ST. JOHN LONG.
In the entire history of charlatanism, however, it would be difficult
to point to a career more extraordinary than the brilliant though
brief one of St. John Long, in our own cultivated London, at a time
scarcely more than a generation distant from the present. Though a
pretender, and consummate quack, he was distinguished from the vulgar
herd of cheats by the possession of enviable personal endowments, a
good address, and a considerable quantity of intellect. The son of an
Irish basket-maker, he was born in or near Doneraile, and in his
boyhood assisted in his father's humble business. His artistic
talents, which he cultivated for some time without the aid of a
drawing-master, enabled him, while still quite a lad, to discontinue
working as a rush-weaver. For a little while he stayed at Dublin, and
had some intercourse with Daniel Richardson the painter; after which
he moved to Limerick county, and started on his own account as a
portrait-painter, and an instructor in the use of the brush. That his
education was not superior to what might be expected in a clever
youth of such lowly extraction, the following advertisement, copied
from a Limerick paper of February 10, 1821, attests:--
"Mr John Saint John Long, Historical and Portrait Painter, the only
pupil of Daniel Richardson, Esq., late of Dublin, proposes, during his
stay in Limerick, to take portraits from Ittalian Head to whole
length; and parson desirous of getting theirs done, in historical,
hunting, shooting, fishing, or any other character; or their family,
grouped in one or two paintings from life-size to miniature, so as to
make an historical subject, choseing one from history."
"The costume of the period from whence it would be taken will be
particularly attended to, and the character of each proserved."
"He would take views in the country, terms per agreement. Specimens to
be seen at his Residence, No. 116, Georges Street, opposite the
Club-house, and at Mr James Dodds, Paper-staining Warehouse, Georges
Street.
"Mr Long is advised by his several friends to give instructions in the
Art of Painting in Oils, Opeak, Chalk, and Water-colours, &c., to a
limited number of Pupils of Respectability two days in each week at
stated hours."
"Gentlemen are not to attend at the same hour the Ladies attend at. He
will supply them in water-colours, &c."
How the young artist acquired the name of St. John is a mystery. When
he blazed into notoriety, his admirers asserted that it came to him in
company with noble blood that ran in his veins; but more unkind
observers declared that it was assumed, as being likely to tickle the
ears of his credulous adherents. His success as a provincial
art-professor was considerable. The gentry of Limerick liked his manly
bearing and lively conversation, and invited him to their houses to
take likenesses of their wives, flirt with their daughters, and
accompany their sons on hunting and shooting excursions. Emboldened by
good luck in his own country, and possibly finding the patronage of
the impoverished aristocracy of an Irish province did not yield him a
sufficient income, he determined to try his fortune in England. Acting
on this resolve, he hastened to London, and with ingratiating manners
and that persuasive tongue which nine Irishmen out of ten possess, he
managed to get introductions to a few respectable drawing-rooms. He
even obtained some employment from Sir Thomas Lawrence, as
colour-grinder and useful assistant in the studio; and was elected a
member of the Royal Society of Literature, and also of the Royal
Asiatic Society. But like many an Irish adventurer, before and after
him, he found it hard work to live on his impudence, pleasant manners,
and slender professional acquirements. He was glad to colour
anatomical drawings for the professors and pupils of one of the minor
surgical schools of London; and in doing so picked up a few pounds and
a very slight knowledge of the structure of the human frame. The
information so obtained stimulated him to further researches, and, ere
a few more months of starvation had passed over, he deemed himself
qualified to cure all the bodily ailments to which the children of
Adam are subject.
He invented a lotion or liniment endowed with the remarkable faculty
of distinguishing between sound and unsound tissues. To a healthy part
it was as innocuous as water; but when applied to a surface under
which any seeds of disease were lurking, it became a violent irritant,
creating a sore over the seat of mischief, and stimulating nature to
throw off the morbid virus. He also instructed his patients to inhale
the vapour which rose from a certain mixture compounded by him in
large quantities, and placed in the interior of a large mahogany case,
which very much resembled an upright piano. In the sides of this piece
of furniture were apertures, into which pipe-stalks were screwed for
the benefit of afflicted mortals, who, sitting on easy lounges, smoked
away like a party of Turkish elders.
