12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY [CHAP. 11. 



and sometime President of the Royal College of Physi- 

 cians, Harley Street, London. * 



My grandfather in the female line, John Latham, M.D., 

 F.R.S. (plate iv.), the eldest son of the Rev. John Latham, 

 came of an old family stock, and was born in 1761 in the 

 rectory house at Gawsworth, Cheshire. He was educated 

 first at Manchester Grammar School, and thence pro- 

 ceeded (with the view of studying for orders) to Brasenose 

 College, Oxford, but the strong bent of his own wishes 

 towards the medical profession induced him to alter his 

 plans, and he took his degree of M.D. on October 10, 1788. 

 " His first professional years were passed at Manchester and 

 Oxford, where he was physician to the respective infir- 

 maries. In 1788 he removed to London, was admitted 

 Fellow of the College of Physicians, and elected succes- 

 sively physician to the Middlesex, the Magdalen, and St. 

 Bartholomew Hospitals. In 1795 he was appointed 

 Physician Extraordinary to the Prince of Wales, and 

 reappointed to the same office on the Prince's accession 

 to the throne as George IV. In 1813 Dr. Latham was 

 elected President of the College of Physicians ; in 1816, 

 founded the Medical Benevolent Society ; and in 1829 

 finally left London, retiring to his estate at Bradwall Hall, 

 where he died on April 20, 1843, in the eighty-second year 

 of his age." 



He indulged in the practical pleasures of country life, 

 and maintained a home farm, on which he kept a dairy of 

 sixty cows. He was a man of great force of character and 

 of decisive action. On one occasion a man who had been 

 told that if he returned he would be summarily ejected, 

 came back to crave an audience. On being reminded of 

 the fact he pleaded, " Oh ! doctor, you do not really mean 

 it." " Yes, I do," was the prompt reply as an order was 

 given to the butler to turn the intruder out. 



Dr. Latham married, in 1784, Mary, eldest daughter and 

 co-heiress of the Rev. Peter Mayer, Vicar of Prestbury, 

 Cheshire, by whom he had numerous children, of whom 

 three sons and two daughters lived to maturity. My 



1 For details and genealogical tables of descent (accompanied by 

 armorial bearings) regarding the above-named families, and many 

 others of the old families of the Counties Palatine of Lancashire and 

 Cheshire, now more or less passed away, see Parentalia, by George 

 Ormerod, cited ante in note, p. 9, with an absolutely enormous 

 amount of reference to documentary evidence, often in itself of much 

 antiquarian interest (E.A.O.). 



