In the late summer of 1830, Dr Thomas Mills of Dublin travelled to Paris with his wife Augusta and sister Kitty. Despite concerns about Thomas’ health, the trio enjoyed a stimulating time meeting friends and seeing the sites of Paris. They stayed at the centrally-located Hôtel des Îsles Britanniques, beside Place Vendôme and Jardin des Tuileries, and the two women experienced the delights of shopping at the vast and glittering Palais Royale. Thomas was more keen to attend political talks and consult with fellow medics. In a letter to his brother back in Dublin,[1] Thomas wrote that he ‘had the good fortune’ to hear General Lafayette, Lafitte and Dupin – all radical, libertarian leaders of the Paris Revolution that had taken place only five weeks earlier.[2]
Who was this Thomas Mills whose ‘heart was pleased’[3] to hear the leading liberal, republican thought-leaders of Paris? There are huge gaps in what we know of the man, and much of the information we have on Mills is drawn from his public profile as a physician. However, we get glimpses of his personal life and private thoughts in a series of letters he wrote from the Armagh and Down countryside, mostly in summer 1805. The letters provide insight into Mills’ personal values and political beliefs as well as presenting acute observations of the lives of people of County Down. The letters are now held in the Royal College of Physicians archive, as part of the Kirkpatrick Collection.[4]
Thomas Mills, Physician ([1773]-1830)
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| Figure 1 Portrait of Thomas Mills by Martin Cregan 1788-1870, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Ref 1850.3, reproduced under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
Radical thinking
At Loughbrickland, Mills came face-to-face
with the realities of the political situation, and its impact on religious
tensions, poverty and local landlord-tenant relations. The village was in the
heart of the countryside and populated by some 600 people,[14]
which he described as being mostly Presbyterian, with some Catholics and
Protestants.[15] This is
important since Mills arrived there soon after the Irish rebellion of 1798, and
the Act of Union (1801), which abolished the Irish parliament and helped build
momentum behind the cause of Catholic Emancipation. Both events created
upheaval and pervaded the thinking of disparate parts of the population.
Although large numbers of Irish people fought with the British against
Napoleon, there was much support for France, particularly amongst those who had
sympathised with the American revolution in the 1780s. This latter group
included certain classes of Catholics, city dwellers and especially, Ulster
Presbyterians.[16] Mills
was amongst this cohort, and his views had been sharpened during his time at
Edinburgh.
Edinburgh at the time was not just a place to
study medicine. Through the 1790s, it was a breeding ground for radical and
novel thinking, and the university was a centre for a specifically Scottish type
of Enlightenment thinking that promoted rationalism, humanism and empiricism.[17]
The ideas of Thomas Paine and his Rights of Man (co-written with
General Lafayette), were widely circulated and discussed, and many new radical
societies emerged that sought political and religious reform. Later in the decade –
just as Mills was graduating – societies of United Scotsmen emerged that
aligned with the United Irishmen.[18] It is highly
likely that Mills was familiar with Irish radical contemporaries like Thomas
Drennan who graduated from Edinburgh medical school twenty-one years before
Mills. In Dublin from the 1790s, Drennan was active in the Volunteer movement and the fight for an independent, reformed Irish
parliament, and was a key leader in the Dublin
Society of United Irishmen.[19]
We know that Mills admired Dr Alexander Crawford of Lisburn, since he called on
him to attend his mother in May 1805.[20]
Dr Crawford was well known and had an extensive medical practice; he was also a
radical and active Volunteer in 1793/4, was implicated in activities with the
French in 1794, and was arrested with other United Irishmen in 1796.[21]
Loughbrickland realities
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Figure 2: The Quack Doctor by John Boyne, dated 1746-1800. The drawing by a County Down artist, shows a ‘quack’ doctor with local people; ‘quack’ doctors competed with physicians like Thomas Mills in an unregulated, emerging market. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Museum Number 1890,0512.13, reproduced under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. |
There are also elements of Lamarckian thinking
in Mills’ letters. Lamarck’s theory posits that a
person’s characteristics could be acquired by behaviour,[26]
and passed through to the next generation. The more radical thinkers, including a number of
medics at Edinburgh University, supported this,[27]
and threads can be seen in Mills’ writing. Mills wrote
that he saw a ‘great number of patients’ with asthma and consumption.
