Thomas Wakley

Thomas Wakley (11 July 1795 – 16 May 1862) was an English surgeon. He became a demagogue and social reformer who campaigned against incompetence, privilege and nepotism. He was the founding editor of The Lancet and a radical Member of Parliament (MP).

He was born in Membury, Devon, to a prosperous farmer and his wife. His father, Henry Wakley (1750–26 August 1842), inherited property, leased neighbouring land and became a large farmer by the standards of the day and a government Commissioner on the Enclosure of Waste Land. He was described as a 'just but severe parent' and, with his wife, had eleven children, eight sons and three daughters. Thomas was the youngest son, and attended the grammar school at Chard, then Taunton Grammar School. In his early teens, he was apprenticed to a Taunton apothecary. Young Wakley was a sportsman and a boxer: he fought bare-fisted in public houses.

He then went to London, where he attended anatomy classes at St Thomas's Hospital, and he enrolled in the United Hospitals of St. Thomas's Hospital and Guy's. The dominant personality at these two hospitals was Sir Astley Cooper FRS (1768–1841). Wakley qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1817. A surgeon at 22, he set up in practice in Regent Street and married (1820) Miss Goodchild, whose father was a merchant and a governor of St Thomas' Hospital. They had three sons and a daughter, who died young. His eldest son, Henry Membury Wakley, became a barrister and sat as deputy coroner under his father. His youngest son, James Goodchild Warley, and his middle son, Thomas Henry Wakley, became joint editors of The Lancet.

All through his career, Wakley proved to be a man of aggressive personality, and his experiences had a sensational beginning. In August 1820 a gang of men (reputedly, the Thistlewood gang) that had some imagined grievance against him burnt down his house and severely wounded him in a murderous assault. The whole affair is obscure. The assault may have been a follow-up to the Cato Street conspiracy, whose supporters believed (wrongly) that the hangman was a surgeon. Wakley was indirectly accused by the insurance company, which had refused his claim, of setting fire to his house himself. He won his case against the company.

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