when he became famous all the world
over as the Church-rate martyr. The lawyers and the doctors were mostly
Tories, but the tradesmen and the merchants were not a little leavened
with the leaven of Dissent. Mr. Hammond was, however, a Liberal surgeon,
and as such flourished. His Whig principles, writes Mr. Glyde, brought
him many patients, and his skill and sound qualities retained them. Dr.
Garrord, the well-known London practitioner, was an apprentice of Mr.
Hammond's; and this reminds me that among the Ipswich men who have risen
is Mr. Sprigg, the Premier of Cape Colony when Sir Bartle Frere was at
the head of affairs there. The father of Mr. Sprigg was the respected
pastor of a Baptist chapel in the town. The only Ipswich minister whom I
can remember was the Rev. Mr. Notcutt, who preached in the leading
Independent chapel, now pulled down to make way for a much more
attractive building. All I can recollect about him is, that once, when a
lad, I fainted away when he was preaching. No sermon ever affected me so
since; and that effect was due, it must be confessed, not to the
preacher, who seemed to me rather aged and asthmatic, but to the heat of
the place, in consequence of the crowd attracted to the meeting-house on
some special occasion.

But to return to the doctors. Of one of them, who was famed for his love
of bleeding his patients, not metaphorically, but in the old-fashioned
way, with the lancet, it is recorded that on the occasion of his taking a
holiday two of his patients died. Lamenting the fact to a friend, the
following epigram was the result:

'B--- kills two patients while from home away--
A clever fellow this same B---, I wot;
If absent thus his patients he can slay,
How he must kill them when he's on the spot!'

Perhaps one of the noted physicians of my boyhood was Mr. Stebbing. 'He
was once,' writes Mr. Glyde, 'called in to see one of the Ipswich
Dissenting ministers, who had taken life very easily, and had grown
corpulent. After examining the patient and hearing his statement as to
bodily state, he replied: "You've no particular ailment; mind and keep
your eyes longer open, and your mouth longer shut, and you will do very
well in a short time."' On another occasion a raw and very poor-looking
young fellow called upon him for advice. The doctor told him to go home
and eat more pudding, adding, 'That's all you want; physic is a very good
thing for one to live b