A newly identified apothecary in Boswell’s Life of Johnson : Edward Ferrand (1691–1769)

The runaway: Francis Barber’s story

James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) has proved to be a rich source for historians of medicine, for whom Johnson’s complex medical history and his knowledge of the medical world are of great interest. In spite of the efforts of numerous medical historians, however, one significant apothecary referred to in the Life has remained unidentified. The reference appears in a footnote in the Life, which provides an account of the life of Francis Barber (c1743–1801), formerly a slave in Jamaica, who joined Johnson’s household as his manservant in 1752 and remained in his service until Johnson’s death in 1784. ¹ Barber’s time with Johnson was not unbroken for the footnote records that he continued in Johnson’s service:

‘from 1752 till Johnson’s death, with the exception of two intervals; in one of which, upon some difference with his master, he went and served an apothecary in Cheapside, but still visited Johnson occasionally … ' ²

The link between Barber and Johnson was the colonel’s son, Dr Bathurst. ⁵ Born in Jamaica in 1722, this Bathurst was sent to Peterhouse, Cambridge, at the age of 16 and graduated in medicine in 1745 but he never made much money as a physician. In 1754 he accepted an appointment as the physician at the Middlesex Infirmary, then a 15-bed charity hospital for ‘the sick and lame of Soho’, but the appointment did not provide him with much income. His lack of success may have been in part due to the fact that he also had literary ambitions. In the early 1740s, while he was still studying, he became acquainted with Johnson, then a struggling jobbing writer, and they formed a close friendship, with Johnson actively promoting Bathurst’s writing. In 1748 Johnson formed a club which met every Tuesday for dinner and conversation at the King’s Head, near St Paul’s Cathedral. Its nine members included three physicians, among them Bathurst.

Their friendship came to a sad end in 1762. Despairing of making a living from his practice as a physician and with little income from his writings, Bathurst joined the Army. Signing on as an Army doctor, he sailed on the British expedition to attack the port of Havana in Cuba. The siege dragged on for two months and many British troops died of disease. Among them was Bathurst who died of a fever before the fall of the city on 12 August.

It must have been Bathurst who arranged for the small boy to join Johnson’s household in 1752. Barber remained with Johnson for several years and then departed. In his replies to Boswell’s questionnaire, Barber described the first of possibly two episodes when he had left Johnson:

'He lived with Dr Johnson from 1752 to about 1757 – when upon some difference, he left him and served a Mr Farren Apothecary in Cheapside for about two years during which he called some times on his Master and was well received and was to return to him'.

The question of whether and when Johnson became concerned about Barber’s flight was settled, in part, in 1985 by Betty Rizzo’s important discovery of this notice in the Daily Advertiser of 14 and 15 February 1757:

'Whereas Francis Barber, a black Boy, has been for some months absent from his Master and has been said to have lived lately at Wapping, or near it; This is to give him notice, that if he will come to his Master, or apply to any of his Master’s Friends, he will be kindly received'.⁷

The phrasing of the replies to the questionnaire suggests that Barber was away from Johnson in 1757–1758. ⁹ What seems to have been a planned return to Johnson’s household did not take place since Barber joined the Navy in July 1758, remaining there until 1760. ¹⁰

Edward Ferrand

The apothecary to whom Barber fled can now be identified. His name was not spelt ‘Farren’, as rendered phonetically in the responses to Boswell’s questionnaire, but rather the sound-alike name ‘Ferrand’. Boswell, who seems to have been taking down Barber’s answers from dictation during an interview in London, assumed Barber’s spoken word ‘Ferrand’ to be ‘Farren’. ¹¹

The apothecary was Edward Ferrand, Citizen of London and Member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. ¹² Ferrand was born in Calverley, Yorkshire, a son of the clergyman Samuel Ferrand (1664 or 1665–?1733) and Anne (Marsh) Ferrand. Samuel Ferrand was Rector of Todwick, Yorkshire (1685–1687), Vicar of Todwick (1688–1733), Vicar of Calverley, Yorkshire (1688–1693) and Vicar of Rotheram (1704–1733). ¹³

