Licence: In copyright
Credit: Medical baronets, 1645-1911. 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.
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![Reprinted from the British Medic ax Journal, May 35th, 1913. f—! 5^ ' \ ' V '*x_-ft AS MEDICAL BARONETS, 1645-1911. May 22nd, 1912, marks the three hundred and first anniversary of the institution of the Baronetcy. Coinci- dently, there has been established a Bureau or Chancery of the Order, for the purpose of registering genuine titles and excluding fictitious ones. It may be interesting, therefore, to inquire what members of the medical pro- fession have received this hereditary dignity. Dr. Munk was of opinion—and that learned man always had good reason for his opinions—that James I, when he instituted the order, offered the first patent to his physician, Dr. Henry Atkins.* The offer was declined, probably from financial reasons, as the early baronets, in addition to being gentlemen with .£1,000 a year private fortune, were required to maintain thirty soldiers for three years. To Dr. Munk also is due the credit of pointing out that the first medical baronet was Dr. Edward Greaves, not Sir Hans Sloane, as formerly thought. The number of baronetcies conferred upon medical men appears so far to have been eighty-seven. Of these twenty- four are now extinct or in abeyance. Five have become merged in peerages—Smithson (Northumberland, D.), Sloane (Cadogan, E.), Pepys (Cottenham, E.) Holland (Knutsford, Y.) and Lister (Lister, B.). As to the imme- diate successors, some have chosen as a profession either the Church, the Bar, or one of the public services; others appear, by the exertions of their illustrious fathers, to have been rendered independent; while in one case the fourth holder of the dignity became an inmate of a metropolitan workhouse. In only six cases—Barry, Broadbent, Christi- son, Clark, Fayrer, and Laurence—has the son adopted the profession which has been the means of raising his father to hereditary rank, and in no case has this profession been followed in the third generation. The following list has been compiled from the usual works of reference and verified by reference to the Complete Baronetage of Mr. G. E. Cockayne, Clarenceux King of Arms, as far as that work extends. The little list of Jacobite baronetcies has been compiled from the Marquis Ruvigny’s work on the subject. [287/12] See Debrett’s Extinct Baronetage.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22436704_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
