Whatmore Family History

For the son of a gamekeeper to become a doctor in the early nineteenth century was most unusual and this makes Isaac Watmough, who was a doctor at Pockington, of great interest.

In writing this post I have made a great deal of use of the information placed on the ancestry website by Alvina Greg. I am most grateful to Alvina for all his/her work and for his/her generosity in sharing it with others.

 The credit for encouraging Isaac, and for funding his career must surely go to Isaac’s father’s employer – Sir John Ramsden of Byram Park, near Brotherton, Yorkshire. Byram Park, now demolished, must have been magnificent in its heyday. Had it survived it would now be overshadowed by the massive towers of the Ferrybridge Power Station. Isaac’s brother Thomas also trained to be a doctor, but sadly he died in 1842 aged only about 23.

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 Byram Park      Copyright: Matthew Beckettt  and reproduced here by his kind permission

 The picture above of Byram Park is from Matthew Beckett’s wonderful website of lost country houses. To view the site, please follow this link: http://lh.matthewbeckett.com/lh_complete_list.html 

 Isaac’s father was John Watmuff or Watmough who was baptised on 21 April 1782 at Otley in Yorkshire. He married Mary Atkinson in 1808 at Brotherton in Yorkshire. John Watmuff’s father was Jeremiah Watmuff born in 1744 at Otley  who married Grace Wood. Jeremiah’s father was another Jeremiah born in 1704 at Otley. It seems likely that Jeremiah Senior’s father was the William Watmuff who was born about 1673 at Wigan and who married Grace Fenton at Leeds in 1698. 

Less than a year after the marriage of John Watmuff and Mary Atkinson they went to live at Inverary in Argyllshire, Scotland. Such a move can surely only be explained by John’s employer Sir John Ramsden asking John Watuff to go and work for him in Scotland where there must have been estates belonging to the Ramsden family. All the known children of John and Mary Watmuff were baptised at Inverary. There were Isaac 1809, Grace 1810, Mary Hannah 1817, Thomas Miles 1819, John George 1822, Israel Atkinson 1825 and George William 1833. 

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Inverary Church      Photo copyright: George J M Briscoe      Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Sometime between 1833 and 1841 the family returned to Yorkshire as in the 1841 census, John and Mary and some of their children are to be found at Eccleshill, Idle, near Bradford. John is described as a farmer.

Mary Watmuff died in 1850 in the Bradford Registration District, presumably at Eccleshill, Idle. John Watmuff died at Claife in Lancashire in 1851 whilst on a visit to his daughter Mary Hannah who had married a John Rawson, a farmer of 12 acres. 

Returning to Isaac Watmough – he became a Master Surgeon in 1830, obtained his MD in 1832 from the University of Glasgow and became a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in London in 1835. By 1841 he was working as a Doctor at Pockington, Yorkshire where he was living in Regent Street with his wife (Jane Smithson whom he had married in 1833) and their children John, Mary Hannah and Jane. 

All of Isaac and Jane Watmough’s known children were born at Pocklington. These were: John Smithson 1834, Mary Hannah 1836, Jane 1840, William 1841 and Anne Elizabeth 1847.

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Pocklington church      Photo copyright: Keith Laverack     Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the of the site licence which be viewed at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 The family was still at Regent Street in 1851. By 1861 they had moved to a house in Chapmangate, Pocklington and by 1871 they had moved again to George Street. 

Isaac died at Pocklington on 8 October 1875. By 1881, his widow Jane had moved to Doncaster to live with her daughter Jane Heathcote who was also by now a widow. By 1891, Jane Watmough and her daughter Jane had moved to Christchurch in Hampshire which is where her son William had settled after his marriage. It was at Christchurch that Jane Watmough passed away on 4 December 1896. I

t would be wrong to think of Isaac Watmough as a simple country doctor. He kept himself imformed of current medical research and no doubted conducted his own. He was a regular contributor to learned medical journal as the following letter demonstrates: 

On the Combination of Senna with Matico in Haemorrhage from the Bowels in Fever

To the Editor of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal

 Sir I have frequently used matico in cases of haemorrhage, but I was much pleased about three months ago, with the benefit obtained from combining it with senus, in a case of typhus fever, where haemorrhage from the bowels took place. As I had previously attended to the state of the liver &c, I immediately ordered Matico and Foliorum Sennae utrq. dr.ij. to be infused in a pint of boiling water, and a wine glassful to be taken frequently. Scybala mingled with blood soon passed the intestines, after which less blood flowed, and by continuing the above mixture in similar doses at various intervals for three or four days, during which time the alvine evacuations gradually improved, my patient soon got rid of this troublesome symptom. 

I make these hasty remarks in order that this remedy, (Matico,) which I consider one of the most valuable additions lately made to the Materia Medica, may be more used in the various forms in which disease in constantly taking place in these wonderous coils, whose healthy functions are so essential to the well-being of man, and the inferior animals. I used this combination with a view, not only to arrest the haemorrhage, but also to prevent the diarroea which frequently follows it in fever cases. Anything which will obviate this, is worthy of the attention of those who are anxious to combat, alleviate, or remove the sufferings, in every form, of their fellow creatures. 

The publication of Dr. Hartle’s valuable communication to Dr. Jeffreys, in the last number of our journal, has emboldened me to address this note, which, if you think it worthy a place in the pages of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, you are at liberty to insert.

 I am, Sir

Your most obedient servant,

ISAAC WATMOUGHPocklington, Yorkshire,   March 4^th 1847 

Isaac’s son William Watmough also qualified as a Doctor and practised at Christchurch in Hampshire. William married Catherine Kemp-Welch in 1867 in Clapham. They had three children, all born at Christchurch. These were Robert William 1869, Frank Cuthbert 1878 and Edward Hall 1880. 

It is of interest to note that it is very likely that the family who ran the printing firm of Watmoughs Ltd at Idle, were closely related to Dr. Isaac Watmough. Like Isaac, they appear to have been direct descendants of Jeremiah Watmuff and Grace Wood through their son Miles Watmuff who was baptised at Otley on 11 January 1789. Watmough’s Ltd was the subject of an earlier post.