Edward was one of six Samuel Ferrand sons. ¹⁴ He was baptised in Calverley on 2 November 1691. ¹⁵ The Ferrands of St Ives (near Bingley) were fairly prominent gentry in the West Riding and were featured in Burke’s Commoners as old landed gentry. However, the admission of Edward’s brother, Benjamin, to Cambridge as a sizar in 1708 suggests that the family in which Edward Ferrand grew up was far from wealthy. ¹⁶

Edward Ferrand married Anne Freeman on 7 September 1732 at St Anne’s, Soho, in Westminster. ¹⁷ He and Anne had a child, Anne (often as ‘Anna’ in Parish Registers of her children’s birth), christened 7 August 1735 at St Mary Le Bow, Cheapside. Edward and Anne Ferrand’s second daughter, Elizabeth was christened 6 March 1737, also at St Mary Le Bow. ¹⁸ The couple’s third known child was also a daughter, Barbara, christened 7 March 1739, again at St Mary Le Bow in keeping with family tradition. On the basis of her not being mentioned in her father’s Will, she is presumed not to have survived to 1769. ¹⁹ Ferrand’s will ²⁰ identified only one of the daughters, Anne, as having married by the time of his death. Anne (or Anna) Ferrand married Edward Astley on 9 January 1762 at the family church, St Mary Le Bow; Thomas Newton (1704–1782), Rector of St Mary le Bow and also the Bishop of Bristol, performed the ceremony, suggesting some eminence in the groom’s family, if not the bride’s. ²¹

Ferrand died on 21 January 1769 ²² but thus far neither a newspaper notice of his demise nor his burial place has been located. ²³ His Will was made on 28 April 1767, amended 17 January 1760 and proved on 18 March 1769. ²⁴ His executors were his son-in-law Edward Astley and Thomas Hartford (replaced by Edward Dickinson of Carey Street in January 1769). He left legacies to his eldest daughter Anne (Ferrand) Astley and his youngest daughter Elizabeth, suggesting that his wife and other daughter were dead by 1767.

These seemingly trivial biographical details tell us a good deal about Ferrand’s origins and social standing: his background is consistent with the view that in the early 18th century the profession was becoming attractive to the respectable but poor middle class. ²⁵ They also have some bearing on Barber’s residence in Cheapside. The repeated resort to the Parish Church of St Mary Le Bow suggests the Ferrands resided in that Parish in 1735, 1737, 1739 and 1762 with the implication that they remained resident in St Mary Le Bow Parish until (as noted below) they moved to Bloomsbury in the mid-1760s. (For Cheapside as it was when Ferrand and Barber lived there, see Figure 1). OPEN IN VIEWER

Ferrand’s professional career

So much for the man; what of his profession? By Ferrand’s time, the Society of Apothecaries was at its height: large, wealthy, respectable and powerful. ²⁶ It was strictly hierarchical, with orders of precedence anxiously maintained. ²⁷ Progress through the ranks was slow and depended on money and influence. The Society was governed by the Private Court, made up of the Master, the Upper Warden, the Renter Warden and a Court of Assistants. The Master and Wardens were elected each year by the Court of Assistants. Assistants were appointed for life. If one died, the vacancy was filled by election. Below the Court of Assistants were the Liverymen, again in strict order of seniority, and below them the Yeomen, once more in order of seniority. The call to the Livery was also determined by the Court of Assistants. ²⁸

Each step through the Society involved considerable expense, both in payment of fines and in costs, including having to pay for a Society dinner. But great prestige attached to appointment to the Livery, as well as the privileges of taking a second apprentice and voting for the Aldermen, from whom the Lord Mayor would be chosen, and for other City posts. ²⁹

Appointment to the Private Court placed the Assistant in a small elite body that had almost complete control of the activities of the Society. The number of Assistants varied with changes in the bye-laws but during Ferrand’s time it was usually in the twenties. In 1719 the Society was made up of the Master and Wardens and 27 Members of the Court of Assistants. Below them came 85 Liverymen and below them again 253 Yeomen. In 1752 the Society was made up of the Master and Wardens and 21 members of the Court of Assistants. Below them came 126 Liverymen and below them again 201 Yeomen. Ferrand, by then a Freeman of 29 years’ standing, appears 25th on the list of Liverymen. ³⁰

