The Mysterious Dr. Kilpatrick

In 1717, a man calling himself James Kilpatrick (sometimes spelled Killpatrick) arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. His exact date of birth is unknown but was sometime in the 1690s. He joined his uncle, David Kilpatrick, who already lived in the colony. 

James Kilpatrick claimed to be a native of Ireland. He set himself up as a doctor, a profession in demand in the feverish colony. He had studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh but had not completed the MD.  

His lack of a medical degree was not a significant problem in the young colony, which lacked any kind of licensing system. The medical "profession" in Charleston at the time included people with little formal medical training, or none at all.   

Kilpatrick achieved some financial success. St. Philip's Parish vestry appointed him visiting physician to the parish poor. He established a pharmacy in the early 1730s -- something that modern doctors cannot do. 

In 1727 he wed Elizabeth Hepworth, an heiress and the daughter of the secretary of the colony. They were married at St. Philip's Church. A few years later he received a joint grant of more than 200 acres, and presumably engaged in a bit of rice planting. 

During Charleston's smallpox epidemic in 1738 Kilpatrick was one of the first doctors to employ the practise of inoculation. One of his children had died of the disease, and he decided to inoculate the rest of his family. He then inoculated several hundred residents. 

He vigorously defended his use of the procedure in the town's newspaper and in pamphlets. His efforts aroused controversy but enhanced his reputation in the long term. 

Upon the outbreak of war with Spain later that year -- the wonderfully named War of Jenkins' Ear -- he enlisted as ship's surgeon. He accompanied General James Oglethorpe's failed expedition in 1740 against St. Augustine, the Spanish stronghold in Florida. [Image: James Oglethorpe]

Around 1742, Kilpatrick moved to London with his wife and children. He established himself in medical practise and completed an MD from Edinburgh. Mysteriously, he also changed his name from Kilpatrick to Kirkpatrick.  

Why did he change his name? An old argument is that he decided that a name that began with "Kill" was not a good one for a doctor. That may be, but there is a more compelling reason: Kirkpatrick was his real name. 

That raises another question: Why did he change it to Kilpatrick on coming to South Carolina? The answer lies in British politics in the early 18th century. The Kirkpatricks were a Scots family who backed the wrong side in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

The aim of the rebellion, and a couple more that followed, was to place the Catholic Stuart claimant "James III" (The Old Pretender) on the British throne, in place of the Hanoverian George I, who had just arrived from Germany.

The rebellion failed. People who had supported it, or were even suspect, were denounced as rebels. Many fled or tried to change their identity. James Kirkpatrick seems to have done both. 

He claimed to have been born in Ireland. Perhaps he was. But his family was Scottish, and he may have been born in Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University shortly before the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. 

Did he take part in it? Possibly, or perhaps he was assumed to have done so because others in his family did. In any case, the political danger may have made a change of name seem like a good idea. The same goes for his migration to South Carolina. In a frontier colony, it was easier bury one's past and start afresh. The colony's promoters welcomed white men to a place where enslaved Africans already made up a majority of the population.  

When Kilpatrick changed his name back to Kirkpatrick, nearly 30 years had passed since the rebellion in which he may have been involved. Another, and more serious Jacobite rebellion took place in 1745, but no one could argue that he had taken any part in that. In any case, the Jacobite threat ended with the defeat of the army of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at Culloden in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. [Image: Culloden]

 

Moreover, while in South Carolina, he had demonstrated his loyalty to the British government by serving as a naval surgeon in the Oglethorpe Expedition to St. Augustine. 

After arriving in London, he published an account of the 1738 smallpox epidemic in Charleston, highlighting the success of inoculation in the epidemic and his own role within it. 

When a smallpox epidemic broke out in London in 1746, Kirkpatrick helped found the innovative Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital, believed to be the first in Europe to specialize in that area. It provided free treatment to the working class. [Image: Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital,  Coldbath Fields, London]

Kirkpatrick collaborated on the hospital project with Isaac Maddox, Bishop of Worcester. Maddox later helped him to publish The Analysis of Inoculation (1754), a treatise on its history, theories, and practise. The book was translated into several languages and gained him a reputation as an expert on the subject. 

In the Analysis, he claimed to have revived inoculation in Britain after it had fallen into disuse. This was exaggeration, but he did help to popularize it, especially in France and the Continent. He inoculated members of the French and British aristocracies. 

