Browsing in a village bookshop in South London on a rare school reunion, a copy of History and Antiquities of the Parish of Camberwell (1875) by William Harnett Blanch mesmerised me. It contained both an extensive history of my school and numerous references to Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, who was born on Little Jost Van Dyke in 1744 of Quaker parents.
At 6 years old, Lettsom was sent to England and educated in Warrington, Lancashire. While there, he was noticed by a Quaker preacher, Samuel Fothergill, who introduced him to his brother, London physician John Fothergill. He was afterwards apprenticed to a self-taught apothecary named Sutcliffe, who had gone from being a weaver to become the first medical practitioner in Settle, Yorkshire.
It is said that Sutcliffe told the villagers that in Lettsom’s country people were placed in an exactly opposite direction to them, so they expected to see him stand on his head and perform other feats. No doubt they were disappointed, but it made sure that most of them turned out to welcome him. After Lettsom had served his five years, Sutcliffe assured him that he might make a physician, “but I think not a good apothecary”.
In 1766, Lettsom came to London, where the Fothergills sponsored his medical training at St. Thomas’s Hospital. However, his father’s death in 1767 made him return to the Virgin Islands. He practised on Tortola as a medical practitioner and in only five months earned £2,000, an astonishing sum then. Before returning to Europe, he freed the slaves he had inherited from his father.
Achievements
Lettsom resumed his medical studies at Leiden in the Netherlands, gaining his M.D. in 1769 with a thesis on the natural history of the tea tree. He began to practise medicine in London in 1770, followed within months by being admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London and elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Blanch omits one of Lettsom’s most famous achievements: the founding of the London Medical Society, to combine the work of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries in 1773. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year. By 1774 he had established a reputation in London as a physician, philanthropist and author.
His initiatives and support eventually led to the formation of several dispensaries in South London and Surrey; the Margate (Kent) Sea Bathing Infirmary; the Philanthropic Society for the Prevention of Crimes; the Society for the Discharge and Belief of Poor Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts; the Asylum for the Indigent Deaf and Dumb; the Institution for the Belief and Employment of the Indigent Blind; and the Royal Humane Society.
Land purchase
In 1776, Lettsom purchased some land (a little over two acres) on the east side of Grove Hill, Camberwell, on a 99-year lease. It was part of a large estate that had been divided for sale after its owner could no longer pay his mortgage instalments.
After he inherited the practice of his mentor John Fothergill on the latter’s death in 1779, Dr. Lettsom built Grove Park, the villa that he was to make famous. From its illustration in Blanch’s book (as it looked in 1805), I gather that it had three floors, with 12 ground-floor windows along an extensive frontage and four on each of the upper floors.
Judging by the house’s depth and its number of chimney pots, it had about eight bedrooms. There was an extensive lawn between the house and black metal railings set back from the road by a wide grass verge.
In “Grove Hill, a Descriptive Poem” (1799) Thomas Maurice, a historian and poet, enthusiastically noted its garden, library and landscape. He was one of several eminent writers who wrote glowingly about Lettsom’s hospitality.
Another frequent visitor was James Boswell, famous companion and biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the distinguished man of letters who compiled the first English dictionary. He celebrated Grove Hill’s beauty and his host’s generosity, Quaker ideals and enquiring mind in an ode that includes the following lines:
“My cordial friend, still prompt to lend
Your cash when I have need on’t;
…
On Saturday at bowls we play
At Camberwell with Coakley.
Methinks you laugh to hear but half
The name of Dr. Lettsom;
From him of good—talk, liquors, food,
His guests will always get some.
…
West Indian bred, warm heart, cold head,
The City’s first Physician;
By schemes humane, want, sickness, pain,
To aid is his ambition. …”
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