Any Apothecary with ambition to move up the ranks of the Society had to take on responsibilities in all its activities – educational, regulatory, trading and administrative. Ferrand’s climb towards the top involved him in all these areas. On 1 April 1707 ‘Edward Ferrand Son of Samuel Ferrand of Rotheram in the County of Yorke Clerke [was] examd [examined] apd [approved] and bound to James Holland for Eight years from this day’. ³¹ The fees amounted to seven shillings and two pence. The Society laid great emphasis on the selection and education of apprentices. Before being bound, a boy (usually aged about 14) would have to attend the Hall to be examined on his general knowledge and in particular his knowledge of Latin. ³² Over the next eight years he would attend classes in anatomy and chemistry and receive instruction in the medicinal properties of plants and herbs. He would be given practical training in pharmacy, the making and administering of medicines, and he would visit patients and physicians with his Master. At the end of his eight years, he would be examined by the Court of Assistants. If he were successful, he would pay his Fine and be sworn in and granted his freedom, which permitted him to open a shop in the City or within a seven-mile radius. ³³

Edward ‘Farrand’ (sic) was made a Freeman of the Company on 4 June 1723. ³⁴ This creates a puzzle as to why he became a freeman 16 years after commencing his Apprenticeship, as opposed to the required eight years. It may be that he lacked the funds to set up in business for himself. He was called to the Livery on 3 September 1736, paying £1 to the garden and the usual fees: he had already paid the £15 Fine on 6 April on binding his second Apprentice. ³⁵

Soon after becoming free of the company, he began taking on apprentices. During most of the years 1724–1755 Ferrand was training at least one Apprentice in his Cheapside shop. Ferrand had eight apprentices during his career, only three of whom are mentioned in the standard reference-work Eighteenth Century Medics. ³⁶ However, the Court Minute Books reveal five other names. His earliest apprentice Charles Dungate was apprenticed for £50 on 7 April 1724, not long after Ferrand became a freeman. ³⁷ John Berkley was apprenticed for £80 on 6 July 1731. ³⁸ Edward James Richard Whaley was apprenticed for a premium of £105 on 6 April 1736. ³⁹ Thomas Joynes was apprenticed for £150 on 7 October 1740. ⁴⁰ George Sainsbery (the son of a clergyman) was apprenticed for £100 on 6 October 1747. ⁴¹ John Lesow initially had been apprenticed to James Ward on 7 June 1743. On Ward’s death, Lesow was turned over to Ferrand on 6 March 1749/1750 and appears to have been made free on 1 October 1752. ⁴² Ferrand’s most successful apprentice was John Hingeston. The son of a clergyman in Ipswich, he was apprenticed on 4 February 1752. The premium was £40, substantially less then the usual sum Ferrand required. ⁴³ Half of the premium was paid by the Sons of the Clergy from proceeds of fund-raising events in April–May 1751 for the purpose of ‘placing out the Children of poor Clergymen [to be] Apprentices’. ⁴⁴ It seems to have been a notably effective piece of charity. Hingeston served his eight years and was made free on 1 May 1764. ⁴⁵ On 14 January 1783 he was admitted to the Livery. On the same day, Hingeston’s son, also John, was Apprenticed to his father. ⁴⁶ Ferrand’s final Apprentice was Samuel Spalding, Bound at a premium of £100 on 2 July 1754. ⁴⁷ When Barber came into Ferrand’s household in 1756, aged approximately 13 or 14, he could possibly have been offered the space in the household allotted to the Apprentices. Masters frequently lived above their shops and the uppermost floors with smaller quarters and wretched garrets were consigned to apprentice-boys and servants.

