Author: BEDDOES, Thomas
Biography:
BEDDOES, Thomas (1760-1808: ODNB)
The son of a prosperous tanner, Richard Beddoes (1738-1803), and his wife Ann Whitehall, he was born in Shifnal, Shropshire, on 13 Apr. 1760. He was educated at Bridgenorth Grammar School and matriculated first at St. John’s College, Oxford, on 15 Nov. 1775 before moving to Pembroke College (BA 1779, MA 1783, MB and MD 1786). Although his medical degrees were from Oxford, he also studied anatomy with John Sheldon in London and attended lectures in Edinburgh where he first developed what became a lifelong interest in the therapeutic application of chemistry to medicine. He visited France and supported the democratic ideals of the revolution; although he was later disillusioned by the bloody turn taken by events in France, he was a firm believer in social change as a prerequisite for improving human health. He was appointed a Reader in Chemistry in Oxford in 1788 but in 1793 he moved to Bristol where he was part of a group that included Coleridge and Southey (qq.v.) in opposing government policy. In Apr. 1794 he married Anna Maria Elers Edgeworth, sister of the novelist Maria Edgeworth; they lived in Clifton, Gloucestershire, and had at least three daughters and two sons. In 1799 Beddoes opened the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol and for a time Humphrey Davy served as his assistant. In 1801 the institute changed its name to the Preventive Medical Institute for the Sick and Drooping Poor, reflecting Beddoes’s ongoing interest in linking social change to medicine. He published Hygeia (1802-03) and The Manual of Health (1806) but they were tainted by bitterness at the growing realisation that his ideals of reform would not be realised. He died of dropsy at Clifton on 23 Dec. 1808. His long and complicated will left his estate in the hands of his wife, his uncle, and Davies Giddy (later Gilbert; q.v.) who was a friend and MP; they were directed to manage trusts for his surviving daughter and two sons, including Thomas Lovell Beddoes (q.v.). His numerous publications include medical works; treatises and letters on improving the condition of the poor; and The History of Isaac Jenkins, an often-reprinted moral tale that was first published in 1792. The Advertisement to his Alexander’s Expedition comments favourably on the compositor being a woman. (ODNB 27 Feb. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 27 Feb. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 27 Feb. 2023; Alumni Oxonienses) SR