I have no background to the following newspaper story – I don’t know who the tailor was or even whether he really existed. The newspaper’s purpose in printing the tale is clearly to amuse readers and allow them to congratulate themselves that they aren’t among the supposed gullible masses who would consult quacks. The implicit criticism is not just of the healer, but of his victim for enabling the fraud to continue.

The way this story is pitched also reveals the expected default position of many 19th-century newspaper readers – one of scepticism about miracle cures. I often get asked whether people are just as gullible today as they were in the past, but that question assumes people in the past were generally gullible, which I don’t believe was the case. There would have been plenty of people chuckling over the wacky product names and strange stories like this one from the Morning Post, 8 September 1824.

There is a tailor going about the country parts of England, his plan is to cure by incantation, prayer, &c. The fellow is eternally drunk, but never staggers, and is possessed of one of those phlegmatic brandy faces which only grows more solemn in its appearances as his intellects become fuddled. A woman applied to him lately to request him to come to see her sick husband; she found him in the back parlour of an inn, booted, spurred, and (although she could not perceive it) drunk. He was walking to and fro, with his hands behind his back, when the poor woman entered the apartment. “Please your Honour. I come to beg you to see my husband, who is lying very ill.” No answer, but still pacing up and down. “He is very ill, I assure your Worship. I hope you will come, Sir.”—Not a word! After a long silence— “I hope, Sir, you’ll be so kind as to come and see my poor husband; I will pay you any thing you demand.” Still not a word; but a few mutterings, and a turn up of the drunken eye-balls, and still pacing about. The woman approached the doctor, pulled him by the coat, and in the most strenuous terms renewed her entreaties, but still he continued walking up and down, and muttering some nonsense to himself. At last she pulled him violently by the coat, when he turned round, and, in a gruff tone, cried— “Hould your tongue d—m you!— I’m busy curing a man in America: I’ll be ready for you by and bye.” and then began pacing and muttering again. This pacified the poor woman, who waited patiently until the American was cured.

This is a short excerpt from a speech attributed to Dr Richard Rock in a satirical mid-18th-century pamphlet called The harangues, or speeches, of several celebrated quack-doctors, in town and country. Rock, whose Viper Drops have previously appeared on this site, is sometimes referred to as an itinerant quack, but his activities were rooted in his premises at Ludgate Hill. When he went out to promote his products mountebank-style, he remained close to home, becoming a familiar figure in Covent Garden. The image of him on the left is a detail from plate 5 of Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress.

The first edition of Harangues is undated but the exchange with the Basket-woman puts the speech at 1742/43, when gin consumption was at its height and civil disturbance was in the air. Rioters protested against proposals that would repeal the largely ignored prohibition and bring gin consumption under the control of the law i.e. make it profitable for the government.

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Gentlemen,

It is with great Pleasure that I see you all, as soon as I arrive in my Chair, flock round about it: It is a Proof, that as I come to do Publick Good, I have a Publick Esteem. I don’t know, Gentlemen, whether here, in Covent-Garden-Market, ye ever heard of Public Spirit; but there is such a thing talk’d of among Parliament Men.

Basket-Woman. Oh! That is the new Act of Parliament, Doctor, about Spirituous Liquors. Pray, Doctor, will Gin be cheaper, or dearer?

Doctor. Cheaper, cheaper, or at least as cheap, my Dear; you may thank Goody Sandsby for that.—But without Jest; —The Public Spirit I meant was, what we in the City call a Love for our Country, without any private View: They talk of the same Thing at Westminster. It is this Publick Spirit, which brings me here among ye: It is the Good of my Country, which engages me to enter into its Public Service. I come not to impose upon ye; for they, who impose on the People, whether it be in Physic or Politics, are equally Quacks.

Some Fools have indeed, call’d Me a Quack: But what is a Quack? A Cheat. —Now, ye all know, I have dispens’d my Medicines, I have effected Cures, I have attended ye all, in this very Place for several Years, and no one ill Thing has been laid to my Charge. ——Let any other Great Man at Court say as much if he can. —I am always the same be I where I will: When I am at Leicester-House I am the same Man as when here; or if at St. J——s’s, my Packets are the same, my Advice is the same and my Speeches to ye are all to the same Purpose.

