LETTSOM'S LIBERATION OF HIS SLAVES.
Dr. Lettsom, the founder of the Sea-Bathing Infirmary at Margate, and of the General Dispensary, was left by his father a property, which happened to consist almost entirely of a number of slaves on an estate in Jamaica. When the benevolent doctor went out to the West Indies to take possession of his inheritance, he is said to have emancipated every one of the slaves on his arrival; so that, in the words of his biographer, "he became a voluntary beggar at the age of twenty-three." The doctor went afterwards to Tortola, where, by his practice as a physician, he amassed a considerable sum of money, with which he returned to England in 1768, and attained a distinguished position among the Metropolitan practitioners.