 31 Sophocles - 18 Soulsby (Lucy H.) 26 Page Spedding (J.) - 7, 14 Stanley (Bishop) 24 Steel (A. G. - 10 (J. H.) - - 10 Stephen (Sir James) 8 (Leslie) - - 9 Stephens (H. Morse) 6 (W. W.) - - B Stevens (R. W.) 31 Stevenson (R. L.) - 23, 26 Stock (St. George) - 15 ' Stonehenge ' - 10 Storr (F.) - - 14 Stuart-Wortley(A.J.) 11,12 Stubbs(j. W.)- - 6 Sturdy (E. T.) - - 30 Sturgis (J.) - 20 Suffolk & Berkshire (Earl of). - - II Sullivan (Sir E.) 12 Sully (James) - - 15 Supernatural Religion (Author of) ~ 32 Sutherland (A. and G.) 6 Suttner (B. von) - 23 Swinburne (A. J.) - 15 Symes Q. E.) - 17 Tacitus Tavlor (Meadows) - Tebbutt (C. G.) Thompson (N. G.) - Thornhill (W. J.) - Todd (A.) - Toynbee (A.) - Trevelyan(SirG.O.) 18 17 12 13 18 6 17 7 (C.P.) - - 17 Trollope (Anthony) - 23 TyndalMJ.) - - g Tyrrell (K. Y.) - - 18 Upton (F. K. and Bertha) - 26 Verney (Frances P. andMargaretM.) 8 Vincent Q. E.) - - 17 Virgil .- . . 18 Vivekananda (Swami) 32 Wakeman (H. O.) 6 Walford (Mrs.) 23 Walker Qane H.) 29 Walpole (Spencer) 6 Walrond (Col. H.) 10 Walsingham(Lord)- 11 Walter Q.) - 8 Watson (A. E. T.) - 11, 12 Waylen (H. S. H.J - Jo Webb (Mr. and Mrs. Sidney) - - 17 ■ (T. E.) 19 Weber (A.) - 15 Weir (Capt. R.) 11 West (B. B.) - - 23, 31 Weyman (Stanley) - '23 Whately(Archbishop) 14, 15 (E. Jane) - - 16 Whishaw (F. J.) g, 23 Whitelaw (R.) - 18 Wilcocks (J. C.) 13 Willich (C. M.) 25 Witham (T. M.) 12 Wolff (H. W.) -V - 6 - ". «■) Wood (Rev. J. tt.) Woodgate (W. B.)_ 25 Wood3tfartin(w!G.) ,6 Wordsworth (Elizabeth) :26 Wylie(J. H.) - - 6 Youatt (W.) 10 Zeller(E.) - - 15 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. History, Polities, Polity, Political Memoirs, &e. Abbott. — A History of Greece By Evelyn Abbott, M.A., LL.D. Part \. — From the Earliest Times to the Ionian Revolt. Crown 8vo., loi. 6rf. Part IL — 500-445 B.o. Crown 8vo., los. td. Acland and Ransome. — A Hand- book IN Outline of the Political His- tory of England TO 1894. Chronologically Arranged.. By A. H. Dyke Acland, M.P., and Cyril Ransome, M.A. Crown 8vo., 6i. ANNUAL REGISTER {THE). A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad, for the year 1895. 8vo., i8i. Volumes of the Annual Register for the years 1863-1894 can still be had. i8i. each. Arnold (Thomas, [D.D.), formerly Head Master of Rugby School. Introductory Lectures on Mod- ern History. 8vo., 71. 6d. Miscellaneous Works. 8vo., 7s. 6d. Baden-Powell. — The Indian Village Community. Examined with Reference to the Physical, Ethnographic, and Historical Conditions of the Provinces ; chiefly on the Basis of the Revenue- Settlement Records and District Manuals. By B. H. Baden.Powell, M.A., CLE. With Map. 8vo., i6s. Bagwell. — Ireland under the TUDORS. By Richard Bagwell, LL.D. (3 vols.) Vols. L and II. From the first invasion of the Northmen to the year 1578. 8vo., 32s. Vol. III. 1578-1603. 8vo. i8i. 'Ball. — Historical Review of the Legislative Systems operative in Ire- land, from the Invasion of Henry the Second to the Union (1172-1800). By the Rt. Hon. J. T. Ball. 8vo., 6j. Besant. — The History of London. By Sir Walter Besant. With 74 Illus- trations. Crown 8vo., is. gd. Or bound as a School Prize Book, 2s. 6d. Brassey (Lord). — Papers and Ad- dresses. Naval and Maritime. 1872-1893. 2 vols. Crown Svo., los. Brassey (Lord) Papers and A DRESSES — continued. Mercantile Marine and Navk tion, from 1871-1894. Crown 8vo., 5 Imperial Federation and Colc ISATION PROM 1880 to 1894. Cr. 8vO., Political and Miscellaneo 1861-1894. Crown Svo 55. Bright. — A History of Englai By the Rev. J. Franck Bright, D.D. Period I. Mediaeval Monarchy: i 449 to 1485. Crown 8vo., 41. 6rf. Period II. Personal Monarchy. 148; to 1688. Crown 8vo., 51. Period III. Constitutional Monarc i68g to 1837. Crown 8vo., 71. 6ii. Period IV. The Growth ofDemocra 1837 '° ^88° Crown 8vo., 6s. Buckle. — History of Civilisati IN England and France, Spain j. Scotland. By Henry Thomas Buck 3 vols. Crown 8vo., 241. Burke. — A History of Spain fn the Earliest Times to the Death of Ferdin; the Catholic. By Ulick Ralph Bur M.A. 2 vols. 8vo., 32s. Chesney. — Indian Polity: a View the System of Administration in India. General Sir George Chesney, K.C With Map showing all the Administral Divisions of British India. 8vo., 21s. Creighton. — A History of 7 Papacy from the Great Schism to j Sack of Pome. By M. Creighton, D. Lord Bishop of London. 6- vols. Crc 8vo., 6i. each. Cuningham. — A Scheme for . PBRIAL Federation: a Senate for Empire. By Granville C. Cuningh of Montreal, Canada. Crown 8vo., 3s. Curzon. — Persia and the Persj Question. By the Right Hon. Geoi N. Curzon, M.P. With 9 Maps, 96 Hi trations, Appendices, and an Index, vols. 8vo., 42J. De Tocqueville.— Democracy America. By Alexis de Tocquevil 2 vols. Crown 8vo., i6j. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. History, Polities, Polity, Political Memoirs, &e, — continued. Dickinson. — The Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century. By G. Lowes Dickinson, M.A. 8vo, 7i. fsd. Ewald. — The History of Israel. By Heinrich Ewald. 8 vols., 8vo., FoUett. — The Speaker of the House of Rbprese^tatives. By M. P. FoLLETT. With an Introduction by Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D., of Harvard University. Crown 8vo, 6s. Froude (James A.). The History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Popular Edition. 12 vols. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each. ' Silver Library ' Edition. 12 vols. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. each. The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. The Spanish Story of the Ar- mada, and other Essays. Cr. 8vo., 35. 6rf. The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. Cabinet Edition. 3 vols. Cr. 8vo., i8j. 'Silver Library' Edition. 3 vols. Cr.8vo., los. 6d. English Seamen IN the Sixteenth Century. Cr. 8vo., 6s. The Council of Trent. Crown 8vo., 6s. Shoe t Studies on Grea t Subjects. 4 vols. . Cr. 8vo., 3^. 6d. each. C^SAR : a Sketch. Cr. 8vo, 35. 6d. Gardiner (Samuel Rawson, D.C.L., LL.D.). History of England, from the Ac- cession of James L to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642. 10 vols. Crown 8vo., 6s. each. A History of the Great Civil W^/?, 1642-1649. 4 vols. Cr.8vo.,6s.each. A History of the Commonwealth AND THE Protectorate. 1649-1660. Vol.L 1649-1631. With 14 Maps. 8vo.,2is. Gardiner (Samuel Rawson, D.C.L., LL.D.) — continued. The Student's History of Eng- land. With 378 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., i2i. Also in Three Volumes, price 4^. each. Vol. I. B.C. 55 — A.D. 1509. 173 Illustra- tions. Vol. II. 1509-1689. 96 Illustrations. Vol. III. 1689-1885. 109 Illustrations. Greville. — A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV., King William IV., AND Queen Victoria. By Charles C. F. Greville, formerly Clerk of the Council. Cabinet Edition. 8 vols. Crown 8vo., 6s. each. ' Silver Library ' Edition. 8 vols. Crown 8vo., 3s 6d. each. HARVARD HISTORICAL STUDIES. The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870. By W. E. B. Du Bois, Ph.D. 8vo., 7i. 6d. The Contest over the Ratificaton OF the Federal Constitution in Massa- chusetts. By S. B. Harding, A.M. 8vo., 6s. A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina. By D. F. Houston, A.M. 8vo., 6s. *^* Other Volumes are in preparation. Hearn. — The Government of Eng- land: its Structure and its Development. By W. Edward Hearn. 8vo., i6s. Historic Towns. — Edited by E. A. Freeman, D.C.L.,and Rev. William Hunt, M.A. With Maps and Plans. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. each. Bristol. By Rev. W.Hunt. Carlisle. By Mandell Creighton, D.D. Cinque Ports. By Mon- tague Burrows. Colchester. By Rev. E. L. Cutts. Exeter. By E. A. Freeman, London. By Rev. W, J. Loftie. Oxford. By Rev. C. W. Boase. Winchester. By G. W. Kitchin, D.D. York. By Rev. James Raine. New York. By Theodore Roosevelt. Boston (U.S.) By Henry Cabot Lodge. Joyce. — A Short History of Ire- land, from the Earliest Times to 1608. By P. W. Joyce, LL.D. Crown 8vo., los. 6rf. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. History, Polities, Polity, Politieal Memoirs, &e. — contim Kaye and Malleson.— ZTy^rojEK of THE Indian Mutiny, 1857-1858. By Sir John W. Kaye and Colonel G. B. Malle- SON. With Analytical Index and Maps and Plans. Cabinet Edition. 6 vols. Crown Svo., 6s. each. K n i g h t. — Madagascar in War Time : Tks Experiences of ' The Times ' Special Correspondent with the HovAS during the French Invasion OF 1895. By E. F. Knight. With 16 Illustrations and a Map. Svo., 12s. 6rf. Lang (Andrew). PicKLS THE Spy : or, The Incognito of Prince Charles. With 6 Portraits. 8vo., 1 8s. St. Andrews. With 8 Plates and 24 Illustrations in the Text by T. Hodge. 8vo. , 15s. net. Laurie. — Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education. By S. S. Laurie, A.M., LL.D. Crovi^n 8vo., 12s. Lecky (William Edward H artpole). History of England in the Eigh- TEEhTH Century. Library Edition. 