Frank Utten Purchas 1861–1909: Physician in Wales and descendant of slave owners

On 25 June 1891, the wedding of Dr. Frank Utten Purchas and Elizabeth Pryce-Jones took place in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, now in the county of Powys. The wedding was the first such ceremony to take place in the new All Saints church, built by Miss Pryce-Jones’s father, Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones. The event was described in the Montgomeryshire Express as one ‘in which so much public interest of a flattering character was evinced’. ¹ As is usual, much more detail was given about the bride than the groom but it is surprising that only one member of Dr. Purchas’s family was mentioned as being present at the ceremony – a maternal cousin, the Reverend James Utten Todd of London. However, inspection of the 1901 census throws some light on the reason. Dr. Purchas was born in Jamaica.

European interest in the West Indies began during the 16th century and made many merchants and bankers wealthy during the following three centuries owing to the lucrative sugar and coffee plantations created there, and to the slave trade. ² Jamaica was first settled by Europeans in 1664, and by 1673, there were 7700 Whites on the island and 9500 people of African origin brought in as slaves. Over the next 50 years, the number of Whites remained constant while the number of Africans rose to 74,000 as the slave trade boomed.^3,4 The wealth and climate attracted settlers, providing them with a comfortable lifestyle and fortunes that enabled plantation owners to send their sons back to Britain to receive the classical education that prepared them for entry to university and the professions. ⁵ Objections to slavery towards the end of the 18th century resulted in the end of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, followed by the emancipation of slaves on British territory in 1833. ⁶

Religion played a part both in the promotion and in the abolition of slavery. Nonconformists, for example, supported slavery prior to the end of the 18th century. Some Welsh settlers in America were slave owners, and their Calvinistic beliefs allowed justification of the practices theologically. However, feelings began to change, and Nonconformists were leaders in the fight to end the slave trade. Quakers began the campaign for abolition, and the founder of Wesleyan Methodism, John Wesley, famously described the trade as ‘That execrable sum of all villainies’. ⁷ Baptist minister, Morgan John Rhys, published essays attacking slavery and these became influential in the abolition movement. ⁸ As the Industrial Revolution grew from the end of the 18th century, Nonconformists – typically ordinary, working people – felt an empathy with other groups of disadvantaged workers including slaves. There is at least one contradiction to this, however. During the early 1800s, Gulliford Nonconformist chapel near Lympstone in Devon was financed by investments with the South Sea Company, which was involved in slave trading.^9–11

The connection between the Todd and Purchas families and the West Indies goes back to the 18th century. In 1795, the marriage took place in Surrey, England, of Thomas Todd and Jamaica-born Elizabeth Rochefort Utten. ¹² Todd was a former Royal Navy captain turned West-India merchant. They had two sons, Utten Todd and Richard Todd. The elder son, Utten Todd, made his way back to his mother’s land of birth to manage properties inherited from his maternal grandparents, and in 1828 married Louisa Lamont in Trelawny parish, on the north side of the island. He made his home there and had interests in several properties either as owner or as manager. These amounted to about 2000 acres, with nearly 400 slaves at the time of emancipation, for which the Todds obtained over £8000 in compensation. He and his wife produced 12 children, and one of the daughters, Harriet, married Henry Purchas in 1858. Later, their son – the future Dr Frank Utten Purchas – was born in 1861. ¹³ Back in England, Richard Todd married and raised a family of several sons and daughters, including the James Utten Todd who later attended Dr. Purchas’s wedding in Newtown. Richard Todd maintained links with his elder brother in Jamaica, for in 1851 his occupation was given as West India Merchant.^14–17 A family tree is shown in Figure 1. OPEN IN VIEWER

Frank Utten Purchas was sent from Jamaica to Britain to acquire his education, and attended the Godolphin School in Hammersmith. ¹⁸ Upon finishing his education, he returned to Jamaica to work on his father’s lands. ¹⁹ The prosperity of the West Indian plantations had taken a downward turn after emancipation, and by the time Dr. Purchas was born, half the plantations in Jamaica had closed down. This was partly because the labour previously available free of charge was now gone and partly because the protected sugar market had been opened to free trade. ²⁰ However, half the plantations did survive and Frank Purchas’s role probably involved observing and learning how to manage the day to day work carried out by the labourers, including planting, harvesting and operating the mills and boiling houses. He may have supervised the work of the overseers and the bookkeepers who kept tallies of the sugar produced and of other quantifiable amounts. ²¹

In 1883 he returned to Britain, this time to Edinburgh, to commence training for a future in Medicine. He attended Edinburgh University’s medical school, which was becoming increasingly famous for its advances in new fields of health including physiology and pathology, and for the great names among its staff. ²² James Simpson introduced chloroform anaesthesia in 1847, and in the decade prior to Purchas’s arrival, Joseph Lister, pioneer in the use of antiseptic, became chair of clinical surgery.^23,24 The university’s tercentenary celebrations took place while Purchas was a student and were attended by Louis Pasteur among other famous names.^25,26 Purchas registered with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery status in December 1887, ²⁷ and after a year spent working as a medical assistant in Kincardineshire, arrived in Newtown as assistant to Drs Hall and Ferguson.

