In 1803, a year after the death of his first child, Knighton gave up a successful medical practice in Plymouth, Devon, and moved to London to make a fresh start.  To practise in London Knighton had to become a licenciate of the Royal College of Physicians, which he believed was a straightforward matter of passing the College’s examination.  Once in London, however, he discovered that the College no longer accepted the qualification he held.  

To put his competence beyond doubt Knighton decided to confront the College with a qualification that it could not refuse – a degree in medicine from Edinburgh University –  even though this meant selling a London house which he had already bought and furnished, earning no fees for at least two years, and moving to Edinburgh with his wife. In October 1804 Knighton sold the house, 28 Argyll Street in St James, to Caleb Whitefoord, a successful wine merchant, lifelong supporter of the arts, and sometime diplomat – as a friend of Benjamin Franklin in London Whitefoord was chosen as an intermediary at the end of the American War of Independence.  

Two months earlier The Times had advertised a substantial, well-appointed house in the same position and on the same side of Argyll Street as No 28. Selling points included two drawing rooms, spacious entrance hall and stone stair case, dining parlour, breakfast room, three servant’s bedrooms and a servants’ hall, kitchen, scullery, garden, and cellars for beer, wine and coals.  

I can’t prove that the ad was for No 28, but I do know that No 28 occupied a plot of more than 93ft x 26ft in a fashionable area – not bad for a provincial physician. Whitefoord was able to display a large art collection there, and was the sort of man Knighton admired – educated, cultured, and convivial.  He had a sense of fun, and invented a ‘New Method of Reading Newspapers’ by scanning across the columns rather than down. I’d like to believe that Whitefoord and Knighton remained in touch.

In later life Knighton remembered his time in Edinburgh with affection. He left without taking his degree but, as he’d studied there for two years, the Royal College of Physicians examined him and admitted him as a licentiate.

Caleb Whitefoord is the figure in the middle, holding a lorgnette.
Connoisseurs examining a collection of George Moreland's by James Gillray, 1807.
By kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London, under creative commons licence http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw62986/Connoisseurs-examining-a-collection-of-George-Morelands?LinkID=mp04807&search=sas&sText=caleb+whitefoord&OConly=true&role=sit&rNo=3

***

I knew that Knighton’s first London home was in Argyll Street, but I didn’t know 
his house number.  I found him in a street directory, misread the faint ‘8’ on the microfilm for a ‘3’, then wondered why there was no corroborating evidence to connect him with No 23.

***

No 28 was on the west side of Argyll Street, almost opposite Argyll House.  The overlay shows Regent Street, built between 1814 and 1825.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/image.aspx?compid=41478&filename=fig55.gif&pubid=290

***

Sources

•  D. G. C. Allan, ‘Whitefoord, Caleb (1734–1810)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29282, accessed 27 June 2013]
  
•  W A S Hewins, ed, The Whitefoord Papers, being the correspondence and other manuscripts of Colonel Charles Whitefoord and Caleb Whitefoord from 1739 to 1810, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1898) [Internet Archive http://archive.org/stream/whitefoordpapers00whituoft#page/n7/mode/2up accessed 16 June 2013]
  
• The Times (London, England), Thurs, 30 August 1804, Issue 6113, page 4, col A
  
• London Metropolitan Archives: Middlesex Deeds Registry MDR 1804/2/351 MDR 1804/8/84
  
•  Westminster City Archives, London: Church Rate Collector’s Books MF737–740

George IV’s death in June 1830 released Knighton from royal duties that had sapped his health and spirits. By July he was planning his retirement, and in September he sold his London home, 9 Hanover Square. The purchaser was Charles Locock, an obstetrician in his early thirties to whom Knighton had once referred patients.

More than twenty years earlier, as a provincial doctor making a second attempt to 
establish himself in London, Knighton had bought the property from Robert Hallifax, one of the physicians-in-ordinary to George, then Prince of Wales. In contrast Locock, who enjoyed the patronage of royal surgeon Benjamin Brodie and respected obstetrician Robert Gooch, both of whom Knighton knew well, brought a thriving practice to 9 Hanover Square.  Nevertheless Knighton and Locock had much in common. Both had attracted mentors who guided their early careers. As their practices grew, both noted a rapid, exponential increase in lucrative connections. And both were befriended by slightly older women who became their confidantes (more about that in a later post).

Robert Hallifax died in 1810, and two years later Knighton was appointed physician-in-ordinary in his place.  In 1831 Locock became physician accoucheur to William IV’s consort, Queen Adelaide, whom Knighton attended in 1820 when she was Duchess of Clarence. In 1840 Locock became physician accoucheur to Queen Victoria.

***

I shepherded the bio through publication, shuffling commas and tweaking headings, ignorant of letters at Westminster City Archives in which Locock discusses Knighton’s practice. How important is stuff like that in a biography of a physician? How many eons did I waste looking for it in the wrong places? What of the trillion hours I wiled away in Westminster City Archives dotting and crossing insignificant 'i's and 't's?  Why did it not occur to me to check out the Locock papers at the Wellcome Library? Now I find there's even a biography of the wretched man.

***

Hanover Square is south of Oxford Street. You can just about make out No 9, second down from the north-east corner.  http://www.motco.com/Map/81005/Sale/imagetwo-a.asp?Picno=81005860&title=+return+to+your+previous+screen+close+this+window+%2D+click+on+the+X+in+the+top+right+corner%2E 

Sources:

• G T Bettanny, revised by Anne Digby, ‘Locock, Sir Charles, first baronet (1799-1875), obstetric physician’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16915 [accessed 9 June 2013, free to members of UK libraries] 
  
• Russell C Maulitz, ‘Metropolitan medicine and the man-midwife: the early life and letters of Charles Locock’, Medical History, Vol 26, Issue 1, Jan 1982, pp25-46 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1139111/?page=1 [accessed 9 June 2013]
  
• Morning Chronicle, London, 11 December 1820 and many subsequent dates
• London Metropolitan Archives: Middlesex Deeds Registry MDR 1834/8/247 and MDR 1834/8/248
  
• Westminster City Archives, London: Poor, Watch and Paving Rates Collector’s Book, MF451
  

This is where I'll put the stuff I discovered about Knighton and his world after I'd published.