Augustus Bozzi Granville

Granville was a friend of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, and he consulted Frederick Hervey Foster Quin about some of his cases:

‘I have to deal with two obstinate and chronic cases of metritis with ovarian irritation. The usual remedies and external applications have been had recorurse to with ambiguous and at all events tedious good effect.

‘I read in Gerard, Nass and Georg von Necker, and other Hahnemannians, wonderful cures performed in similar instances by strychnine 3, or sulphur 6, or platina 6, or phos ac 9, or conium 30, or pulsatilla 30.

‘The questions arising in my mind on reading these varied agents to combat one and the same disorder, and which (as I am willing to give every medical alleged improvement a fair trial) I would submit to you for information and guidance are these….

‘At your leisure I shall esteem it a favour to receive a reply to my present communication, which I the less scruple to address you, as I feel convinced of your sincerity in working in the field of science of which we are fellow labourers.’ Letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin from A B Granville 25.4.1838.

Frederick Hervey Foster Quin wrote fully to Granville, who answered:

‘I am unwilling to suffer more than a night to elapse without thanking you most sincerely for the very full and elaborate manner in which you have replied to my queries respecting a very troublesome, and I may say often a rebellious, class of female disorders.

‘You have extended your readiness in complying to my wishes for information respecting homeopathic agents themselves already prepared and ready for administration, and for the additional mark of your attention, as well as for the present of your edition of Samuel Hahemann’s Fragmenta, I tender to you my sincere acknowledgments.

‘Thus instructed and thus supplied with means, I shall certainly feel tempted to enter into a course of experiments in the species of disorder above alluded to, and I will think it my duty to acquaint you with the result.’ A B Granville’s Letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin April 1838

Granville was born in Milan from an ancient Corsican family related to the Corsican Bonapartes. Augustus was born from an Italian father, Carlo Bozzi, his mother had an English grandmother, and an Italian grandfather.

Granville was educated in Italy against the background of Bonaparte’s occupation of Lomardy, and obtained his MD in Pavia, but had to flee the political situation, travelling to Genoa, Venice, and Corfu, where he met William Richard Hamilton, private secretary to Lord Elgin, and he travelled in Lord Elgin’s party to Constantinople, where he became a Physician to the British Embassy there, where he contracted the plague.

Lord Elgin was a ‘passionate advocate of homeopathy‘ and set about ‘making himself one of its promoters‘. Lord Elgin was a patient of Samuel Hahnemann, who treated him for facial neuralgia, and Lord Elgin recommended his friend Dr. Scott from Glasgow, ‘an ardent student of homeopathy’ to see Frederick Hervey Foster Quin.

Granville then joined the Turkish fleet as a Physician, and travelled to the Holy Land, through the Mediteranean and to Spain, where he passed his Latin and established a practice in Madrid. He then moved to Lisbon and, finding a British Fleet there, he signed on as a surgeon on the HMS Raven and spent six years serving in the Navy in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. He caught yellow fever and recovered using James Currie’s cold water treatment, and in 1813, he resigned on half pay at the full rank of Surgeon.

Granville married Ms. Kerr, an English woman in 1809, and learned English, working as a translator for the British Foreign Office. In 1814, Granville became active in the Italian cause, and with his friend William Richard Hamilton, he travelled to Paris and met Viscount Castlereagh, and trusted with important dispatches he returned to Milan to see his family again after an absence of twelve years, enlisting Henry Palmerston’s support for the cause of Italian patriotism.

He was arrested by the Austrians, visited Madame Stael, met Humphrey Davey and Michael Faraday, and was engaged in intelligence work meeting Antonio Canova.

In 1848, Granville joined the campaign for Italian independence.

From 1813, Granville’s official address was London, first in South Audley Street, and then 16 St. Michael’s Place Brompton, and he worked as a tutor to his friend William Richard Hamilton’s children, and as a Lecturer in Chemistry at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, and he studied medicine at Westminster Hospital under John Ayrton Paris and Anthony Carlisle.

In 1816, his friend William Farquhar advised him to take up  midwifery and he spent some time in Paris studying under some of the great names of medicine at the time including Rene Laennec, and working at the l’Hopital Necker (founded by the mother of Madame Stael).

In London, Granville obtained his MRCS and LRCP in 1817, and set up is practice in 8 Saville Row, becoming the Editor of The Medical Intelligencer, and The London Medical and Physical Journal, and he published a review of Rene Laennec’s treatise on the stethescope De Le Auscultation Mediate, and various other papers.

In 1819, he was appointed Physician to the Westminster General Dispensary, where Samuel Johnson, the Literary Club and The Linnaeum Society met. During this time he continued publishing articles and was appointed to the staff of the Metropolitan Hospital for Sick Children.

His clientelle included Sarah Siddons, Edward VII (when he was Duke of Clarence), Count Simon Woronzov, and the Princess Tczernicheff in St. Petersberg, where he also commented on the health of Tsar Nicholas I.

In 1818, he reported on the research of Guy Lussac on iodine, and he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians, and he was a founding member of the Athanaeum, and President of the Westminster Medical Society, Vice President of the British Medical Society, and a Freemason.

Granville gave evidence to Parliamentary Committees on quarantine, was concerned with sanitation and sewage, and in 1831, convinced that cholera was a water bourne disease, he published Catechism of Health, and an eager advocate of spas, his Spas of Germany appeared in 1841.

In 1861, Granville’s wife died, and he wrote his autobiography.

In 1872, his Obituary was printed in The Lancet.

