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Thomas Charles Morgan

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Sir Thomas Charles Morgan (1783–1843) was an English physician and writer with an interest in philosophical and miscellaneous subject matter. His wife was the famed novelist Lady Morgan.

He was born in Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury,[1] a son of one John Morgan, and was raised in Smithfield, London. As a young man, he was given an annual income of £300. He studied at Eton and Cambridge and graduated from Peterhouse in 1809. He established a medical practice in London where the focus of his work was the study of cowpox and smallpox. He was a friend and supporter of Edward Jenner.[2] He was accepted to the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1810. He married a Miss Hammond but she died in childbirth in 1810. Their daughter, Anne Hammond Morgan, survived.

With his daughter, he moved to Ireland after his wife’s death where he took a post as physician to the Marquis of Abercorn. Abercorn’s wife, the Marchioness Lady Anne Jane Gore, engineered an introduction to the Irish novelist Sydney Owenson (1776–1859)[3] who had become famous for The Wild Irish Girl (1806). She was several years his senior.

He was knighted in Ireland in 1811 and in January, 1812 he married Miss Owenson, who would henceforth be known as Lady Morgan. Of his knighthood, Lady Morgan's biographer wrote: “It was an act of courtesy on the part of his Grace the Duke of Richmond to Lord Abercorn to confer knighthood on his family physician, who had done nothing to deserve it on public grounds. Morgan, himself, cared nothing about it; but to please Miss Owenson he would have been content to pass under any denomination.”[4] After their marriage the couple lived in Barons Court, the Abercorn seat, before eventually moving to Dublin.

During Morgan's residence in Ireland he devoted much of his time and talents to the cause of Catholic Emancipation, which he advocated in the public journals and periodicals. He was a lover of civil and religious liberty, and his house, both in Dublin and London, was always open to sufferers in that cause from whatever land they came.[1]

From 1815 to 1817 the Morgans toured France and Lady Morgan subsequently published two historical works, France (1817), and Italy (1821), to which Thomas wrote appendices. These were popular works.[5] They later shared credit (in 1841) for a two-volume work enigmatically titled The Book without a Name. It was a collection of previously published articles and essays.

His own works included Sketches of the Philosophy of Life (1818), a scientific work, and Sketches of the Philosophy of Morals (1822) which offered a rebuttal to criticism of his first work, notably, that of Thomas Rennell. He also contributed articles to several magazines including The New Monthly Magazine and The Metropolitan Magazine.

In 1835 he was made commissioner of Irish fisheries.[1] The Morgan’s moved to London in 1837. In England, he was appointed physician to the Marshalsea prison. Thomas Morgan died in London in 1843.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Munk, p. 93
  2. ^ Dixon, p. 372.
  3. ^ Dixon, p. 444.
  4. ^ Dixon, p. 527.
  5. ^ Margaret Drabble, editor, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Fifth Edition, p. 668, 1985

References

  1. William Hepworth Dixon, Lady Morgan's memoirs: autobiography, diaries and correspondence, Volume 2, 1862
  2. William Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London: 1801 to 1825, published by the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1878

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