William Pare (1804-1873) was a Birmingham tobacconist, who was one of the founders of the first Birmingham Cooperative Society. He left Birmingham in 1842 to become acting governor of Robert Owen's community at Queenswood, Hampshire, from 1842-1844, and published numerous works on cooperation.
Robert Owen was born in Newtown, Wales in 1771. He was apprenticed to a draper in Stamford, Northamptonshire at the age of 10, and continued his working education in London from the ages of 13 to 16. In 1787 Owen moved to Manchester, where he set up a small cotton-spinning establishment, and also produced spinning mules for the textile industry. Following this success, he became a manager for several large mills and factories in Manchester. In 1794 he formed the Chorlton Twist Company with several partners, and in the course of business met the Scots businessman David Dale. In 1799, Owen and his partners purchased Dale's mills in New Lanark, and Owen married Dale's daughter. At New Lanark, Owen began to act out his belief that individuals were formed by the effects of their environment by drastically improving the working conditions of the mill employees. This included preventing the employment of children and building schools and educational establishments. Owen set out his ideas for model communities in speeches and pamphlets, and attempted to spread his message by converting prominent members of British society. His detailed proposals were considered by Parliament in the framing of the Factories Act of 1819. Disillusioned with Britain, Owen purchased a settlement in Indiana in 1825, naming it New Harmony and attempting to create a society based upon his socialist ideas. Though several members of his family remained in America, the community had failed by 1828. Owen returned to England, and spent the remainder of his life and fortune helping various reform groups, most notably those attempting to form trade unions. He played a role in the establishment of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, 1834, and the Association of All Classes and All Nations, 1835. Owen died in 1858.
The Glasgow Union Banking Company was established in 1830. As a result of various amalgamations the company became known as the Union Bank of Scotland in 1843.
George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, began writing Don Juan in Italy in 1818, and continued to add episodes until his death in 1824. The long, digressive satiric poem is a loose narrative, based on the life and adventures of the eponymous hero. The first two cantos were published in 1819, though the poem was not published in its entirety until eighty years after Byron's death. Willis W. Pratt, in his Notes on the Variorum Edition of Byron's Don Juan, Vol IV (1957), says (p.312) '...throughout the forties and fifties...there was still a spate of imitations and continuations [of Don Juan], but they became fewer, and, if possible, worse'. Among those he cites (on p.313) is 'John Clark (?), second of two volumes, titlepage missing, printed between 1834 and 1847'. The British Museum does not record a copy of this work.
Dôle is located in the Franche-Comté region of France, between Dijon and Bescanon.
The Coachmakers and Coach Harnessmakers Company was granted a charter by King Charles II in 1677. It was soon established as the governing body of the trade and undertook a certain amount of policing within the trade. The company survived the trials of history and developed new interests alongside its traditional ones, particularly in the motor trade.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c AD 56-117) was a Roman orator, public official and historian. He was a friend of Pliny the Younger and married the daughter of Gaius Julius Agricola. In AD 97 he was appointed substitute consul under Nerva, and later he was proconsul of Asia. Tacitus was the author of several works, including Dialogus, a discussion of oratory, and Germania, on the origins and location of the Germans. A sense of moral purpose and severe criticism of contemporary Rome, fallen from the virtuous vigor of the old republic, underlies his two longer works, commonly known as the Histories (of which four books and part of a fifth survive) and the Annals (of which twelve books survive). The extant books of the Histories cover only the reign of Galba (AD 68-69) and the beginning (to AD 70) of the reign of Vespasian, and the surviving books of the Annals tell of the reign of Tiberius, of the last years of Claudius, and of the first years of Nero.
Philip Doddridge was born in 1702, and orphaned by the age of 13. The Duchess of Bedford decided to finance his entire education providing he would promise to become an Anglican clergyman, but Doddridge was set on becoming a Dissenting minister. Samuel Clark came to the rescue and offered to finance Doddridge's studies, obtaining for him a place at a Dissenting college at Kibworth, Leicestershire, run by John Jennings. Jennings died in c 1722?, and the college was closed down until April 1729, when Isaac Watts and several other ministers met at Lutterworth for a day of fasting and prayer and felt moved to invite Doddridge to reopen the academy in Market Harborough, which he did. By 1730, the Academy had moved to Northampton, and developed such a good reputation that Anglican clergy began to send their sons there. Doddridge died in 1751.
