Sheffield Medical School: Origins and Influences

Porter WS . The Medical School in Sheffield 1828–1928. Sheffield: Northend, 1928:2.

Ibid: 14–28.

Chapman AW . The Story of a Modern University. A History of the University of Sheffield. Oxford: University Press, 1955:103–27.

Porter WS (op. cit. ref 1):6.

The Society of Apothecaries in 1828 refused to grant group recognition involving “several gentlemen of Sheffield who had combined to form a Medical School there” (the new Medical Institution), even though “a testimonial of the qualifications of these Persons was read to the Court”. “The Secretary was desired to reply to Dr Favell's letter and to say the Court required that each individual on whose behalf this application was made was expected by the Court to send separate Testimonials” (Society of Apothecaries. Guildhall Library, London. Ms 8239 Sept 1828). Three years later the Royal College of Surgeons of London appears to have recognized as a corporate establishment the Sheffield School of Anatomy and Medicine, the Overend School (Royal College of Surgeons. Resolutions of the Court of Examiners 1825–1832, 25 Nov 1831:248–9), its Court agreeing to accept “attendance upon the several courses of lectures” – which included physiology and the practice of medicine - given there by five individuals whose names are listed in their minutes. The Court made this decision after discussing a letter which was minuted as “requesting the recognition of the School”. Approval was granted on certain conditions but there is no indication that approval depended on the continued presence of the named lecturers. Prima facie this is corporate recognition of a provincial medical school on a broader base than for anatomy and surgery alone. The College policy was evolving from its first hesitating step taken in 1829 when it began to recognize provincial schools of anatomy (Cope Z. The History of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. London: Anthony Blond Ltd, 1959: 48). The Anatomy Act of 1832 led to the licensing of individuals in terms of that act (Royal College of Surgeons. Resolutions of the Court of Examiners 1825–32, 16 Nov 1832: 307–8 which lists “Teachers of Anatomy in the Provincial Towns of England licensed by the Secretary of State”).

Porter WS . Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society 1822–1922. Sheffield: Northend, 1922:54.

Hurt William (1816); Gabriel Reedall (1817); Thomas Thompson Metcalfe (1818); James Farewell Wright (1821); Frederick Huntington (1822); John Dunn (1825) (in whose training Reedall shared); Wilson Overend (1826). Each of these also obtained at least six months clinical training at Guy's Hospital, St Thomas's Hospital, Marylebone Dispensary, General Dispensary, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary or Sheffield General Infirmary (Society of Apothecaries, Court of Examiners Entry Book of Qualifications of Candidates 1815–1888, Guildhall Library, London, Ms 8241^1–3.

Only the name of a candidatés apprentice-master is routinely given. Information about individual subjects, where taught and by whom, is less uniformly provided. Men indentured to other apothecaries but attending the Overend school left no record of this.

Royal College of Surgeons of London. Resolutions of the Court of Examiners 1825–1832, 30 Nov 1832:310–11. Extract from “Provincial Schools of Anatomy. Report from Dr Somerville to the Secretary of State”.

Report from the Select Committee on Medical Education, [London: House of Commons]: 1834. Appendix No 29 to vol 3:134–6. The unexplained omission of any reference to the Sheffield Medical Institution in this report posed a question which has led to an interesting conclusion. There is an entry for “Messrs Gregory and Jackson, Dublin” where two candidates passed LSA 1830–32. The Librarian at Trinity College Dublin, after consultation with the archivist of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, says there is no record of a Dublin anatomical school of these names around 1834 nor of Gregory nor Jackson as anatomists in Dublin at that time. Messrs Gregory and Jackson are, however, the two names that appear in the 1829 prospectus for the Sheffield Medical Institution (op. rit. ref 1 : 19) and are the names quoted as the teachers of anatomy in the same Institution by the Royal College of Surgeons in their minutes⁹. It is proposed, therefore, that there has been a higher clerical error in the official report of the Select Committee relating to Gregory and Jackson where the word “Dublin” should be replaced by “Medical Institution Sheffield”. Perhaps there was already a misunderstanding within the Society of Apothecaries for the Society approved Mr George Turton on 27 September 1832 as lecturer in the Medical School of Sheffield at a time when there were two medical schools there (Society of Apothecaries. Recognition of Lecturers. London. Guildhall Library. Ms 8243). Confusion was possible because there was a Henry Jackson, anatomist, in one school and a William Jackson, anatomist, in the other. The combined annual output of LSA successes from the two Sheffield schools 1830–1832 can therefore be calculated to be three, MRCS passes might have to be added to this. In 1855–6 the LSA pass figure from Sheffield was still only three (Society of Apothecaries Ms 8239⁷) and 60 years later the throughput of qualified doctors from the Sheffield medical school had increased only to six per year, averaged over the ten years up to 1901 (Hall AJ. Floreamus, University College Sheffield, 1901:7).

