Sue Young Histories

James John Garth Wilkinson 1812 - 1899

March 20, 2008

James John Garth Wilkinson National Portrait GalleryJames John Garth Wilkinson 1812

The Wedgwood family seem to have known James John Garth Wilkinson and his wife from at least 1848. On 15th April 1848, Garth Wilkinson wrote to his wife Emma: ‘… Emma and Florence _(their two eldest daughters) spent the day at the Scotts on Thursday and were very good and happy; they met there the little Wedgwoods…’ (_Swedenborg Archive Family Register A148b Temple Bar loose leaf Documents and Summary Enclosed. Garth Wilkinson is referring to the home of Alexander John Scott first principal of Owens College, Manchester). In 1866, a Ms. Wedgwood and a Mrs. Garth Wilkinson were both subscribers to the London Working Women’s College (Anon,* Second annual report of the council of teachers, London working women’s college at 29 Queen Square Bloomsbury,* (London, 1866). Page 16), and they both knew Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle. Emma Wedgwood and Mrs. Garth Wilkinson were sponsors of the National Anti-Vivisection Society in 1887 (Anon, The Animal’s defender and zoophilist, Volume 6, (National Anti-Vivisection Society (Great Britain), 1887). Page 83), (NB: Emma Wilkinson died in 1886)  (Emma Wedgwood subsequently married Charles Darwin).

In 1849, Ralph Waldo Emerson was able to introduce James John Garth Wilkinson to London society via his publisher John Chapman who Ralph Waldo Emerson had known since 1832 (on 25th April 1848 (Swedenborg Archive K125, letter 25th April 1848), James John Garth Wilkinson invited Ralph Waldo Emerson to his house along with Mr. and Mrs. John Chapman- though we do not know whether this was the publisher John Chapman or the homeopath John Chapman, who James John Garth Wilkinson would have known very well from his student days at The Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square).

James John Garth Wilkinson was the homeopathic practitioner of Margarete Conway (Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway, Volume 2, (reprinted by Elibron.com, 2001). Page 10), John Winston Spencer Churchill 7th Duke of Marlborough, Thomas Lake Harris (Unknown World 1894-1895,__ _Arthur Edward Waite, (Kessinger Publishing, 2003). Page 169. See also Thomas Frederick Robinson (Ed.), _A remembrancer and recorder of facts and documents illustration of the genius of the New Jerusalem dispensation, 1864_. *Page 364.), Daniel Dunglas Home (James John Garth Wilkinson (using his pseudonym VERAX), The Spiritual Herald; a recording of spirit manifestations, Volume 1, Evenings with Mr. Home and the Spirits, (H. Balliere, 219 Regent Street and 290 Broadway, New York, February 1856). Preface page 2, and also pages 4-11), Lola Montez, Augustus de Morgan, Elizabeth Robins **(Angela John, _Elizabeth Robins: Staging a Life ; 1862 – 1952_, (Routledge, 1995). Page 197), [Elizabeth Siddal](/archives/2008/06/13/dante-gabriel-rossetti-and-homeopathy/#more-2906), the wife of **Francis William Newman, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Arthur Versluis, *The esoteric origins of the American Renaissance_, (Oxford University Press, 8 Mar 2001). Page 82), Florence Theobald **and **Genevieve Ward:

’… In February of the year 1866, a great trouble and anxiety fell upon Newman while he and his wife were staying at Hastings. For nine or ten days she seemed to be dying. “We got her through the acute crisis… I resigned her a full month ago, and have since not dared to hope that she can do anything but linger. Nevertheless her life is less distressing and more worth having than it was. She moves from her bed into an arm-chair; sits at table for dinner… She talks cheerfully, and can enjoy seeing her sisters. When I look at her I fancy she is pretty well;… yet I feel that she might be carried off very suddenly. Indeed, this was her mother’s case, who had the very same combination of disease, and retained much muscular strength to the last. We had two physicians at Hastings, and here she is under Dr. Garth Wilkinson…’ (Giberne Sieveking, Memoirs and Letters of Francis W Newman, (reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2004). Page 139).