John Ferguson was the owner of Robert Ferguson and Son, a textile manufacturing company in Carlisle.
Excise are inland duties levied on articles at the time of their manufacture, notably, alcoholic drinks, but have also included salt, paper and glass. In 1643 a Board of Excise was established by the Long Parliament, to organize the collection of duties in London and the provinces. Excise duty was settled by statute despite widespread aversion in 1660. A permanent board of Excise for England and Wales was established in 1683 with separate boards for Ireland in 1682 and Scotland in 1707.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, control of the major aspects of English coinage passed from the Crown to Parliament. Charles Montagu, Chancellor of the Exchequer, solicited advice from a selection of eminent persons on solutions to the poor state of the silver coinage, 1695-1696.
Inspeximus (literally 'We have seen') is a word sometimes used in letters-patent, reciting a grant, inspeximus such former grant, and so reciting it verbatim; it then grants such further privileges as are thought convenient. The term letters patent in its most general form refers to a letter delivered open with the royal seal attached, designed to be read as a proclamation.
Hume was born at Newington, Surrey on 28 April 1774 and received his education from Westminster School. In 1791 he became a clerk and later a controller of customs at Custom House in Thames Street, London. Between 1822 and 1825 Hume was given leave by the Treasury to study the laws of customs. His findings were published in ten acts in July 1825. In 1828 he was appointed joint secretary of the Board of Trade, which he retired from in 1840. During his time at the Board of Trade, Hume undertook an investigation in to silk duties and gave evidence before a committee on timber duties. From 1821 to 1841 he regularly attended meetings of the Political Economy Club, which he helped to establish in 1821. On retirement in 1840 he went to live in Reigate, Surrey. Although retired he gave evidence on the Corn Law and duties on coffee, tea and sugar. Hume died in Reigate on 12 January 1842.
The island of Newfoundland is situated off the eastern coast of North America between the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean, and is one of the four Atlantic provinces of Canada. Claimed as an English possession in 1583, British sovereignty of the island was recognised in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht. During the nineteenth century, the population was swelled by labourers brought over from Britain to work in the fisheries, which were the main industry of Newfoundland. In 1855, the island was granted self-government.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway was built to carry coal from the collieries of West Durham to the port of Stockton. In 1821, Edward Pease and a group of businessmen formed the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company. Royal Assent for the project was given in 1821, and building started the following year. The railway was opened in 1825, the first locomotive railway in Britain.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation.
George Smith was born on 15 July 1871. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School, 1880-1887. From 1881 to 1892 he was articled to Gilbert Ellis who were engaged in the business of Antiquarian books. Smith passed the Library Association examination with honours, being the only candidate to qualify for the full professional certificate prior to the revised scheme of 1901. From 1893 to 1894 he served as the sub librarian of University College London and chief librarian of the Linen Hall, Belfast from 1894 to 1902. On the death of Gilbert Ellis in 1902, Smith succeeded to a partnership in the firm of Ellis and Elvey, the rare and antique bookshop founded by John Brindley, the famous bookbinder and publisher in 1728. He remained with the firm until his retirement in 1937 and died in Brighton aged 91 years.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Great Tower Street is in the centre of the City of London, and was formerly the site of the parish church of St Dunstan in the East, which was built in the 13th century. For biographical details of William Allen, see A.B. Beaven, The aldermen of the City of London (1908). He may have been the same William Allen who was elected Mayor of London in 1571.
No information available at present.
The Cornish tin industry became so important during the Middle Ages that the Cornish tin miners were granted special privileges and were placed by the crown under the separate legal jurisdiction of the stannary (tin mine) courts. Cormwall had four stannaries: Foymore, Blackmore, Tywarnhaile and Penwith and Kerrier.Thomas Pearce, in his work on The Laws and customes of the stannaries (1725) records a convocation of the stannators of Cornwall held at Truro in 1703. A Thomas Hawkins and a John Hill are both to be found in A list of all the Adventurers in the Mine Adventure, 1700.