8 vols. 8vo., £j 4s. Cabinet Edition. England. 7 vols. Crown 8vo., 6s. each. Ireland. 5 vols. Crown 8vo., 6s. each. History of European Morals FROM Augustus to Charlemagne. 2 vols. Crown 8vo., i6s. History of the Rise and Influ- ence OF THE Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. 2 vols. Crown 8vo., i6s. Democracy and Liberty. 2 vols. 8vo., 36s. The Empire : its value and its Grovrth. An Inaugural Address delivered at the Imperial Institute, November zo, 1893. Cr. 8vo., IS. 6d. Lowell. — Governments and Parties in Co^TINENTAL Europe. By A. Lawrence Lowell. 2 vols. 8vo., 21s. Macaulay (Lord). The Life and iVoRKS of L Macaulay. ' Edinburgh ' Edition, vols. 8vo., 6s. each. Vols. I. -IV. History of England. Vols. V.-VII. Essays; Biograpi, Indian Penal Code ; Contribui TO Knight's 'Quarterly Magaz Vol. VIII. Speeches ; Lays OF Anc Rome; Miscellaneous Poems. Vols. IX. and X. The Life and Let of Lord Macaulay. By the 1 Hon. Sir G. O. Trevelyan, Bart., This Edition is a cheaper reprint of the Lii Edition of Lord Macaulay's Life and W Complete Works. Cabinet Edition. 16 vols. Post £4 i6s. Library Edition. 8 vols. 8vo., f, ' Edinburgh ' Edition. 8 vols. 8vo each. History of England from Accession of James the Second. Popular Edition. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo., Student's Edition. 2 vols. Cr. 8vo., People's Edition. 4 vols. Cr. 8vo., i Cabinet Edition. 8 vols. Post 8vo., ' Edinburgh ' Edition. 4 vols. Svo each. ' Library Edition. 5 vols. Svo., £^. Critical and Historical Ess. WITH Lays of Ancient Rome, volume. Popular Edition. Crown Svo., 2s. 61 Authorised Edition. Crown Svo., 2s or 3*. 6d., gilt edges. Silver Library Edition. Cr. Svo., 3s Critical and Historical Ess Student's Edition, i vol. Cr. 8vo., t People's Edition. 2 vols. Cr. Svo., 1 ' Trevelyan ' Edition. 2 vols. Cr. Svc Cabinet Edition. 4 vols. Post Svo., 2 ' Edinburgh ' Edition. 4 vols. Svc each. Library Edition. 3 vols. Svo., 36s Essays which may be had separa price 6d. each sewed, is. each cloth. Addison and Walpole. " Croker's Boswell's Johnson. HaUam's Constitutional History. Warren Hastings. The Earl of Chatham (Two Essays). Frederick the Great. Miscellaneous Writings People's Edition. 1 vol. Cr. Svo., 4s. Library Edition. 2 vols. Svo., 21s Ranke and Gladston Milton and Machiav Lord Byron. Lord Clive. Lord Byron, and Comic Dramatis the Restoration. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. History, Polities, Polity, Political Memoirs, &e. — continued Macaulay (Lord) — continued. Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches. Popular Edition. Crown 8vo., 2s. dd. Cabinet Edition. Including Indian Penal Code, Lays of Ancient Rome,and Miscel- laneous Poems. 4 vols. Post 8vo., 24^. Selections from the Writings of Lord Macaulay. Edited, with Occa- sional Notes, by the Right Hon, Sir G. O. Trevelyan, Bart. Crown 8vo., 6s. MacColl. — The Sultan and the Powers. By the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., Canon of Ripon. Svo., loi. 6 vols. 8vo each. Marbot. — The Memoirs of Baron de Marbot. Translated iron French. Crown 8vo., 7s. td. Nansen. — Fridtiof Nansen, i, 1893. By W. C. Brogger and NoR] RoLFSEN. Translated by William Arc With 8 Plates, 48 Illustrations in the ' and 3 Maps. 8vo., 12s. 6f.4K£i and Adventurii IN Northern Queensland. By Arthuf C. Bicknell. With 24 Plates and 22 Illus- trations in the Text. Svo., 15s. Brassey. — Voyages and Travels of Lord Brassey, K.C.B., D.C.L., 1862- 1894. Arranged and Edited by Captain S, Eardley-Wilmot. 2 vols. Cr. Svo., los. Brassey (the late Lady). A Voyage IN the ^ Sunbeam;' Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven MohTHS. I Library Edition. With 8 Maps and Charts, and 118 Illustrations. Svo. 21s Cabinet Edition. With Map and 6t Illustrations. Crown Svo., 7^. 6d. Silver Library Edition. With 66 Illustra- tions. Crown Svo., 3s. 6d. Popular Edition. With 60 Illustrations 4to., 6d. sewed, li. cloth. School Edition. With 37 Illustrations, Fcp., 2j. cloth, or 3s. white parchment MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Travel and Adventure, the Colonies, &e. — continued. Brassey (the late Lady) — continued. Sunshine and Storm in the East. Library Edition. With 2 Maps and 141 Illustrations. Svo., 21s. Cabinet Edition. With 2 Maps and 114 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., is. td. Popular Edition. With 103 Illustrations. 4to., 6d. sewed, is. cloth. In the Trades, the Tropics, and THE ' Roaring Forties. ' Cabinet Edition. With Map and 220 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 75. 6d. Popular Edition. With 183 Illustrations. 4to., 6d. sewed, is. cloth. Three Voyages in the ' Sunbeam'. Popular Ed. With 346 lUust. ^to.,2s.6d. Browning. — A Girl's Wanderings IN Hungary. By H. Ellen Browning. With Map and 20 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. Froude (James A.). Oceana : or England and her Col- onies. With g Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 2s. boards, 2s. 6d. cloth. The English IN THE West Indies: or, the Bow of Ulysses. With 9 Illustra- tions. Crown 8vo., 2s. boards, 2S. 6d. cloth. Howitt. — Visits to Remarkable Places. Old Halls, Battle-Fields, Scenes, illustrative of Striking Passages in English History and Poetry. By William Howitt. With 80 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. Knight (E. F.). The Cruise of the ' Alerte ' : the Narrative of a Search for Treasure on the Desert Island of Trinidad. With 2 Maps and 23 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Where Three Empires meet: a Narrative of Recent Travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Baltistan, Ladak, Gilgit, and the adjoining Countries. With a Map and 54 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. The 'Ealcon' on the Baltic: & Voyage from London to Copenhagen in , a Three-Tonner. With 10 Full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3J. Srf. Lees and Clutterbuck.— B.C. 1887 : A Ramble IN British Columbia. By J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck. With Map and 75 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. Max MuUer. — Letters from ( stantinoplb. By Mrs. Max Miii With 12 Views of Constantinople anc neighbourhood. Crown 8vo., 6s. Nansen (Fridtjof). The First Crossing of Gri LAND. With numerous Illustration! a Map. Crown 8vo., 3s. dd. Eskimo Life. With3i lUustrati Svo., i6s. Olive r. — Crags and Cra tj Rambles in the Island of Reunion. William Dudley Oliver, M.A. 27 Illustrations and a Map. Cr. 8vo., Peary. — My Arctic Journal year among Ice-Fields and Eskimos. Josephine Diebitsch-Peary. Wit! Plates, 3 Sketch Maps, and 44 Illustra in the Text. 8vo., 12s. Qm\\insca.^JouRNAL of a u Months' REsiDEt,cE in Portugal, Glimpses of the South of Spain. By QuiLLiNAN (Dora Wordsworth). Edition. Edited, with Memoir, by Edi Lee, Author of ' Dorothy Wordsworth Crown 8vo., 6s. Smith. — Climbing in the Bri Isles. By W. P. Haskett Smith. Illustrations by Ellis Carr, and Num Plans. Part I. England. i6mo., 3s. 6d. Part II. Wales and Ireland, h 3s. td. Part III. Scotland. [In frepari Stephen. — The Pla y- Gro unl Europe. By Leslie Stephen. Edition, with Additions and 4 lUustra Crown 8vo., 6s. net. THREE IN NOR WA Y. By of Them. With a Map and 59 lUustra Crown 8vo., 2s. boards, 2s. 6d. cloth. Tyndall. — The Glaciers of Alps : being a Narrative of Excui and Ascents. An Account of the C and Phenomena of Glaciers, and ar position of the Physical Principles to ^ they are related. By John Tyni F.R.S. With numerous Illustrations. C 8vo., 5s. 6d. net. Whishaw. — The Romance of Woods : Reprinted Articles and Skel By Fred. J. Whishaw. Crown Svo. , 10 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Veterinary Medicine, &e. Steel (John Henry). A Treatise on the Diseases of THE Dog. With 88 Illustrations. Svo., los. 6d. A Treatise on the Diseases 6f THE Ox. With 1 19 Illustrations. 8vo., 15s. A Treatise on the Diseases of THE Sheep. With 100 Illustrations. 8vO., I2i. Outlines of Equine Anatomy : a Manual for the use of Veterinary Students in the Dissecting Room. Cr. 8vo., ys. 6d. Fitzwygram. — Horses an. Stables. By Major-General Sir F. F1T2 WYGRAM, Bart. With 56 pages of lUustrE tions. 8vo., 2S. 6d. net. 'Stonehenge.' — The Dog i. Health and Disease. By ' Stone HENGE '. With 78 Wood Engravings 8vo., 7J. 6rf. Youatt (William). The Horse. Revised and Enlarge( by W. Watson, M.R.C.V.S. With 5 Wood Engravings. Svo., 7s. td. The Dog. Revised and Enlarged With 33 Wood Engravings. 8vo., 61. Sport and Pastime. THE BADMINTON LIBRARY. Edited by HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, K.G. ; Assisted by ALFRED E T. WATSON. Complete in 28 Volumes. Crown 8vo., Price loj. 6rf. each Volume, Cloth. *(,* The Volumes are also issued half-bound in Leather, with gilt top. The price can be hai from all Booksellers, ARCHER Y. By C. J. Longman and Col. H. Walrond. With Contributions by Miss Legh, Viscount Dillon, Major C. Hawkins Fisher, &c. With 2 Maps, 23 Plates and 172 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. 