As Knighton's London practice increased he wrote that he was making valuable connections who handed him over from one circle of people to another. Had he wished to give an example, the poets of Regency London would have made his point.
In 1812 Coleridge, bedridden and opium addicted, consulted Robert Gooch, a physician with whom Knighton had studied medicine at Edinburgh, and whom Knighton encouraged to practise in London.
In 1812 Coleridge, bedridden and opium addicted, consulted Robert Gooch, a physician with whom Knighton had studied medicine at Edinburgh, and whom Knighton encouraged to practise in London.
In March 1813 Leigh Hunt, a patient of Knighton, was imprisoned for libelling the Prince Regent. Knighton was by then physician-in-ordinary to the Regent and, believing that his visits to Hunt's cell would be exploited by the Regent's critics, he arranged for Gooch to attend Hunt instead. Knighton treated Hunt's family without charge, and lent him money which was probably repaid through the intervention of Shelley.
Coleridge and Hunt were connections of Byron, a patient whom Knighton advised against marriage, and to whom he introduced the phrenologist Johann Spurzheim. Coleridge was also colleague and brother-in-law to Robert Southey. Robert's brother Henry studied at Edinburgh with Knighton and Gooch, and on Knighton's advice he too moved to London to practise. In 1817, when Robert was on the Continent, he reported to Knighton on the ill-considered conduct of Princess Caroline while abroad. Knighton's transition to full-time courtier had begun, but it would be another five years before he gave up his practice. So when one of Hunt's children became dangerously ill a week before George IV's coronation in July 1821, Knighton made a midnight call to attend her.
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Secondary sources disagree about whether it was Knighton or Sir Henry Halford who recommended John Polidori as physician to accompany Byron abroad in 1816. Wish I'd followed this up.
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Sources:
- Aspinall, A. (editor), Letters of King George IV, 1812–1830, 3 volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938)
- Blainey, Ann, Immortal Boy. A Portrait of Leigh Hunt (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985)
- Cameron, Kenneth Neill, and Donald H. Reiman, Shelley and his Circle, 1773–1822, 8 volumes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973), volume 5
- Knighton, Lady [Dorothea], Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, Bart., G.C.H., Keeper of the Privy Purse during the Reign of His Majesty King George the Fourth. Including his correspondence with many distinguished persons, 2 volumes (London: Richard Bentley, 1838)
- Marchand, Leslie A, (editor), Byron's Letters and Journals, volume 4 (London: John Murray, 1974)