With these two agents St. John Long engaged to combat every form of
disease--gout, palsy, obstructions of the liver, cutaneous affections;
but the malady which he professed to have the most complete command
over was consumption. His success in surrounding himself with patients
was equal to his audacity. He took a large house in Harley Street, and
fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to consult him; and
for some seasons every morning and afternoon (from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.)
the public way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his door. The
old and the young alike flocked to him; but nine of his patients out
of every ten were ladies. For awhile the foolish of every rank in
London seemed to have but one form in which to display their folly.
Needy matrons from obscure suburban villages came with their guineas
to consult the new oracle; and ladies of the highest rank, fashion,
and wealth, hastened to place themselves and their daughters at the
mercy of a pretender's ignorance.
Unparalleled were the scenes which the reception-rooms of that
notorious house in Harley Street witnessed. In one room were two
enormous inhalers, with flexible tubes running outwards in all
directions, and surrounded by dozens of excited women--ladies of
advanced years, and young girls giddy with the excitement of their
first London season--puffing from their lips the medicated vapour, or
waiting till a mouth-piece should be at liberty for their pink lips.
In another room the great magician received his patients. Some he
ordered to persevere in inhalation, others he divested of their
raiment, and rubbed his miraculous liniment into their backs, between
their shoulders or over their bosoms. Strange to say, these lavations
and frictions--which invariably took place in the presence of third
persons, nurses or invalids--had very different results. The fluid,
which, as far as the eye could discern, was taken out of the same
vessel, and was the same for all, would instantaneously produce on one
lady a burning excoriation, which had in due course to be dressed with
cabbage-leaves; but on another would be so powerless that she could
wash in it, or drink it copiously, like ordinary pump-water, with
impunity. "Yes," said the wizard, "that was his system, and such were
its effects. If a girl had tubercles in her lungs, the lotion applied
to the outward surface of her chest would produce a sore, and extract
the virus from the organs of respiration. If a gentleman had a gouty
foot, and washed it in this new water of Jordan, at the cost of a
little temporary irritation the vicious particles would leave the
affected part. But on any sound person who bathed in it the fluid
would have no power whatever."
The news of the wonderful remedy flew to every part of the kingdom;
and from every quarter sick persons, wearied of a vain search after an
alleviation of their sufferings, flocked to London with hope renewed
once more. St. John Long had so many applicants for attention that he
was literally unable to give heed to all of them; and he availed
himself of this excess of business to select for treatment those cases
only where there seemed every chance of a satisfactory result. In this
he was perfectly candid, for time after time he declared that he would
take no one under his care who seemed to have already gone beyond
hope. On one occasion he was called into the country to see a
gentleman who was in the last stage of consumption; and after a brief
examination of the poor fellow's condition, he said frankly--
"Sir, you are so ill that I cannot take you under my charge at
present. You want stamina. Take hearty meals of beefsteaks and strong
beer; and if you are better in ten days, I'll do my best for you and
cure you."
It was a safe offer to make, for the sick man lived little more than
forty-eight hours longer.
But, notwithstanding the calls of his enormous practice, St. John Long
found time to enjoy himself. He went a great deal into fashionable
society, and was petted by the great and high-born, not only because
he was a notoriety, but because of his easy manners, imposing
carriage, musical though hesitating voice, and agreeable disposition.
He was tall and slight, but strongly built; and his countenance, thin
and firmly set, although frank in expression, caused beholders to
think highly of his intellectual refinement, as well as of his
decision and energy. Possibly his personal advantages had no slight
influence with his feminine applauders. But he possessed other
qualities yet more fitted to secure their esteem--an Irish impetuosity
of temperament and a sincere sympathy with the unfortunate. He was an
excellent horseman, hunting regularly, and riding superb horses. On
one occasion, as he was cantering round the Park, he saw a man strike
a woman, and without an instant's consideration he pulled up, leaped
to the ground, seized the fellow bodily, and with one enormous effort
flung him slap over the Park rails.