Parliamentary Papers. Report from Commissioners: Eighteen Volumes. 1843,22:393 footnote “s”.

Ibid. Comparative Population of the chief Cities and Towns 1801–1841. preface:10.

Ibid. Appendix. Population of Cities Boroughs and Districts of Boroughs returning Members to Parliament: 465–6.

Quaker Records: Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting Births Digest in relation to Hall Overend. Inkster states, however, that Hall Overend's father was a Sheffield clerk (Inkster I. “Studies in the Social History of Science in England During the Industrial Revolution circa 1790–1850.” PhD thesis Sheffield University Library, 1977; vol 1:270). The father was still described in 1800 as of Settle (Quaker Records. Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting Marriages Digest, in relation to Hall Overend) and a John Overend died in Settle in 1826.

Floreamus. A chronicle of University College, Sheffield. Vol 1, Oct 1897–June 1901:47. His brother John was later head of the very successful financial house of Overend Gurney and Co in London.

Ernest Robert , apothecary/house surgeon to the General Infirmary, whose training was comparable to his own and who was almost exactly the same age, published the Infirmary statistics, a clinical paper in a national journal and a small book.

Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections, Matriculation records. Da35.

Quaker records. Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting. Births and Burials Digests.

Walker R. Regency Portraits. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1985:103–4, No 654. Chantrey was knighted in 1835.

Bell AB , ed. Peeps into the Past from the Diary of Thomas Asline Ward. Sheffield: Leng, 1909:58.

Porter WS (op. cit. ref 6):16.

Bell AB (op. cit. ref 20):156.

Inkster I (op. cit. in note 14):247.

The Sheffield Iris, 13 May 1828.

Bell AB (op. cit. ref 20):195.

Ibid:164.

Leader RE , ed. Reminiscences of Old Sheffield. Sheffield: Independent Office, 1875:301–2.

Doncaster HM . James Henry Barber, a family memorial, 1905;vol i:2.

A common explanation for failure to conform to Friends' usage was a marriage outside the Society with a consequent absence of records of that event in Friends' records.

Will of Hall Overend, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, Exchequer Probate Records, December 1831.

An incident arose in 1827–8 involving a young nephew who was at school in Sheffield and who used to dine with them on Sundays because Mrs Overend was his aunt. On one occasion after dinner, when left to his own devices, the boy went up to the museum to play with a school friend, it being assumed by the grown ups that they would occupy themselves by looking at animals in glass cases. Instead the two boys had a game pretending that each was riding a horse and they had a race. The friend riding a seal did no harm to his seal but the nephew riding a lynx broke its slender back. Mrs Overend quickly took him back to school in order to save him from what in Sheffield was called a “warming” from Hall Overend. The nephew said some years later of his uncle that ‘though most charming to me usually as a child he would certainly have taken steps to cure me of a propensity for steeplechasing with his anatomies”. (Barber JH. The Overends and the Medical History of Sheffield. Floreamus vol 1 (Oct 1897–June 1901): Sheffield: Northend, 1901:48).

Leader RE . Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford, 1901:217.

Porter WS (op. cit. ref 1):15.

Richard Sutcliffe, having been variously described professionally as, “apothecary”, “surgeon apothecary”, “druggist”, “chemist” and being the one-time apprentice-master of surgeons invites comparison with another late 18th century medical man where one individual was similarly described as “surgeon”, “druggist”, “chymist” and “apothecary” (Burnby JGL. A Study of the English Apothecary from 1660 to 1760, Medical History Supplement, 1983:29 & 51). There was a lack of precision in the titles used to describe medical men, apart from physicians, until by the establishment of new professional examinations a measure of discipline was forced upon the nomenclature.

Leader RE (op. cit. ref 32):187–8.

Burnby JGL (op. cit. in note 34):53–4.

Porter WS (op. cit. ref 6):6.

Ibid: 7–8; also Bell AB (op. cit. ref 20):55.

Inkster I (op. cit. in note 14):108.

John Coakley Lettsom was a celebrated London physician, licentiate of the College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society, the Antiquarian Society and a co-founder of the dispensary movement. He was founder of the Medical Society of London in 1773, a philanthropist and writer and was “full of miscellaneous learning”.

Quaker Records, Yorkshire Quarterly Meeting Births Digest 1286, 1788–1790; and 1287, 1791–1792. Present P.R.O. references RG6/791 and RG6/792.

The Cutler's Company maintained a record of apprenticeships but has no reference to a Richard Sutcliffe. The Sheffield Assay Office did not keep records of trainees in silver work.