Sandbach, Tinné and Co. were Liverpool importers and exporters, shipping and estate agents mainly concerned with trade in slaves, sugar, coffee, molasses and rum.
The Bank of Scotland was established by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1695, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was founded as a corporation by grant of a Royal Charter under the Great Seal of Scotland, May 1727.
The decretals are canonical epistles, written by the pope alone, or by the pope and cardinals, at the instance or suit of some one or more persons, for the ordering and determining some matter in controversy, and have the authority of a law in themselves. Pope Gregory IX (1143-1241) ordered the first complete and authoritative collection of papal decretals, the Corpus Iuris Canonici.
The Vagrancy Act of 1531 made a distinction between those found begging although able to labour, and those incapable of work. Magistrates were allowed to give licences to beggars allowing certain kinds of begging.
Joseph Yorke, younger son of Philip, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, was born in 1724. He entered the military, where he served under the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontency, 1745. In 1749 Yorke was appointed Secretary to William Anne, 2nd Earl of Albermarle, then the ambassador extraordinary to France, and later later (1751) the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United Provinces. In 1761, Yorke himself was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the United Provinces, a post which he held until 1780, when he resigned due to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Holland (caused by the latter giving aid to the US colonists during the War of Independence). During this period he was also elected MP for Dover in 1761 and 1768, and for Grampound, Cornwall, in 1774. He was created a General in 1777 and Baron Dover in 1788. Yorke died in 1792.
From the 16th century onwards, Justices of the Peace dealt with the administration of the Poor Law, and, following the Poor Law Act in 1601, had responsibility for appointing the overseers for each parish. Overseers of the poor were appointed annually and were responsible to ensure the sick, needy poor and aged were assisted either in money or in kind, distribution of which took place in the Vestry of the Parish Church.
Possibly produced during the War of the Grand Alliance, 1689-1697, the third major war of King Louis XIV of France, in which his expansionist plans were blocked by an alliance led by England, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the Austrian Habsburgs.
The Russell family were a prominent English noble family, who played an important part in the government of England, especially from the reign of Henry VIII onwards, when John Russell (1486-1555) was created 1st Earl of Bedford.
No information available at present.
Hopton Haynes entered the Royal Mint as a clerk in 1687, and moved into the Comptrollers office for the great recoinage, 1696. He was successively Weigher and Teller, 1701, and the King's Assay Master, 1749. He was also a unitarian writer. Publications: A brief enquiry relating to the right of His Majesty's Royal Chapel, and the privilege of his servants within the Tower (London, 1728); The Scripture Account of the attributes and worship of God, and of the character and offices of Jesus Christ (London, 1790).
No information available at present.
The Board of Trade began collecting annual agricultural returns in 1866. The returns of acreage and livestock were made by proprietors under the provisions of various Acts of Parliament, including the Agriculture Act of 1889 which set up a Board of Agriculture and transferred to it and its successors responsibility for the direction of the agricultural census.
A tax on households employing male servants was levied in Britain from 1777-1852.
The Court of King's Bench exercised a supreme and general jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases as well as special jurisdiction over the other superior common-law courts until 1830.The Court of Common Pleas was the main court for cases between individuals about land and debt rather than prosecutions by the crown.
The Privy Chamber was created by Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509) as a new department of the Royal Household. It was run by the Lord Chamberlain and consisted of Gentlemen of the Chamber, chosen by the monarch as personal attendants. The roles of Gentlemen were given as political rewards, and were bestowed mainly on members of the aristocracy.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Edmund Backhouse (1824-1906) came from a family of prominent Quaker bankers. He was MP for Durham from 1868-1880, and married Juliet Fox, daughter of Charles Fox, in 1848.
Benjamin Thompson was a dramtist who wrote plays including The Florentines, or Secret Memoirs of the noble family De C** (J. F. Hughes, London, 1808); Oberon's Oath; or, the Paladin and the Princess: a melodramatic romance, in two acts (London, 1816); The Recall of Momus. A bagatelle (G. Robinson, London, 1809); and The Stranger (J. Dicks, London, [1875]).