Had I any private View, any Ambition, any Desire, but to serve my Country, I could have gratify’d them. I am above such paltry Things, as foolish Dignities, and empty Titles. Let P——rl——t Men accept Places, and desert their Cause; let Commoners do pitiful Actions to become L——ds: But let Dr. ROCK be still Dr. ROCK.

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Source: The Graphic 11 July 1891

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From the moment of his sudden rise to fame in Portsmouth in 1887, Sequah knew how to win friends and influence people. He built up an almost cult-like following by giving the crowds what they wanted – miraculous cures, affordable medicines, and a lot of Wild West-style entertainment.

Handbills and extensive newspaper advertising built up the hype, so that when Sequah arrived in town, a curious crowd would be waiting for him. His painted wagon, brass band and entourage of assistants dressed as cowboys and Indians made for an unusual spectacle, and his displays of speed dentistry would get even cynical audience members cheering.

For all Sequah’s Western get-up and claims about the traditional Native American origin of his recipes, he was a Yorkshireman called William Henry Hartley. About a year after he began his shows, demand for his products – Sequah’s Prairie Flower and Sequah’s Oil – proved so high that he needed to be in two places at once, so Hartley recruited some more ‘Sequahs’ to cover different areas of the country. By late 1890 there were 23 of them, and Sequah grew to be a big-business brand name throughout Britain and Ireland.

Getting the audience on side was a vital part of Sequah’s modus operandi. The entertainment provided by his apparent tooth-drawing expertise was just the prelude to the main part of the show. Rheumatism sufferers would be carried up on stage to undergo a theatrical process of massage with Sequah’s Oil. Afterwards, they walked jauntily away, apparently cured.

It sounds a con, but these patients were not shills – they were local people known to others in the crowd. One example is Michael Casby of Sheffield, who informed Sequah that he had suffered from rheumatism for 16 years. Consultations with numerous doctors had been to no avail so Sequah’s attendants carried him forward for treatment. Soon the pain had gone, and Casby and Sequah danced a jig together.

One audience member, John Roadhouse, was suspicious. He asked around and discovered that Casby was an outdoor labourer on the Duke of Norfolk’s Sheffield estate. He had missed only half a day’s work in the past three months, and his colleagues expressed surprise that he had been carried onto the stage, as they had never known there was anything wrong with him. Casby later tried to explain away his actions by saying he had knee pain. His motivation appears to have been to buy into the hype surrounding Sequah and become part of the performance. For other patients, the collusion with the theatrical atmosphere was probably subconscious – caught up in the excitement, they might exaggerate their condition and play to the audience’s expectations of a cure.

Above: Sequah pulls a tooth while his brass band  plays in the background. The bulb on his forehead is an electric light. Cheshire Observer 15 March 1890

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Sequah also insinuated himself into influential people’s good books by giving money to local charities, but there was one group he did not get on with – medical students.

In Edinburgh in 1888, a note travelled round the University’s medical department suggesting a demonstration against Sequah (the original one). At Waverley Market that night, according to the Dundee Courier & Argus, Sequah was ‘greeted by a considerable number of young men with jeers and cries of “Quack.”’ Allegedly, one of them leapt forward and coshed a performer (possibly Sequah himself) with a stick. The assaulted party retaliated and knocked him out, to the delight of the crowd, who began shouting ‘Down with the students!’ The disturbance must have been anticipated, however, because the police were out in force and used ‘energetic measures’ to quell the kerfuffle and haul the students away.

Police involvement was a regular occurrence at Sequah shows, but they were not always so heavy-handed. In 1889 a police sergeant managed to rescue one unfortunate young man when the crowd turned ugly on him. The show included a ‘thanksgiving’, where former patients were invited to testify to the power of Sequah’s treatment, but once the man got up on stage, he said what he really thought about its failure to cure him. On his return to the crowd, he was set upon and had to be pulled back onto the wagon, where the sergeant also scrambled up to protect him until the show was over. Afterwards, a mob followed the wagon as far as the police station, shouting ‘Lynch him!’ Once inside the charge office, the frightened chap managed to escape via a side door, having learnt that upsetting a quack’s loyal followers can be a matter of life and death.

