George Pearson

Life & Legacy

George Pearson FRS (1751–1828) was a British medical doctor, chemist and early advocate of Jenner's cowpox vaccination.

Davies Gilbert, who was then President of the Royal Society, began his 1829 memoir (written anonymously) of Dr. Pearson thus:
'THIS eminent physician, celebrated chemist, and amiable though singular individual has, at an advanced age, fallen under the stroke of his ancient but indomitable enemy.'
He continued:
'Dr. Pearson was born at Rotherham in Yorkshire. [His father, John, was an apothecary]. His grandfather Nathaniel, was for years Vicar of Stainton, in that neighbourhood, and died in 1767 at the age of 88. His uncle, George after whom he was named, was a wine-merchant at Doncaster for upwards of thirty years a member of the Corporation, and twice Mayor of the Borough [1785 and 1793].'

Pearson studied in Edinburgh, took his MD in 1771 and went to study for a year at St. Thomas's Hospital. He settled in Doncaster in 1777. In his six years there he became a close friend of John Philip Kemble and analysed the water at Buxton, about which he produced a two-volume work.
In 1783 he moved to London, to Leicester Square, and was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians on 25 June 1784. He began to lecture. He was elected (chief) Physician of St George's Hospital on 23 February 1787, and was there for the next forty years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 23 June 1791. (He served on the Society's Council in 1802 and in 1827, in which year he gave the Bakerian Lecture, Researches to discover the Faculties of Pulmonary Absorption with respect to Charcoal).

Davies went on:
'Dr. Pearon was acknowledged by good judges, to be a sound Greek and Latin scholar. He was a hospitable landlord, a disinterested friend, and a very good-humoured and jocose companion : he abounded in anecdotes, which he took with excellent effect. He would often observe to his friends, that he knew he was growing old; but that he had made up his mind to die 'in harness.''

On Sunday 9 November 1828 he died at his home in George Street (9 St. George Street), Hanover Square, in Davies' words: 'in consequence of a fall down stairs'.

He left two daughters; one, Frances Priscilla, married John Dodson, DCL (and formerly M. P.), and the other, Mary-Anne, was, once again as Davies put it in 1828, single.