Garth Wilkinson was also the homeopath of James Outram 1st Baronet 1803 – 1863

‘… In 1861, Garth Wilkinson took an autumn trip to Spain with his friend Decimus Hands 1805 - 1872, meeting up with General Outram on board ship… ’… who in these his last days is quite a picture and a study to me. He talks very unreservedly of his past life…’ ( Clement John Wilkinson, James John Garth Wilkinson; A Memoir of His Life, with a Selection of His Letters. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1911). Page 42).

James John Garth Wilkinson was also the homeopath of John Bright ’… Just before Christmas 1892, James John Garth Wilkinson wrote to a Mr. John Marten from 4 Finchley Road: ‘… One day, years ago, a pious churchman of militant character, knowing that John Bright was an acquaintance and patient of mine, said to me, tell John Bright from me that he is an Ass. I said to him, before you vilify an Ass, as you here intend to do, remember that Christ, on a Royal Progress, rode on an Ass into Jerusalem. My friend, a very strong man to look at, turned pale, & almost fainted away… *(Swedenborg Archives K125 [44] Christmas 1892))…’ _Also* ‘… *I knew Dr. Roth the elder__, [Mathias Roth (1818- 1891)] a Hungarian disciple of Ling’s Swedish Kinetic treatments. His son married a daughter of John Bright MP, [John Bright (1811-1889)] who was a patient of mine…’ *(Swedenborg Archive K125 [44] Letter dated 8.10.1896 from Garth Wilkinson to John Marten)._

Garth Wilkinson himself was a patient of Robert Ellis Dudgeon (who also treated his daughter in her final illness in 1893). On 11th April 1893, Garth Wilkinson wrote to John Marten from 4 Finchley Road: ‘… Being a North County man I have been always used to a ‘wee drop’: & now it does me good. My physician, Dr. Dudgeon__, says it is, like wine, & all alcohols, ‘poison’; partly because from his ever youthful temperament, it is contrary to him, dulling his faculties. My faculties are dull & hypochondriac to begin with, & what poisons his, brightens them…(Swedenborg Archives K125 [44] letter dated 11.4.1893 from Garth Wilkinson to John Marten)…’

Garth Wilkinson was also a patient of Robert Masters Theobald, who also acted as his locum. On 31st July 1894, Garth Wilkinson wrote to Robert Masters Theobald from 4 Finchley Road: ‘… If my dear Friend and Patient Mi/s Sharpe of 30 Alma Square, St. John’s Wood, asks you to see her, will you do so for me, and I will make it right when I return. My ears are better for nat mur 30, and kali sulph 30. Thank you!… _(Swedenborg Archives K125 [45] letter dated 31.7.1894 from Garth Wilkinson to Robert Masters Theobald) …’_