Merino sheep originated in North Africa descended from a strain of sheep developed during the reign of Claudius, from 14 to 37 A.D. They spread via the Spanish and French royal families to northern Europe. The original Merinos were a wool sheep, who sheared a very heavy, fine fleece.
John Yellowly was born 30 April 1774 at Alnwick, Northumberland. He was educated locally before studying medicine at Edinburgh, where he graduated MD on 12 September 1796.
He was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in September 1800 and, at about that time, was elected physician to the General Dispensary. Yellowly was an active figure in establishing the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London in 1805 (which became the Royal Society of Medicine in 1907), and remained interested in the affairs of the Society throughout his life.
In September 1807 he was elected physician to the London Hospital. As well as a good practitioner and chemist, he was `a person of considerable scientific attainments' (Munk's Roll, 1878, p.471). Yellowly was a Fellow of the Royal and of the Geological Societies.
In 1818 he resigned his office at the London Hospital and left London to settle in Norwich. In 1820 he was appointed physician to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. In 1832 Yellowly retired from the practice of his profession and withdrew to Woodton Hall, Norfolk, and then to Cavendish Hall.
He died at Cavendish Hall on 31 January 1842, aged 67.
Publications:
Remarks on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases, with Observations on the Nature of Urinary Concretions; and an Analysis of a Large Part of the Collection Belonging to the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital (London, 1829; sequel, London 1830)
Observations on the Arrangements Connected with the Relief of the Sick Poor, in a Letter to Lord John Russell (London, 1837)
Born, 1835; Joint Professor of Medicine (with Dr Duffin) at King's College Hospital, London; died, 1914.
William Francis Victor Bonney was born in Chelsea in 1872. He was educated at a private school and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, but transferred to the Middlesex Hospital, intending to become a physician. Sir John Bland-Sutton invited him to the Chelsea Hospital for Women, where he laid the foundations of his success as a gynaecological surgeon. In 1905 he became obstetric registrar and tutor at the Middlesex Hospital. He was elected assistant gynaecological surgeon in 1908, a post which he held till 1930, when he succeeded his old friend Sir Comyns Berkeley FRCS as gynaecological surgeon. Together they wrote Textbook of Operative Gynaecology. During the first World War Bonney served as a surgeon made famous for his 'violet green anti-septic', popularly called 'Bonney's blue' (British Medical Journal 15 May 1915). At the Royal College of Surgeons he was a Hunterian Professor in 1908, 1930, and 1931, Bradshaw Lecturer in 1934, and Hunterian Orator in 1943. He was the only gynaecological specialist ever elected to the Council, and served with distinction from 1926 to 1946, being a Vice-President 1936-1938; died, 1953.
Bryce was born in Southport and educated at Manchester University Medical School from which he graduated in 1912. Apart from wartime service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1915-1919, he spent most of his professional career in the Manchester area, holding appointments at the Manchester Memorial Jewish Hospital and the Manchester Royal Infirmary where he was appointed to the honorary staff in 1934. Bryce was a founder member of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He was the Society's first Secretary and Treasurer until November 1946, when he was elected Vice-President, a position he held for three years; he served as President of the Society, 1949-1951. Bryce was also President of the Thoracic Society and of the Manchester Surgical Society. He retired in 1955.