Granville wrote Autobiography of A B Granville, M.D, FRS, being eighty-eight years of the life of a physician who practised his profession in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, the West Indies, Russia, Germany, France, and England.

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Sir James Clark 1788-1870 MD Edinburgh 1817, member of the Royal College of Physicians, member of several Royal Commissions, Physician to the Duchess of Kent, physician to Queen Victoria,

James Clark was a friend of John Forbes, Charles Locock 1st Baronet, Florence Nightingale, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin,

James Clark asked Frederick Hervey Foster Quin for some homeopathic medicine and a list of books, as he wished to conduct clinical trials into homeopathy:

‘I wrote to you some six or eight weeks ago by your Italian homeopathic friends, and requested you to send me some homeopathic medicine and a list of books you consider most deserving of looking into.

‘I am desirous, very desirous that you do this as soon as possible, because at this moment I feel disposed to give some of the remedies a trial in my infirmary, and in a sort time I shall be, perhaps, too much occupied with one thing or another to give the matter that close attention which is would require.

‘I confess that, in looking into some of the doctrines on the similia similibus principle, I have been struck with the apparent explanation which it affords to some practical facts that I had treasured up in my mind, and which puzzled me not a little before.

‘I beg you not to lose an occasion of sending me the medicine chest and the information I wish so much, and if an occasion does not soon preset, Balliere will take charge of it, I have no doubt.

‘You must also send me a bottle of sugar of milk if such a thing is to be met with in Paris. I shall be glad to hear that you continue to prosper, and the late occurrences in Paris (alluding to the Revolution) have not diminished your clientelle.

‘The difficulty, insurmountable in private practice, in this country presents itself to the mode which you homeopathists administer your drugs; no man’s reputation could stand it a month. The contraries would soon floor the similias. They are preparing to publish a cyclopaedia of practical medicine in this country.

‘I have nothing to do with it further than writing one or two articles for it; I will send you a prospectus as soon as I can get one. Yours very truly.’ James Clark’s letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin 19.10.1830.

Frederick Hervey Foster Quin replied:

‘Many thanks for your kind and promt answer. I perceive, although you do not speak out, that you think my resolution an imprudent one. But as you do not advance one difficulty that has not been staring me in the face for some time (in fact since I first began to believe in homeopathy), your letter instead of damping my spirits, rather has had the contrary effect; as for my being considered an apothecary by the profession, that is the least possible evil I can expect; I am prepared to hear myself called and treated as quack, charlatan, visionary, and heaven knows what besides by your liberal confreres in London.

‘Whether either the college or the worshipful body may think me worthy of their notice I know not, but I shall not be taken by surprise if they do persecute me, as I shall go to England prepared for all these ills, the absence of any one of these will be an agreeable surprise to me…

‘Like every man who has the courage to introduce useful innovations I must make up my mind to struggle with great difficulties, and it is the conviction that I shall have the same difficulties to encounter ten or twenty years hence as much as today, that has in a great measure induced me to listen to the suggestions of my friends to establish myself sooner in London than it was originally my intention…

‘You say, my dear Clark, that you do not place the same confidence in homeopathy that I do. It would, indeed, be wonderful if you did. You have not yet tried it. There is no man to whom I would more willingly apply than to you were I in difficulty about the treatment of a patient according to the present practice, but till you have fairly tried the new system, and not till then can I admit your opinion on it as a valid one; and permit me to observe, in order to give it a fair trial, you must do it a la lettre of the instructions of those who have put it to the test before you, and not with modifications founded upon a priori reasoning.

‘However, I will willingly compound in any way to induce you to try it even as circumstances will allow. I can well imagine all the menagement you will be obliged to take in your infirmary, I hope you will not lose heart, but give it a fair trial. God bless you my dear Clark. Frederick Hervey Foster Quin’s letter to James Clark October 1830.

Unfortunately, James Clark did not go ahead with his clinical trials into homeopathy, such was the threat from his ‘liberal’ colleagues.

With his friend James Clark, who also came of farming stock, John Forbes walked to the local parish school at Fordyce.  They became close friends and their later medical careers coincided as physicians in London.

Both were helped financially at Fordyce school by scholarships, which were originally funded from a legacy donated by an ancestor of John Forbes’ mother, Cicilia Wilkie.  This provided a small annual income for twenty children for five years’ education at the school, and for an additional four years of higher education at the University of Aberdeen….

Because of their lifelong friendship,  John Forbes and James Clark named their only sons after each other.  James Clark named his son John Forbes Clark, and Forbes called his Alexander Clark Forbes….

Between 1817 and 1822 John Forbes laid the foundations for his knowledge of the newly invented stethoscope of Rene Laennec, an early model of which James Clark had brought back from Paris in 1818.

James Clark was enthusiastic about the French physician’s teaching on stethoscopy as expressed in his classical work De L’Auscultation Médiate (1819), and, prompted by James Clark, John Forbes translated this into English in four editions issued between 1821 and 1834. (James Clark’s recommendation was followed by John Forbes being appointed as Physician to Prince Albert).

James Clark was an English physician, was born at Cullen, Banffshire, and was educated at the grammar school of Fordyce and at the universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

He served for six years as a surgeon in the army; then spent some time in travelling on the continent, in order to investigate the mineral waters and the climate of various health resorts; and for seven years he lived in Rome.

In 1826 he began to practise in London. In 1835 he was appointed physician to the Duchess of Kent, becoming physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1837. In 1838 he was created a baronet.