As part of the education of Apprentices, the Society organised ‘simpling days’, later known as ‘herbarizing’. These expeditions ventured out into the open land near the City, such as Hampstead Heath or Greenwich, where plants could be collected and studied for their medicinal properties. The outings were led by a freeman chosen for the purpose (the leader). ⁴⁸ The events were popular with apprentices but the expense to the leader was considerable as he had also to provide the dinner. Many of those chosen as leader preferred to pay a fine and be excused, rather than incur the expense. ⁴⁹ Ferrand was chosen twice as leader of the private herbarizing. On the first occasion (21 March 1747) he led the expedition but on the second (7 June 1748) he paid the fine of £5 rather than accept the appointment. ⁵⁰

The important step up to the Court of Assistants occurred when he was elected on 16 March 1758 and paid the fine of £10 and £1 to the garden plus the usual fees. ⁵¹ Once elected, his responsibilities soon increased: on 21 September he was appointed an Auditor of the Master’s and Wardens’ Accounts, a position to which he was appointed on four more occasions over the next seven years. ⁵²

The importance of the careful study of botany to the methodical and painstaking making of medications had led to the establishment in 1675 of the famous Apothecaries’ Physic Garden in Chelsea (Figure 2). ⁵³ On six occasions between 1758 and 1766 Ferrand was appointed to the committee for managing the affairs of the garden. ⁵⁴ The society’s educational role extended beyond its own members: on 17 August 1758 a Committee of the master, wardens and three others was established at the Navy’s request to examine the dispensers for Navy hospitals. Ferrand was one of those appointed to the Committee and he served on 11 occasions over the next four years, the last being on 21 October 1762. ⁵⁵ OPEN IN VIEWER

Another aspect of the society’s business was the enforcement by search of the laws concerning medicines. By its charter, the society had the power of supervision over anyone practising pharmacy within a seven-mile radius of the City, with the right to search premises, to destroy defective drugs and to punish offenders by a fine. ⁵⁶ It was a duty the society took very seriously. Ferrand was appointed to lead such a search on 15 June 1758, on 11 June 1761 and again on 26 June 1766. ⁵⁷

Much of the prosperity of the Society in Ferrand’s time was due to the trading activities of its two joint-stock companies, the Laboratory Stock (established 1672) and the Navy Stock (1703). ⁵⁸ The Laboratory Stock was created for the manufacture and sale of drugs while the Navy Stock supplied medicines to Royal Navy surgeons. The controlling shares in the companies were held by freemen who received stock for their own businesses at discount, as well as dividends. Ferrand was involved in the running of each of these bodies. He was appointed a Liveryman Member of the Committee of Navy Stock on 5 December 1757 and he was elected an Auditor of the Treasurers’ Accounts and the Committee of the Navy Stock’s Accounts. He was re-elected on 7 December 1758 and was chosen as Deputy Treasurer. ⁵⁹ In 1765, by then Renter Warden, he served once again on the Committee of Navy Stock. ⁶⁰ On 3 July 1767 he was appointed a Member of the Committee for managing the affairs of the Laboratory Stock. ⁶¹

Ferrand was also involved in the society’s general administration. He served from 1758 to 1761 on the committee for inspecting and ordering payment of the Company’s bills, on a committee to recover unpaid rent from a tenant of the wharf at Black Fryars Stairs and a committee for selling land at the wharf for the building of a bridge across the Thames. ⁶²

From 1758 until 1764 Ferrand remained in the ranks of the many Assistants in the annual catalogue of the several members of the society of apothecaries; his business being listed as in Cheapside. ⁶³ Thomas Mortimer’s The universal director (1763) was one of the only early London trade guides to create lists sorted by profession, including apothecaries; it included among its listings ‘Edward Ferrand’ as located in Cheapside. ⁶⁴

On 20 August 1765 he was elected Renter Warden (the junior of the two Wardens). ⁶⁵ The following year, on 19 August 1766 he moved up one rank to be the Upper Warden. ⁶⁶ But he never took the final step to the office of Master. On 20 August 1767 he sought re-election as Upper Warden but was defeated. Thereafter he appeared at Court meetings as an Assistant. ⁶⁷ In the annual list, Catalogue of the … society of Apothecaries, from 1745 through to 1766, Ferrand appears as in Cheapside. However, in 1767–1768 he had moved up in the world, now having an address on Southampton-row. ⁶⁸ By the Catalogue of 23 September 1769 he had vanished from the list, correctly since he had died on 21 January 1769. On 15 March 1769 a new Court Assistant was elected to replace Ferrand. ⁶⁹ Perhaps a combination of the political setback of his defeat in the election of 1767 and declining health prevented his rise to Master which otherwise would have been a most splendid capstone of a man’s career as a London Apothecary.