Consistent with his views on fever, he discounts lack of fuel, poor clothing, ‘mode
of living’ and the weather as causes. Rather, he attributes the illnesses
partly to ‘the intemperance and debauchery of our forefathers’, and cites
‘constant inter-marriage of families’ and a ‘long abstinence from animal feed
and other nourishing diet’ as contributing factors.[28]
However,
Mills was not a true Lamarckian, in that he was not an atheist or
anti-Religion; [29] on the
contrary, he frequently mentions the value of religious thinking and
instruction as essential to morality, wisdom and
happiness. He could be seen to be Lamarckian in that he believed that people could,
through their own exertions, advance their position and power.[30]
 |
Figure 3: Print by William Hincks, ‘Taken on the spot in the County of Downe, Representing Spinning, Reeling with the Clock Reel, and Boiling the Yarn’, Plate VI of The Linen Manufactory of Ireland, 1791. This scene may reflect what Thomas Mills perceived when he wrote of the industriousness of the women of County Down, with their sewing, spinning, weaving and knitting. Museum number 1877,0113.375, © The Trustees of the British Museum, reproduced under Creative Commons Licence. |
Many of Mills’ letters focus on the work habits and productivity of the people of Tartaraghan and Loughbrickland. He noted the highly-cultivated fields and neat, clean and comfortable looking cabins and he admired the work ethic of farmers who supplemented their farm income by weaving.[31] He also admired the capability and industriousness of women who worked at sewing, spinning, weaving and knitting, and engaged in making hay, digging potatoes, pulling flax and reaping the harvest.[32] He was realistic enough to realise that poor families, no matter how hard they worked, could often not earn enough to ‘provide themselves with the necessities, much less the comforts of life’.[33] Mills’ letters reflect a deep awareness of the unequal distribution of wealth between the land-owning and the tenant classes. He acknowledges that the wealth of people like himself, living ‘in the lap of luxury and pleasure’, depended on the very existence of a discontented tenantry, asking if it should be surprising that ‘such men become rebels’.[34] He even anticipates the potential of a French-style revolution if this is not addressed. He writes, ‘We will not discover, I fear, our real interest, ‘till fatal experience teach it to us - ‘till we taste a little of those sorrows that we have made others feel’.[35]
Overall, Mills' settles on education and
virtue as the best response to poverty and bigotry:[36]
a fairer, more equitable country could be built if young people were taught to
be ‘good citizens’, to ‘admire virtue and despise vice, and to be frugal,
industrious and sober’.[37]
He lauds the local people for sending their children to school,[38]
and conversely, considers the potential for ‘despotism and slavery’ if
property-owners are not well-educated.[39]
He goes so far as to call for a law to prohibit any man ‘unacquainted with the
Principles of Liberty’ from owning Property.[40]
In many ways, Mills appears less a radical and liberal than an Improver,
focusing on relieving poverty and achieving social and moral transformation through economic growth, education, and application of rational,
Enlightenment principals.[41]
Building a career
By September 1805, Mills had gained ‘health
and strength’, and anticipated returning to Dublin.[42]
Unfortunately, we do not know when Mills did settle back in the city. He got
married at a relatively advanced age[43] in 1814 to the 31 year old Augusta Sophia Hamill.[44] Little about the
couple’s personal life is known, except that they lived for a time at the
family home (possibly with Michael Mills) at 41 Dominick Street, Dublin, and by 1829, had moved a street away to 38 Granby Row. As a physician, Mills is recorded as treating patients in Dublin by
the mid-1810s. He is not listed in the 1809 annual report of Cork Street
hospital,[45] though
he may have returned to it in subsequent years, since he wrote a paper in 1813
based on case studies from there.[46]
In one noteworthy intervention, he was called as a witness to the declaration
of a miracle by the Catholic Diocese of Dublin. Mills had been treating Mrs
Mary Stuart, a religious sister in Ranelagh Convent, Dublin in 1823 for four
years prior to her ‘miraculous’ recovery.[47] Mills cannot have
liked the newspaper coverage, and especially the mockery
the
miracle declaration attracted from Protestant clergy
and other physicians. That incident notwithstanding, Mills kept close to the
Dublin medical fraternity and set out to establish his position, with the hope
of rising to the ‘head of my profession’.[48]
Some of the ambition that his brother Michael observed in him at the start of
his career remained,[49]
and Thomas took only a short time to achieve the wealth and ‘higher rank in
society’ that he sought.[50]
Mills published a series of papers and case studies over the years, including essays on blood-letting, typhus, and on various diseases of the liver,
brain and other organs.[51]
By 1824, Mills had consolidated his position as a physician in Dublin. Mills’ ambition saw
him elected as joint vice-President and President of the
Association
of Members of the King and Queen’s College of Physician of Ireland in 1821,[52] and 1823[53]
respectively. While he clearly enjoyed some support from his medical colleagues within the College, Mills never became President or Vice-President of the College itself.