Kilpatrick/Kirkpatrick harbored poetic as well as medical ambitions. He used them to celebrate the maritime and naval achievements of the British Empire, in a long poem entitled The Sea-Piece. He had composed it, he said, in South Carolina between 1717 and 1738. He published it in London in 1750. 

He praised the works of Alexander Pope, whom he called the poetic lord of the British empire. He wrote several poems commending and defending Pope and an elegy on Pope after his death in 1744. 

Kirkpatrick died in London in 1770. His son James became a high-ranking officer in the British East India Company. He was known as the "Handsome Colonel." Two of the colonel's sons, William and James Achilles Kirkpatrick, also attained high rank in the Company. 

James married an Indian princess in Hyderabad. The marriage ended in tragedy; a story superbly told by William Dalrymple in White Mughals.  

Further Reading: 

James Kilpatrick, An Essay on the Small-Pox Being Brought Into South Carolina in the Year 1738. (London, 1743)

James Kirkpatrick, The Analysis of Inoculation. (London, 1754). 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)

William Dalrymple, White Mughals. (London, 2002)

David S. Shields, Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1990)

 

Admiral Anson of Charleston and Carshalton

Admiral George Anson is best known for commanding a British naval squadron on an epic circumnavigation of the world between 1740 and 1744. Britain was at war with Spain, the War of Jenkins' Ear, and his goal was to raid Spanish possessions. The voyage was in some ways a disaster. Of his six ships, only one completed the journey. Many of his men died of scurvy, then the scourge of long voyages. But he did capture a Spanish ship loaded with treasure near the Philippines. [Image: George Anson, by Thomas Hudson]

By the time he returned to Britain, the country was also at war with France. In 1747, Anson captured an entire French squadron at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre, which netted him an enormous treasure. The government rewarded him with a peerage, as First Baron Anson. In 1751 the government elevated him to the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. In that capacity, he was responsible for reforms that greatly improved the efficiency of the Royal Navy during the Seven Years War (1756-63). He also commissioned an investigation into the causes and cure for scurvy. Anson died near the end of the war, in 1762, aged 65.

I have a "special connection" to Anson. No, we are not related, except maybe through Adam and Eve. It is this: he lived in two places I have lived in, in Charleston, South Carolina in America and Carshalton, Surrey, in England.

I first learned about Anson's Charleston connection while working as a history professor at the College of Charleston. One of the neighborhoods of the city is named after him, Ansonborough. So are Anson Street, the Anson Restaurant, Ansonborough House, and the Ansonborough Inn. George Street was also named for him. Several other streets were named for ships he commanded, but they have other names now.

In 1724, when he was only 26 but already a captain, the Royal Navy sent Anson to Charleston in command of a small squadron to defend the city and its region from pirate attacks. He remained in that capacity until 1735, long after pirates had ceased to be a major threat. 

In 1726, he purchased 64 acres of land on the Charleston peninsula. That land later became the town's first "suburb," Ansonborough. According to one story, perhaps apocryphal, Anson won the money he used to buy the land in a card game. True or not, gambling was a common pastime of the elite. 

Now for Carshalton. In 1749 Anson leased Carshalton House, a country house originally built around 1700 for a tobacco merchant, Edward Carlton. He went bankrupt and the house passed to several other owners before Anson leased it. Anson lived there until 1752, when he moved to a house he had built in Hertfordshire, Moor Park. [Two Images of Carshalton House, a mid-19th century lithograph and a modern photo.]

At the time of the lithograph Carshalton House was being used by the government as a preparatory school for cadets of the Royal Artillery and Engineers. In the late 19th century, an order of Catholic nuns purchased Carshalton House and grounds. They established a primary and high school for girls there, St. Philomena's. It is still in operation and is  only five minutes' walk from my house. 

Most people in Carshalton have probably never heard of Anson. Lots of Charlestonians will be familiar with his name at least because it is everywhere. How many know why is another matter. But be ye from Charleston or Carshalton, raise a glass for Admiral Anson! I'll raise two! We’ll meet at the Anson Arms pub, as soon as it’s built!

Interestingly, the online articles about Anson do not mention his connections to Charleston or Carshalton. If I hadn't lived in these places, I would never have known about them.