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There is a vast quantity of surviving evidence pertaining to Sequah and his medicine company – enough, in fact, to fill a whole book rather than a blog post, so it’s possible that Sequah will show up again on The Quack Doctor. For further reading, however, I can highly recommend W. Schupbach’s paper, Sequah: An English “American Medicine” Man in 1890, which is available at PubMed Central.

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Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 April 1823

Much of the evidence on this one is anecdotal, but the proprietor of the Balm of Zura, Dr A. Lamert, certainly sounds quite a character.

Lamert was the son of a London-based German quack who dabbled in ophthalmology before moving on to selling a Nervous and Rheumatic Balsam and treating venereal disease.

While Lamert senior worked solely from his Spitalfields address, his son branched out, setting up a dispensary in Bristol and travelling the country, announcing in each town’s newspaper that the lucky denizens were to be favoured with a visit. In the first four decades of the 19^th century he went far and wide, taking in Derby, Ipswich, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Falmouth, Exeter, Manchester and plenty of other places in between. While at Ipswich in 1811 he received some anonymous hate-mail with a Bury postmark. His dad advertised in the Bury and Norwich Post offering a 30 guinea reward for identifying the culprit, but the residents of Bury appear to have remained silent.

Lamert Jnr was the ostentatious variety of quack who flaunted his wealth and took every opportunity to publicise his miraculous cures. The Citizen (October 1 1829) described him as:

…a fearfully dashing gentleman, all powder, with a black servant, and drives a beautiful pair of greys. Vive la quackery!

…while the Medical Adviser in 1824 was typically indignant:

All Devonshire, and the next fifty counties, does not produce so arrant a humbugger as this: he is powdered from the occiput to the coccygis,—from one shoulder to the other —from the cape of his coat to the buttons of his waist,—a curricle a-la-Jordan, an eyeglass,—a bamboo, and a copper face. Thus he parades about, all outside, while if you tapped him upon the head it would sound like a drum, —so hollow, so empty, so brainless is the wight.

(‘a-la-Jordan’ refers to the proprietors of the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri.)

One of Lamert’s innovative ways of increasing his fame was to attend the theatre and, during the performance, instruct a servant to call out that he was wanted for some medical emergency.

‘These interruptions,’ grumbled the Medical Adviser, ‘always happen when some interesting part of the play is going on.’

Lamert’s theatrical connections, however, were not confined to sitting in the audience. In his youth he had sung at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel, but after being pelted with oranges, he changed his career path and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps as a quack.

His arrogance might have made him capable of drawing attention, but this was often from pranksters rather than admirers. In 1848, (after Lamert’s death) an anti-quackery lecturer called Mr Richardson told of a student going to consult the doctor, pretending to be deaf. Lamert, assuming he would not be heard, ‘made some very free remarks on the character of the student’, who soundly thrashed him and went on his way.

The Medical Adviser (who, once they had it in for a quack, didn’t tend to let up), tells the tale of a dissatisfied customer who – not quite literally – gave Lamert a taste of his own medicine. The patient had wasted £5 on the Balm of Zura and received no benefit, so he took the empty bottle along to a tavern where Lamert was regaling the drinkers with a song. When the doctor ‘had occasion to absent himself a short time from the company,’ the joker pissed in the bottle and topped it up with brandy and water. On Lamert’s return he complained to him that his last purchase of Zura had gone sour.

As the doctor tasted the mixture, a couple of the tavern-goers were ‘necessitated to quit the room, to give vent to their risible titillation.’ Then someone pretended to get angry that the sour mixture might be poisonous, so Dr Lamert drank the whole bottle in proof of its safety, to the hilarity of all concerned.

They let him in on the joke and the original prankster ‘prudently decamped’ in the face of his wrath.

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Source: The North Wales Chronicle 18 April 1868

In a series of letters to the Medical Circular in the 1860s, Francis Burdett Courtenay, under the pseudonym ‘Detector’, exposed the villainous practices of a breed of quacks preying on men who suspected they had spermatorrhea.

Spermatorrhea (an excessive discharge of semen) was a source of such panic in the mid-19^th century that there were even cases of suicide among those who had convinced themselves – or been led to believe – that they were suffering.