Garth Wilkinson was a friend of William Boericke, Robert Browning, James Compton Burnett, Thomas Carlyle, William Benjamin Carpenter, John Henry Clarke, Frances Power Cobbe (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895), Robert Thomas Cooper, Paul Francois Curie (Garth Wilkinson was his student - Swedenborg Archive K125 [2] letter dated 2.11.1894 from Garth Wilkinson to William Boericke), Charles Dickens, Hugh Doherty, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Epps, James Anthony Froude (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895), Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Howitt, Henry James Snr, Charles John Kean, Eliza Lynn Linton and her husband William James Linton (William James Linton, Threescore and ten years, 1820-1890: recollections by W. J. Linton, (C. Scribner’s sons, 1894). Multiple pages. See also Eliza Lynn Linton, The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland, Volume 1, (reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2004). Page 26), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George MacDonald, Edward Maitland, Horace Mann and his wife,*Amelia Matilda Murray (see below), the Oliphants, Robert Owen, Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore, George Ripley,  Henry Crabb Robinson (who had met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Mrs. Salis Schwabe (in his address book in 1895, at Glyn Garth, Bassetts Bury, High Wycombe, and also at Ex Collegio Medico Largo, S Aniello, Napoli, and 28 Clarges Street, W London. Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895), Elizabeth Siddal, James Spiers, Edward Strachey (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895), Algernon Charles Swinburne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Masters Theobald, Charles Augustus Tulk, Mrs. Wagstaff, Alfred Russel Wallace and many others, and he attended Spiritualist meetings with Thomas Henry Huxley, Edward Bulwer Lytton, John Tyndall, Percy Roberts Wilde (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895). NB: James John Garth Wilkinson had the names and address of the Miss/s Tyrwhitt (Drake and Miss Mary) in his address book at Dulas Court, *Pontrilles, Herefordshire, (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895). NNB: James John Garth Wilkinson also has another Vernon in his address book - W H Vernon at 34 Gaisford Street, Kentish Town, and also at 45 South Hill Park, Hampstead (Victorians did tend to move rather frequently) (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895). See /archives/2009/12/14/william-warren-vernon-1834-1919/ and /archives/2009/06/27/harold-edgar-tyrwhitt-1890-1960/ and /archives/2009/08/27/robert-vernon-heber-percy-1911-%E2%80%93-1987/

With thanks to Francis Treuherz Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy: Vol. 77 No 4 1984. T_7 _The Origins of Kent’s Homeopathy:

The mid eighteenth century spiritual scientific works of Emanuel Swedenborg were translated by an English physician, John James Garth Wilkinson, in the 1840’s; he then became a homeopath. His translations were distributed through Henry James Snr to the homeopathic and Swedenborgian community of the USA…

Wilkinson went once to Iceland for a holiday and observed that the animals which fed in the pastures where the finer ashes of Mount Hekla fell, suffered from immense maxillary and other exostoses. Being an adherent of the scientific system of medicine founded for us by Samuel Hahnemann. He brought some Hekla Lava [see http://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/the-trip-to-iceland-to-obtain-hekla-lava-1868/] home with him (and James Epps made the remedy), and it has already been successfully used to cure affections similar to those which it is capable of causing. Hekla Lava has been shown to consist of silica, alumina, calcium, and magnesia with some ferric oxide. We are, therefore, not astonished that it can cause and cure exostosis…

Wilkinson was a prolific correspondent, writer, translator and homeopath…

He was a reluctant physician, following his father’s wishes. He qualified in 1834, when the work of a general practitioner was more that of a pharmacist than today, he had to recommend the copious consumption of physic, for it was from physic that he derived profit, but he was described as having a conscience, and a horror of promiscuous drugging.’

In the 1830’s, Wilkinson began to practice medicine, and having at first few patients he had time for other activities, notably translating Emanuel Swedenborg from the Latin.

In addition to obviously spiritual works like The Doctrine of Charity and Arcana Coelestia, he translated Regnum Animalis (The Animal Kingdom), “the greatest and noblest work on Human Physiology which has ever appeared in the world”, as Wilkinson described it in a letter to his fiancee. The work took four years to translate, from 1839 to 1843.

He wrote a biography of Emanuel Swedenborg published in 1849 (reissued in 1885 (?possibly 1883 with Rudolf Leonhard Tafel (1831-1896), and published by the Swedenborg Society)). His work came to the attention of Henry James Snr, the editor of a Fourierist newspaper, The Harbinger of New York, a polished writer on theological and metaphysical subjects, father of William James and Henry James jnr. The two became intimate friends and regular, copious and affectionate correspondents.

It was through Henry James Snr that Wilkinson became acquainted with homeopathy. “You more than any other man led me into homeopathy,” wrote Wilkinson.