The general picture of Ferrand that emerges from the Court Minute books is of an ambitious, successful and wealthy apothecary, rising steadily in the manner of Hogarth’s ‘Industrious Apprentice’, taking all the right steps that might lead eventually to appointment as Master.

Ferrand appears on the List of the Liverymen of the City in 1768. ⁷⁰ He was involved in many charitable enterprises. William Freeman’s A Complete list, of … the Royal Corporation, For the relief of the poor widows and children of clergymen … 1733, in its list of ‘the present Court of Assistants’, mentions ‘Edward Ferrand’ but without mention of profession or address. That same Ferrand served on the same Court of Assistants as late as 1765. ⁷¹ In 1756 Edward Ferrand was among the ‘6 Apothecaries, who administer their Medicines gratis’ to the patients at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunaticks; this is certainly Ferrand the Apothecary. ⁷² ‘Edward Ferrand, Esq.; Cheapside’ was in the List of the Governors of the Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem in 1756 and 1758 and he was a steward of the same in 1766. ⁷³ He also served St Bartholomew’s Hospital, serving as a Steward for the Annual Venison Feast of the Board of Governors in 1763 and himself a Governor by 1767. ⁷⁴

Barber’s employment

The impulse to Christian charity may have driven, in part, Ferrand’s taking in of the runaway servant. However, Barber was as likely to have seemed a good candidate for an apothecary’s lad of all work. He must have done well enough as he served Ferrand for about two years. ⁷⁵ Servants were rarely kept for merely ornamental purposes in Georgian London; they had to pull their own weight or be dismissed by their masters.

In employing Barber there may have been another factor at work, in addition to the charitable impulse. Masters of the great guilds and societies faced considerable difficulty in recruiting journeymen or binding apprentices, especially in time of a major war such as the trans-global Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763. The issue was raised in 1738 when the Society petitioned the City against the law prohibiting employment of foreigners (journeymen not Free of the City). The City was again petitioned in 1747 but without success. ⁷⁶ On 7 February 1758 the issue arose once more when several freemen petitioned the Society, complaining that they could not be supplied with journeymen Free of the City or qualified to serve there, most of them having gone into His Majesty’s service. The petitioners complained that they could not, by the laws of the City, employ foreign journeymen nor could they get properly qualified apprentices. These shortages ‘had put them in great difficulties in carrying out their business’. On 7 December Ferrand was appointed to a Committee tasked with petitioning the Lord Mayor and Common Council of the City of London about the matter ⁷⁷ (Barber had joined the Navy on 7 July). As a result, an Act of the Court was passed. It recited that ‘by reason of the present war, the Apothecaries residing within this City and the Liberties thereof cannot be supplied with a sufficient number of journeymen who are free of the same City’. The Act made it lawful to grant licences permitting such employment ‘during the Continuance of the present War and for 12 months after the expiration thereof’. ⁷⁸

How did Francis Barber meet Ferrand? Ferrand did not attend Johnson’s church of choice, St Clement Danes in the Strand, nor St Bride’s, Fleet Street (which was close to Gough Square). His preferred and his parish church of St Mary le Bow in Cheapside was relatively distant from these. One possible manner in which the two might have met is another heretofore murky character referred to in the Life, the Apothecary William Deyman of No 16 Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, whose name was given in the text as ‘Diamond’, impeding his identification. Dr Bathurst – Barber’s former master’s son – and Mr ‘Diamond’ dined with Anna Williams and Johnson ‘every Sunday’ ⁷⁹ (Appendix).

Another possible link with Ferrand was through a resident of the Gough Square household of which Johnson was the head, Robert Levet or Levett (1705–1782), who was ‘a member of Samuel Johnson’s household from before 1756 … to 1782’; Levet had met Johnson in 1746 and was a provider of medical services although whether he was a ‘“Physician in ordinary”, a surgeon, an apothecary, or a combination of the three together’ has baffled his biographers. ⁸⁰

