East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

by J. Ewing Ritchie

When I was a boy Ipswich was resorted to by Londoners in the summer-time. As an illustration, I give the case of Mr. Ewen, one of the deacons of the Weigh House Chapel, when the Rev. John Clayton was the pastor. In his memories of the Clayton family, the Rev. Dr. Aveling writes of Mr. Ewen, that ‘he was so sensitively conscientious

in the discharge of his official duties at the Weigh House, that he was never absent from town on the days when the Lord’s Supper was administered, and when he was expected to assist in the administration of the elements. His London residence was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but having a house and property in the town of Ipswich, he passed his summer months there. Yet so intent was he upon duly filling his place in the sanctuary of God, that he regularly travelled by post-chaise once in every month, and returned in the same manner, that he might be present, together with his pastor and the brethren, at the table of the Lord. The length and the expense of the journey (and travelling was not then what it is now) did not deter him from what he at least deemed to be a matter of Christian obligation.’ Dr. Aveling is quite right when he tells us travelling is not what it was. It took almost a day to go from Ipswich to London when I was a boy, and now the journey is done by means of the Great Eastern Railway in about an hour and a half. It seems marvellous to one who, like myself, remembers well the past, to leave Liverpool Street at 5.0 p.m. precisely, and to find one’s self landed safe and well in Ipswich soon after half-past six. The present generation can

have no conception of travelling in England in the olden time.

There were some wonderful old Radicals in Ipswich, though it was, and is, the county town of the most landlord-ridden district in England. Some of them got the great Dan O’Connell to pay the town a visit, and some of them nobly stood by old John Childs when he became famous all the world over as the Church-rate martyr. The lawyers and the doctors were mostly Tories, but the tradesmen and the merchants were not a little leavened with the leaven of Dissent. Mr. Hammond was, however, a Liberal surgeon, and as such flourished. His Whig principles, writes Mr. Glyde, brought him many patients, and his skill and sound qualities retained them. Dr. Garrord, the well-known London practitioner, was an apprentice of Mr. Hammond’s; and this reminds me that among the Ipswich men who have risen is Mr. Sprigg, the Premier of Cape Colony when Sir Bartle Frere was at the head of affairs there. The father of Mr. Sprigg was the respected pastor of a Baptist chapel in the town. The only Ipswich minister whom I can remember was the Rev. Mr. Notcutt, who preached in the leading Independent chapel, now pulled down to make way for a much more

attractive building. All I can recollect about him is, that once, when a lad, I fainted away when he was preaching. No sermon ever affected me so since; and that effect was due, it must be confessed, not to the preacher, who seemed to me rather aged and asthmatic, but to the heat of the place, in consequence of the crowd attracted to the meeting-house on some special occasion.

But to return to the doctors. Of one of them, who was famed for his love of bleeding his patients, not metaphorically, but in the old-fashioned way, with the lancet, it is recorded that on the occasion of his taking a holiday two of his patients died. Lamenting the fact to a friend, the following epigram was the result:

‘B--- kills two patients while from home away—
A clever fellow this same B---, I wot;
If absent thus his patients he can slay,
How he must kill them when he’s on the spot!’

Perhaps one of the noted physicians of my boyhood was Mr. Stebbing. ‘He was once,’ writes Mr. Glyde, ‘called in to see one of the Ipswich Dissenting ministers, who had taken life very easily, and had grown corpulent. After examining the patient and hearing his statement as to bodily state, he replied: “You’ve no particular ailment;

mind and keep your eyes longer open, and your mouth longer shut, and you will do very well in a short time.”’ On another occasion a raw and very poor-looking young fellow called upon him for advice. The doctor told him to go home and eat more pudding, adding, ‘That’s all you want; physic is a very good thing for one to live by, but a precious bad thing for you to take.’ One of the Ipswich characters of my boyhood, of whom Mr. Glyde has preserved an anecdote, was old Tuxford, the veterinary surgeon. He used to declare that he never took more than one meal a day—a breakfast; but when asked of what that consisted, he said, ‘A pound of beefsteak, seven eggs, three cups of tea, and a quartern of rum.’ It may also be mentioned that before Mrs. Garrett Anderson was born, Ipswich had a lady physician in the person of Miss Stebbing, daughter of the doctor to whom I have already referred. ‘She was,’ says one who knew her well, ‘a woman of general education, with more than ordinary tact and discernment, combined with the true womanly power of analyzing and observing. She had good physical powers, and, like her worthy father, was somewhat pungent in her remarks and eccentric in her habits. She entered the ranks as a medical practitioner during her father’s life. The

benefit of his advice so aided her perceptive powers as to make her quite an expert in various ways, and she continued to practise long after his decease, occasionally attending males as well as females. Her knowledge of midwifery caused a large number of ladies to engage her services.