He published The Influence of Climate in Chronic Diseases, containing valuable meteorological tables (1829), and a Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (1835).

In 1826 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and served on the General Medical Council between the years 1858 and 1860.

He was responsible for a number of Royal commissions including advising on military hygeine in the aftermath of the Crimean War, and introduced Florence Nightingale to Queen Victoria.

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Charles Locock 1st Baronet 1799 – 1875 MD Edinburgh 1821, FRCP 1836, FRS,  DOL Oxford, 1864 Obstetric Physician, Fellow of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Physician Accoucher to Queen Victoria (and used chloroform during her deliveries), President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Honorary President of the Obstetrics Society, who discovered the efficacy of bromide of potassium in epilepsy,

Charles Locock was a friend of Hugh Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet, James Clark, Charles Dickens, Harris F Dunsford, William Fergusson 1st Baronet, Henry William Paget Marquess of Anglesey, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin,

Charles Locock conducted clinical trials on the homeopathic remedy belladonna for the treatment of scarlet fever in ?1854,

In 1838, Henry William Paget Marquess of Anglesey wrote to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin:

‘I saw Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet today, he talked most liberally of you and of the good the homeopathic system had effected for both Lady Anglesey and me.

‘I proposed to him to meet you at dinner on Friday next, and I hope you will give us your company. I think we shall have some pretty good fun, for Locock and Harris F Dunsford will also be of the party…’

In 1861, William Fergusson 1st Baronet was reprimanded by The Lancet for visiting patients that were also patients of homeopaths, and he subsequently promised not to do so in the future.

Charles Locock felt compelled to write to the British Medical Journal 1861;2:183-184 to suggest that if William Fergusson 1st Baronet:

‘rubs up his memory a little’ and recall that ‘within a day or two of inditing this ambiguous note, he did not visit a patient at the suggestion of a homeopathic practitioner residing not a hundred miles from Mayfair?‘ (obviously Frederick Hervey Foster Quin),

Charles Locock continued:

‘if he rubs up his memory a little, he will be able to state whether he have or have not personally visited patients in company with the same practitioner?‘

(As Charles Locock and William Fergusson 1st Baronet were both friends of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, he would know this!)

Charles Locock has obviously also been criticised for the same sin, as he continues to dissemble:

‘I reply in stronger language that these insinuations or direct charges are entirely false. There are, I believe, only two homeopaths in my neighbourhood in Hertford Street – W Bell and Hugh Cameron.

‘To the former I have never spoke in my life, and I have certainly not been in the same room as Hugh Cameron for more than two years, and then not in the presence of a patient.‘

How carefully Charles Locock conceals his own friendship with Frederick Hervey Foster Quin (and with Harris F Dunsford) – but why is he criticising his friend William Fergusson 1st Baronet if not to ubraid him for betraying a friendship?

William Fergusson 1st Baronet wrote to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin a few days later:

‘I have never considered that you were under any pecuniary obligations to me, and the personal services which I have been able to give I have always deemed as of a friendly kind. I am truly pained that you should think otherwise… and I must express a hope that you will let our personal relations stand as heretofore…‘ (William Fergusson 1st Baronet’s letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin 23.8.1861)

Charles Locock was the son of Henry Locock and Susannah Smyth, and they had five sons including Charles Brodie Locock,

Charles Locock’s Obituary is in the London Echo the in 1875,

Of interest:

In 1886, a Mrs. Locock was a sponsor of homeopathy,

Henry Frederick Leicester Locock 1867 – 1907

The highest church court in the land is to decide whether a body can be exhumed from an overgrown Kent churchyard vault as part of a campaign to prove that it is the illegitimate grandson of Queen Victoria.

Henry Frederick Leicester Locock was adopted by Frederick Locock, the son of Queen Victoria’s gynaecologist, Sir Charles Locock, after he was born in December 1867.

One of his grandchildren, Nicholas Locock, is seeking to take a bone sample from Henry Locock’s body for mitochondrial DNA testing to establish the truth or otherwise of a family legend that Henry Locock’s mother was the bohemian sculptor Princess Louise, the sixth child of Queen Victoria.

His aim is to compare his grandfather’s DNA with that of the Tsarina Alexandra, whose body was one of nine discovered in a grave in Russia in 1991 and whose identity was established by comparison with the DNA of the Duke of Edinburgh, one of her living relatives.

If the Locock family legend is correct, Henry Locock would have been a first cousin of the Tsarina, who was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter.

Judge Michael Goodman, chancellor of the Rochester diocese where the remains are buried in a family vault, refused the exhumation petition at a consistory court last year but Mr Locock has appealed to the Court of Arches, the highest ecclesiastical court in the country. The case will be heard on April 3 at St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London.

Henry Locock, who died aged 39 in 1907, was buried in the Locock family vault, now overgrown and barely accessible, at St Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks.

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Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke

Charles Clarke was a friend of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin who in 1838 was eager to investigate homeopathy, but in 1852, he was to deny that homeopathy had been used at Buckingham Palace (obviously a ‘little white lie’ see below*) when placed in a difficult position by the Medical Society (William Fergusson 1st Baronet was also to be similarly treated in 1861),

*Queen Dowager Adelaide was a patient of John Ernst Stapf. John Ernst Stapf attended the Queen Dowager in Nuremberg and saved her life after her allopathic physicians had given up on her.

This incredible cure ‘opened up the mansions of the aristocracy’ across Europe to homeopathy.