6d. ATHLETICS AND FOOTBALL. By Montague Shearman. With 6 Plates and 52 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. td. BIG GAME SHOOTING. By Clive Phillipps-Wolley. Vol. I. AFRICA AND AMERICA. With Contributions by Sir Samuel W. Baker, W. C. Oswell, F. J. Jackson, Warburton Pike, and F. C. Selous. With 20 Plates and 57 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., lOi. 6rf. Vol. II. EUROPE, ASIA, AND THE ARCTIC REGIONS. With Contribu- tions by Lieut.-Colonel R. Heber Percy, Arnold Pike, Major Algernon C. Heber Percy, &c. With 17 Plates and 56 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6(/. BILLIARDS. By Major W. Broad FOOT, R.E. With Contributions by A. H Boyd, Sydenham Dixon, W. J. Ford Dudley D. Pontifex, &c. With 11 Plates ig Illustrations in the Text, and numerou Diagrams and Figures. Crown 8vo., los. 6rf BOATING. By W. B. Woodgate With 10 Plates, 39 Illustrations in the Text and from Instantaneous Photographs, am 4 Maps of the Rowing Courses at Oxford Cambridge, Henley, and Putney. Crowi Svo., loj. 6if, CO URSING AND FAL CONR Y By Harding Cox and the Hon. Gerali Lascelles. With 20 Plates and 56 lUus trations in the Text. Crown Svo. , los. 6d. CRICKET. By A. G. Steel anc the Hon. R. H. Lyttelton. With Con tributions by Andrew Lang, W. G. Grace F. Gale, &c. With 12 Plates and 52 lUus trations in the Text. Crown Svo., los. dd. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Sport and Pastime — continued. THE BADMINTON LIBRARY— conimw^rf. CYCLING. By the Earl of Albe- marle and G. Lacy Hillier. With ig Plates and 44 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. 6rf. DANCING. By Mrs. Lilly Grove, F.R.G.S. With Contributions by Miss MiDDLETON, The Hon. Mrs. Armytage, &c. With Musical Examples, and 38 Full- page Plates and 93 Illustrations in the Text. Crown Svo., loj. 6d. DRIVING. By His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, K.G. With Contributions by other Authorities. With Photogravure Intaglio Portrait of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, and 11 Plates and 54 Illustra- tions in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. FENCING, BOXING, AND WRESTLING. By Walter H. Pollock, F. C. Grove, C. Prevost, E. B. Mitchell, and Walter Armstrong. With 18 Intaglio Plates and 24 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. FISHING. By H. Cholmondeley- Pennell, Late Her Majesty's Inspector of Sea Fisheries. Vol; I. SALMON AND TROUT. With \ Contributions by H. R. Francis, Major John P. Traherne, &c. With Frontis- piece, 8 Full-page Illustrations of Fishing Subjects, and numerous Illustrations of Tackle, &c. Crown 8vo., 10s. 6d. Vol. II. PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. With Contributions by the Marquis of Exeter, William Senior, G. Christopher Davis, &c. With ; Frontispiece, 6 Full-page Illustrations of Fishing Subjects, and numerous Illustra- tions of Tackle, &c. Crown 8vo., ids. 6rf. GOLF. By Horace G. Hutchinson. With Contributions by the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., Sir Walter Simpson, Bart., Andrew Lano, &c. With 25 Plates and 65 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. I HUNTING. By His Grace the Duke OF Beaufort, K.G.,*and Mowbray Morris. With Contributions by the Earl of Suffolk AND Berkshire, Rev. E. W. L. Davies, J. S. Gibbons, G. H. Longman, &c. With 5 Plates and 54 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. MOUNTAINEERING. By C Dent. With Contributions by Sir W CoNVifAY, D. W. Freshfield, C. Matthews, &c. With 13 Plates an Illustrations in the Text. Cr. 8vo., loi •POETRY OF SPORT {THE Selected by Hedley Peek. Wit Chapter on Classical Allusions to Spo: Andrew Lang, and a Special Prefai the Badminton Library by A. E. T. Wat With 32 Plates and 74 Illustrations ir Text. Crown 8vo., los. td. RACING AND STEEPLE- CH ING. By the Earl of Suffolk Berkshire, W. G. Craven, the Hoi Lawley, Arthur Coventry, and Al E. T. Watson. With Coloured Frc piece and 56 Illustrations in the ' Crown 8vo., los. 6d. RIDING AND POLO. RIDING. By Captain Robert V the Duke of Beaufort, the Ear Suffolk and Berkshire, the Ear Onslow, J. Murray Brown, &c. 18 Plates and 41 Illustrations in the ' Crown 8vo., los. 6d. SEA FISHING. By John Bic dyke. Sir H. W. Gore-Booth, Al C. Harmsworth, and W. Senior. 22 Full-page Plates and 175 lUustratio the Text. - Crown 8vo., los. 6d. SHOOTING. Vol. I. FIELD AND COVERT. By '. Walsingham and Sir Ralph P/ Gallwey, Bart. With Contributio: the Hon. Gerald Lascelles and Stuart-Wortley. With 11 Full Illustrations and 94 Illustrations ii Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. Vol. II. MOOR AND MARSH. Lord Walsingham and Sir Ralph Pi Gallwey, Bart. With Contributio Lord Lovat and Lord Charles Le Kerr. With 8 Full-page lUustrz and 57 Illustrations in the Text. C 8vo., los. 6d. 12 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Sport and Pastime — continued. THE BADMINTON lAB.'RhSX— continued. SKATING, CURLING; TOBOG- GANING. By J. M. Heathcote, C. G. Tebbutt, T. Maxwell Witham, Rev. John Kerr, Ormond Hake, Henry A. Buck, &c. With 12 Plates and 272 Illus- trations and Diagrams in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. td. SWIMMING. By Archibald Sin- clair and William Henry, Hon. Sees, of the Life-Saving Society. With 13 Plates and 106 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. 6d. TENNIS, LA WN TENNIS, RACKETS AND FIVES. By J. M. and C. G. Heathcote, E. 0. Pleydell- Bouverie, and A.C. Ainger. With Contri- butions by the Hon. A. Lyttelton, W. C. , Marshall, Miss L. Dod, &c. With 12 Plates and 67 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., loj. 6d. YACHTING. Vol. I. CRUISING, CONSTRUCTIO^ OF YACHTS, YACHT RACING RULES, FITTING-OUT,&c. By Si) Edward Sullivan, Bart., The Earl 01 Pembroke, Lord Brassey, K.C.B., C. E. Seth-Smith, C.B., G. L. Watson, R T. Pritchett, E. F. Knight, &c. Witl 21 Plates and 93 Illustrations in the Text and from Photographs. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. Vol. II. YACHT CLUBS, YACHT- ING IN AMERICA AND THE COLONIES, YACHT RACING, &c. By R. T. Pritchett, The Marquis of DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P., THE EARL OF Onslow, James McFerran, &c. Witt 35 Plates and 160 Illustrations in the Text. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. FUR AND FEATHER SERIES. Edited by A. E. T. Watson. Crown 8vo., price 5s. each Volume, cloth. ,* The Volumes are dho issued half-bound in Leather, with gilt top. from all Booksellers. The price can be had THE PARTRIDGE. Natural His- tory by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson ; Shooting, by A. J. Stuart-Wortley ; Cookery, by George Saintsbury. With II Illustrations and various Diagrams in the Text. Crown Svo., 5s. THE GROUSE. Natural History by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson; Shooting, by A. J. Stuart-Wortley; Cookery, by George Saintsbury. With 13 Illustrations and various Diagrams in the Text. Crown 8vo., ss. THE PHEASANT. Natural History by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson ; Shooting, by A. J. Stuart-Wortley ; Cookery, by Alexander Innes Shand. With 10 Illus- trations and various Diagrams. Crown 8vo., 5s. *,* Other Volumes are in preparation. THE HARE. Natural. History by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson ; Shooting, by the Hon. Gerald Lascelles ; Coursing; by Charles Richardson ; Hunting, by J. S. Gibbons and G. H. Longman ; Cookery, by Col. Kenney Herbert. With g Illustrations. Crown Svo, 54. RED DEER.— Natural History. By the Rev. H. A. Macpherson. Deer Stalk- ing. By Cameron of Lochiel. — Stag Hunting. By Viscount Ebrington. — Cookery. By Alexander Innes Shand. With 10 Illustrations by J. Charlton and A. Thorburn. Crown 8vo., ss. BADMINTON MAGAZINE (The) of Spouts and Pastimes. Edited by Alfred E. T. Watson (" Rapier "). With numerous Illustrations. Price is. monthly. Vols. I. -III. 6s. each. Bickerdyke. — Davs of my Life on Waters Fresh and Salt; and other Papers. By John Bickerdyke. With Photo-Etched Frontispiece and 8 Full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 6j. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Sport and Pastime — continued. DEAD SHOT{The): or, Sportsman's Complete Guide. Being a Treatise on the Use of the Gun, with Rudimentary and Finishing Lessons in the Art of Shooting Game of all , kinds. Also Game-driving, Wildfowl and pigeon-shooting, Dog-breaking, etc. By Marksman. Seventh edition, with i^umer- ous Illustratiohs. Crown 8vo., loi. 6d. Ellis. — Chess Sparks ; or, Short and Bright Games of Chess. Collected and Arranged by J. H. Ellis, M. A. 8vol, 4s. 6d. Falkener. — Games, Ancient and ORiEKrAL, AND How TO Play Thbm. By Edward Falkener. With numerous Photographs, Diagrams, &c. 8vo., 21s. Folkard. — The Wild-Fowler : A Treatise on Fowling, Ancient and Modern, descriptive also of Decoys and Flight-ponds, Wild-fowl Shdoting, Gunning-punts, Shoot- ing-yachts, &c. Also Fowling in the Fens and in Foreign C6untries, Rock-fowling, &c., &c., by H. C. Folkard. Fourth edition. With 13 highly-finished Engravings on Steel, and several Woodcuts. 