To Paris
Twenty-five years after his letters from
Armagh and Down, Mills travelled to France to alleviate his declining health.[54]
He may have gone to seek a change of air, to recover from overwork and
‘exertion of the intellectual faculties’, or for something more serious.[55]
In his
letter of 3 September 1830, Mills writes that he
consulted with Dr Crawford – ‘a kind friend’ – who advised him to go on
to Nice. He followed the advice, but died there two months
later, on 6 November 1830. He was 57. The
Belfast Newsletter noted the death of this eminent and distinguished
physician who had made an extraordinary contribution to his profession. Mills,
it said, had been an ‘amiable and interesting companion, and a generous
friend’, and his death was ‘a source of deep affliction’ to a wide circle of
friends and colleagues.[56]
After his death, Augusta Sophia continued to reside at their home at 15 Rutland
Square East for at least the next five years;[57] in 1838, she
married Dr William Turner at Malvern Wells in Worcestershire.
Conclusion
While the letters represent a limited source, it seems reasonable to
conclude that Thomas Mills was a radical in his mind, a liberal in his heart,
and a pragmatist in his practice. His observations of country life are acute
and interspersed with the enlightenment ideas and radical principles he honed
at Edinburgh University, but his absorption of these principles and ideals was
selective, particularly in relation to his belief in the value of religion.
That he was sincere in his desire to address the plight of the poor is
evidenced by his taking a position at the Cork Street hospital, and his letters
are infused with sympathy and some empathy for the poor of County Down. He was
not extremist enough to be overtly public with his views; nor did his radical ideals
supersede his position in society or role as a physician, as in the case of
people like Drennan or Crawford. Nor, it turns out, was Mills’ espoused
ambition enough to see him rise to the very top of his profession as he had
wished. The Belfast Newsletter may have been correct in remembering him
as an eminent physician and amiable companion, whose ‘qualifications,
both of head and heart, were of no ordinary description’.[58]
The letters of Dr Thomas Mills are held in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Heritage Centre, and are part of the Thomas Percy Claude Kirkpatrick Archive, also known as the Dr Kirkpatrick collection.
Fiona Slevin
[1] Thomas
Mills, 3 September 1830, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/26.
[2] The
French Revolution of 1830 took place between 26-29 July 1830, and resulted in
the abdication of Charles X; the king was replaced with a constitutional
monarchy with Louis Philippe on the throne. Lafayette was leader of the
opposition and had been a hero of the American Revolution of the late 1770s; he
co-wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and was an outspoken advocate of religious
toleration and the abolition of the slave trade. Lafitte was also a member of the Chamber
of Deputies and led the development of finance and banking post-revolution.
Dupin (likely Dupin the Elder), was a magistrate, eminent advocate, and
President of the Chamber of Deputies for eight sessions.
[3]
Thomas Mills, 3 September 1830, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/26.
[4] ‘Letters
from Thomas Mills TPCK/6/3/5, in the Thomas Percy Claude Kirkpatrick Archive’,
n.d., The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Heritage Centre.
[5] Harriet Wheelock,
‘My Dear Mich …’, RCPI Heritage Centre Blog, June 13, 2011; available
from http://rcpilibrary.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-dear-mich.html;
accessed 21 September 2021.
[6]
‘Scottish Enlightenment’, British Council, July 2016; available from https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/scottish-enlightenment;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[7] Laurence
Brockliss, ‘Medicine, Religion and Social Mobility in Eighteenth- and Early
Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, in Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, eds. James Kelly and Fiona Clark (London, 2016), p
77.
[8] Harriet Wheelock,
‘My Dear Mich …’, RCPI Heritage Centre Blog, June 13, 2011; available
from http://rcpilibrary.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-dear-mich.html;
accessed 21 September 2021.
[9] ‘Cork
Street Fever Hospital and House of Recovery’, Cork Street Fever Hospital,
October 2015; available from http://corkstreetfeverhospital.ie/;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[10]
Thomas Mills, 1 May 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/2.
[11]
Thomas Mills, 1 May 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/2.
[12] John
Farmer, Patients, Potions & Physicians: A Social History of Medicine in
Ireland, 1654-2004, (Dublin, 2004), p71, 74.
[13]
Thomas Mills, 18 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/8.
[14]
Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, (Dublin, 1837),
lists the population as 617 people.
[15]
Thomas Mills, (n.d. possibly 1 or 2) July 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/5.
[16] Kennedy,
W. Benjamin, Catholics in Ireland and the French Revolution, Records of
the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol 85, No.
3/4, 1974, pp 221.
[17]
‘Scottish Enlightenment’, British Council, July 2016; available from https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/scottish-enlightenment;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[18]
‘Scotland and the French Revolution’, The Scottish History Society,
n.d.; available from https://scottishhistorysociety.com/scotland-and-the-french-revolution/;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[19] A.T.Q.