However, John Ernst Stapf could not travel to England to become her permanent homeopath, so Harris F Dunsford was called upon to attend her there. Queen Dowager Adelaide was also a friend of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, and a Patron of his St. James’s Homeopathic Dispensary in 1843.

In 1838, Henry William Paget Marquess of Anglesey wrote to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin:

‘I saw Sir Charles Clarke today, he talked most liberally of you and of the good the homeopathic system had effected for both Lady Anglesey and me.

‘I proposed to him to meet you at dinner on Friday next, and I hope you will give us your company. I think we shall have some pretty good fun, for Charles Locock 1st Baronet and Harris F Dunsford will also be of the party…’

Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronett. was born on 28 May 1782. He was the son of John Clarke and Biddy Mansfield.

He married Mary Anna Squire, daughter of Wright Thomas Squire, on 17 January 1806.

He died in 1857.

Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet. graduated with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.). He was invested as a Fellow, Royal Society (F.R.S.). He was Physician to Queen Dowager Adelaide. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Law (LL.D.). He was created 1st Baronet Clarke, of Dunham Lodge, co. Norfolk on 30 September 1831.

Children of Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet. and Mary Anna Squire: Mary Anna Clarke d. 13 Sep 1841; Catherine Clarke; Maria Agnes Clarke d. 26 Feb 1847; Reverend Sir Charles Clarke 2nd Baronet b. 15 Jun 1812, d. 25 Apr 1899; John Clarke b. 16 Aug 1823, d. 8 May 1906.

The Lancet described Charles Mansfield Clarke as ‘one of the most distinguished ornaments of the medical profession‘,

Charles Mansfield Clarke’s Obituary is in The Lancet and in The Times in 1857.

Of interest:

Rev Charles Clarke2nd Baronet, son of Charles Mansfield Clarke, was a supporter of homeopathy in 1872,

J S Clarke was a British homeopath in 1854,

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The Rosher family

The Rosher family were friends of Charles Dickens,

Alfred Rosher senior – 1904, father of Henry Rosher, ?brother of George Rosher, Solicitor, educated at the University of London in 1850, was a sponsor of homeopathy and an Honorary Solicitor on the Management Committee of the London Homeopathic Hospital, who retired in 1885, Alfred Rosher lived at the Grange, Rosherville, Gravesend,

Alfred Rosher was a member of the Kent Archaeological Trust, and a co founder and patron of the Rochester Church in Rosherville,

Edward Rosher - 1885, son of Jeremiah Rosher, was a sponsor of homeopathy in 1870,

Frederick Rosher 1829 – , son of Henry Rosher, was a sponsor of homeopathy in 1870,

George Rosher 1832 – , son of Jeremiah Rosher, brother of Alfred Rosher Senior, was a British solicitor and a sponsor of homeopathy in 1882, he was a co founder and patron of the Rochester Church in Rosherville, and he died in 1885,

George married Mary Hindle, the daughter of the Rector of Higham, Joseph Hindle. Joseph Hindle was born in 1795 of a landed family in Great Harwood, Blackburn, Lancashire. Hindle was the occupant of Gad’s Hill House when Charles Dickens decided to buy it in 1856.

Whether this cemented their friendship, or if they had known each other previously, is not clear. However, Charles Dickens became a regular visitor to The Knowle, the house at Higham Hindle had built for himself, Mary and her husband George Rosher.

The current owners of the Knowle, Lyn and Michael Baragwanath, have been handed down stories about the Charles Dickens’ period. Staff always knew of the arrival of Charles Dickens’ carriage at The Knowle as they could hear the ringing of the bells around the necks of his horses.

Henry Rosher 1794 – 1879, son of Jeremiah Rosher, father of George Rosher and Alfred Rosher, was on the Board of Management, and a Trustee (1873) on the Management Committee of the London Homeopathic Hospital, and he lived at 11 Bedford Square, and retired in 1875, and died in 1879,

Of interest:

The offspring of Henry Rosher (born 1794, Rotherhithe) and Sarah Susannah Gladdish also included Frederick (born 1829, St Pancras, London) who married Mary Sophie White in 1857.

Their son, Percy White Rosher (born circa 1861, St Pancras, London) married Mary Burns in 1891. This branch of the Rosher family lived in the St Pancras area of London for over half a century, but Percy and Mary’s second son, Charles Rosher (born 1885, St Pancras, London), finally broke the trend.

Charles Rosher studied photography in London and became one of Fleet Street’s first newsreel cameramen.

Then, in 1909, he moved to America, bought his first movie camera and found a job at the studios of the Horsley Brothers. David Horsley moved his studios out to California in 1911 and thus Charles Rosher became one of the first cameramen in Hollywood, and a firm favourite of the silent film star Mary Pickford.

Charles Rosher won Academy Awards for his work as cinematographer on Sunrise (1927) and The Yearling (1946). He also received eight Oscar nominations, two Eastman medals, a Gold Medal from Photoplay magazine, and the only fellowship award ever given by the Society of Motion Picture Engineers.

Charles Rosher married twice, first to Lolita Hayes and then to Doris Guazoni. His daughter, Dorothy Rosher (Nancy Anne Rosher), by Lolita, also went into the motion picture industry and is better known by the name of Joan Marsh.

Her first role, at nine months old was in Hearts Aflame. Later she played alongside stars such as Greta Garbo and Loretta Young, but she is perhaps best known in the role as a magician’s assistant in the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope classic, The Road to Zanzibar.