Whether Barber came to know of Ferrand through these members of the profession or through some odd chance walking through Cheapside when displeased with his situation at Gough Square, he did opt to find his refuge, or at least steady work, there. It seems clear from reasons not explained in the sources that Barber thought Ferrand’s household and shop was a good place to which to escape. We know that Johnson’s runaway notice was printed in the Daily Advertiser (and perhaps in other papers of the day) in February 1757 and so it is not outside probability that Ferrand not only knew that young Barber had fled his master but also that his master was looking for his return. Apparently Ferrand had motives for allowing Barber to stay there rather than returning him to his master, since Barber made clear to Boswell that he was in sporadic contact with Johnson during the time when he was estranged. Runaway servants were not tracked down as assiduously as runaway apprentices since there was no contract which bound the youth to servitude. ⁸¹

Whether he was an industrious or an idle youth, Barber’s lack of reading and writing knowledge of anything but basic English would have presented an insuperable bar to his rising in the apothecary’s craft. There were a few successful businessmen of colour in the Georgian period, usually shopkeepers or victuallers. ⁸² But the apothecary’s craft required proof of Latin erudition, botany and chemistry, as well as good mathematics for book-keeping, middling written English and a fair amount of business sense. The requirement that Apprentices demonstrate competency in reading and writing neo-Latin would alone have been sufficient to prevent Barber from being apprenticed to Ferrand. Barber was no scholar though he was in his last years able enough to earn some money teaching in a small village school in Burntwood, near Johnson’s home city of Lichfield.

Even had he been as great a Latinist as his master Samuel Johnson, he would have had no hopes of advancement in medicine: the City of London had earlier known a smattering of Afro-British apprentices such as John Satia who completed his apprenticeship and was made a Freeman of London in 1730. However, in reaction to Satia’s achievement, as Chater notes, ‘The city of London authorities promptly passed a regulation forbidding the apprenticeship of black people’, a ruling less motivated, Chater argues, by racist attitudes as by a guild mentality that wished to keep the city elites restricted. ⁸³

So how does this sketch of the ‘Life of Edward Ferrand’ help us with the ‘Life of Barber’ and, by implication, help us better to understand the Life of Johnson? We can say with confidence that the man to whom Barber fled in 1756 or 1757 was not just any old London or Westminster Apothecary. He was a man from Anglican North Country gentry roots, born into a family used to having a certain amount of ‘pull’ in their locality as squires and as parsons. Both Edward’s father and his brother were Cambridge graduates and clergymen of the Church of England, and Edward, also of the Established Church, was involved in numerous charitable societies. These activities not only certified his respectability as a man of wealth but also connected him to a network of Anglican benevolence, especially to financially distressed youths and the mentally ill. Furthermore, he was a guild-member of the Society of Apothecaries, an officially-endorsed practitioner who had gone through his own lengthy formal apprenticeship and in turn had become a Master himself, ascending from the Society’s Yeomanry into its Livery where he was serving when Francis Barber entered his life. He was then aged about 65. After his years with Barber, Ferrand had even risen to the Court of Assistants, Renter Warden and Upper Warden. In this steady climb up the ranks of his profession, Ferrand was quite unlike the self-credentialled ‘Dr’ Levett, Johnson’s housemate who lived and died among London’s lower classes.

Barber’s time with Ferrand came to an end in 1758 when he decided to return to Johnson’s service. However, he then had a dramatic change of mind: on 7 July he joined the Navy as a volunteer. ⁸⁴ He served for two years as a landman (the lowest level of seaman, effectively a novice) successively on HMS Princess Royal, HMS Stag, HMS Raven and again on HMS Stag. But his naval service came to an abrupt end on 8 August 1760 when he was, in his own words ‘discharg’d thro’ Dr Johnson’s application, without any wish of his own’. ⁸⁵

It was a well-intentioned intervention by Johnson but an unwelcome one. Barber nevertheless decided to return to Johnson’s service and found him living in the Inner Temple. They did not exactly all live happily ever after. However Barber and Johnson both survived the rivalries and disputes of Johnson’s homes and Barber was at Johnson’s deathbed in 1784 and selected in his will as his residuary legatee.

Did the Ferrand episode alter the Johnson–Barber relationship? It certainly proved that Barber was free at law to come and go as he pleased and that he was willing to go off in a huff if he felt his place in Johnson’s home was disagreeable to him. Though he was retrieved from the Navy by Johnson’s guile, he seems to have been better able, after his years working for another master and going to sea, to hold his own in Johnson’s quarrelsome household.