Skip to main content

Author: Sealy, John Hungerford

Biography:

SEALY, John Hungerford (1804-51: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 26 Mar. 1804, the second son of Robert Sealy of Barleyfield, Cork, and his second wife, Ann Hungerford, who had married in 1794. Nothing is known of his early education but he proceeded to Trinity College Dublin (Pensioner 1821, BA 1826) and then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (MD 1827). He married Sarah (Sally) Shanley on 18 Dec. 1828 at St. George’s, Dublin. They had a son and a daughter. He spent the summer of 1829 in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland, and travelled widely in Europe. His first work, Rostang, the Brigand of the Rhone (1834) was probably inspired by his travels, as was his second, Facts and Fictions; or Gleanings of a Tourist(1835). He practised in Bath throughout the 1830s. He wrote Medical Essays(1837) which consisted of two essays on phthisis pulmonalis (consumption) and imagination. In 1844 he was resident physician at Florence, Messina, and various Italian cities, and described his experiences in “Observations on a peculiar Nervous Affection incident to Travellers in Sicily and Southern Italy,” Medico-Chirurgical Review, July 1844, 241-2. Throughout the Irish famine from 1846 to 1849, he returned to his family home at Gortnaclohy, Cork, and worked in the Skibbereen Union general dispensary and fever hospital. He then served as surgeon on emigrant ships. Writing to the Lancet from San Francisco, on 8 Sept. 1850, he was struck by the magnificence of the harbour but appalled by the lawlessness and disease: “For God’s sake, Mr. Editor, dissuade every one from coming here, for it is a hell upon earth . . . Let no medical man who can get bread and cheese at home, go to Sydney, Port Phillip, or Adelaide . . . .” He died on 19 Jan. 1851 and was buried at New Helvetia cemetery, Sacramento, California. It is not known if his wife, Sarah, accompanied him on his travels. She died at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1882. (ancestry.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 22 Aug. 2023; Burke, Landed Gentry of Ireland [1912], 633; Dublin Evening Packet 20 Dec. 1828;  Lancet 7 Dec. 1850, 644-5.Dublin Daily Express 23 Oct. 1882) AA

 

Books written (1):