Medals of centenarians / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Weber, Frederick Parkes, 1863-1962.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medals of centenarians / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    6/18 (page 4)
    was made by the celebrated Dr. William Harvej'^, and in the account taken from Harvey's notes {Philo- sophical Transactions, vol. iii. p. 888) it is stated that Parr was able even to the 130th year of his age to do any husbandman's work, even threshing of corn. The story of Old Parr became widely known, owing in great part to the poetical version of his life by John Taylor, the water poet, entitled The Old, Old, Very Old Man: or, The Age and long Life of Thomas Par [sic], the Son of John Parr of Winnington. (London, Printed for Henry Gosson, 1635.) The evidence as to Parr's exact age is certainly not very good, but it may probably be safely allowed that he was over a hundred. His portrait, engraved by C van Dalen, appears on a contemporary broadside, entitled The Wonder of this Age (London, Printed for Benjamin Fisher, 1635), published whilst Parr was living in Arundel House ; there are reprints and numerous copies of this engrav- ing. A painting in the school of Honthorst, said to be a portrait of Parr, is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. (See Art. by T. Seccombe in Diet, of Nat. Biog.) A painting by Rubens was believed, proba- bly on insufficient grounds, to represent Old Parr, and engravings after it have been published as por- traits of him. There are likewise various engravings copied from a portrait by John Payne, a contemporary engraver, and of this portrait the mezzotint by George White is a variety. Parr is not so well represented by medals as by engravings, and of the three follow- ing pieces the first is posthumous, the second is a seventeenth - century farthing token possibly not meant to represent Parr, and the third, as will be shown, certainly does not represent him at all.