He moved to Sheffield late 1786 (Quaker Records, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, MS [Deposit] 1979/1. Settle Womens Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1771–1792; Also Sutcliff R. Travels in Some Parts of North America in the Years 1804, 1805 and 1806. York: Alexander Peacock, 1811: preface: iii.

“A General alphabetical list of the principal tradesmen and inhabitants of Sheffield” in A Directory of Sheffield first published in Sheffield 1787. New York: Da Capo Press, Reprint Edition, 1969.

Abraham JJ . Lettsom; his Life, Times, Friends and Descendants. London: Heinemann, 1933:26.

Pettigrew TJ . Memoirs of the life and writings of the late John Coakley Lettsom MD FRS FLS etc etc with selection from his correspondence. 3 vols. London: Longman, 1817.

Ibid: Vol 1:16.

Ibid:14.

Alexander Monro primus; class lists of students, Edinburgh University Library (Ms. Dc 5.95).

As well as surgery and anatomy Monro primus taught physiology and pathology (Bynum WF, Porter R. William Hunter and the Eighteenth Century Medical World. Cambridge: University Press, 1985:157) and had been a surgeon before he acquired his MD and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. His classes are likely to have comprised the same mix of students as has been analysed in convincing detail by Rosner from 1760, where Sutcliff would fit into the category of “occasional auditors” (Rosner L. Medical Education in the Age of Improvement; Edinburgh Students and apprentices 1760–1826, Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, chapter heading “Occasional auditors”:104–118), a group “all but invisible to historians” (Rosner L. ibid.:104). This considerable group included keen young men who were perfecting their training as surgeon apothecaries but were not proceeding to a degree.

Pettigrew TJ (op. cit. ref 46): 14. Pettigrew also inserted an “etc” after the names of Monro, Rutherford and St Clair.

Lawrence CJ . “Medicine as culture: Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment”. PhD thesis, University of London, 1984:73, quoting The Caledonian Mercury 8 & 12 Sept 1726.

Abraham JJ (op. cit. ref 45):21.

As an aid towards completeness a few other facts about Sutcliff and his family are given. Abraham Sutcliff was a highly regarded practising Quaker. One source says that he had seven children (ref 45) but an older reference says there were eight (ref 46: 15fn). His will of probate date 1799 (ref 55) refers to his wife but only five children each by name. Samuel (b. 1754), although not mentioned in the will, seems to have been the first born and is known to have gone from Settle to London in 1774, when he was aged 20 (Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, MS [Deposit] 1979/1 Settle Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1767–1787) and presumably had. died before his father wrote his will. The presence of Robert (1757–1811) the second son, in Sheffield could have been an important reason why the family moved there from Settle late in 1786. Robert was bound apprentice from 1772 for seven years to a cutler called Trickett and obtained his freedom in 1781 registering his mark with the Cutlers' Company as the word PUNCTUAL. He was also trained to work in silver, registering a mark with the Sheffield Assay Office, and made silver handles and occasionally silver blades (Sheffield Assay Office, Register). He was also inventive (Sheffield Assay Office records. Copy of patent application “Die for Ornamenting the Handles of Knives, etc.” 3 Nov. 1785 No. 1505). When he obtained his freedom he took on his youngest brother Joshua (b. 1767) as his own apprentice, but Joshua is not mentioned in his father's will so may have died before 1798. Robert probably trained one of his medical brothers, Richard (supra), for a couple of years. Robert twice crossed the Atlantic to visit Philadelphia and many other places in North America as part of an extensive export business from Sheffield and published a book about it (see notes 43 above). William (b. 1759) the third son was presumably trained by his father as one of a long series of his apprentices (ref 45:21). William like his father went to Edinburgh University (Sutcliff R. inref 43:271. This information is not repeated in the “improved” edition of 1815) but he did not proceed to graduation. His name appears in the matriculation list at Edinburgh University of 1783–4 for classes in chemistry and anatomy. In that entry he was already able to describe himself as “medical practitioner” so will have completed his apprenticeship by then (ref 17). William remained in Settle to take over his fathers practice and later shared with Richard their father's bequest of medical books. John (b. 1762) the fourth son became a mercer or draper in Sheffield. Richard (1764–1828) the fifth son has been dealt with above and then, after Joshua (b. 1767) (supra) came Sarah (b. 1768), the youngest of the family and the only girl.

Will of Abraham Sutcliff, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, Exchequer Probate Records, March 1799.

Sheffield Archives, Sheffield Library and Information Services, Minutes of the Boards of Infirmary, ref. 333/H2/1.

Ibid. ref. 333/H5/19.

The Sheffield Iris, 31 August 1798.

Leader RE (op. cit. ref 32): 187–8.

Burial register of the Society of Friends (QR50). Copy deposited Sheffield Archives.