Jeremiah Rosher was also responsible for the development of the entire area of Gravesend known as Rosherville, which even had its own station and stationmaster’s house. According to Adrian C. Whittaker, the railway was part of the London, Chatham and Dover line built in 1888 and ran from Longfield to Gravesend West station via Southfleet and Rosherville.

Jeremiah Rosher died in 1848, and his estate was divided amongst his children. Jeremiah Burch Rosher, his eldest son (born 1792, Rotherhithe), inherited Trewyn, where he lived until his death in November 1874. Henry (born 1794, Rotherhithe), George (born 1804, Rotherhithe, who married Mary Rachel Brenchley) and Edward (born 1807, Rotherhithe) continued the lime and cement business in the Limehouse area of London, where Jeremiah had acquired a considerable amount of land on which he had also built housing.

Charles (born 1796, Rotherhithe) married into the Rickards family and remained at Crete House, William (born 1804, Rotherhithe) also remained in Northfleet and practised as a solicitor.

Charles Rosher, A.S.C. 1885 – 1974, grandson of Henry Rosher, was a two time Academy Award-winning cinematographer who worked from the early days of silent films through the 1950s. Born in London, he was the first cinematographer to receive an Academy Award, along with 1929 co-winner Karl Struss.

Charles Rosher was a member of the The Golden Dawn, alongside Edward William Berridge, Gerard Anaclet Vincent Encausse, Charles Lloyd Tuckey,

Claude William Rosher, son of Alfred Rosher junior, educated at Rugby School in 1893,

In 1889, Henry Rosher and Edward Rosher sold the land in Gravesend where they had worked a lime and chalk works since the early nineteenth century,

Rosherville was a pleasure garden in Kent was opened in 1839 by George Jones (a business man from Islington in north London) on the site of a disused chalk pit in Northfleet,

Despite his shrewd business instinct, Jeremiah Rosher clearly had a philanthropic side to his nature, as in 1839, he sold a disused chalk pit in Gravesend to a George Jones of Islington, who turned the area into a pleasure ground known as the Rosherville Gardens….

John Brenchley and Mary Harman, who lived at Wombwell Hall near Gravesend in the early 1800s. John Brenchley was a banker and distiller in Gravesend, probably running branches of the same businesses in Maidstone owned by his father, John Brenchley, the elder, and set up by other earlier members of the Brenchley family and their business partners, which also included the Bishop family.

The distillery in Maidstone produced an inexpensive variety of gin, known as Maidstone Geneva, and worked successfully side by side with the bank for many years until the driving force behind them, George Bishop, died in 1793.

The management skills of George’s heir, Argles Bishop, were not so successful, the distillery ran into problems and went bankrupt, and by 1814 his bank also had to close. It is unclear whether this 1814 incident was related to the bankruptcy case in 1826 concerning John Brenchley, the elder, of Maidstone and his son, John Brenchley, the younger, of Wombwell Hall, Gravesend.

Nevertheless, this shift in fortunes appears to have been temporary and did not seem to affect the Brenchleys’ relationship with the Roshers. By 1861, John and Mary Brenchley had died, and Mary Rachel’s brother, Thomas Harman Brenchley (born 1822, Milton), had married Emily Sarah Vaughan in Cardiganshire, Wales.

It is possible that the move to Wales may have been prompted by the Roshers who also had Welsh connections, though some distance away in Monmouthshire.

Jeremiah Rosher senior may have been born in Suffolk, and he likely moved to Trewyn, Monmouthshire, in the early to mid 1700s; more work needs to be done to establish this possible link to Mary Patterson’s line. He may even have married Sarah Stanton in Suffolk, but their son, Jeremiah, was born in Trewyn in 1765.

Sarah died between 1765 and 1774, and Jeremiah senior then shrewdly married Elizabeth Eysham, or Evesham, widow of William Shaw. Elizabeth had inherited from her grandfather James Eysham a mansion at Trewyn (according to Kelly’s Directory for Monmouthshire, 1901, built in 1695) and a considerable amount of land.

The younger Jeremiah Rosher inherited his father’s keen business sense. In 1791, he married Sarah Susannah Burch of Gravesend, daughter of the successful lime merchant, Benjamin Burch, and by his late twenties, Jeremiah had moved from Trewyn and established himself in London as a lime, coal and timber merchant.

In partnership with his wife’s sister, Mary Burch (heiress to Benjamin’s fortune), Jeremiah’s business empire stretched from Rotherhithe to Poplar in London’s docklands.

Here not only did he trade in lime but he also excavated the commodity, the main ingredient for mortar, concrete, plaster, renders and wash, and essential for the building of a newly industrialised London.

According to the British History Online, in 1801 and 1804 Jeremiah bought around three acres in Poplar in the area known as the St Vincent Estate and the east side of the Westferry Road. He also acquired a building in Limehouse where a lime kiln was situated to process the freshly mined material.

Henry Louis Rosher, son of Alfred Rosher junior, was educated at Tonbridge School in 1893,

Jeremiah Rosher 1765 – 1848

Much of the area later occupied by the St Vincent Estate and the land on the east side of Westferry Road south of the Docklands Light Railway viaduct was first developed in the early nineteenth century by Jeremiah Rosher, a lime and timber merchant.

In 1801 and 1804 Rosher acquired about three acres in Poplar, together with property in Limehouse that included the lime kiln near the head of Limekiln Dock, from which he had previously been carrying on business in partnership with Mary Burch.