But horse-exercise was the only masculine pastime he was very fond of.
He was very temperate in his habits; and although Irish gentlemen
_used_ to get tipsy, he never did. Painting, music, and the society of
a few really superior women, were the principal sources of enjoyment
to which this brilliant charlatan had recourse in his leisure hours.
Many were the ladies of rank and girls of gentle houses who would have
gladly linked their fortunes to him and his ten thousand a year.[20]
But though numerous matrimonial overtures were made to him, he
persevered in his bachelor style of life; and although he was received
with peculiar intimacy into the privacy of female society, scandal
never even charged him with a want of honour or delicacy towards
women, apart from his quackery. Indeed, he broke off his professional
connection with one notorious lady of rank, rather than gratify her
eccentric wish to have her likeness taken by him in that remarkable
costume--or no costume at all--in which she was wont to receive her
visitors.
[20] A writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1843 observes:--"In
England, after Sir Astley, whose superiority of mind or dexterity of
hand stood uncontested, another practitioner in that category of the
Faculty of which it has been said, 'Periculis nostris, et experimenta
per mortes agunt medici,' the once famous St John Long was, I believe,
the most largely requited. I had some previous knowledge of him, and
in 1830 he showed me his pass-book with his bankers, Sir Claude Scott
and Co., displaying a series of credits from July, 1829, to July,
1830, or a single year's operations, to the extent of £13,400, But the
delusion soon vanished. One act of liberality on his part at that
period, however, I think it fair to record. To a gentleman who had
rendered him some literary aid, which his defective education made
indispensable, he presented double, not only what he was assured would
be an ample remuneration, but what exceeded fourfold the sum his
friend would have been satisfied with, or had expected."
In the exercise of his art he treated women unscrupulously. Amidst the
crowd of ladies who thronged his reception-rooms he moved, smiling,
courteous, and watchful, listening to their mutual confidences about
their maladies, the constitutions of their relations, and their family
interests. Every stray sentence the wily man caught up and retained in
his memory, for future use. To induce those to become his patients who
had nothing the matter with them, and consequently would go to swell
the list of his successful cases, he used the most atrocious
artifices.
"Ah, Lady Emily, I saw your dear sister," he would say to a patient,
"yesterday--driving in the Park--lovely creature she is! Ah, poor
thing!"
"Poor thing, Mr. Long!--why, Catherine is the picture of health!"
"Ah," the adroit fellow would answer, sadly, "you think so--so does
she--and so does every one besides myself who sees her;
but--but--unless prompt remedial measures are taken that dear girl,
ere two short years have flown, will be in her grave." This mournful
prophecy would be speedily conveyed to Catherine's ears; and, under
the influence of that nervous dread of death which almost invariably
torments the youthful and healthy, she would implore the great
physician to save her from her doom. It was not difficult to quiet her
anxious heart. Attendance at 41, Harley Street, for six weeks, during
which time a sore was created on her breast by the corrosive liniment,
and cured by the application of cabbage-leaves and nature's kindly
processes, enabled her to go out once more into the world, sounding
her saviour's praises, and convinced that she might all her life long
expose herself to the most trying changes of atmosphere, without
incurring any risk of chest-affection.
