The Quack Doctor

Bristol Mercury 16 June 1838

Baron Spolasco next moved on to Swansea, and celebrated the first anniversary of his rescue by paying for a whole ox to be distributed among the poor. He was, however, about to suffer a temporary reversal of his fortunes, for in 1839 he was arrested in connection with the death of a young woman.

Twenty-three-year-old Susannah Thomas consulted the Baron about abdominal pain. Her aunt’s statement at the inquest gives an insight into how he worked. The Baron allegedly

…told [Miss Thomas] he knew by her eyes, that she was very ill, and that he would cure her; afterwards she would have cause to bless the hour she saw the good Baron Spolasco. Witness was not allowed to relate the symptoms of the disorder of deceased to the Baron, as he said he could know them by her bold eye.

In return for 22s. 6d., he supplied two pills and some powder – the aunt noticed that this was exactly the same for all the other patients. Back home, Miss Thomas became worse, so her aunt sent for the Baron, who advised to try some castor oil and a gruel and turpentine clyster. A quarter of an hour after he left, Miss Thomas died. The autopsy revealed that her intestines were inflamed and her stomach ulcerated and gangrenous, with a hole in the stomach wall allowing the contents to escape into her abdominal cavity. The surgeon conducting the post mortem examination believed that the Baron’s medicines – composed of aloes and jalap – had hastened the patient’s death.

Baron Spolasco was charged with manslaughter and, furious about the ‘foul conspiracy got up against him’ was sent to gaol to await the next circuit court. When his trial came up, the surgeon could not say with certainty that the medicines were the cause of death and the Baron was found not guilty.

But it wasn’t long before he had another brush with the law. In March 1840 he was arrested for forging the government stamps on his pills. An undercover policeman went to the Baron’s house and was furnished with medicines whose stamps imitated a design discontinued in 1823. Spolasco’s defence was that the packets were intended for sale in Ireland, where stamps were not necessary. He again spent a few months in gaol waiting for the Assizes, and again was acquitted.

One might have expected him to lie low for a while after this troublesome time, but he was as ostentatious as ever and within a few months of getting out of gaol, he published a song (in both English and Welsh) lauding his genius.

I pledge unto Spolasco’s name,
A name in which we glory;
His splendid cures and healing fame
Recorded are in story.
Be mindful of Spolasco’s skill,
Ye patrons of his merit;
Save him from all impending ill.
And a relentless spirit.

It goes on in the same vein for ten verses.

Advertising token from the Baron's days in Cork.

(Thank you to Lucy Martin for the above photograph.)

The Baron remained in Swansea for several more years, and was mentioned in an inquest for the Rev. Edward Matthews Davies, who died of kidney disease in 1843. The Baron had  tried to get him to hand over 20 guineas for consultation. Mr Davies’ servant asked whether such a large amount of money would actually result in a cure, and Baron Spolasco allegedly replied:

Do you think I would take any man’s money if I could not cure him? It is not the money I want, it is a name; I can get money as fast as I can count it.

It proved clear that the Rev Mr Davies had died of natural causes, and this time the Baron was not charged with anything. The coroner observed that:

…however culpable it might be to extort money from the pockets of a person labouring under a deadly disease, by pretending to cure him, yet a coroner’s jury could not deal with the case, unless it were proved that death was caused by the medicine prescribed.

At some point over the next few years, Baron Spolasco moved to London, remaining there until a 16-year-old servant girl stole a diamond ring from him, saying in her defence that she had taken it in revenge after he criminally assaulted her. She quickly changed her story to state that he had ‘taken a little liberty’ but that she had pushed him away. The Baron denied her allegations but appears not to have pressed charges for the theft. Soon afterwards he departed these shores for New York.

He carried on there just the same as he had done everywhere else, trumpeting his miracles and charging hefty fees for his advice. But he gradually went to seed and became the subject of Walt Whitman’s merciless description in ‘Street Yarn’ (1856):

Somebody in an open barouche, driving daintily. He looks like a doll; is it alive? We’ll cross the street and so get close to him. Did you see? Fantastic hat, turned clear over in the rim above the ears; blue coat and shiny brass buttons; patent leathers; shirt-frill; gold specs; bright red cheeks, and singularly definite jetty black eyebrows, moustache, and imperial. You could see that from the sidewalk; but you saw, when you stood at his wheel, not only the twinkling diamond ring and breast-pin, but the heavy, slabby red paint; and even the substratum of grizzly gray under that jetty dye; and upon our word there’s a hair of the same straggling out under the jaunty oiled wig! How straight he sits, and how he simpers, and how he fingers the reins with a delicate white little finger stuck out, as if a mere touch were all — as if his whole hand might govern a team of elephants! The Baron Spolasco, with no end of medical diplomas from all sorts of universities across the ocean, who cures everything immediately; you may consult him confidentially, or by letter, if you choose. It would be worth money to see that old gentleman — they say he is nearly eighty — undress himself! Clothes, wig, calves, stays, moustache, teeth, complexion — what a bald, bare, wizened, shriveled old granny he would be!