8vo., izs. 6rf. Ford. — The Theory and Practice OF Archery. By Horace Ford, New Edition, thoroughly Revised and Re-written by W. Butt, M.A. With a Preface by C. J. Longman, M,A. Svo., 14^. Francis. — A Book on Angling : or, ^ Treatise on the Art ot Fishing in every Branch ; including full Illustrated List of Sal-' mon Flies. By Francis Francis. With Por- trait and Coloured Plates. Crown 8vo., 151. Gibson. — Tobogganing on Crooked JftTNS. By the Hon. Harry Gibson. With - >.; Contributions by F. de B. Strickland and ' Lady-Toboganner '. With 40 Illustra- tions. Crown 8vo., 6s. Gtaham,— Co [iNTRy Pastimes for Boys. By P. Anderson Graham, With ■';. : 2^2 Illustrations from Drawings and ' Photographs. Crown Svo. ts. Lang. — Angling Sketches. By Andrew Lang. With 20 Illustrations. Crown Svo., 31. 6d. Longman. — Chess Openings. By Frederick W. Longman. Fcp. 8vo., 2i. 6d. Maskelyne. — Sharps and Flats : a Complete Revelation of the Secrets 01 Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. By John Nevil Maskelyne, of the Egyptian Hall. With 62 Illustrations. Crown Svo., 6j; Park. — The Game of Golf. William Park, Jun., Champion 1887-89. With 17 Plates and 26 I tions in the Text. Crown 8vo., 7s. 1 Payne-Gallwey (Sir Ralph, : Letters to Young Shooters Series). On the Choice and use ol With 41 Illustrations. Crown Svo. Lettersto Young Shooters{^ Series). On the Production, Presa and Killing of Game. With Dii in Shooting Wood-Pigeons and Br in Retrievers. With Portrait a Illustrations. Crown Svo., 125. da Letters to Young Snot (Third Series.) Comprising a Natural History of the Wildfov are Rare or Common to the Islands, with complete directi Shooting Wildfowl on the Coa Inland. With 200 Illustrations. 8vo., iSi. Pole (William). The Theory of the Modern, tific Game of Whist. Fcp. Svo. TheEvol utionof Whist: a Si the Progressive Changes which th has undergone. Cr. 8vo., 2s. 6(f. Proctor. — How to Play l^ with the Laws and Etiquei Whist. By Richard A. Proctor. Svo., 3s. 6d. Ronalds. — The Fly-Fisher's . MOLOGY. By Alfred Ronalds. \ coloured Plates. Svo., 14J. Thompson and Cannan. 1 in-Hand Figure Skating. ByNoE G. Thompson and F. Laura C Members of the Skating Club. V Introduction by Captain J. H. Th R.A. With Illustrations. i6mo., 6j Wilcocks. — The Sea Fishei Comprising the Chief Methods of H( Line Fishing in the British and otht and Remarks on Nets, Boats, and E By J. C. Wilcocks. Illustrated. Cr. i 14 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Mental, Moral, and Political Philosophy. LOGIC, RHETORIC, PSYCHOLOGY, &-C. Abbott. — The Elements of Logic. By T. K. Abbott, B.D. i2mo., 3s. Aristotle. The Politics: G. Bekker's Greek Text of Books L, IIL, IV. (VII.), with an English Translation by W. E. Bolland, M.A. ; and short Introductory Essays by A. Lang, M.A. Crown 8vo., 71. 6d. The Politics: Introductory Essays. By Andrew Lang (from Bolland and Lang's ' Polities'). Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. The Ethics: Greek Text, Illustrated with Essay and Notes. By Sir Alexan- der Grant, Bart. 2 vols. 8vo., 32J. An Introduction to Aristotl^s ' Ethics. Books I.-IV. (Book X. c. yi.-ix. in an Appendix). With a continuous Analysis and Notes. By the Rev. Edward Moore, D.D., Cr. Svo. loj. td. Bacon (Francis). Complete Works. Edited by R. L. Ellis, James Spedding and D. D. Heath. 7 vols. Svo., £3 135. 6d. Letters and Life, including all his occasional Works. Edited by James Spedding. 7 vols. Svo., £n 4s. The Essa ys : with Annotations. By Richard Whately, D.D. Svo., ios. 6rf. The Essays. Edited, with Notes, by F. Storr and C. H. Gibson. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. The Essays: with Introduction, Notes, and Index. By E. A. Abbott, D.D. 2 Vols. Fcp. 8vo.,6s. The Text and Index only, without Introduction and Notes, in One Volume. Fcp. 8vo., 2s. 6d. Bain (Alexander), Mental Science. Cr. 8yo., 6s. 6d. Moral Science. Cr. 8vo., 45. 6rf. The two works as above can be had in one volume, price los. dd. Senses and the Intellect. 8vo., 15s. Emotions AND ths Will. Svo., 15s. Bain (Alexander) — continued. Logic, Deductive and Inductive. Part I. 4s. Part II. 6i. td. Practical Essays. Cr. 8vo., as. Bray (Charles). The Philosophy OF Necessity : or, Law in Mind as in Matter. Cr. Svo., y. The Educa tionof the Feelings : a Moral System for Schools. Cr. 8vo., 2s. 6rf. Bray. — Elements of Morality, in Easy Lessons for Home and School Teaching. By Mrs. Charles Bray. Crown Svo., u. dd. Davidson. — The Logic of Defini- tion, Explained and Applied. By William L. Davidson, M.A. Crown Svo., 6s. Green (Thomas Hill). — The Works OF. Edited by R. L. Nettleship. Vols. I. and II. Philosophical Works. Svo., i6s. each. Vol. III. Miscellanies. With Index to the three Volumes, and Memoir. Svo., 2is. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. With Preface by Bernard Bosanquet. Svo., 5s. Hodgson (Shadworth H.). Time and Space: A Metaphysical Essay. Svo., i6s. The Theory of Practice: an Ethical Inquiry. 2 vols. Svo., 24s. The Philosophy of Reflection. 2 vols. Svo., 2,1s. Hume. — The Philosophical Works OF Da vw Hume. Edited by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose. 4 vols. Svo., 56s. Or separately. Essays. 2 vols. 2Si. Treatise, of Human Nature. 2 vols. 2&s. Justinian. — The Institutes of yusTiMAN : Latin. Text, chiefly , that of Huschke, with English Introduction, Trans- lation, Notes, and Summary. By Thomas C. Sandars, M.A. Svo., iSs. Kant (Immanuel), Critique of Practical Peason, AND Other Works on the Theory of Ethics.. Translated by T. K. Abbott, B.D. With Memoir. 8vo„ 12s. 6d. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 15 Mental, Moral and Political Philosophj'' — continued. Kant (Immanuel) — continued. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic OF Ethics. Translated by T. K. Abbott, B.D. (Extracted from ' Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and other Worlds on the Theory of Ethics.') Crown 8vo, 3s. Introduction ' TO Logic, and his Essay on the Mistaken Subtilty of the Four Figures.. Translated by T. K. Abbott. 8vo., 6s. K i 1 1 i c k. — Handbook to Mill's System of Logic. Ey Rev. A. H. KiLLicK, M.A. Crown 8vo., 31. 6d. Ladd (George Trumbull). ■ ' 'Philosophy OF Mind : An Essay on the Metaphysics of Psychology. 8vo., i6i. ' Elements of Physiological Psy- chology. 8vo., 21J. Outlines of Physiological Psy- chology. A Text-book of Mental Science for Academies and Colleges. 8vo., I2j. Psychology, Descriptive and Ex- planatory; a Treatise of the Phenomena, < Laws, and Development of Human Mental Life. 8vo., 21S. ( Primer of Psychology. Cr. 8vo., ' 5s, 6d. hevres.—THE History of Philoso- phy, from Thales to Comte. By George Henry Lewes. 2 vols. 8vo., 32s. Max Miiller (F.). The Science of Thought. 8vo.,2I5. ' Three Introductory Lectures ON THE Science of Thought. 8vo., is. 6d. Mill. — Analysis of the Phenomena OF THE Human Mind. By James Mill. 2 vols. 8vo., 28s. Mill (John Stuart). A System of Logic. Cr. 8vo., 35. 6ang. — Custom and Myth : Studies , of Early Usage and Belief. By Andrew Lang. With 15 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. td. Lubbock. — The Origin of Civilisa- tion, and the Primitive Condition of Man. By Sir J. Lubbock, Bart., M.P. With 5 Plates and 20 Illustrations in the Text. 8vo., i8s. Romanes (George John). Darwin, and after Darwin: an Exposition pf the Darwinian Theory, and a Discussion on Post-Darwinian Questions. Part I. The Darwinian Theory. With Portrait of Darwin and 125 Illustrations. Crown Svo., los. 6d. Part II. Post- Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility. With Portrait of ' the Author and 5 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo., IOS. 6d. An Examination of Weismann-t , ISM. Grown 8vo., 6s. Ess A YS. Edited by C. Lloyd Morgan, Principal of University College, Bristol, Crown 8vo., 6s. i8 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Classical Literature Abbott. — Hbllenica. a Collection of Essays on Greek Poetry, Philosophy, History, and Religion. Edited by Evelyn Abbott, M.A., LL.D. 8vo., i6j. i^^ChylpS. — EUMENIDES OF ^SCHY- Lus. With Metrical English Translation. By J. F. Davies. 8vo., 7s. Aristophanes. — The Acharnians OP Aristophanes, translated into English Verse. By R. Y. Tyrrell. CrownSvo., ij. Aristotle. — Youth and Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration. Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by W. Ogle, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., some- time Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 8vo., 7^. td. Becker (Professor). Gallus : or, Roman Scenes in the Time of Augustus. Illustrated. Post 8vo., 3i. 6d. Charicles : or, Illustrations of the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. Illustrated. Post 8vo., 3s. 6d. Cicero. — Cicero's Correspondence. By R. Y. Tyrrell. Vols. I., 11., III., 8vo., each I2J. Vol. IV., 15s. E g b e r t. — Introd uction to the .Study of Latin Inscriptions. By James C. Egbert, Junr., Ph.D. With numerous Illustrations and Facsimiles. Square crown 8vo., i6i. Farnell. — Greek Lyric Poetry: a Complete Collection of the Surviving Passages from the Greek Song-Writing. Arranged with Prefatory Articles, Intro- ductory Matter and Comnientary. By George S. Farnell, M.A. With 5 Plates. 8vo., 16s. Lang. — Homer and the Epic. By Andrew Lang. Crown 8vo., gs. net. , Translations, &e. Lucan, — The Pharsalia of Lucan. Translated into Blank Verse. By Edward Ridley, Q.C. 8vo., 14*. Mackail. — Select Epigrams from THE Greek Anthology. By J. W. Mac- kail. Edited with a Revised Text, Intro- duction, Translation, and Notes. 8vo., i6s. Rich. — A Dictionary ofRomai^jind Greek Antiquities. By A. Rich, B.A. With 2000 Woodcuts. Crown 8vo., 7^. 6rf. Sophocles. — Translated into English Verse. By Robert Whitelaw, M.Aij Assistant Master in Rugby School. Cr. Svo., 8s. 6d. Tacitus. — The History of P. Cornelius Tacitus. Translated into English, with an Introduction and Notes, Critical and Explanatory, by Albert William Quill, M.A., T.C.D.^ 2 vols. Vol. I. 8vo., ^s. 6d. Vol. II. 8vo., 12s. 6d. Tyrrti\.^TRANSLATiONs into Greek AND Latin Verse. Edited by R. Y. Tyrrell. 8vo., 6s. Virgil. The ^neid of Virgil. Translated into English Verse by John CoNiNGToifi-' Crown 8vo., 6i. The Poems of Virgil. Translated into English Prose by John Conington. Crown 8vo., 6j. The ^neid of Virgil, freely trans- lated into English Blank Verse. By W. J. Thornhill. Crown 8vo., 75. 6d. The j/Eneid of Virgil. Translated ; into English Verse by James Rhoades. Books I.-VI. Crown 8vo., 5s. Books VII.-XII. Crown 8vo., 5s. Poetry and Acworth. — Ballads of the Mara- THAS. Rendered into English Verse from the Marathi Originals. By Harry Arbuth- NOT Acworth. 8vo., 3s. AUingham (William). Irish Songs and Poems. With Frontispiece of the Waterfall of Asaroe. Fcp. 8vo., 6s. Laurence Bloomfield. With Por- trait of the Author. Fcp. 8vo., 3s. td. Flower Pieces; Day and Night Songs; Ballads. With 2 Designs by D. Q. RossETTi. Fcp. 8vo., 6s. large paper edition, lis. > the Drama. Allingham (William) — continued. Life and Phantasy : with Frontis- piece by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., and Design by Arthur Hughes. Fcp. 8vo., ' 6s. ; large paper edition, 12s. Thought and Word, and Ashby Manor: a Play. Fcp. 8vo., 6s.; large paper edition, i2s. Blackberries. Imperial i6mo., 6s. Sets of the above 6 vols.^may be had in uni- form Half-parehment binding, price 30s. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 19 Poetry and the Drama — continued. Armstrong (G. F. Savage). J'oEMS : Lyrical and Dramatic. Fcp. 8vo., 6s. King Sa ul. (The Tragedy of I srael , Part L) Fcp. 8vo., 5*. King David. (The Tragedy of Israel, Part IL) Fcp. 8vo., 6j. King Solomon. (The Tragedy of Israel, Part IIL) Fcp. 8vo., 6i. Ugone : a Tragedy. Fcp. 8vo., 6s. A Garland from Greece : Poems. Fcp. Svo., ys. 6d. Stories OF WiCKLOiv : 'Poexns. Fcp. 8vo., js. 6d. Mephistopheles in Broadcloth : a Satire. Fcp. 8vo., 4^. One in the Infinite: a Poem. Crown 8vo., 7s. f>d. Armstrong. — The Poetical Works OF Edmund J. Armstrong. Fcp. 8vo., 5s. Arnold (Sir Edwin). The Light of the World : or the Great Consummation. With 14 Illustra- tions after Holman Hunt. Cr. 8vo., 6s. Potiphar' s Wife, and other Poems. Crown 8vo., $s. net. Adzvma : or the Japanese Wife. A Play. Crown Svo., 6s. 6d. net. The Tenth Muse, and other Poems. Crown Svo., 5s. net. Beesly (A. H.). Ballads and other Verse. Fcp. 8vo., 5s. ,: Danton, and other Verse. Fcp. 8vo., 4s. bd. Bell (Mrs. Hugh). , Chamber Comedies: a Collection of Plays and Monologues for the Drawing Room. Crown 8vo., 6s. Fairy Tale Plays, and How to Act Them. With gi Diagrams and 52 ,- Illustrations. Crown Svo., 6s. Carmichael. — Poems. By Jennings Carmichael (Mrs. Francis MullisJ. Crown Svo, 6s. net. Christie. — Lays and Verses. By NiMMO Christie, Crown Svo., 3s. 6d. Cochrane (Alfred). The Kestrel's Nest, and other Verses. Fcp. 8vo., 3s. 6d. Leviore Plectro : Occasional Verses. Fcap. 8vo., 3s. 6d. Florian's Fables. — The Fablms of Florian. Done into English Verse by Sir Philip Perring, Bart. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. Goethe. Faust, Part I., the German Text, with Introduction and Notes. By Albert M. Selss, Ph.D., M.A. Crown Svo., s^- Faust. Translated, with Notes. By T. E. Webb. Svo., 12s. 6d. G u r n e y. — Da y-Dreams : Poems. By Rev. Alfred Gurney, M.A. Crown Svo., 3s. 6d. Ingelow (Jean). Poetical Works. 2 vols. Fcp. 8vO., I2S. Lyrical and other Poems. Selec- ted from the Writings of JEAN Ingelow. Fcp. Svo., 2s. 6d. cloth plain, 3s. cloth gilt. Lang (Andrew). Ban and Arri^re Ban: a Rally of Fugitive Rhymes. Fcp. Svo., 5s. net. Grass of Parnassus. Fcp. 8vo., 2s. 6d. net. Ballads of Books. Edited by Andrew Lang. Fcp. Svo., 6s. The Blue Poetry Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. With 100 Illustrations. Crown Svo., 6s. 'L&ds.y.— Poems. By W. E. H. Lecky. Fcp. Svo., 5s. Lindsay. — The Floiver Seller, and other Poems. By Lady Lindsay. Crown Svo., 5s. Lytton (The Earl of), (Owen Meredith). Mar ah. Fcp. 8vo., 6s. 6d. King Poppy ; a Fantasia. With i Plate and Design on Title-Page by Ed. BuRNE-JoNES, A.R.A. Cr. 8vo., los. 6d. The Wanderer. Cr. Svo., los. 6d. LuciLE. Crown Svo., 10s. 6d. Selected Poems. Cr, Svo., los. 6d, zo MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Poetry and the Drama — continued. Macaulay. — La ys of Ancient Rome, &'C. By Lord Macaulay. Illustrated by G. Scharf.- Fcp. 4to., loi. td. Bijou Edition. i8mo., 2i. td. gilt top. ^ Popular Edition. Fcp. 4to., fid. sewed; u. cloth. Illustrated by J. R. Wequeun. Crown 8vo., 3i. 6d. Annotated Edition. Fcp. 8vo., is. sewed, IS. 6<2. cloth. Macdonald (George, LL,D.). A Book of Strife, in the Form of THE Diary of an Old Soul : Poems. iSmo., 6s, , Rampollo; Growths from an Old Root; containing a Book of Translations, old and new ; also a Year's Diary of an Old Soul. Crown Svo., 6s. Morris (William). Poetical Works — Library Edition. Complete in Ten Volumes. Crown 8vo., price 6s. each. The Earthly Paradise. 4 vols. 6s. each. The Life and Death of Jason. 6s. The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems. 6s. The Story OF Sigurd the Volsung, AND The Fall of the Niblungs. 6s. , Love is Enough; or, the Freeing of Pharamond : A Morality ; and Poems BY THE Way. 6s. The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English Verse. 6s. The ^neids of Virgil. Done into English Verse. 6s. Certain of the Poetical "VVorks may also be had in the following Editions : — The Ear thl y Paradise. Popular Edition, s vols. i2mo., 25s.; or 5s. each, sold separately. The same in Ten Parts, 25s.; or 2S. td. es^ch, sold separately. Cheap Edition, in i vol. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6rf. Love is Enough ; or, the Freeing of Pharamond : A Morality. Square crown 8vo., 7s. fsd. Poems by the Way. Square crown 8vo., 6s. *^* For Mr. William Morris's Prose Works, see pp. 22 and 31. Murray (Robert F.). — Author of ' i'he Scarlet Gown '. His Poems, with a Memoir by Andrew Lang. Fcp. 8vo., , Ss. net. Nesbit. — La ys and Legends. By E, Nesbit (Mrs. Hubert Bland). First Series. Crown 8vo., 3s. bd. Second Series. With Portrait. Crown 8vo., 5s. Peek (Hedley) (Frank Leyton). Skeleton Leaves : Vo&iR^. With a Dedicatory Poem to the late Hon. Roden Noel. Fcp. 8vo., 2s. (>d. net. The Shadows of the Lake,^ and other Poems. Fcp. 8vo., 2S. 6d. net. Piatt (Sarah). An Enchanted Castle, and Other Poems: Pictures, Portraits, and People in Ireland. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Poems: With Portrait of the Author. 2 vols. Crown 8vo., los. Piatt (John James). Ldyls and Lyrics of the Ohio Valley. Crown 8vo., 5s. Little New World Idyls, Cr. 8vo., 5s. R h o a d e s. — Teresa and other Poems. By James Rhoades. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Riley (James Whitcomb). Old Fashioned Roses: Poems. i2mo., 5s. Poems ; Here at Home. Fcp. Svo 6s. net. A Child-World: Poems. Fcp. 8vo., 5s. Romanes. — A Selection from the Poems of Gbqrgs John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.E.S. With an Introduction by T. Herbert Warren, President of Mag- dalen College, Oxford. Crown 8vo., 4s. 6d. Shakespeare. — Bowdler's Family Shakespbarb. With 36 Woodcuts, i vol, 8vo., 14s. Or in 6 vols. Fcp. 8vo., 21s. The Sha kespea re Bir thda y Book, By Mary F. Dunbar. 32mo., is. fid, Sturgis.— ^ Book of Song. By Julian Sturgis. i6mo. sis. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 21 Works of Fiction, Humour, &e. Alden. — Among the Freaks. By W. L. Alden. With 55 Illustrations by J. F. Sullivan and Florence K. Upton. Crown 8vo., 3*. 