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2 Career
Lettsoms career accelerated with the LRCP and marriage to an heiress. By the age of 30 his reputation as
a physician, author, and Fellow of the Royal Society was
established. Furthermore, he had founded the General
Dispensary in Aldersgate Street and the Medical Society of London. He was a founder-member of the Royal
Humane Society in 1774, he initiated the Sea-bathing Inrmary at Margate (1791), became a pillar of the Royal
Jennerian Society (for vaccination) and gave his support
to the Society for the Relief of Widows and Orphans
of Medical Men, the Society for the Relief of Debtors,
and the Philanthropic Society (for homeless children).
Numerous clubs, societies, hospitals, dispensaries, and
Life
John Coakley Lettsom was born into the Quaker community on the island of Little Jost Van Dyke in the British
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6 SEE ALSO
When his good friend, William Thornton, sought his advice about setting up a colony for freed slaves on the west
coast of Africa, Lettsom counseled against it, and suggested that spending the money acquiring and manumitting the slaves in North America would be a better use of
funds.
However, towards the end of his life, something ironic
happened. Lettsoms son, Pickering Lettsom, returned to
Tortola to practice law, and there he married a wealthy
widow, who had inherited some 1,000 slaves from her
grandfather, Benzaliel Hodge. Pickering Lettsom died
about a month after the marriage, and his new wife (some
16 years his senior) died two months later, and left all of
her property to her father-in-law, John Lettsom. By a
twist of fate, shortly before his own death, Lettsom, who
had freed all the slaves he had ever owned, found himself
as the owner of another 1,000 slaves. However, Lettsome
himself died before he had a chance to decide what to do
with the slaves, and they were inherited by his grandson.
5 Entomology
Humor
Abolitionism
The naturalists and travelers companion, 1774
6 See also
William Cullen
Notes
Further reading
ODNB article by J.F. Payne Lettsom, John Coakley (17441815), rev. Roy Porter, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press, 2004 accessed 27 Oct 2015
Hunting, Penelope (2004) [2003]. History Of
Medicine: The Medical Society of London. London:
Postgraduate Medical Journal.
Florence Lewisohn, Tales of Tortola and the British
Virgin Islands (1966)
9 External links
Lettsom, John Coakley. The Naturalists and Travellers Companion, rst published in 1772
Postgraduate Medical Journal 2004;80:350-354
A quaker viewpoint on John Lettsom
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