This was at a time of religious unrest in the area where many of the people held an attachment to Nonconformity, with the Anglican faith, or Church of England, being associated with the land-owing and ruling classes. ²⁸ Dr Purchas will have been aware of violent protests over tithe payments and rents to the Anglican Church and occasional aggressive threats to church personnel. Meanwhile, he achieved his Doctor of Medicine status in 1890 and was appointed physician to the local workhouse and post office. ²⁹ In early 1891, he travelled to Germany to find out more about a revolutionary treatment for tuberculosis.^19,30 This was Robert Koch’s important but controversial discovery of tuberculin, found in experiments to cure but also to pose great risks.^31,32 A photograph of Dr. Purchas is shown in Figure 2. OPEN IN VIEWER

Dr. Purchas’s wealthy background, education and professional status made him a very suitable match for Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones’s younger daughter. Sir Pryce at that time was High Sheriff of Montgomeryshire and had been M.P. for Montgomeryshire Boroughs twice during the late 1800s. ³³ Purchas joined his future father-in-law as a freemason in 1890. ³⁴ The wedding was celebrated with lavish decorations in the area around Pryce-Jones’s main business premises, and along the route to the church there were flags to be seen and banners bearing good luck messages. From early morning cannon sounded from grounds of the Pryce-Jones family home, and the schoolchildren of the town, as well as all Pryce-Jones’s employees, were given a day’s holiday. Dr. Purchas’s best man was his friend Dr. Scott Thompson from Scotland, and his cousin, Rev. James Utten Purchas, conducted part of the ceremony along with the Bishop of St. Asaph and a vicar from a neighbouring parish. During the late afternoon, the newly married couple left by train for their honeymoon in Scotland.¹

The Purchases made their home in The Bank, one of the streets in the centre of town, which had a pleasant, elevated position overlooking a cobbled area that used to be part of the old horse market. Their household Join included four servants and Dr Purchas ran a surgery at the house, which remained in place until a new surgery in another part of the town was built.^35,36 In 1896, a baby girl was born to the couple and given the name Eleanor, the same name as the child’s maternal grandmother. She was also given the middle names Margaret Utten.

As well as the surgery at The Bank, Dr. Purchas worked at the Montgomeryshire Infirmary, situated at the other end of town, next to the river and the flannel exchange. Six months after his wedding he was invited to open the annual New Year infirmary ball and, two months later, was thanked for his work at the institution along with the other medical staff.^37,38 The infirmary was to become a large part of his life and fourteen years later, at the annual meeting of the directors in February 1906, Dr. Purchas, now senior medical officer, was given a special vote of thanks:

Following upon his valuable efforts in 1904, Dr. Purchas has again kindly come to the assistance of the institution in procuring donations to a special fund for the refurnishing of the operating room at the cost of £37.0s.5d. The Board desires to express their sincere thanks.

Dr. Purchas returned thanks on behalf of himself and his colleagues, who, he said, undertook the work connected with the infirmary as a labour of love. ³⁹

By the time of this meeting of directors, however, the infirmary was proving inadequate and thoughts turned to building a new infirmary. Dr. Purchas supported plans for a new establishment and gave advice on the requirements and on fundraising.¹⁹ This new infirmary did indeed come to be built – on a prime site surrounded by open fields by the side of the road leading out of town, the plot being gifted by Sir Pryce’s other son-in-law, Edward Powell. ⁴⁰ But Dr. Purchas was never to see it. Two years before it opened its doors and shortly after his 48th birthday in January 1909, he died after a lingering illness. Ironically, he died in the Purchas’s new family home named ‘Homestay’, adjacent to the site of the soon-to-be built replacement infirmary. The funeral took place at a church a few miles away where the grave within the Pryce-Jones family plot was lined with violets from the garden at ‘Homestay’. (Figure 3). At the opening ceremony of the new infirmary, a tribute was paid to Dr Purchas and his efforts. ⁴¹ OPEN IN VIEWER

Conclusion

Frank Purchas was born into a slave-owning family in Jamiaca. After working in that environment for a number of years, he left it and entered the medical profession via training at the prestigious medical school in Edinburgh. He accepted a permanent position in Montgomeryshire and, like other incomers, came to love life in the Welsh county. He settled down, established a family, and became admired and respected for his work with the community. His obituary in the Montgomeryshire Express ends with the words:

Removed in the prime of life from a sphere where he was eminently useful, this estimable citizen will be much missed but he will long live in the memory of a people by whom he was universally esteemed.