6rf. Anstey (F., Author of 'Vice Versa '). Voces Populi. Reprinted from ' Punch '. First Series. With 20 Illus- trations by J. Bernard Partridge. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. The Man from Blanklev's : a Story in Scenes, and other Sketches. With 24 Illustrations by J. Bernard Partridge. Post 4to., 6s. Astor. — A Journey in other Worlds .- a Romance of the Future. By John Jacob Astor. With 10 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo., 6j. Baker. — By the Western Sea. By James Baker, Author of John Westacott', Crown Svo., 3i. dd. Beaconsfield (The Earl of). Novels and Tales. Complete in II vols. Crown 8vo., is. td. each. Vivian Grey. TheYoungDuke, &c. Alroy, Ixion, &c. Contarini Fleming, &c. Tancred. Sybil. Henrietta Temple. Venetia. Coningsby. Lothair. Endymion. Novels and Tales, The Hughen- den Edition. With z Portraits and 11 Vignettes. 11 vols. Crown 8vo., 42s. Black. — The Princess DisiR^s. By Clementina Black. With 8 Illustra- tions by John Williamson. Cr. 8vo., 6s. Crump. — Wide Asunder as the Poles. By Arthur Crump. Cr. 8vo., 6s. Dougall (L.). Beggars All. Cr. 8vo., 35. 6d. What Necessity Knows. Crown 8vo., 6s. Doyle (A. Conan). MiCAH Clarke: A Tale of Mon- mouth's Rebellion. With 10 Illustra- tions. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. The Captain of the Polestar, and other Tales. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. The Refugees : A Tale of Two Con- tinents. With 25 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. The Stark Munro Letters. Cr. 8vo, 6s. Farrar (F. W., Dean of Canter- bury). Darkness and Dawn: or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale. Cr. 8vo., 7J. 6d. Gathering Clouds : a Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom. Cr. 8vo., 7s. 6d. Fowler. — The Young Pretenders. A Story of Child Life. By Edith H. Fowler. With 12 Illustrations by Philip Burne-Jones. Crovra 8vo., 6s. Froude. — The Two Chiefs of Dun- boy: an Irish Romance ofthe Last Century. By James A. Froude. Cr. 8vo., 3s. dd. Graham. — The Red Scaur: A Novel of Manners. By P. Anderson Graham. Crown 8vo., 6s. Haggard (H. Rider). Heart of the World. With 15 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 6s. Joan Haste. With 20 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 6i. The People of the Mist. With 16 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Montezuma's Daughter. With 24 Illustrations. Crown Svo. , 3s. &d. She. With 32 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. fid. Allan Quatermain. With 31 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Maiwa's Revenge : Cr. 8vo., li. 6d. Colonel Quaritch, V.C. Cr. Svo. 3s. 6d. Cleopatra. With 29 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 3s. fid. 22 MESSRS. LONGMAN'S & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Works of Fiction, Humour, ho,.— continued. Haggard (H. Rider) — continued. Beatrice. Cr. 8vo., 35. 6d. The House of Surprises. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6rf. Molesworth — Silverthorns. By Mrs. Molesworth. With Illustrations. Cr. 8vo., 5s. Stevenson. — A Child's Garden of Verses. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Fcp. 8vo., 5s. Upton (Florence K. and Bertha). The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls AND A '■ Golliwogg\ Illustrated by Florence K. Upton, with Words by Bertha Upton. With 31 Coloured Plates and numerous Illustrations in the Text. Oblong 4to., 6s. The Golliivogg's Bicycle Club. Illustrated by Florence K. Upton, with words by Bertha Upton. With 31 Coloured Plates and numerous Illustra- tions in the Text. Oblong 4to., 6s. Wordsworth. — The Snow Garden, AND OTHER FaIRY TaLBS FOR CHILDREN. By Elizabeth Wordsworth. With 10 Illustrations by Trevor Haddon. Crown 8vo., 5s. Longmans' Series Price 2S. Atelier {The) Du Lys : or, an Art Student in the Reign ot Terror. By the same Author. That Child. Mademoiselle Mori: a Tale of Modern Rome. In the Olden Time : a Tale of the Peasant War in Germany. The Younger Sister. Under a Cloud, //ester's Venture The Fiddler of /^ugau. A Child op the Revolution. Atherstone Priory. By L. N. Comyn. The Story of a Spring Morning, etc. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated. The Palace in the Garden. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated. of Books for Girls. 6d. each. Neighbours. By Mrs. Molesworth. The Third Miss St. Quentin. By Mrs. Molesworth. Very Young; and Quite Another Story. Two Stories. By Jean Ingelow. Can this be Love ? By Louisa Parr. Keith Deramore. By the Author of ' Miss Molly '- Sidney. By Margaret Deland. An Arranged Marriage. By Dorothea Gerard. Last Words to Girls on Life at School and after School. By Maria Grey. Stray Thoughts for Girls. By Lucy H. M. Soulsby, Head Mistress of Oxford High School. i6mo., is. 6d. net. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 27 The Silver Library. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. each Volume. Arnold's (Sir Edwin) Seas and Lands, With 71 Illustrations. 3^. 6d. Bagehot's (W.) Biographical Studies. 3^. dd. Bagehot's (MI.) Economic Studies. 3^. 6tl. Bagehot's (W.) Literary Studies. With Portrait. 3 vols, 3J. 6d. each. Baker's (Sir S. W.) Eight Years in Ceylon. With 6 Illustrations, y. 6d. Baker's (Sir S. W.) Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. With 6 Illustrations. 3i. 6d. Baring-Gould's (Rev. 8.) Curious Uyths of the Middle Ages. 3;. 6ii. Baring-Gould's (Rev. S.) Origin and Develop- ment of Religious Belief. 2 vols. 3S.6cl.ea.ch. Becker's (Prof.) Gallus : or, Roman Scenes in the Time of Augustus. Illustrated, y. 6d. Becker's (Prof.) Charlcles: or. Illustrations of the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. Illustrated. 3J. 6ii. Bent's (J. T.) The Ruined Cities of Mashona- land. With 117 Illustrations. 3^. 6ti. Brassey's (Lady) A Voyage in the ' Sunbeam '. With 66 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Butler's (Edward A.) Our Household Insects. With 7 Plates and 113 Illustrations in the Text. 3s. 6d. Glodd's (E.) Story of Creation : a Plain Account of Evolution. With 77 Illustrations. 3.r. 6d. Conybeare (Rev. W. J.) and Howson's (Very Rev. J. S.) Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 46 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Dougall's (L.) Beggars Ail : a Novel. 3s. 6d. Doyle's (A. Conan) Mlcah Clarke. A Tale of Monmoutn's Rebellion. 10 Illusts. 3^. 6d. Doyle's (A. Conan) The Captain of the Polestar, and other Tales. 3s. 6d. Doyle's (A. Conan) The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents. With 25 Illustrations. 3s 6d. Froude's (J. A.) The History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 12 vols. 3s. 6d. each. Froude's (J. A.) The English in Ireland. 3 vols. 10s. 6d. Froude's (J. A.) The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon. 3J. 6d. Froude's (J. A.) The Spanish Story of the Armada, and other Essays. 3s. 6d. Froude's (J. A.) Short Studies on Great Sub- jects, 4 vols. 3J. 6d. each. Froude's (J. A.) Thomas Carlyle : a History of his Life. 1795-1835. 2 vols. 7s. 1834-1881. 2 vols. 7s. Froude's (J. A.) Caesar : a Sketch. 3^. 6d. Froude's (J. A.) The Two Chiefs of Dunboy : an Irish Romance of the Last Century. 3s. 6d. Gleig's (Rev. G. R.) Life of the Duke of Wellington. With Portrait. 3s. 6d. Greville's (C. C. F.) Journal of the Reigns of King George IV., King William IV., and Queen Victoria. 8 vols., 3s. 6d. each. Haggard's (H. R.) She : A History of Adventure. 32 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Allan Quatermain. With 20 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H./R.) Colonel Qnaritch, V.C. . a Tale of Country Life. jj. 6d. Haggard's (H, R.) Cleopatra. With 29 Illustra- tions. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Eric Brlghteyes. With 51, Illustrations. 31. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Beatrice. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Allan's Wife. With 34 Illus- trations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Montezuma's Daughter. With 25 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) The Witch's Head. With 16 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Mr. Heeson's Will. With 16 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) Nada the Lily. With 23 Illustrations. 3J. 6rf. Haggard's (H.R.) Dawn. With 16 Illusts. 3s. 6d. Haggard's (H. R.) The People of the Mist. With 16 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Haggard (H. R.) and Lang's (A.) The World's Desire. With 27 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Harte's (Bret) In the Carqninez Woods and other Stories. 3;. 6d. Helmholtz's (Hermann von) Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects. With 68 Illustrations. 2 vols. 3s. 6d. each. Hornung's (E. W.) The Unbidden Guest. 3;. 6d, Hewitt's (W.) Visits to Remarkable Places 80 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Jefferles' (R.) The Story of My Heart : My Autobiography. With Portrait. 