Author: Wilson, George
Biography:
WILSON, George (1812-70: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 14 May 1812 and baptised 29 July 1813 at St. Peter’s, Leeds, the only son of Isaac Wilson, liquor merchant, and his wife Mary Hill, who had married in the same church in 1806. He was educated at Leeds Free Grammar School and dedicated Cyril (1834) to William Charles Wollaston, the under-master who had taught him. The Preface highlights the financial difficulties he faced in completing his surgeon’s apprenticeship and fulfilling the requirements of the Society of Apothecaries. His earlier work, Apollo in Leeds (1830) is attributed to him in the Kohler copy in a contemporary hand, “Surgeon’s apprentice, only son of Isaac Wilson, late liquor merchant.” Despite his difficulties, he managed to qualify MRCS (1838) and LSA (1837) and worked in Leeds as a General Practitioner, and as surgeon at the Industrial Schools, the House of Recovery, and also probably at the Workhouse. He married Hannah Joanna Benson, daughter of a woolstapler and manufacturer, on 1 Oct. 1840, at Leeds. They went on to have five children. They lived at North Street, Leeds, for most of their married life. He does not appear to have published further after qualifying; he died on 1 Mar. 1870 of liver failure and was buried at Leeds General Cemetery. His wife died in 1880 and was also buried there. (ancestry.co.uk 26 Dec. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 26 Dec. 2022; Newsam, 159-60; Abraham Holroyd, A Garland of Poetry[1873], 172; Leeds Intelligencer 27 Jan. 1831; Leeds Times 3 Oct. 1840, 5 Mar. 1870, 11 Dec. 1880; The Medical Directory for 1870, 626; GRO death cert.) AA