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Resource Name:
Resource Type:
External Resource
Metadata
Asset Name:
E001545 - Edmonds, Frederic ( - 1885)
Title:
Edmonds, Frederic ( - 1885)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E001545
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2011-11-09
Description:
Obituary for Edmonds, Frederic ( - 1885), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Edmonds, Frederic
Date of Death:
April 1885
Place of Death:
Addiscombe, UK
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS August 31st 1832

FRCS February 10th 1853

LSA 1832
Details:
First practised in Richmond, Surrey, and immediately after marrying Elizabeth Mary, second daughter of the Rev John Curnow Millett, of Penpol House, Hayle, Cornwall, on October 21st, 1846, went with his wife to Mexico, where he remained until 1855. In 1856, after a severe illness, he went to Spain and returned in June, 1860, to reside at 6 Tamworth Villas, Croydon. During his absence there had been five deaths in his wife's family at Penpol House, and at the end of December, 1863, his brother-in-law, Jacob Curnow Millett, also died after a short illness, whilst residing with his younger brother, Dr Richard Oke Millett, at Penpol House. Thereupon Edmonds obtained an order for exhumation, and meanwhile RO Millett, to whom Jacob Millett had left his property, was held in prison under suspicion of having murdered his brother, until, as declared by Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor, there was no evidence of poisoning; consequently odium recoiled on Edmonds, both socially in Cornwall and professionally in the columns of the *Lancet*. An action, Millett v Edmonds, was heard at Bodmin before Baron Bramwell on March 16th-17th, 1864; Edmonds was cast in £400 damages and three times that amount in costs. Coleridge, QC, had referred to Edmonds as actuated by 'inveterate and deliberate malice', which the *Lancet* referred to in scathing terms. Thereupon Edmonds wrote to the Editor of the *Lancet* and published the letter as a pamphlet - *A Letter to the Editor of the Lancet with the Explanatory Statement of Defendant in Millett v Edmonds*, 8vo, London, 1866. In it Edmonds said: "It is with regret that I have now felt myself compelled to allude even to these suspicions which I believe to have been entirely unfounded, and the results simply of exaggerated family feeling, arising from disagreements which took place whilst my wife and I were absent from England." The Lancet commented:- "Dr Edmonds' object in the pamphlet is to show that the suspicions originated with others, and that in so far as he acquiesced in them, he was not actuated by malice, and was not unreasonable. We freely admit all this." The *Lancet* went on to advocate a Public Prosecutor instead of "the present law, which entrusts private individuals with the power of bringing Crime to punishment" (*Lancet*, 1866, I, 182). A Public Prosecutor was not appointed for many years afterwards. Edmonds suffered in health from long residence in the Tropics and died at Addiscombe in April, 1885.
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
Media Type:
Unknown