In one of the letters (which he collected into a pamphlet called Revelations of Quacks and Quackery in 1865) Courtenay cites the case of an anxious young man who responded to one of Dr Hammond’s advertisements. The reply asked for two guineas for a ‘self-curative’ belt – he sent the money, but the package he received in return contained only ‘some bottles of medicine and a lotion to rub over the penis and testicles.’ Annoyed that he didn’t get the belt, the patient wrote back, asking where it was.

Hammond responded with a missive calculated to scare his patient half to death. He had looked further into the case (even though he had never actually seen the man) and decided ‘a slight disease of the kidneys’, was causing semen to drain away.

This vital waste is not only capable of causing all the symptoms you detail, but such is the sympathy existing between the generative functions and the brain, that should this drain of the most vital of all your secretions be not immediately arrested, your whole system must suffer very serious derangement, whilst the organs of generation themselves will become vitiated and relapse into a state of utter impotency.

This would result in complete loss of erectile function and lead to ‘withering and wasting of the penis’. In case the lad wasn’t already terrified enough, Hammond predicted that his case would end in insanity. Fortunately, he had sought help just in time!

Hammond again recommended the curative belt (which the patient thought he’d already paid for) and sent a bill for a further 2 guineas. The young man paid up, and while it would be easy to laugh at him throwing good money after bad, there’s no law against being inexperienced and scared that there’s something seriously wrong with you.

The belt arrived, and proved to be an ordinary suspensory bandage, with a band that went round the patient’s waist, holding up a circular string of metal pieces through which one had to place the part in question. This would somehow provide

a continuous current of electricity, which is taken up by the whole system, infusing new life and ‘manly vigour’ into the debilitated or relaxed frame, and affords great support and comfort to the testicles and generative organs.

The patient subsequently consulted Courtenay and was reassured that there was nothing wrong with him.

As well as the belts, Hammond sold ‘Restorative Powders’ and ‘Seminal Replenisher’, which were not only supposed to produce top-quality semen, but also restore ‘brain fluid’, whatever that might be.

In 1869, the more famous electric belt manufacturer, Pulvermacher, tried to gain an injunction against Hammond for using the trademarked slogan ‘Electricity is Life’ – and for bringing the whole electric belt business into disrepute – but failed as it proved difficult to find out exactly who Hammond was.

The following advert, placed right underneath a Dr Hammond ad in the Bristol Mercury, appears to promote a competing specialist in electrical medicine. Percy House and 11 Charlotte Street were, however, the same place, and Henry James was either a sidekick of Hammond’s or quite possibly the same guy. Further aliases later joined the team – there were Dr Walter Jenner, Dr Harrison, Mr Raphey and Mr A Barrows, all at slightly different versions of the same address.  Once patients gave up on the useless treatment from one alias, they would receive through the post a pamphlet extolling the superior virtues of another.

Hammond also employed what Courtenay referred to as ‘the hospital dodge’. His earlier ads proclaimed him to be ‘of the Lock Hospital’ and his letterhead described him as ‘F.A.S., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., H.G. St Mary’s, King’s College, The Lock, and St George’s Hospitals, LONDON.’ An impressive list – but F.A.S., F.S.A. and M.R.A.S. didn’t stand for any recognised qualifications, and H.G. simply meant ‘Honorary Governor.’

Any Tom, Dick or Harry could become an honorary governor just by making a charitable subscription to the hospital. Although the Lock cancelled Hammond’s donations when they found out what he was up to, this didn’t stop him continuing to deceive patients by claiming affiliation with these respectable institutions.

A John Leech cartoon commenting on the ready availability of poisons - an unscrupulous chemist sells arsenic and laudanum to a child. Credit: Wellcome Images

When you’re under the weather and you Google your symptoms in an attempt to convince yourself that you are about to die, spare a thought for Jean Landess, whose perusal of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia was the beginning of a tragic chain of events.

In May 1868, 39-year-old Mrs Landess, of Paisley, had just weaned her youngest child and had developed what she called a ‘weed’ in her breast. She sought medical help, and the family doctor poulticed and lanced two small abscesses.