3s. 6d. Jefferles' (R.) Field and Hedgerow. With Portrait. 3^. 6d. Jefferles' (R.) Red Deer. 17 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Jefferles' (R.) Wood Magic: a Fable. With Frontispiece and Vignette by E. V. B. 3s. 6d. Jefferles (R.) The Tollers of the Field. With- Portrait from the Bust in SaUsbury Cathedral. 3s. 6d. Knight's (E. F.) The Cruise of the 'Alerte': the Narrative of a Search for Treasure on the Desert Island of Trinidad. With z Maps and 23 Illustrations.^ 3s. 6d. Knight's (E. F.) Where Three Empires Meet : a Narrative of Recent Travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Baltistan, Gilgit. With a Map and 54 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Knight's (E. F.) The ' Falcon ' on the Baltic : a Coasting Voyage from Hammersmith to Copenhagen in a Three-Ton Yacht. With Map and 11 Illustrations. 3s. id. Lang's (A.) Angling Sketches. 20 Illustrations. ST. (id. Lang's (A.) Custom and Myth: Studies of Early Usage and Belief. 3s. 6d. Lang's (Andrew) Cock Lane and Common-Sense. With a New Preface, jr. 6d. 28 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. The Silver Wovs^YJ— continued. Lees (J. A.) and Clutterbuok'a (W. J.) B. C. 1S8T, A Ramble In British Columbia. With Maps and 75 Illustrations. 3J. 6d. Macaulay's (Lord) Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome. With Portrait and Illustration. 3J. 6d. Macleod's (H. D.) Elements of Banking. 3;. 6d. Harshman's (J. C.) Memoirs of Sir Henry Havelock. 3^. 6d. Max Holler's (F.) India, what can It teach us 7 31. 6d. Max Mfiller's (F.) Introduction to the Science of Religion. 3f. 6d. Herlvale's (Dean) History of the Romans under the Empire. 8 vols. 3^. 6d. each. Hill's (J. S.) Political Economy. 3;. 64. Hill's (J. S.) System of Logic. 3;. bd. HUner's (Geo.) Country Pleasures : the Chroni- cle of a Year chiefly in a Garden, y. 6d. Hansen's (P.) The First Crossing of Greenland. With Illustrations and a Map. 31. 6d. PhllUpps-WoUey's (C.) Snap : a Legend of the Lone Mountain. 13 Illustrations, y. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) The Orbs Around Us, 3;. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) The Expanse of Heaven. 3^. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Other Worlds than Ours. 3^.61^. Proctor's (R. A.) Our Place among Infinities : a Series of Essays contrasting our Little Abode in Space and Time with the Infinities around us. Crown 8vo., y. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Other Suns than Ours. 3^. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Rough Ways made Smooth. 3s. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Pleasant Ways In Science. 3/. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Hyths and Harvels of As- tronomy. 3^. 6d. Proctor's (R.'A.) Nature Studies. 3^. 6d. Proctor's (R. A.) Leisure Readings. By R. A. Proctor, Edward Clodd, Andrew Wilson, Thomas Foster, and A. C. Ranyard. With Illustrations, y. 6d. Rhoscomyl's (Owen) The Jewel of Tnys Galon. With 12 Illustrations. 31. 6d. Rossetti's (Harla F.) A Shadow of Dante. 3;. 6d. Smith's (R. Bosvorth) Carthage and the Cartha- ginians. With Maps, Plans, &c. 3J. 6d. Stanley's (Bishop) Familiar History of Birds. 160 Illustrations. 3s. 6d. Stevenson's (R. L.) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; with other Eables. 3J. bd. Stevenson (R. L.) and Osbonrne's (LL) The Wrong Box, 3s. 6d. Stevenson (Robert Louis) and Stevenson's (Fanny yan de Grift) More New Arabian Nights.— The Dynamiter. 3s. bd. Weyman's (Stanley J.) The House of the Wolf: a Romance. 3;. bd. Wood's (Rev. J. G.) Petland Revisited. With 33 Illustrations. 3^. bd. Wood's (Rev. J. G.) Strange Dwellings. With 60 Illustrations. 3s. bd. Wood's (Rev. J. G.) Out of Doors. With 11 Illustrations, ■y. bd. Cookery, Domestic Management, Gardening, &e. Acton. — Modern Cookery. By Eliza Acton. With 130 Woodcuts. Fop. 8vo., 4i. td. Bull (Thomas, M.D.). Hints to Mothers on the Man- agement OP their Health during the Period of Pregnancy. Fcp. 8vo., is. 6d. The Maternal Management of Children in Health and Disease. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6d. De Salis (Mrs.). Cakes and Confections 1 la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., is. 64. Dogs : A Manual for Amateurs. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6d. Dressed Game and Foultrv a la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., is. 6d. De Salis (Mrs.). — continued. Dressed Vegetables a la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., li. dd. Drinks^ la Mode. Fcp.Svo., is.6d. ENTRiES A LA MoDE. Fcp. 8vO., IS. fid. Floral Decorations. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6d. Gardening a la Mode. Fcp. 8vo. Part I., Vegetables, is. 6d. Part II., Fruits, IS. 6d. Na tional Viands a la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6rf. New-laid Eggs. Fcp. Svo., \s. 6d. Ovsters ^ LA Mode. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6d. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 29 Cookery, Domestie Management, &e De Salis (Mrs.). — continued. Puddings and Pastry ^ la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., IS. 6d. Sai^ouries a la Mode. is.6d. Fcp. 8vo., SouFS AND Dressed Fish J5 la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., is. dd. Sweets and Supper Dishes i la Mode. Fcp. 8vo., is. 6d. Tempting Dishes for Small In- comes. Fcp. Svo., IS. 6rf. Wrinkles and E very Household. Notions for Crown Svo. , is. fid. -continued. Lear. — Maigre Cookery. By H. L. Sidney Lear. i6mo., 2s. Poole. — Cookery FOR the Diabetic. By W. H. and Mrs. Poole. With Preface by Dr. Pavy. Fcp. 8vo., 2s. td. Walker (Jane H.). A Book for Every Woman. Part L, The Management of Children in Health and out of Health. Crown 8vo., 2s. dd. Part H. Woman in Health and out of Health. Crown 8vo., 2J. 6rf. A Handbook for Mothers : being , being Simple Hints to Women on the Management of their Health during Pregnancy and Confinement, together with Plain Directions as to the Care of Infants. Crown 8vo., 2S. 6d. Miscellaneous and Critical Works. Allingham. — Varieties in Prose. By William Allingham. 3 vols. Cr. 8vo., i8s. (Vols. I and 2, Rambles, by Patricius Walker. Vol. 3, Irish Sketches, etc.) Armstrong'. — Essa ysand Sketches. By Edmund J. Armstrong. Fcp. 8vo., 5s. Bagehot. — Literary Studies. By Walter Bagehot. With Portrait. 3 vols. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. each. Baring-Gould. — Curious Myths of THE Middle Ages. By Rev. S. Baring- Gould. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Baynes. — Shakespeare Studies, and other Essays. By the late Thomas Spencer Baynes, LL.B., LL.D. With a Biographical Preface by Professor Lewis Campbell. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. Boyd (A. K. H.) ('A.K.H.B.')- And see MISCELLANEOUS THEOLOGICAL WORKS, p. 32. Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. C0MM0NPL.4CE PHILOSOPHER. Cr. 8vo., 3s. 6d. Critical Essays of a Country Parson. Crown 8vo., 3s. fid. East Coast Days and Memories. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Landscapes, Churches, and Mora- lities. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Leisure Hours in Town. Crown 8vo., 3s. f>d. Boyd (A. K. H.) continued. ('A.K.H.B.').- Lessons of Middle Age. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. Our Little Life. Two Series. Crown 8vo., 3s. dd. each. Our Homely Comedy: and Tra- gedy. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Recr'eationsof A Country Parson. Three Series. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6i. each. Also First Series. Popular Edition. 8vo., dd. Sewed. Butler (Samuel). Erewhon. Crown 8vo., 55. The Fair Haven. A Work in De- fence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry. Cr. 8vo., 7s. (sd. Life and Habit. An Essay after a Completer View of Evolution. Cr. 8vo., 7s. fid. Evolution, Old and New. Cr. 8vo., los. 6d. Alps and Sanctuaries of Pied- mont and Canton Ticino. Illustrated. Pott 4to., los. 6d. Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification? Cr. 8vo., 7s. 6d. Ex VoTO. An Account of the Sacro Monte or New Jerusalem at Varallo-Sesia. Crown 8vo., los. 6d. JO MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORfts. Miscellaneous and Critieal IVovks— continued. Charities Register, The Annual, AND Digest: being a Classified Register of Charities in or available in the Metro- polis, together with a Digest of Information respecting the Legal, Voluntary, and other Means for the Prevention and Relief of Distress, and the Improvement of the Con- dition of the Poor, and an Elaborate Index. With an Introduction by C. S. Loch, Sec- retary to the Council of the Charity Organi- sation Society, London. 8vo., 4s. Dreyfus. — Lectures on French Literature. Delivered in Melbourne by Irma Dreyfus. With Portrait of the Author. Large crown 8vo., 12s. 6d. Gwilt. — An Encyclopedia of Ar- chitecture. By Joseph Gwilt, F.S.A. Illustrated with more than iioo Engravings on Wood. Revised (1888), with Alterations and Considerable Additions by Wyatt Papworth. 