The Carlyle Letters Online

January-September 1845

The Collected Letters, Volume 19

TC TO JAMES BOOTH ; 7 June 1845; DOI: 10.1215/lt-18450607-TC-JBO-01; CL 19: 74-75

TC TO JAMES BOOTH

Chelsea, 7 june, 1845—

Dear Booth,

There are three men that want to go into the House of Commons on Tuesday Evening next, to hear a little of the Balderdash current there,—on the Medical Bill, I think.1 These names and addresses are:

Dr John Carlyle, 15. Cadogan Terrace / Chelsea—

Dr Jacob Hunter, 70. Upper Berkley St / Portman Square 2

Mr John Welsh (resident with us here).3

If you have still the faculty of getting Orders, I will ask you exert your benevolence with the Speaker 4 on their behalf. If Three are too great a number all at once (as seems not inconceivable at all), then the two Medical men are to be preferred.

Do you ever ride now? I have been obliged to get a horse; take it solitary as Pistol did the leek;5 and should be much alleviated by your company on occasion.— I am in fact exceedingly busy, on the wretchedest work, and almost killed with botheration.

With kind remembrances to Mrs Booth,6

Yours always truly /

T. Carlyle

Sourcenote

TC-JB [JBO], 7 June. MS: Yale. Hitherto unpbd. James Booth (1796–1880; ODNB), counsel to the speaker of the House of Commons; see TC to JAC, 26 May 1839.

Footnotes

1. Probably Sir James Graham's medical reform bill—introduced Aug. 1844, reintroduced 25 Feb. and 7 May with changes—aimed to centralized and unify medical education and practice. Initially opposed by general practitioners who thought it ranked them lower than physicians and surgeons, it was eventually also opposed by the latter. On 28 July Graham put off consideration to the next session, when it was dropped. TC may possibly have meant a bill sponsored by Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801–85; ODNB), Lord Ashley, to repeal many existing acts respecting the treatment of lunatics and insure that pauper patients were not improperly detained and that patients received medical visits and were allowed visits by friends. Neither bill, however, was considered on Tues., 10 June, nor the next Tues.

2. Unidentified further, but see JWC to JW, 19 Oct. 1842. He was probably also a graduate of Edinburgh Univ., where Jacob Hunters are recorded in the medical lists for 1817, 1831, and 1834.

3. John May Welsh (1824–56), eldest son of JWC's paternal uncle Robert (1786–1841; see TC to JWC, 29 April 1841); see JWC to MW, 8 July 1842. He was at Edinburgh Univ., 1843–45, studying literature and then law, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates, Dec. 1846.

4. Charles Shaw-Lefevre (1794–1888; ODNB), speaker of the House of Commons, 1839–57.

5. See Henry V 5.1.

6. Jane Booth (d. 1872); see TC to JAC, 15 Feb. 1840.

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SUBJECT / RECIPIENT INDICES

	Subject terms: Ashley Anthony A. Cooper (later Lord Shaftesbury) Booth James Booth Jane Graham Sir James Hunter Jacob Lunacy Medical reform Bill Parliament > House of Commons Shakespeare William > Henry V Shaw Charles Lefevre Welsh John May (son of JWC's uncle Robert) Welsh Robert (JWC's paternal uncle)
	Recipient terms: Booth James