Though ‘they’ might have said Spolasco was pushing eighty, he was more like a mere 56. His fortunes declined and he moved to increasingly less salubrious parts of the city, defaulting on his rent each time. He died in 1858, unable to find a miraculous cure for his own cancer – but  perhaps still mourning the death of his little son on the Cork coast twenty years before.

On 19 January 1838, the steamer Killarney set sail from Cork, bound for Bristol. On board were 37 people and 600 pigs, and ahead of them was the most violent storm in more than half a century. The steamer was forced to turn back, and anchored at Cove for a few hours, until the Captain made the ill-fated decision to continue. By the following evening, 21 survivors were clinging to a rock, fast losing hope of rescue.

One of these survivors was Baron Spolasco (above), a flamboyant character who had been fraudulently practising as a physician and surgeon in different parts of Ireland. Though he looks rather exotic, he was probably born in the north of England in about 1800, and his real name appears in different sources as John Williams, John Smith, or the slightly more impressive John William Adolphus Frederick Augustus Smith.

Spolasco did not specialise in particular ailments – he cured everything instantly. You can click to enlarge this handbill and see the extent of his claims. I am very grateful to Lucy Martin for the handbill and portrait photographs, which she took at the University of Cork Art Gallery.

One part of the handbill says:

Any individual who has lost his, or her nose, can be supplied with a REAL one, Grecian, Roman or Aquiline, perfect and natural as by nature

This was done by the Talicotian operation, an ancient and ingenious way of reconstructing a missing nose by bringing down a flap of skin from the patient’s forehead.

On that fateful Friday in January 1838, Spolasco was off to Bristol to meet the agent of a ‘high personage’ about a complicated surgical case (or perhaps the people in Cork were starting to get wise to him). All his belongings were loaded onto the Killarney but he, his eight-year-old son Robert and their two Newfoundland dogs were five minutes late. They had almost resolved to wait for the next week’s boat, when some locals offered to row them out to the steamer.

During the course of that night and the next morning, the storm and the terrified pigs put the steamer in peril and it perished in Renny Bay. The poor Newfoundlands rapidly joined the choir invisible, but the Baron and Robert were among the 21 people who reached a rock 200 yards from shore. Though so close to land, there were no rescue attempts until the Sunday, by which time little Robert was among those who succumbed to the waves. In his Narrative of the Wreck of the Steamer Killarney, Spolasco later described his feelings about the death of his son:

I pause one moment to offer up my most fervent supplications to my God, to spare such of you my kind readers, as are fathers, and mothers; to spare you ever, from having to go through, to witness, to feel, to suffer, even a thousandth part of what I did for my dear, my sweet, my beautiful boy. Alas ! he is now no more, he is as still as the grave ! yes he is quiet—he moves not—he breathes not—he no longer enchants me as he was wont to do, morning, noon and night, with his sweet prattling, his but too sensible conversation ! HE IS DEAD ! ! !

The Narrative is a gripping read and, while melodramatic (in a good way) and self-aggrandising, the Baron’s story concurs in most details with other reports of the wreck.

The image below is from the Narrative, and though there’s no doubt a bit of artistic licence, it does emphasise just how near and yet so far the stranded people were from the land. They could see the locals making off with the dead pigs washed up on the beach, but they could do nothing to get themselves there alive.

We had not the good fortune to reach the top of the rock; we only got to between one and two yards of it and that part faced the sea. We had to hold on all night by our fingers and toes – something like being suspended by our hands and toes from the sill of a window in one of the upper stories of a house, and at every moment the tremendous and fearful billows lashing at our backs terribly, we were not able to rest ourselves even for a moment.

Eventually they were spotted by some ‘respectable’ people who sent for a set of rescue apparatus, but this relied on getting a rope out to the rock, and attempts proved futile. The rescuers tried attaching ropes to ducks and setting them off across the waves, but only one duck made it, and the survivors couldn’t catch it. Next they tried using a howitzer to fire balls with ropes attached, but to no avail.

