Thomas Pole, M.D. / written by Edmund Tolson Wedmore for the Friends' Historical Society ; with notes by Norman Penney ; illustrated by portrait, and forty-eight drawings by Dr. Pole.

  • Wedmore, Edmund Tolson.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thomas Pole, M.D. / written by Edmund Tolson Wedmore for the Friends' Historical Society ; with notes by Norman Penney ; illustrated by portrait, and forty-eight drawings by Dr. Pole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    William Allen, and at the Borough Hospital where he was offered and availed himself of exceptional facilities for acquiring knowledge. No wonder he was loath to leave London and its opportunities, but he accompanied his father and made the best of the change. He studied with one of Dr. Pole’s Bristol pupils, James Cowles Prichard* who had come to reside with him, and he kept in touch with John A. Ransome, his father’s late assistant in London. His death evoked marked sorrow; his personal friends bore him to the grave, where amidst a large company his father was drawn, notwithstanding his grief, to address the young people present. The many testimonies borne by well-known Friends and others evidenced the love and regard in which John Pole was held. Of their other four children who came to Bristol with them, Rachel and Eliza were at this time in school at Milverton, where their elder sister had been educated. Dr. Pole’s drawing of the meeting house in this little town shows the forms within the door which were occupied by a school for boys, and the window over the door which lights the gallery where the girls were seated—well out of sight of the youth below, so the story goes. In 1807 Mary Ann, the eldest daughter, was married to Francis M. Fowler; they eventually emigrated to Baltimore. In 1809 Dr. Pole assisted in promoting the Lancasterian Schools in Bristol. We give his silhouette of his friend, Joseph Lancaster (drawing No. 12). He was also actively engaged in visiting the prisoners in Bridewell and the schools which were shortly afterwards established on Sunday afternoons, when unoccupied with his patients. He was a strong advocate of Peace, and neglected no opportunity of proclaiming the inconsistencies of the Christian world—so called—which must convey the idea that we believe in a * Thomas Hodgkin, M.D., in his biographical sketch of J. C. Prichard, refers to his going “ to Bristol from Ross to study under Dr. Pole, an ingenious American who had for years been engaged in teaching the obstetric art.”