But Mr. Long had not calculated that, although nine hundred and
ninety-nine constitutions out of every thousand would not be
materially injured by his treatment, he would at rare intervals meet
with a patient of delicate organization, on whom the application of
his blistering fluid would be followed by the most serious
consequences. In the summer of the year 1830, two young ladies, of a
good Irish family, named Cashin, came to London, and were inveigled
into the wizard's net. They were sisters; and the younger of them,
being in delicate health, called on Mr. Long, accompanied by her
elder sister. The ordinary course of inhalation and rubbing was
prescribed for the invalid; and ere long, frightened by the quack's
prediction that, unless she was subjected to immediate treatment, she
would fall into a rapid consumption, the other young lady submitted to
have the corrosive lotion rubbed over her back and shoulders. The
operation was performed on the 3rd of August. Forthwith a violent
inflammation was established: the wound, instead of healing, became
daily and hourly of a darker and more unhealthy aspect; unable to bear
the cabbage-leaves on the raw and suppurating surface, the sufferer
induced her nurse to apply a comforting poultice to the part, but no
relief was obtained from it. St. John Long was sent for, and the 14th
(just eleven days after the exhibition of the corrosive liniment), he
found his victim in a condition of extreme exhaustion and pain, and
suffering from continued sickness. Taking these symptoms as a mere
matter of course, he ordered her a tumbler of mulled wine, and took
his departure. On the following day (Sunday, 15th) he called again,
and offered to dress the wound. But the poor girl, suddenly waking up
to the peril of her position, would not permit him to touch her, and,
raising herself with an effort in her bed, exclaimed--
"Indeed, Mr. Long, you shall not touch my back again--you very well
know that when I became your patient I was in perfect health, but now
you are killing me!" Without losing his self-command at this pathetic
appeal, he looked into her earnest eyes, and said, impressively--
"Whatever inconvenience you are now suffering, it will be of short
duration, for in two or three days you will be in better health than
you ever were in your life."
But his words did not restore her confidence. The next day (the 16th)
Mr., now Sir Benjamin, Brodie was sent for, and found on the wretched
girl's back an inflamed surface about the size of a plate, having in
the centre a spot as large as the palm of his hand, which was in a
state of mortification. The time for rescue was past. Sir Benjamin
prescribed a saline draught to allay the sickness; and within
twenty-four hours Catherine Cashin, who a fortnight before had been in
perfect health and high spirits--an unusually lovely girl, in her 25th
year--lay upon her bed in the quiet of death.
An uproar immediately ensued; and there was an almost universal cry
from the intelligent people of the country, that the empiric should be
punished. A coroner's inquest was held; and, in spite of the efforts
made by the charlatan's fashionable adherents, a verdict was obtained
from the jury of man-slaughter against St. John Long. Every attempt
was made by a set of influential persons of high rank to prevent the
law from taking its ordinary course. The issue of the warrant for the
apprehension of the offender was most mysteriously and scandalously
delayed: and had it not been for the energy of Mr. Wakley, who, in a
long and useful career of public service, has earned for himself much
undeserved obloquy, the affair would, even after the verdict of the
coroner's jury, have been hushed up. Eventually, however, on Saturday,
October 30, St. John Long was placed in the dock of old Bailey,
charged with the manslaughter of Miss Cashin. Instead of deserting him
in his hour of need, his admirers--male and female--presented
themselves at the Central Criminal Court, to encourage him by their
sympathy, and to give evidence in his favour. The carriages of
distinguished members of the nobility brought fair freights of the
first fashion of May-fair down to the gloomy court-house that adjoins
Newgate; and belles of the first fashion sat all through the day in
the stifling atmosphere of a crowded court, looking languishingly at
their hero in the dock, who, from behind his barrier of rue and
fennel, distributed to them smiles of grateful recognition. The Judge
(Mr. Justice Park) manifested throughout the trial a strong
partisanship with the prisoner; and the Marchioness of Ormond, who was
accommodated with a seat on the bench by his Lordship's side,
conversed with him in whispers during the proceedings. The summing up
was strongly in favour of the accused; but, in spite of the partial
judge, and an array of fashionable witnesses in favour of the
prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.
As it was late on Saturday when the verdict was given, the judge
deferred passing sentence till the following Monday. At the opening of
the court on that day a yet greater crush of the _beau monde_ was
present; and the judge, instead of awarding a term of imprisonment to
the guilty man, condemned him merely to pay a fine of £250, or to be
imprisoned till such fine was paid. Mr. St. John Long immediately took
a roll of notes from his pocket, paid the mulct, and leaving the court
with his triumphant friends, accepted a seat in Lord Sligo's
curricle, and drove to the west end of the town.