Then the chief coastguard’s brother, Edward Hull, had the idea of carrying a long rope round the bay so that it would stretch from one promontory to the other, with a second rope hanging down over the rock. The first attempt was late on Sunday afternoon and as darkness fell the rescuers almost left off, but in desperation two people grabbed the rope and shouted to be hauled in. According to the Baron:

…[the rescuers] immediately did so, upon which we heard a splash but could see nothing, it being at this time dark.

After this melancholy occurrence, the remaining survivors were abandoned to a second night without food, water or shelter. The next day, using the long rope and a basket, those on land were finally able to get the staples of life – wine, whiskey and bread – onto the rock. The Baron writes:

I cannot find words sufficiently strong to express how grateful the wine was to my parched lips. Each having partaken of this seasonable relief, we all huzza’d, and waved our hats and caps, in token of gratitude for what we had just had, and in the hope of being speedily relieved.

The equipment had a cot designed to transport human beings, and by this method the 14 survivors were removed, one by one. First was the only woman, Mary Leary, but Baron Spolasco managed to be second in line and was taken to a nearby house. One of the others subsequently died of exhaustion.

Only a month later he wrote his Narrative, and used it as a way of increasing his fame and spreading the word about his medical practice. He went through with his plan of going to Bristol and started up with the same wild claims about miraculous cures. But his adventures had only just begun.

In the next post, the intrepid Baron gets arrested for manslaughter, charged with forgery, and falls under the satirical eye of Walt Whitman in 1850s New York.

Although Henry Thompson claimed to manufacture the salts by evaporating spa water, The Monthly Gazette of Health for 1 Sept 1819 claimed that the product was nothing more than Glauber’s salt (sodium sulphate decahydrate). The Gazette had “been informed, by a gentleman residing in Cheltenham, who could prove the fact, that many tons of common Glauber’s salts, made at Lymington, were forwarded to Cheltenham. This fact may account for the water of certain wells not being weakened by the evaporation of nearly two thousand gallons daily!!”

In spite of cynicism from some quarters, however, Thompson was highly respected as the proprietor of the Montpellier Spa, which he established in the early years of the 19th century. The spa boasted several varieties of mineral water, a pump room, baths, and 50 acres of pleasure gardens carefully laid out with rides and drives. It became Cheltenham’s most celebrated spa and was further developed after Thompson’s death by his son, Pearson. Although the fashion for spas declined in the 1830s, and late 19th-century attempts to revive the Montpellier establishment failed, many of the fine buildings are still standing today.

Image: Effects of the Cheltenham Waters, or, ‘Tis necessary to quicken your motions after the second glass. Published by S W Fores, 1823. Courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine.

T H E    late    H E N R Y   T H O M P S O N ‘ S   R E A L
C H E L T E N H A M   S A L T S,  made by the simple Pro-
cess of Evaporating the Montpellier Spa Waters, at the Labo-
ratory,  at  Cheltenham.        Also,   REAL    EFFERVESCING
CHELTENHAM SALTS, and the concentrated Waters
and native Waters, from the Springs.
 CAUTION.—The  many  Chemical  and  most  injurious  Fa-
brications assuming the Name of Cheltenham Salts, induce
the  Proprietors  to  Caution  the  Public  to  ask  for  the  late
“HENRY   THOMPSON’S    R E A L    C H E L T E N H A M
SALTS.”   None  are  genuine  that  have  not  the  Initials  R.
W. and C. J., and the late Henry Thompson’s Name, on the
Stamp.
To be  had  at  No. 7,  Throgmorton  Street;  of  the  principal
Wholesale Dealers in London, and Retail of all the Medicine
Venders throughout the United Kingdom.

Source: The Newcastle Courant, Saturday 6 September 1834

According to a correspondent of the Monthly Gazette of Health (vol 5 1825), the proprietor of Goss & Co was a former shop assistant going by the unlikely name of Mr Crucifix.

While Mr Crucifix insisted that his company had genuine surgical credentials, it had a terrible reputation among the medical profession. The Medical Adviser and Guide to Health and Long Life, edited by Alexander Burnett, particularly had it in for him, mounting a sustained campaign against Goss & Co in 1824:

Goss and Company! Good God! Was there ever such a heap of filth and infamy as this swindling firm of straw! Was there ever such a cancer upon society – such an adroit and plausible system of rapacious plundering!

The Adviser also remarked that the letters M R C did not stand for Member of the Royal College, but for MURDERING, ROBBING CHARLATAN.