8vo., £2 I2S. 6d. Hamlin. — A Text-Book of the History of Architecture. By A. D. F. Hamlin, A.M., Adjunct-Professor of Archi- tecture in the School of Mines, Columbia College. With 229 Illustrations.' Crown Bvo., 7s. 6rf. Haweis. — Music and Morals. By the Rev. H. R. Haweis. With Portrait of the Author, and numerous Illustrations, Facsimiles, and Diagrams. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. [ndian Ideals (No. i). Narada SStra : an Inquiry into Love (Bhakti-Jijnasa). Translated from the Sanskrit, with an Independendent Commentary, by E. T. Sturdy. Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. net. Jefferies. — (Richard). Field and Hedgerow: With Por- trait. Crown 8vo., 3^. td. The Story of My Heart: my Autobiography. With Portrait and New Preface by C. J. Longman. Crown 8vo., 3s. (>d. Red Deer. With 17 Illustrations by J. Charlton and H. TuNALV. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. The Toilers of the Field. With Portrait from the Bust in Salisbury Cathedral. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Wood Magic : a Fable. With Fron- tispiece and Vignette by E. V. B. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. Thoughts from the Writings of Richard Jefferies. Selected by H. S. HooLE Waylen. i6mo., 3J. dd. Johnson. — The Patentee's Man-. UAL : a Treatisfe on the Law and Practice of Letters Patent. By J. & J. H.Johnson, Patent Agents, &c. 8vo., los. 6d. Lang (Andrew). Letters to Dead Authors. Fcp. 8vo., 21. bd. ijet. Books and Bookmen. With 2 Coloured Plates and 17 Illustrations. Fcp. 8vo., 2s. td. net. Old Friends. Fcp. 8vo., is. 6d. net. Letters on Literature. Fcp. 8vo., 2i. 6d. net. Cock Lane and Common Sense. Crown 8vo., y. 6d. Macfarren. — Lectures on Har- mony. By Sir George A. Macfarren. 8vo., I2S. Marquand and Frothingham. — A Text-Book of the History of Sculpture. By Allan Marquand, Ph.D., and Arthur L. Frothingham, Junr., Ph.D., Professors of Archaeology and the History of Art in Princetown University. With 113 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 6s. Max MiiUer (F). India: What can it Teach Us? Crown 8vo., 35. dd. Chips from a German Workshop. Vol. I. Recent Essays and Addresses. Crown 8vo., 6j. 6d. net. Vol. II. Biographical Essays. Crown Bvo., 6j. td. net. Vol. III. Essays on Language and Litera- ture. Crown 8vo., 6s. 6d. net. Vol. IV. Essays on Mythology and Folk Lore. Crown 8vo, Ss. 6d. net. Contributions to the Science of Mythology. 2 vols. 8vo., 32J. Milner. — Country Pleasures : the Chronicle of a Year chiefly in a Garden. By George Milner. Crown 8vo., y. bd. MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. 31 Miseellaneous and Critieal Works — continued. Seven Lectures Occasions. Post Morris (William). 'Signs of Change. delivered on vario 8vo., 45. 6rf. Hopes and Fears for Art. Five Lectures delivered in Birmingham, Lon- don, &c., in 1878-1881. Crown 8vo., • 45. -6ii. Orchard. — The Astronomy of ' Milton's Paradise Lost '. By Thomas N.. Orchard, M.D., Member of the British Astronomical Association. With 13 Illus- trations. 8vo., isj. Poore. — Essays on Rural Hygiene. By George Vivian Poore, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 13 Illustrations. Crovi'n 8vo., ts. 6d. Proctor. — Strength : How to get Strqng and keep Strong, with Chapters on Rowing and Swimming, Fat, Age, and the Waist. By R. A. Proctor. With 9 Illus- trations. Crown 8vo., 2J. Richardson. — JVa tional Health. A Review of the Works of Sir Edwin Chad- wick, K.C.B. By Sir B. W. Richardson, M.D. Crown 8vo., 4s. td. Rossetti. —A Shadow op Dante: being an Essay towards studying Himself his World and his Pilgrimage. By Maria Francesca Rossetti. With Frontispiece by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Crown 8vo., 3i. 6d. Solovyoffl — A Modern Priestess OF Isis (Madame Blavatsky). Abridged and Translated on Behalf of the Society fot Psychical Research from the Russian of VsEVOLOD Sergyeevich Solovyoff. By Walter Leaf, Litt.D. With Appendices. Crown 8vo., 6i. Stevens. — On the Stowage of Ships AND thbirCargobs. With Information re- garding Freights, Charter-Parties, &c. By Robert White Stevens, Associate-Mem- ber of the Institute of Naval Architects. 8vo., 21J. West. — Wills, and How Not to Make them. With a Selection of Leading Cases. By B. B. West, Author of " Halt Hours with the Millionaires". Fcp. 8vo., IS. fid. Miscellaneous Theologieal Works. For Church of England and Roman Catholic Works see Messrs. Longmans & Co.'s Special Catalogues. Boyd (A. K. H.) (' A.K.H.B.'). OccA sioNA L A ndImmemoria l Da ys : Balfour. — The Foundations of Belief: being Notes Introductory to the Study of Theology. By "the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. 8vo., i2i. 6d. Bird (Robert). A Child's Religion. Cr. 8vo., 25. Joseph, 8vo., $s. the Dreamer. Crown Jesus, the Carpenter Nazareth. Crown 8vo., 5s. of To be had also in Two Parts, price 2s. 6d. each. Part I. Galilee Gennesaret. and the Lake of Part II. Jerusalem and the Per^a. Discourses. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit. Crown 8vo., y. fid. Sunday Afternoons in the Parish Church of a Scottish University City. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6rf. Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. Graver Thoughts- of a Country Parson. Three Series. Crown 8vo., 3i. 6d. each. Present Day Thoughts. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6(i. Seaside Musings. Cr. 8vo., 35. 6d. ' To Meet the Day' through the Christian Year : being a Text of Scripture, , with an Original Meditation and a Short Selection in Verse for Every Day. Crovim 8vo., 4i. 6d. 32 MESSRS. LONGMANS & CO.'S STANDARD AND GENERAL WORKS. Miscellaneous Theological Works — continued. De la Saussaye. — A Manual of THE Science of Hbligion. By Professor Chantepie de la Saussaye. Translated by Mrs. Colyer Fergusson («^« Max MiiLLER). Crown 8vo., I2j. &d. Gibson. — The Abbe de Lamennais. AND THE Liberal Catholic Movement IN France. By the Hon. W. Gibson. With Portrait. 8vo., I2S. 6d. Kalisch (M. M., Ph.D.). Bible Studies. Part I. Pro- phecies of Balaam. 8vo., los. 6rf. Part n. The Book of Jonah. Svo., loi. 6d. [^.Commentary on the Old Testa- ment: with a New Translation. Vol. I. Genesis. 8vo., iSs. Or adapted for the General Reader. 12s. Vol. IL Exodus. 15J. Or adapted for the General Reader. I2S. Vol. in. Leviticus, Part 1. 15s. Or adapted for the General Reader. 81. Vol. IV. Leviticus, Part II. 15^. Or adapted for the General Reader. 8j. Macdonald (George). Unspoken Sermons. Three Series. Crown 8vo., 3s. dd. each. The Miracles of our Lord. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d. Martineau (James). Hours of Thought on Sacred Things: Sermons, 2 vols. Crown 8vo., 3J. 6d. each. Endeavours AFTER the Christian Life. Discourses. Crown 8vo., ^s. 6d. The Seat of Authority in Re- ligion. 8vo., 141. Essays, Reviews, and Addresses. 4 Vols, Crown 8vo., 7s. 6rf. each. I. Personal ; Political. II. Ecclesiastical ; Historical. III. Theological; Philosophical. IV. Academical; Religious. Home Prayers, with Two Services for Public Worship. Crown Svo., 35. 6d. 10,000/2/97. Max Miiller (F.). Hibbert Lectures on the Origin AND Growth of Religion, as illustrated by the Religions of India. Gr. 8vo., 75. -6rf. Introduction to the Science of Religion : Four Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution. Crown 8vo,, 31. (sd. Natural Religion. The Gifford Lectures, delivered before the University of Glasgow in 1888. Crown 8vo., loi. 6rf. Physical Religion. The Gifford Lectures, delivered before the University of Glasgow in i8go. Crown 8vo., loi. td. Anthropological Religion. The GiiTord Lectures, delivered before the Uni- versity of Glasgow in 1 8g I . Cr. Svo. , los. f>d. Theosophy, or Psychological Re- ligion. The Gifford Lectures, delivered before the University of Glasgow in 1892. Crown 8vo., lOi. 6d. Three Lectures on the VedAnta Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution in March, 1894. 8vo., 5*. Phillips. — The Teaching of the Vedas. What Light does it Throw on the Origin and Development of Religion ? By Maurice Phillips, London Mission, Madras. Crown 8to., 6s^ Romanes. — Thoughts on Religion. By George J. Romanes, LL.D., F.R.S. Crown 8vo., 45. dd. SUPERNATURAL RELIGION: an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revela- tion. 3 vols. 8vo., 36i. Reply (A) to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays. By the Author of ' Supernatural Religion '. 8vo., 6i. The Gospel according rd St. Peter: a Study. By the Author of ' Supernatural Religion '. 8vo., 6s. Vivekananda. — Yoga Philosophy: Lectures delivered in New York, Winter of 1893-96, by the Swami Vivekananda^. on Raja Yoga; or, Conquering the Internal Nature ; also Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms, with Commentaries. Crown Svo, 35. 6d.