Mrs Landess, however, discovered from the Encyclopaedia that her symptoms were almost exactly like those of breast cancer. On the recommendation of an acquaintance who had apparently been cured, she decided to consult an unlicensed practitioner by the name of Paterson. This might seem like a naïve or even downright stupid decision, but I think it’s understandable. She had recently undergone a painful invasive procedure, she was in the midst of the hormonal upheaval of stopping breast-feeding, and now feared that a terminal disease was going to deprive her 8 children of their mother. The recommended cancer-healer must have seemed a potential life-saver. Unfortunately, he proved quite the opposite.

Alexander Paterson was a shoemaker with a sideline in treating cancer patients. He made no claims to being a doctor and does not appear to have been out to swindle anyone. He was no less dangerous, however, for being well-intentioned.

Paterson told Mrs Landess that she did have cancer, but not to worry – it could easily be removed. The first stage of the treatment was a fly-blister (a plaster of cantharides) that would take off the surface of the skin, leaving it ready to absorb his cancer-curing salve. After the plaster had been on for about 12 hours, he applied the ointment and instructed the patient to renew it every day.

By Paterson’s next visit, most of the tissue had turned black, but he saw this as a good thing and reassured Mrs Landess that the treatment was going well. She, however, was suffering from headaches, vomiting and great thirst, and the inflammation of the breast began to spread into her arm. Two days later, she had a fit. Her husband described her appearance as:

…being like a ‘half-felled cow’. Foam issued from her mouth, and she roared most unnaturally.

That evening, she died.

Douglas Maclagan, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Edinburgh University, carried out a post-mortem examination and confirmed that Mrs Landess had never had breast cancer. There were traces of arsenic in her organs, and when he analysed Paterson’s salve he discovered that it was 49% arsenic and 51% lard.

Arsenic salves were a long-established quack treatment for cancer, and local unqualified healers like Paterson were not unusual – though perhaps less common by the 1860s than they had been in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. When Paterson was brought to trial charged with culpable homicide, the question was not whether he should have been practising as a healer in the first place, but whether he had been negligent when administering a dangerous medicine.

Paterson’s defence was that he had 20 years’ experience of treating cancer and that when Mrs Landess asked him for help, she knew very well that he was an unlicensed practitioner. Several witnesses came forward to say that he had cured them.

The judge, Lord Ardmillan, must have been in a particularly good mood that day. In summing up, he advised the jury not be too swayed by the fact that Paterson was unqualified, but to take into account his experience, the apparent cures of the witnesses, and the fact that any medical man could muck up sometimes.

‘A mere mistake,’ he said, ‘did not imply culpability.’

The jury found Paterson guilty. Lord Ardmillan, however, told him that ‘no one could suppose he meant any harm to the unfortunate woman Landess’ and sent him to prison for just four months.

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Last October I blogged about the Magic Foot Drafts, a remedy for rheumatism that required the patient to stick pine-tar-coated oilcloth plasters to the soles of their feet. This was supposed to draw out uric acid through the pores, but as Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud,

…they might as well be affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.

A few weeks ago, Linda Riordan, who lives in Ohio, found the blog post while searching for some info about a letter that her late grandma had kept in a shoebox since 1915.

Linda’s grandfather had sent off for a trial pair of Magic Foot Drafts but sensibly decided not to place a further order. By then, however, he was on their mailing list and they weren’t about to let him go. Linda kindly sent me the letter – it’s in beautiful condition and a very entertaining read.

It’s signed by Frederick Dyer, Corresponding Secretary of the Magic Foot Draft Company, and he doesn’t take the softly-softly approach to sales.

Dear Mr. Greene:

If you have written us a letter regarding the Dyer Foot Drafts we sent on your order last week, it has failed to reach our office yet. We were quite disappointed not to get your letter this morning, for you must know we expect you will be prompt to inform us just how your case is progressing.

The letter goes on to explain that the effect of the Drafts will vary according to the severity of the disease and how the plaster is applied – in other words, if it doesn’t work, it’s because your case is a complicated one or you put the plaster on wrong. Chronic cases might require up to 6 applications.

Any effect like this comes by degrees, perhaps slowly at first, but none the less surely if the patient is faithful in the effort and not over-eager to see a miraculous change right away quick.