Rosher owned chalk pits near Gravesend, one of which was made into a pleasure ground in 1839, and the area is still known as Rosherville.  The three acres were a roughly triangular field, which had been part of the park of the Dusthill, a Limehouse mansion of the sixteenth century or earlier.

It lay north of James Mitchell’s ropewalk and south of the creek or common sewer that ran into Limekiln Dock, and was empty save for eight back to back cottages built just north of the ropewalk by William Syer in 1786.

Rosher had Park Street laid out c1809 to run from Limekiln Hill east into the ‘park’, with the cottages on its south side. They had been joined by other houses at the west end of the street by 1813.

The surveyor William Robert Laxton can probably be credited with the layout of the Rosher estate from 1811, when Regent Street (later Gill Street) was laid out. He was responsible for the houses on its east side.

Development of the south side of Park Street extended eastwards across the then parish boundary into Poplar with five more houses in 1817–18. Around that date the Royal Sovereign public house was built north east of the junction of Regent Street and Park Street.

Phoebe Street and Phoebe Court, east of Regent Street, were at least partially built in 1821–2. The east end of Park Street and Park Place, including the Steam Packet public house, were built up in the late 1820s.

Rosher died in 1848, and the estate was then divided among his three sons, Henry, Edward and George. George surrendered his interest in 1848. Edward died in 1885 and his half of the estate was sold in 1888. Later freeholders, who may have been relatives of the Roshers, included the Rev. John Fleming and members of the Milroy family.

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William Fergusson 1st Baronet

In 1861, William Fergusson was reprimanded by The Lancet for visiting patients that were also patients of homeopaths, and he subsequently promised not to do so in the future. (In 1852, Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet had been similarly compromised – and so, it appears was Charles Locock 1st Baronet).

However, William Fergusson said that he was occasionally consulted by homeopaths for his professional opinion, which he was happy to give,

William Fergusson was accused of ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy‘, though he denied that he approved of homeopathy.

Frederick Hervey Foster Quin offered his support, though not publically:

‘You have written your letter and have made your statement in your own way, and I would take my stand upon it if I were you’, as ‘any testimony or evidence from me, or any one of my persuasion, would harm instead of benefit you’, and ‘my testimony would raise up a host of new enemies and fresh leading articles, and furnish besides fresh pretexts for atacking you‘,

William Fergusson felt compelled to write subsequently to the British Medical Journal 1861;2:183-184 as his explanation was ‘deemed unsatisfactory‘:

‘The explanation I offered in my letter to The Lancet of 20 July last (1861), regarding my alleged communication with homeopaths, not appearing satisfactory to the profession. I beg to state that for the future I shall feel it incumbent on me to decline any meeting or so called consultation with homeopathic practitioners.

‘Enjoying a large share of professional confidence, and holding various important public appointments, I should consider myself unworthy of such honours, were I, at the present time, to offer any objections to the expressed wishes and opinions of my professional brethren.’ (such was the fear allopaths brought to bear!)

His friend Charles Locock 1st Baronet also felt compelled to write to the British Medical Journal 1861;2:183-184 to suggest that if William Fergusson:

‘rubs up his memory a little’ and recall that ‘within a day or two of inditing this ambiguous note, he did not visit a patient at the suggestion of a homeopathic practitioner residing not a hundred miles from Mayfair?‘ (obviously Frederick Hervey Foster Quin),

Charles Locock 1st Baronet continued:

‘if he rubs up his memory a little, he will be able to state whether he have or have not personally visited patients in company with the same practitioner?‘

(As Charles Locock 1st Baronet and William Fergusson were both friends of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, he would know this!)

Charles Locock 1st Baronet has obviously also been criticised for the same sin, as he continues to disemble:

‘I reply in stronger language that these insinuations or direct charges are entirely false. There are, I believe, only two homeopaths in my neighbourhood in Hertford Street – W Bell and Hugh Cameron.

‘To the former I have never spoke in my life, and I have certainly not been in the same room as Hugh Cameron for more than two years, and then not in the presence of a patient.‘

How carefully Charles Locock 1st Baronet conceals his own friendship with Frederick Hervey Foster Quin (and with Harris F Dunsford) – but why is he criticising his friend William Fergusson if not to ubraid him for betraying a friendship?

Frederick Hervey Foster Quin subsequently sent William Fergusson a cheque for 100 guineas in payment for his surgery, and explaining that the commissioned bronze Frederick Hervey Foster Quin had ordered for his friend, and the past twelve years of discussions and friendships were now ‘unsuitable’, considering William Fergusson’s published declaimer against homeopathy (Frederick Hervey Foster Quin’s letter to William Fergusson 23.8.1861).

William Fergusson replied to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin within the hour, to return the cheque, refusing payment for the surgery:

‘I have never considered that you were under any pecuniary obligations to me, and the personal services which I have been able to give I have always deemed as of a friendly kind. I am truly pained that you should think otherwise… and I must express a hope that you will let our personal relations stand as heretofore…‘ (William Fergusson’s letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin 23.8.1861)

In 1896, when an allopath quipped that ‘he wouldn’t pass a catheter for the patient of a homeopath‘, William Fergusson commented ‘that, says a great deal for your orthodoxy, but very little for your humanity‘,

William Fergusson was the son of James Fergusson of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, and was born at Prestonpans, East Lothian.

After receiving his early education at Lochmaben and the Royal High School of Edinburgh, he entered the University of Edinburgh with the view of studying law, but soon afterwards abandoned his intention and became a pupil of the anatomist Robert Knox whose demonstrator he was appointed at the age of twenty.