Thompson C. “An address delivered in Mr Overend's Museum at the opening of the Sheffield School of Anatomy and Medicine on Friday October 17, 1828”. Sheffield: J. Blackwell, 1828.

Society of Apothecaries, Court of Examiners Minute Books, Guildhall Library, London. Ms 9239/3.

Ibid. Chas. Aston Key, Guy's hospital: T. Callaway, Guy's hospital: Thos. Hodgkin MD New Broad Street: Gilbert Krackburdo, St Thomas's hospital; also James Farewell Wright, Corden Thompson MD and James Ray of Sheffield.

Ibid. Ms 8239 (3 & 4) Wilson Overend LSA, MRCS: Corden Thompson MD: James Farewell Wright LSA: Edward Barker (chemistry).

The Sheffield Iris, Tues 19 February 1828; Sheffield Mercury and Hallamshire Advertiser, Sat 16 February 1828.

Arnold Knight MD was knighted in 1841. He became “the first Catholic connected with the medical profession to whom the honour of knighthood has been conferred since the Reformation”. The Tablet, 17 April 1841:249.

The Sheffield Iris, Tues 19 February 1828.

Porter WS (op. cit. ref 1):5.

Society of Apothecaries (op. cit. ref 62): Ms 8239 (4).

The violent destruction of a leased house of the Overend medical school used for the teaching of anatomy has been described as “a popular response to class legislation” (Donnelly FK. Trans Hunter Arch Soc vol 10 (1971–9) 1975:167–72) but the building that was destroyed was only one of three associated by the townspeople with anatomy. The other two anatomy-linked buildings received scant damage and then only late in the proceedings by which time there was drunkenness. After referring to local newspapers a good case can be made instead for the popular hostility having been particularly focused against the articulator/caretaker and his wife who were in residence in the leased property, for they frequently disturbed the neighbourhood with their noisy drunken brawls, and were not themselves being kept under control by the medical men who employed them. The landlord's role at the time is unlikely to have been neutral for he had already printed an open address describing dissection as “sinful” (ref 73:4). It is difficult to define the part played by Wilson Overend on the occasion of the riot, despite his holding overall responsibility, for his name is only occasionally seen in the contemporary press.

White W. History and General Directory of Sheffield etc. Sheffield, Independent Office, 1837:83.

At one stage the House Surgeon did not approve of Wilson Overend's services to the Infirmary. A copy letter shows that he and another on the staff received a letter from the House Surgeon asking if they had resigned their situations at the Infirmary as it was three weeks since they had last seen any of their patients. (Leader JD, Snell S. Sheffield General Infirmary 1797–1897. Sheffield: Infirmary Board, 1897:140 fn).

Roberts S. The Lectures Lectured and the Dissectors Dissected. Sheffield: A. Whitaker, 1834:1–16.

Wilson Overend matriculated for the courses of Anatomy and Surgery and Chemistry, 1823–4 (op. cit. ref 17).

The influence of the volatile personality of Dr Corden Thompson on these events and in particular on Wilson Overend's actions remains unknown but he is unlikely to have remained in the background. He and Wilson Overend seemed to retain good relations over many years because it was Dr Thompson who attended Wilson Overend during his last short illness in 1865 (Leader & Snell, op. cit. ref 72:116). Corden Thompson was a man of many words who wrote freely to the press. His personality could be powerfully expressed, neither peacefully nor cooperatively. In 1832 he published in the local press invective of 12,000 words in eight weekly instalments publicly criticizing in particular the House Surgeon but also some others (The Sheffield Mercury and Hallamshire Advertiser, March–May 1832). The Infirmary Board supported the House Surgeon. It was Corden Thompson who was held particularly responsible for having persuaded the Governors that it would be inexpedient for the Infirmary to link with a dispensary, a negative decision which shaped a two hospital pattern for the city of Sheffield lasting 150 years. This information about Thompson's role has a good provenance, coming from the surgeon Arthur Jackson who had a close family relationship with Wilson Overend's wife (see also Leader & Snell, op. cit. ref 72:136; also Skinner EF. The Sheffield Royal Hospital 1832–1932, Sheffield: Greenup & Thompson Ltd, 1932:3). In 1833 Corden Thompson chaired a well attended meeting of medical gentlemen resident in Sheffield to address and congratulate the late medical officers of the Aldersgate Street Dispensary. By so doing he received considerable praise from Thomas Wakley of The Lancet (Lancet 1833–34:i:27–31). In 1845 Dr Thompson having been nominated president of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, now the British Medical Association, then declined the honour because he found himself not sufficiently in agreement with many of his professional brethren (Porter WS, op. cit. ref 1:18).

Chapman AW (op. cit. ref 3):112.

The Sheffield Independent (obit) 4 June 1831.