Stewart, ‘William Drennan’, in Dictionary of Irish Bibliography,
October 2009, Royal Irish Academy, https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002765.v1, accessed 9 December
2021.
[20] Thomas
Mills, 14 May 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/4.
[21] C.J.
Woods, ‘Alexander Crawford’ in Dictionary of Irish Bibliography,
revised December 2010, Royal Irish Academy, https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002156.v2, accessed 9 December 2021.
[22]
John Gamble, edited by Breandán Mac Suibhne, Society and manners in early
nineteenth-century Ireland, Field Day, 2011, XXV.
[23] Thomas
Mills, 12 July 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/10.
[24]
Thomas Mills, 12 July 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/10.
[25]
Thomas Mills, 1 September 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/17.
[26] P.J.
Bowler, ‘Evolution, History Of’, in International Encyclopedia of the Social
& Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (Oxford,
2001), 4986–92; available from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767030679.
[27]
Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in
Radical London (Chicago, 1989), 5.
[28]
Thomas Mills, 29 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, RCPI Kirkpatrick
Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/15.
[29]
Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in
Radical London (Chicago, 1989), 4.
[30]
Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in
Radical London (Chicago, 1989), 5.
[31]
Thomas Mills, 9 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/1.
[32]
Thomas Mills, 28 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, RCPI Kirkpatrick
Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/13.
[33] Thomas
Mills, 30 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/16
[34]
Thomas Mills, 3 July 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/5.
[35] Thomas
Mills, 3 July 1805, p9- 10, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/5.
[36]
Thomas Mills, 13 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/4.
[37]
Thomas Mills, 13-14 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/5.
[38]
Thomas Mills, (n.d., possibly 1 or 2 July 1805), RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive,
TPCK/6/3/5/5.
[39]
Thomas Mills, 18 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/9.
[40]
Thomas Mills, 18 August 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/9.
[41] W.
Forsythe, ‘The Measures and Materiality of Improvement in Ireland’, International
Journal of Historical Archaeology 17, no. 1 (2013), 73.
[42]
Thomas Mills, 4 September 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/19.
[43] Maria
Luddy and Mary O’Dowd, eds., ‘Meeting and Matching with a Partner’, in Marriage
in Ireland, 1660–1925 (Cambridge, 2020), 91–134; available from https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/marriage-in-ireland-16601925/meeting-and-matching-with-a-partner/EDDDE9E6E154ED7B3DAF063F99B75B9E;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[44] Probate
Record and Marriage License Index, 1270-1858, Keeper of the Public Records
in Ireland, (Dublin, Ireland), 745; available from www.ancestry.co.uk;
accessed 24 November 2021.
[45] Annual
Report of the Managing Committee of the House of Recovery, and Fever-Hospital,
in Cork Street Dublin, for the Year Ending 4th January, 1809 (Dublin,
1809); available from http://corkstreetfeverhospital.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/1808.pdf;
accessed 9 December 2021.
[46]
An essay on the utility of Blood-Letting in Fever, (Dublin, 1813).
[47] Belfast
Newsletter, 22 & 29 August 1823; The Freeman’s Journal, 25
August 1823.
[48]
Thomas Mills, 1 May 1805, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/2.
[49]
Michael Mills, 13 May 1824, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/21.
[50]
Michael Mills, 13 May 1824, RCPI Kirkpatrick Archive, TPCK/6/3/5/21.
[51] An
essay on the utility of Blood-Letting in Fever, (Dublin, 1813); The
Morbid Anatomy of the Brain in Typhus Fever, (Dublin, 1817); Observations
on the Diseases of the Liver’ (Dublin, 1811 and 2nd edition
1821); An Account of the Morbid Appearances exhibited on Dissection in
various Disorders of the Brain, (Dublin, 1826); and An Account of the
Morbid Appearances exhibited on Dissection in Disorders of the Trachea, Lungs
and Heart, (Dublin, 1829).
[52]
The Freeman’s Journal, 11 May 1821.
[53] Transactions
of the Association of Fellows and Licentiates of the King’s and Queen’s College
of Physicians in Ireland. Volume 4, 1824, digitised by Wellcome
Library; available from http://archive.org/details/s3id13658270;
accessed 25 November 2021.
[54] Belfast
Newsletter, 26 Nov 1830..
[55] Richard
E. Morris, ‘The Victorian “Change of Air” as Medical and Social Construction’, Journal
of Tourism History 10, no. 1 (January 2, 2018), 4.
[56] Belfast
Newsletter, 26 Nov 1830.
[57] Pettigrew and Oulton, The Dublin Almanac and General Register Of Ireland,
1835, 308.
[58] Belfast
Newsletter, 26 Nov 1830.
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