William Clift (1775-1849), museum curator and scientific illustrator, was born near Bodmin in Cornwall on 14 February 1775. He was the youngest of the seven children of Robert Clift (1720-1784), a miller, and his wife Joanna, a seamstress. Clift went to school at Bodmin, where is demonstrated his ability in illustration. This attracted the attention of Walter Raleigh Gilbert and his wife Nancy, who had been a schoolfellow of Anne Home who had married John Hunter in 1771. On the Gilbert's recommendation, Clift was apprenticed to John Hunter as an anatomical assistant, employed to make drawings, copy dictation and assist in the care of Hunter's anatomical specimens. Until Hunter's sudden death in 1793, Clift assisted him with dissections and often wrote from dictation from early morning until late at night. After Hunter's death, his collection of specimens was offered for sale to the government. During the period of negotiations, Clift was employed to look after the collections for a small income. He did this diligently from 1793 to 1799 when the collections were eventually purchased by the government. During this period, Clift feared for the safety of the collection, and copied out many of Hunter's unpublished manuscripts. This meant that much of the content of the collection was saved from loss through Sir Everard Home's destruction of his brother-in-law's manuscripts in 1823. In 1799 the government asked The Company of Surgeons (soon to become the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800) to look after the John Hunter collections. The Trustees of the College then made Clift conservator of the new Hunterian Museum paying him £80 per annum. Under Clift's supervision the collections were twice moved without damage into storage and then to new premises, and were greatly enlarged and enriched. Clift was a prolific record keeper and his diaries are a valuable resource for information about the workings of the College and Museum as well as wider social life in London. Clift married Caroline Harriet Pope (1775-1849) in January 1801. They had a son, William Home Clift (1803-1832) and a daughter, Caroline Amelia Clift (1801-1873). William Home Clift died after a carriage accident in 1832 and Caroline Amelia Clift married William Clift's assistant Richard Owen in 1835. William Clift was well known and highly thought of in the scientific community. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, was a member of the Society for Animal Chemistry, and also a fellow of the Geological Society. His skills as an illustrator were demonstrated through his work for Matthew Baillie's "A series of engravings... to illustrate the morbid anatomy of some of the most important parts of the human body," and also his work on illustrations in Sir Everard Home's numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions. Clift submitted some papers to the Philosophical Transactions (1815, 1823), the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1831), and to Transactions of the Geological Society (1829, 1835). William Clift and Richard Owen also published the "Catalogue of the Hunterian Collection of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London (1830-1831), and then the "Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the physiological series of comparative anatomy contained in the museum of The Royal College of Surgeons (1833-1840). Clift retired from the museum in 1842, when he was replaced by Richard Owen as curator. His wife died on the 8th May 1849 and Clift died shortly afterwards on 20th June 1849, both being buried in Highgate cemetery. [Source: Edited from the entry by Phillip R. Sloan, 'Clift, William (1775-1849)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5668, accessed 7 March 2005]
These are the collected letters, poems and relicts of the Hunter-Baillie family. Matthew Baillie, (1761-1823), was an anatomist and physician extraordinary to George III and nephew to the surgeons William Hunter (1718-1833) and John Hunter (1728-1893). Matthew had two sisters, Joanna Baillie, (1762-1851) poet and dramatist and Agnes Baillie (1760-1861), their parents were Revd James Baillie and Dorothea Hunter Baillie. The family moved from the manse at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1775 to Glasgow when Revd Baillie was appointed Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. Revd Baillie died in 1778 and Dorothea's brother William Hunter supported the family.
Matthew moved to London in 1779 to lecture at William Hunter's medical school in Great Windmill Street. When William Hunter died in 1783, he left his medical museum and his collections of manuscripts, books and coins to Glasgow University, subject only to the life interest of his nephew, Matthew Baillie, who succeeded him in his school of anatomy. Matthew Baillie kept only certain personal things, among them the letter-book, which Hunter had acquired from the family of Queen Anne's physician, John Arbuthnot (1667-1735). To this William Hunter had added letters written to himself by famous or distinguished people.
In 1783 Joanna, Agnes and Dorothea moved to London to keep house for Matthew. Joanna built up a close relationship in London with her other uncle, John Hunter, his wife, the poet, Anne Home Hunter [whose poems are included in this collection] and their daughter Agnes, later Lady Campbell. After Matthew's marriage to Sophia Denman in 1791 Joanna, Agnes and Dorothea moved to Red Lion Hill and later after the death of Dorothea in 1802 to Hampstead.
Joanna started publishing poems and plays in 1790 and gradually her reputation became known. She made friends with many leading literary and society figures of the day including Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Rogers, William Sotheby, William Wordsworth, and Lord Byron among many others. Joanna was particularly close to Sir Walter Scott [over sixty letters between them are included in this collection].
Joanna's long life, she died aged 88 in 1851 meant that she witnessed the death of many of her contemporaries, the death of her brother, Matthew in 1823 affected her strongly but she became close to younger generation especially her niece Elizabeth Margaret Baillie (1794-1876) companion of Walter Scott's daughter Sophia; and her nephew William Hunter Baillie (1797-1894). William, a barrister, moved in the same literary circles as his aunt and was interested in Hunter-Baillie family history.