In 1836 he succeeded Robert Liston as surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and coming to London in 1840 as professor of surgery in King’s College London, and surgeon to King’s College Hospital, he acquired a commanding position among the surgeons of the metropolis.

He revived the operation for cleft palate, which for many years had fallen into disrepute, and invented a special mouthgag for the same. He also devised many other surgical instruments, chief among which, and still in use today, are his bone forceps, lion forceps and vaginal speculum.

In 1866 he was created a baronet.

As a surgeon Fergussons greatest merit is that of having introduced the practice of conservative surgery, by which he meant the excision of a joint rather than the amputation of a limb.

He made his diagnosis with almost intuitive certainty; as an operator he was characterized by self possession in the most critical circumstances, by minute attention to details and by great refinement of touch, and he relied more on his mechanical dexterity than on complicated instruments.

He was the author of The Progress of Anatomy and Surgery in the Nineteenth Century (1867), and of a System of Practical Surgery (1842), which went through several editions.

He died in London on February 10, 1877.

Of interest:

James Fergusson 1832 – 1907 of Kilkerran, Philanthropist, MP for Ayr, MP for Manchester, Under Secretary of State for India, Under Secretary for the Home Office, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Post Matre General, Governor of South Australia, Governor of New Zealand, Governor of Bombay,

James Fergusson was a patient of the Indian homeopath Kulkarni,

A cable has been received saying that Sir James Fergusson, a former Governor of Bombay, was killed, having been buried alive in an earthquake in Jamaica. He greatly encouraged education in the Bombay Presidency. Before leaving for Jamaica he had accepted the Presidentship of the South Africa British Indian Committee. He was buried in Kingston with great honours. [From Gujarati] Indian Opinion, 2-2-1907

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James Beaumont Neilson

James Beaumont Neilson was on the Local Liverpool Branch of the British Homeopathic Association,

The son of an engineer, he was born in Shettleston and worked his way up to a position as foreman of the Glasgow Gasworks in 1817, a position he would hold for 40 years.

While trying to solve a problem with a blast furnace at Wilsontown Ironworks, Neilson realized that the force of the blast could be increased by passing hot air, rather than cold air, through the red-hot vessel. This reduced the amount of coal required to make iron, and greatly increased production efficiency to meet the demands of the railway and shipbuilding industries.

Neilson conducted experiments to prove this theory, and patented his hot-blast process in 1828. After resolving some early teething troubles by 1834, the process became used widely, though Neilson had to frequently go to the courts to defend his patent and be able to license his invention.

His defence of his invention was successful, and he became rich. He died on his estate at Queenshill, near Kirkcudbright. His son, Walter Montgomerie Neilson, erected a monument to his memory there in 1883.

William Neilson, James’s brother, founded the Glasgow locomotive manufacturer Neilson and Company, in 1836. James’s son Walter took over the running of the firm in 1843.

Of interest:

Robert Neilson ?1817 -  was a British engineer, and he was the Local Liverpool Honorary Secretary and Deputy Chairman of the British Homeopathic Association,

Robert Neilson, ?son of Robert Neilson, died in India, late Chief Engineer SS Vortigern of Glasgow. Died July 16th 1896, aged 51 years.

Neilson & Co:

Neilson and Company was a locomotive manufacturer in Glasgow. The company was started in 1836 at McAlpine Street by Walter Neilson and James Mitchell to manufacture marine and stationary engines.

In 1837 the firm moved to Hyde Park Street and was known as Kerr, Mitchell and Neilson and, in 1840, Kerr, Neilson and Company, becoming Neilson and Mitchell in 1845. Locomotive building began in 1843 for the local railways.

By 1855, the company was building four-coupled tank engines, along with 2-4-0 and 0-4-2 tender locos. Some of these were for Cowlairs and St. Rollox, but many more went to India.

Through the 1870s considerable numbers of 0-4-4 tank engines were built for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, the Midland and the Great Eastern. Many other types were built for railways at home and abroad, including fifty 0-4-2s for India. The company’s first eight-coupled locos were built in 1872, also for India.

In 1879 the first 2-6-0s to run on British rails were built for William Adams of the Great Eastern. One of these was named “Mogul” and this became the name applied to all locomotives of this wheel arrangement. (However, the name had already been employed in the USA about ten years earlier.)

More overseas orders followed, with engines for South Africa and South America.

In 1884, Neilson left to form a new company at Clyde Locomotive Works but, though Reid became the sole owner, it was not until 1898 that the company changed its name to Neilson, Reid and Company.

However, by this time, intense competition from America meant that small companies were unable to survive. There was a need for amalgamation, and in 1903 Neilson Reid combined with Dübs and Company and Sharp Stewart and Company to form the North British Locomotive Company, the largest locomotive company in the world, outside of the United States.

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William A Parsons

Parsons was a Resident Physician at a small hospital at Paul Francois Curie’s house, alongside Barry, Edward Charles Chepmell, Sydney Hanson, William Leaf, Victor Massol, Jas Bell Metcalfe, John Ozanne,

Parsons was a colleague of George Fearon, George Stevenson Knowles, Joseph Lawrence,

Of interest:

G H Parsons was a homeopath in London in 1872,

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Adolf Salis Schwabe

Salis Schwabe was married Julie Salis Schwabe 1819 – 1897, who founded a number of elementary schools in Naples, and she also managed the Garibaldi Schools for orphans in Naples and Turin, no doubt she discovered homeopathy there, as Cosmo Maria De Horatiis’s famous scientific trials into homeopathy caused such a storm. Salis Schwabe and his wife also lived in Paris, so it is possible they also knew Samuel Hahnemann.