The scandalous sentence was a fit conclusion to the absurd scenes
which took place in the court of the Old Bailey, and at the coroner's
inquest. At one or the other of these inquiries the witnesses advanced
thousands of outrageous statements, of which the following may be
taken as a fair specimen:--
One young lady gave evidence that she had been cured of consumption by
Mr. Long's liniment; she knew she had been so cured, because she had a
very bad cough, and, after the rubbing in all the ointment, the cough
went away. An old gentleman testified that he had for years suffered
from attacks of the gout, at intervals of from one to three months; he
was convinced Mr. Long had cured him, because he had been free from
gout for five weeks. Another gentleman had been tortured with
headache; Mr. Long applied his lotion to it--the humour which caused
his headache came away in a clear limpid discharge. A third gentleman
affirmed that Mr. Long's liniment had reduced a dislocation of his
child's hip-joint. The Marchioness of Ormond, on oath, stated that she
_knew_ that Miss Cashin's back was rubbed with the same fluid as she
and her daughters had used to wash their hands with; but she admitted
that she neither _saw_ the back rubbed, nor _saw_ the fluid with which
it was rubbed taken from the bottle. Sir Francis Burdett also bore
testimony to the harmlessness of Mr. Long's system of practice. Mr.
Wakley, in the _Lancet_, asserted that Sir Francis Burdett had called
on Long to ask him if his liniment would give the Marquis of Anglesea
a leg, in the place of the one he lost at Waterloo, if it were
applied to the stump. Long gave an encouraging answer; and the lotion
was applied, with the result of producing not an entire foot and
leg--but a great toe!
Miss Cashin's death was quickly followed by another fatal case. A Mrs.
Lloyd died from the effects of the corrosive lotion; and again a
coroner's jury found St. John Long guilty of manslaughter, and again
he was tried at the Old Bailey--but this second trial terminated in
his acquital.
It seems scarcely creditable, and yet it is true, that these exposures
did not have the effect of lessening his popularity. The respectable
organs of the Press--the _Times_, the _Chronicle_, the _Herald_, the
_John Bull_, the _Lancet_, the _Examiner_, the _Spectator_, the
_Standard_, the _Globe_, _Blackwood_, and _Fraser_, combined in doing
their best to render him contemptible in the eyes of his supporters.
But all their efforts were in vain. His old dupes remained staunch
adherents to him, and every day brought fresh converts to their body.
With unabashed front he went everywhere, proclaiming himself a martyr
in the cause of humanity, and comparing his evil treatment to the
persecutions that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, and Hunter underwent at the
hands of the prejudiced and ignorant. Instead of uncomplainingly
taking the lashes of satirical writers, he first endeavored to bully
them into silence, and swaggering into newspaper and magazine offices
asked astonished editors how they _dared_ to call him a _quack_.
Finding, however, that this line of procedure would not improve his
position, he wrote his defence, and published it in an octavo volume,
together with numerous testimonials of his worth from grateful
patients, and also a letter of cordial support from Dr. Ramadge, M.D.,
Oxon., a fellow of the College of Physicians. In a ridiculous and
ungrammatical epistle, defending this pernicious quack, who had been
convicted of manslaughter, Dr. Ramadge displayed not less anxiety to
blacken the reputation of his own profession, than he did to clear the
fame of the charlatan whom he designated "_a guiltless and a cruelly
persecuted individual!!!_" The book itself is one of the most
interesting to be found in quack literature. On the title-page is a
motto from Pope--"No man deserves a monument who could not be wrapped
in a winding-sheet of papers written against him"; and amongst pages
of jargon about humoral pathology, it contains confident predictions
that if his victims had _continued_ in his system, they would have
lived. The author accuses the most eminent surgeons and physicians of
his time of gross ignorance, and of having conspired together to crush
him, because they were jealous of his success and envious of his
income. He even suggests that the same saline draught, prescribed by
Sir Benjamin Brodie, killed Miss Cashin. Amongst those whose
testimonials appear in the body of the work are the _then_ Lord
Ingestre (his enthusiastic supporter), Dr. Macartney, the Marchioness
of Ormond, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, the Countess of Buckinghamshire, and
the Marquis of Sligo. The Marchioness of Ormond testifies how Mr. Long
had miraculously cured her and her daughter of "headaches," and her
youngest children of "smart attacks of feverish colds, one with
inflammatory sore throat, the others with more serious bad symptoms."