Matthew Baillie was one of the leading London physicians of his day and a favoured friend at Court. He continued to add to the family collection letters, which he received, from his distinguished friends and patients. He also kept together the letters written to him by the Royal Princesses, all of which begin 'Dear Baillie.'
Matthew Baillie's wife was Sophia, daughter of Dr. Thomas Denman, (1733-1815) whose reminiscences of his early life as a ship's surgeon have been quarried for some historical novels. Denman had a fashionable obstetric practice, in which he was followed by his other son-in-law, the ill-fated Sir Richard Croft (1762-1818), who killed himself after the death of his patient Princess Charlotte, the heir to the Throne. Denman's son, Thomas Denman (1779-1854), a lawyer, advocated legal reform including the abolition of slavery, defended Queen Charlotte and became Lord Chief Justice.
Justice Denman interested himself in the family collection, helping Matthew Baillie's granddaughters to complete the work, begun by Matthew's wife Sophia, of identifying and arranging the letters. He also brought into it a miscellaneous collection of autographs gathered by his side of the family. Matthew Baillie had been a friend of Edward Jenner (1749-1823), discoverer of the small pox vaccine and of Jenner's biographer John Baron (1786-1851), and at the end of his life settled near them in Gloucestershire. Through Baron a small collection of papers of Jennerian interest was added.
A. Kirkpatrick Maxwell was born in Annan, Scotland, and studied drawing at evening classes run by Glasgow City Art School. He was asked to contribute some articles by a natural history lecturer at Glasgow University and built up a reputation as an illustrator. After the outbreak of war in 1914 he travelled to France to make over 1000 surgical illustrations of war wounds and diseases, many of which were published in the British Journal of Surgery. The original illustrations were kept at the Royal College of Surgeons of England but were destroyed during the Blitz. After the war, Maxwell worked as an ilustrator for University College and for the Cancer Research Institute, publishing his own articles on cancer. During the Second World War he was asked by Sir Cecil Wakeley to again sketch wounded servicemen.
Richard Radford Robinson was born in 1806. He was the eldest son of Henry Robinson of East Dulwich. He practised in south London and was Surgeon to the London Dispensary, a Member of the Court of Examiners of the Apothecaries' Company, and President of the South London Medical Society. His essay Fractures of Ribs, Sternum and Pelvis won the Jacksonian Prize in 1831, and his dissertation Formation, Constituents and Extraction of Urinary Calculi won the honorarium in 1833. He died in London in 1854.
Francis Trevelyan Buckland was born in Oxford in 1826. He was the son of William Buckland the geologist, who was Canon of Christ Church. Buckland was educated at Winchester, Christ Church, and St Georges Hospital, London. He became house-surgeon at St Georges in 1852, as was assistant surgeon for the 2nd Life Guards from 1854-1863. During this period he discovered Hunter's coffin, just before the closing of the vaults at St Martins Church. He began to research zoology, and in 1856 he became a regular writer on natural history for the newly established Field, particularly on the subject of fish. In 1866 he started Land and Water on similar lines. In 1867 he was appointed Government Inspector of Fisheries. He died in 1880.
John Eric Erichsen was born in Copenhagen in 1818. He was educated at the Mansion House School, Hammersmith, and studied medicine at University College London, and in Paris. On his return to London he served as House Surgeon at University College Hospital. He was elected Secretary of the Physiological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1844, and received the Fothergillian Gold Medal of the Royal Humane Society in 1845, for An Essay on Asphyxia. Erichsen was appointed Assistant Surgeon to University College Hospital in 1848 and became full Surgeon to the hospital at the age of 32. He was President of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society from 1879-1881, and also in 1881, the President of the Surgical Section at the meeting in London of the International Medical Congress. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876. In 1877 he was appointed the first Inspector under the Vivisection Act, and in the same year he was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to the Queen. He became President of the Council of University College in 1887, an office he held until his death. He was created a baronet in 1895, and died in 1896.
Currently no information is known concerning the author and the hand of the manuscript has not been identified. In addition, the full details of Mr Arden, the lecturer, are also unknown.