Once again, an unsatisfactory result is the patient’s fault for being too impatient or giving up too easily.

Dyer then goes on to ask Mr Greene to read ‘every one of the enclosed fifty-odd letters’ from satisfied patients (these testimonials have not survived). The hard sell continues:

Now then, to be fair with yourself and square with us, what do you intend to do? Try to get rid of your misery as others have, or go on suffering the rest of your natural life? There is positively no reason in settling down and saying: “Oh, I believe my case is incurable, for I have tried so many things, etc., etc.”

There was a money-back guarantee if the Drafts didn’t work, but the company probably relied on the patient wanting to believe there was some improvement, or feeling like an idiot and putting the episode down to experience without bothering to claim a refund.

The letter ends:

Unless you have already sent your order we shall expect a letter from you very soon, and there will be no failure to send the treatment just as you instruct, so you will have it and keep your recovery going steadily on day and night until every last twinge of pain has left you.

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A huge thank you to Linda Riordan for sending me this letter.

It is surprising the number of Persons that apply daily from 11 o’clock till 3, at No. 84, Wells-street, Oxford-street, to consult Dr. Cameron, who discovers disorders by an inspection of the morning urine, and although Dr. C.’s method is singular, it it (sic) a well known fact, that he restores many to perfect health, when the most eminent of the profession have failed, in painful, lingering, and dangerous cases; as diseases of the liver, bilious, and other obstructions, complaints in the Stomach, loss of appetite, jaundice, consumptions, dropsy, &c.; also those complaints peculiar to females at the different periods of life, and in all instances of Debility produced by free living and excesses, that derange, disorganize and weaken the nervous and muscular powers.

Source: The Anti-Gallican Monitor, 21 May 1815

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Uroscopy had been a diagnostic tool for centuries. The colour, consistency, smell and taste of urine were observed since the time of Hippocrates, and in the 17th century Thomas Willis described one circumstance in which it could be useful – in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. By Cameron’s time, however, the idea that it was possible to diagnose every disease from the urine alone – often without even seeing the patient – was well within the realms of quackery and uroscopists were derided as ‘piss-prophets’.

Cameron set up as a doctor in Well Street off Oxford Street in about 1809. Initially sharing premises with a silhouette-maker, he soon had enough good fortune to part ways with his impoverished artist friend. Because of urine-casting’s long history, he was able to attract patients who thought there was something in it and who were suspicious of most doctors’ insistence that it was a load of rubbish.

An anecdote in the Medical Adviser (1824) tells of Cameron’s modus operandi. The Adviser is not the most impartial of publications so the details must be taken with a pinch of salt, but they did claim to have verified the story.

A Holborn innkeeper consulted the doctor for chest pains and received some pills. After a month of taking them, he became unable to urinate and, in agony in the middle of the night, had to send for a surgeon to catheterise him. The pills turned out to contain the purgatives jalap and calomel (mercurous chloride), which the surgeon felt had been responsible for his symptoms. He recovered (apart from the chest pain, which was still there) – but not without wanting to pay Cameron back.

The vengeful innkeeper sent his ostler, along with a ‘heavy’ for back-up, to take a urine sample to Cameron. Variations on this story are still doing the rounds today, so you can immediately see what’s coming…

The doctor tasted the urine, and concluded that the sufferer was in a bad way, but could be cured. By asking questions about the age of the patient (24), how hard he worked (lots of heavy loads) and whether he was a drinker (a pail of water twice a day), Cameron diagnosed a bad back, at which point the ostler revealed that the urine was from his donkey.

‘Get out of my house, you rascal!’ bellowed the enraged ‘Doctor’ as he chased the little ostler about the parlour, who now got behind his colossal assistant, and as well might Cameron pierce the shield of Ajax as make an impression upon him, so he contented himself with snatching up the bottle, opening the window and dashing it into the street.

He continued to have a go at the visitors until they ‘coolly retired.’  In reporting the tale, the Medical Adviser certainly didn’t disguise its contempt of the self-styled Water Doctor:

In the name of the north and the honor of old Scotland is this fellow a Cameron? And has the name that is associated with deeds of glory and the might of auld lang syne, dwindled into a filthy water-taster?

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.