                 ”Domus et placens uxor.”—HOR.
                  Thy house, and (in the cup of life,
                That honey-drop) thy pleasing wife.
H A P P I N E S S  “the  gay  to-morrow  of  the
mind,”  is  ensured  by  marriage;  ”the  strictest  tie
of perpetual Friendship” is  a  gift  from  Heaven,  cementing
pleasure with reason, by which, says Johnson, we approach
in some degree  of  association  with  celestial  intelligence.”
Previous,  however,  to  entering  into  the  hallowed  obliga-
tion of marriage, it becomes an impressive duty not only  to
regulate the passions, but to cleanse the grosser nature from
those impurities which the freedom of unrestricted  pleasure
may have entailed upon it. To the neglect of  such  atten-
tion, are attributable  many  of  those  hapless  instances,
which while they excite the commiseration of  the  behold-
er, should also impress him with the fear of self-reproach.
Luxurious habits will effeminate the body—a residence  in
the tropics will too much relax the elastic fibre—but more
especially does the premature infatuation of youth too fre-
quently reduce the natural dignity into a state of inanition,
from whence the agonized sufferer more than doubts the
chance of relief. To all such, then, we address ourselves,
offering  hope–energy–muscular strength–facility;  nor
ought our advances to appear questionable, sanctioned as
they are by the multiplied proofs of  twenty-five  years  suc-
cessful experience.
The easy cares of married life are sometimes disturbed
by the want of those blessings which twine the nuptial
wreath—for the female habit is often constitutionally weak
—yet it can be strengthened, and deficient energy improved
into functional power.
In every case of syphilitic intrusion, as well as in every
relaxation of the generative economy, we pledge our reputa-
tion to cure speedily and permanently. Earnestly solicitous
to  expel  the  unfeeling  empyric  from  the  position so pre-
sumptuously taken by him, we deviate  from  general   prin-
ciples  with  less  hesitation;  and   confident   in   our   own
honourable integrity as Members of the College of Surgeons,
we invite sufferers of either  sex,  (especially  those  entering
into  matrimonial  life)  at  once  to  our  house,  where  daily
attendance is given  for  personal  consultation;  and  imme-
diate answers are returned  to  country  letters,  which  must
minutely describe the  case,  and  contain  a  remittance  for
advice and Medicine, which can be forwarded  to  any  part
of the  world,  however  distant.  No  difficulty  can  occur,  as
the Medicine will be securely packed, and carefully protected
from observation.
                     GOSS & Co., (M.R.C. Surgeons).
7, Lancaster Place, Waterloo Bridge, Strand, London.
*** Just published (Twenty-First Edition), 1st, The AEGIS
of LIFE, a similar commentary on the above Diseases.—
2d. HYGEIANA, addressed exclusively to the Female Sex.—
3. The SYPHILIST, a Treatise on Lues Venerea, Gonor-
rhoea, &c. May be had at 23, Paternoster-Row, London; F.
Hobson, Leeds; and of all Booksellers, Price 5s.

Source: The Leeds Mercury, Saturday 29 April, 1837

A correspondent to the Medical Adviser described his experience thus: 

When I wrote to Goss & Co., I enclosed a pound bill, and asked their advice. I received a letter by return of post, asking all particulars, (useless to them), for example whether I was fair, tall, handsome, and many other things of little consequence. I was quite disgusted; they concluded with a request for 5l., and they would send me a box of medicine. I received the medicine and a modest request for 25l. and they would cure me … Their medicine I took to a Chemist, and he said I could have got it, bottles and all, for 5s.

Grimstone’s Eye Snuff was widely advertised, purportedly at a cost of £5000 per year to its inventor. Testimonials were often included in the ads, and the product even inspired one satisfied customer to write a poem about it (Quoted in The Champion and Weekly Herald, 3 Feb 1839):

.

From Blackwood’s Lady’s Magazine for May 1838. To Mr. W. Grimstone, on his valuable invention of the Eye-Snuff, made from British herbs, for the diseased organs of the head and eyes:—

Great was the power that did to man impart
Creative genius and inventive art;
The second praise is, doubtless, Grimstone, thine!
Wise was thine head, and great was thy design.
Our precious sight from danger now set free
Wives, widows, fathers, praises sing to thee.