The Countess of Buckinghamshire says she is cured of "headache and
lassitude"; and Lord Ingestre avows his belief that Mr. Long's system
is "preventive of disease," because he himself is much less liable to
catch cold than he was before trying it.
Numerous pamphlets also were written in defence of John St. John Long,
Esq., M.R.S.L., and M.R.A.S. An anonymous author (calling himself a
graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Member of the Middle
Temple), in a tract dated 1831, does not hesitate to compare the
object of his eulogy with the author of Christianity. "But who can
wonder at Mr Long's persecutions? The brightest character that ever
stept was persecuted, even unto death! His cures were all perverted,
but they were not the less complete; they were miraculous, but they
were not the less certain!"
To the last St. John Long retained his practice; but death removed him
from the scene of his triumphs while he was still a young man. The
very malady, his control over which he had so loudly proclaimed,
brought his career--in which knavery or self-delusion, doubtless both,
played a part--to an end. He died of consumption, at the age of
thirty-seven years. Even in the grave his patients honoured him, for
they erected an elegant and costly monument to his memory, and adorned
it with the following inscription.
"It is the fate of most men
To have many enemies, and few friends.
This monumental pile
Is not intended to mark the career,
But to shew
How much its inhabitant was respected
By those who knew his worth,
And the benefits
Derived from his remedial discovery.
He is now at rest,
And far beyond the praises or censures
Of this world.
Stranger, as you respect the receptacle of the dead
(As one of the many who will rest here),
Read the name of
John Saint John Long
without comment."
Notwithstanding the exquisite drollery of this inscription, in
speaking of a plebeian quack-doctor (who, by the exercise of
empiricism, raised himself to the possession of £5000 per annum, and
the intimate friendship of numbers of the aristocracy) as the victim
of "many enemies and few friends," it cannot be said to be open to
much censure. Indeed, St. John Long's worshippers were for the most
part of that social grade in which bad taste is rare, though weakness
of understanding possibly may not be uncommon.
The sepulchre itself is a graceful structure, and occupies a prominent
position in the Kensal Green cemetery, by the side of the principal
carriage-way, leading from the entrance-gate to the chapel of the
burial-ground. Immediately opposite to it, on the other side of the
gravel drive, stands, not inappropriately, the flaunting sepulchre of
Andrew Ducrow, the horse-rider, "whose death," the inscription informs
us, "deprived the arts and sciences of an eminent professor and
liberal patron." When any cockney bard shall feel himself inspired to
write an elegy on the west-end grave-yard, he will not omit to compare
John St. John Long's tomb with that of "the liberal patron of the arts
and sciences," and also with the cumbrous heap of masonry which
covers the ashes of Dr. Morrison, hygeist, which learned word, being
interpreted, means "the inventor of Morrison's pills."
To give a finishing touch to the memoir of this celebrated charlatan,
it may be added that after his death his property became the subject
of tedious litigation; and amongst the claimants upon it was a woman
advanced in years, and of an address and style that proved her to
belong to a very humble state of life. This woman turned out to be St.
John Long's wife. He had married her when quite a lad, had found it
impossible to live with her, and consequently had induced her to
consent to an amicable separation. This discovery was a source of
great surprise, and also of enlightenment to the numerous high-born
and richly-endowed ladies who had made overtures of marriage to the
idolized quack, and, much to their surprise, had had their advances
adroitly but firmly declined.
There are yet to be found in English society, ladies--not silly,
frivolous women, but some of those on whom the world of intellect has
put the stamp of its approval--who cherish such tender reminiscences
of St. John Long, that they cannot mention his name without their eyes
becoming bright with tears. Of course this proves nothing, save the
credulity and fond infatuation of the fair ones who love. The hands of
women decked Nero's tomb with flowers.
[Illustration: _THE ANATOMIST_]