The Schwabe family originated outside Berlin in the town of Dessau in Germany.  Some of the family then moved to Hamburg, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century a succession of Schwabes emigrated to England, settling in Manchester.

The Salis Schwabes counted among their friends:  Frederic Chopin, Jenny Lind, Ethel Smythe, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, Charles Halle, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Ary Sheffer, Wilhelm Richard Wagner, Friedrich Froebel, Florence Nightingale, Christian Karl Josias Bunsen, Thomas Carlyle, The Empress Victoria of Germany, and many others.

Very little has been written about the Salis Schwabes. One source is Nietzsche’s close friend Malwida von Meysenberg who acted for a time as governess to their children.

Salis Schwabe and his wife also knew John Bright, Robert Browning, Richard Cobden, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Mohl, Ignaz Moscheles, Friedrich Max Muller, Francis William Newman, Samuel Smiles,

The Clinical Hospital for the Diseases of Children, Manchester: Salis Schwabe, a German industrialist who had become a wealthy Manchester businessman.

He and his wife were Unitarians and adherents of the Manchester School of Free Traders, as well as liberal supporters of good causes. Mrs Salis Schwabe was, with Richard Cobden’s wife, a prominent member of the Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress, which raised money, among other things, to help patients of the German Hospital in London find employment when they were discharged.

Salis Schwabe would probably have done the lion’s share of the fundraising without interfering in the doctors’ work as he was already prominent and influential in Manchester and didn’t need the prestige of involvement in a hospital management committee.

In 1853 there was a meeting of “a number of friends” with the two doctors with Salis Schwabe as Chairman to discuss the project. Unfortunately, Schwabe died before any progress was made with founding the hospital and the efforts were discontinued for a time as they were deprived of the scheme’s “most efficient promoter.”

A strong proponent of the Friedrich Froebel system of education was Julia Salis Schwabe (1819-1896), widow of a Manchester industrialist, Unitarian and educational benefactor.

She had discovered Friedrich Froebel’s philosophy during her travels in the German states, and had come to see it as the key to social progress. In 1884 she introduced Claude Montefiore, son of a friend of hers, to the Froebel Society, and he became Secretary almost immediately.

Another Manchester industrialist and friend of Julia Salis Schwabe who also became closely associated with the Froebel movement in England was William Mather.

Having established a successful kindergarten and school in Naples, Mrs Salis Schwabe proposed the establishment of a training college with a ‘demonstration school’ in England. As a result, the Froebel Educational Institute was inaugurated in October 1892 at a meeting in the Westminster Palace Hotel. William Mather became the first Chairman, followed in 1920 by Claude Montefiore.

The first Principal was Karin Michaelis (1834-1904), who had worked in kindergartens abroad and had jointly founded the Croydon Kindergarten in 1875.

As Patroness, Mrs Salis Schwabe secured the services of Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager Empress Frederick (1840-1901), the eldest child of Queen Victoria. After building delays, the college and school finally opened, in Colet Gardens, Talgarth Road, West Kensington, on 20th September 1894, and the Grand Opening by the Empress Frederick took place on 5th March 1895. The financial deficits were met by Claude Montefiore and Mrs Salis Schwabe.

Adolf Salis Schwabe’s Obituary is in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1853,

Of interest:

George Salis Schwabe, son of Adolf and Julia, was a British army officer, calico printer and Liberal politician. He married Mary Jaqueline James, daughter of William Milbourne James, Lord Justice of Appeal in 1870.

Julia Rosetta Salis Schwabe, daughter of Adolf and Julia, married Frank Lockwood , an English lawyer and Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1897.

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Henry Turner

Henry Turner was an activist in the cause and promotion of homeopathy in Britain and in America,

Henry Turner & Co had offices in London and Manchester, and they published The British Journal of Homeopathy, The Monthly Homeopathic Review, The Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, with John James Drysdale and George Atkin, The North American Journal of Homeopathy (British edition), and many other homeopathic books and writings from both sides of the Atlantic and from Europe.

Henry Turner was a colleague of Julius Schweitzer,

Henry Turner & Co 77 Fleet Street, 74 New Bond Street, London, and 41 Piccadilly, 15 Market Street, Manchester,

Henry Turner was a member of the Northern Homeopathic Medical Association, and the chemist of the Manchester Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary, and in 1851, he attended the 3rd Homeopathic Congress in Edinburgh, and later that year, he also attended the 4th Homeopathic Congress in London,

Henry Turner was also a homeopathic practitioner, trialing the use of salts in the treatment of cholera in Jamaica in 1854, and he wrote to The Times to advertise his success.

Of interest:

Henry Turner – 1859, ?father of Henry Turner, was also a homeopathic chemist,

The Lung Disease of Cattle; or pleuro pneumonia cured by homeopathy, Henry Turner 1856 discussed some work done by William Haycock, who first noticed this disease in 1842, George Edward Allshorn, Charles W Luther and John Rush, who also had experience treating this disease.

Farmers had been losing thousands of cattle to this disease, Charles W Luther estimated that 6 out of every 10 cattle so affected could be cured. Peter Stuart also was using homeopathy at this time and treated up to 180 cows with this disease, saving about 130 of them. George Edward Allshorn used aconite and bryonia and estimated he had saved 17 out of every 20 cows he treated.

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