19 Bell-street, Edgware-road, Marylebone.   ELIZ. ROBSON

__________________

Here is the advert for today:

    SIGHT   RESTORED,   and   Nervous    Head-ache
cured—Numerous  testimonials  and   references   of   the   first   re-
spectability  may  be   seen   at  the  manufactory,  39,  Broad-street,
Bloomsbury, and  24,  King-street,  Long-acre,  proving  cataract,  in-
flammations, and all other diseases of the eyes and head completely
eradicated, glasses left off after using them 20 years, and the breath
rendered impervious to  contagion,  by  taking  GRIMSTONE’s  EYE
SNUFF.  Thousands  have  been  restored  by  this  delightful  com-
pound of the  most  choice  aromatic  and  odiferous  herbs.  A  fact
too well known to be doubted. Observe the signature of  the  inventor
on each canister, “with the  Patronage  of  His  late  Majesty  and the
Lords of  the  Treasury.”  Sold  in  canisters,  1s. 3d., 2s. 4d., 4s. 4d.,
and 8s. each, by almost every tobacconist in the world. All are  spuri-
ous that have not the inventor’s signature.

Source: The Times, Saturday 6 April 1833 

__________________

Dr. A L Wigan, in his A New View of Insanity (1844) claimed (approvingly) that Grimstone’s snuff comprised nothing but black pepper. He didn’t give any evidence for this, however, and perhaps more reliable is the analysis done by Dr Hassall of the Lancet Analytical Sanitary Commission in 1855, which suggested that it contained a variety of herbs including orris-root, savory, rosemary and lavender, plus a fairly high proportion of salt. There was no actual tobacco in it and so it was not an exciseable article, but the Stamp Office nevertheless made several attempts to prosecute Mr Grimstone for selling it without tax. They also turned their attention to retailers of the snuff, with the result that Mr Grimstone was beseiged by angry stockists demanding that he take back his supplies and pay their fines. In 1850 this left him insolvent with debts of £6000. He did, however, manage to continue selling the snuff and other herbal products until his death in 1862 at the age of 71.

Carrington’s Life Pills were made principally of capsicum, so they might well have cured your cold — if having your entire head blown off could be said to constitute a cure.

The Reverend Caleb Carrington was Vicar of Berkeley from 1799 until his death in May 1837, and his eventful incumbency included getting embroiled in a court case in which the Countess of Berkeley sought to prove that the seven children born before her marriage to the Earl were actually legitimate, owing to an earlier, secret wedding.

(Image: Capsicum frutescens, from Materia Medica and Pharmacognosy by David Culbreth, M.D. 1927. Courtesy of the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, Arizona.)

COLDS, RHEUMATISM, GOUT & INDIGESTION
LIFE PILLS, entirely vegetable, discovered by
the Rev. C. CARRINGTON, Vicar of Berkeley, one
of his Majesty’s Deputy Lieutenants, &c. for the County of
Gloucester.—To alleviate the tortures of Spasm, Gout, Rheu-
matism, Cholic, and Nervous Afflictions, with superb success
by giving fresh life and energy to the efforts of nature, is
not the only merit of CARRINGTON’S LIFE PILLS. On
the same principle they are adapted to Female Complaints,
rouse the dormant constitution, and with gentle exercise in
the open air soon spread the bloom of health on the palest
cheek. They strengthen the digestive organs and expel
wind, they cherish and prolong life in the debilitated, and
they prevent the attack of many fatal acute diseases, if re-
sorted to on the first sensation of chill, pain or lassitude. A
large portion of the human race is hurried to an untimely
grave by Inflammations, Consumptions, &c. the effect of
neglected Colds; but a recent cold is certainly cured by
these Pills, invigorating the torpid arteries of the skin, and
thereby restoring the perspiration.
Sold in Boxes, at 1s. 1½d. and 4s. 6d. each, by J. Drewry,
Derby, and all Medicine Dealers. “BARRY and SON,
BRISTOL,” is engraved in the Government Stamp.

Source: The Derby Mercury, Wednesday 4th February 1835.

The Monthly Gazette of Health, Vol. VIII, 1823, carried an indignant letter from one J.D. of Brighton to the Bishop of Gloucester, condemning the Rev. Mr. Carrington as a quack more concerned with personal gain than with the spiritual welfare of his parishioners.

“This ecclesiastical nostrum-monger,” wrote the correspondent, “surpassing the impudence of ordinary empiricisms, enlists into his service the terrors of religious guilt, and denounces as a suicide every individual, who has been cut off by sudden death, without attempting to avert the fatal blow by a box of the Life Pills!!!”

The Bishop replied that “… the advertisement in question, however grossly unbecoming the clerical character, would not be deemed punishable in the clerical court,” while other correspondents pointed out that it was the supplier, Mr Barry, who placed the adverts and profited from sales.

If Mr Carrington took his own pills, they certainly didn’t do him any harm, as he lived to the age of eighty. They were less efficacious for his financial state, however. Although his brief obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine doesn’t mention the place of death, other records suggest it was Gloucester debtors’ prison.