82 BARON DIMSDALE AND INOCULATION CHAP. 



John Dimsdale, married Susanna Bowyer and pursued 

 the family calling at Theydon Gernon, where Thomas 

 Dimsdale was born in 1712, in the same year as Fother- 

 gill. 1 Young Dimsdale acted as pupil to his father, who 

 had " an extensive practice in physic," until the latter 's 

 death ; he then studied successively under Joshua 

 Symonds and John Girle, surgeons at St. Thomas's 

 Hospital ; quitting that school about the time that 

 Fothergill entered it. He settled as a surgeon at Hert- 

 ford, where the elder branch of the family had left a high 

 medical reputation. 



The year 1745 was a period of national alarm and 

 distress : England was at war on the continent of Europe, 



conscientious refusal to pay tithes. Besse, Sufferings, i. 250 ; W. Penn, 

 Description of Pennsylvania, 1683. This Robert Dimsdale, who seems to 

 have joined the Friends, had a father of the same name at Hoddesdon, and a 

 brother, John Dimsdale, who settled at Hertford, where both he and his sons, 

 Robert Dimsdale, M.D., and Sir John Dimsdale, M.D., were men of some 

 note, holding the mayoral and other offices. This branch of the family became 

 extinct. A certain William Dimsdale or Dimsdel of Ware was probably 

 connected with the family ; a young man who forsook the Friends in 1673. 

 See W. Haworth, The Quaker converted to Christianity, 1674. 



1 Another son of Robert Dimsdale, William, was a surgeon at Bishop 

 Stortford, and became the ancestor of the Dimsdales of Hitchin, Hertford, 

 and Upton, some of them medical men and some bankers. Allied with this 

 branch was the Cockfield family of Upton. It was through his valued friend 

 and patient, Zachariah Cockfield, a Quaker shipowner, that Fothergill pur- 

 chased his house and botanic garden at that place. Joseph Cockfield, son of 

 the former and also a friend of Fothergill, was a writer, a man of scientific and 

 antiquarian tastes, and a Friend of liberal views. "It is in the sphere of 

 active life," J. Cockfield wrote about 1785, " that the true Christian must 

 move. The solitary cell and the crucifix may suit a religious drone," but 

 they ill accord with " the sweet and social principles of Christianity." Its 

 votaries should be less anxious about meats and drinks and ritual observances, 

 and should labour more to be useful to our fellow-creatures and innocent in 

 life. J. Cockfield's daughter Sarah, who had been inoculated by Baron 

 Dimsdale in her childhood, and had acted as T. Clarkson's amanuensis in his 

 work for the abolition of slavery, married Joseph Dimsdale of Upton. She is 

 remembered by some still living as a charming old lady, dwelling in a house 

 full of curiosities in Bruce Grove, Tottenham : she died in 1860. Her grandson 

 was the late Sir Joseph Cockfield Dimsdale, Bart., P.C., M.P., Lord Mayor 

 of London in 1901-2, and long Chamberlain of the city. Fothergill had a 

 ward, Priscilla Pitts, left an orphan very young, and placed under his guardian- 

 ship by desire of her father, William Pitts of Southwark, a Quaker minister. 

 She was " most wisely and tenderly cared for " by her guardian ; the poet 

 John Scott was one of her admirers, but she married with Fothergill's full 

 approval, in 1773, John Dimsdale, surgeon, of Hitchin, father to Joseph 

 Dimsdale of Upton. E. G. Dimsdale, MS. Memoirs of the family ; Nichols, 

 Lit. Ittust. v. 753 ; John Scott, Poet. Works, 2nd ed. p. 200 ; Letter, J. F. 

 to Dr. Ducarel, Gibson MSS. v. 225, Fds. Ref. Lib. ; Jos. Smith, Catal. Fds. 

 Books, s.v. J. Cockfield. 