And it was through Henry James Snr that the numerous adherents of the New Church of Emanuel Swedenborg in the United States became acquainted with the translation of Emanuel Swedenborg by Wilkinson.

Wilkinson went on to translate Oeconomia Regni Animalis (The Economy of the Animal Kingdom), with an analytical introduction separately published and among many other of Emanuel Swedenborg’s writings The Final Cause of Creation and The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body.

A preoccupation with spirituality and formative causation is disclosed, also found in the related ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy. Through his friendship with Henry James Snr and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the spread of his writings in the United states, Wilkinson has been viewed as a transcendentalist, and there was pressure on him to become a Fourierist.

Wilkinson was a friend of Hugh Doherty, chief disciple of Charles Fourier, in England, also a Swedenborgian.

Among Wilkinson’s homeopathic discoveries were two new nosodes, Glanderine and Farcine (also known as Hippozaeninum) and another two delightfully idiosyncratic works on the treatment of insanity with spiritualism, and painting with both hands, also known as stereoscope in art, or bimanual pictures. In 1855 his services to homeopathy were recognised by his election to the Presidency of the Congress. Wilkinson began to lecture on physiology up and down England in Mechanics’ Institutes and the like; the line of thought he pursued led to his The Human Body and its Connection with Man in 1851.

During these years, from the time that Frederick Hervey Foster Quin introduced homeopathy to England in 1837, and when Henry James Snr drew it to his attention, Wilkinson underwent a gradual conversion - the word conversion with its connotations of religion is used by his biographer.

Up to 1850 he was a writer specialising upon theology from a Swedenborgian outlook, who practiced physic for a maintenance; from that time forward he was a physician who found time to write upon the old subjects.’

From the publication of The Human Body in 1851, which was very widely read, his homeopathic practice grew and his writings took second place. He practised with great success in the Hampstead and St. John’s Wood area of London until his death in 1899…

Wilkinson studied homeopathy in the 1840’s, at a time when he was aware that homeopaths were, as his nephew Clement John Wilkinson wrote, not only knaves or fools, lucky if they escaped condemnation under both headings but if a patient died under the care of one of their number, it was darkly hinted that the verdict of manslaughter should follow…

Having been reluctantly pushed into medicine by his father, he was at last discovering good reasons for remaining. He became enthusiastic, even a high dilutionist, using extremely attenuated remedies.

He wrote to Henry James Snr: “To what you say about small doses Homeopathic and large doses ditto, I have only one thing to answer, that I find my minute potions do their work, surely, swiftly and sweetly. If others And bigger things do the same, there is not any quarrel between us.

“But I do aver and maintain my own position. Everyday’s practice confirms me in the thought, if the right remedy is given, the quantity is a secondary affair: though also the quantity in that case by all the rules of causes, may be smaller than in the other case of inexacter skill”.

Wilkinson’s spirited defense of the essence of prescribing his high dilutions, for its style, as much as its content. The first paragraph deals with scientific exactness; the second with dilutions, and the “spiritual force;” the third paragraph quoted deals with “odium modicum.”

The main point of interest in Wilkinson’s adoption of homeopathy lies not only in his exploratory attitude and discovery of Hekla Lava, nor only in his place in the chain of the transmission of ideas across the Atlantic, but in the similarity which can plainly be seen in his homeopathic medical beliefs and his Swedenborgian theological creed.

The Doctrine of Correspondence is the working key of the Swedenborgian New Church attitude towards God and conduct, in medical matters the correspondence of drug effects and disease effects is the whole of homeopathic practice.’

The similarity was a striking one to Wilkinson, whose attachment to medicine had never been strongly marked. The convinced and enthusiastic followers of Emanuel Swedenborg found the system of Hahnemann a scientific statement of the Doctrine of Correspondence, in terms of medicine.

It was the Doctrine of Correspondences which made and kept Wilkinson a homeopath as a manifestation of the bond between his religious and medical creed, It crops up in his tract Emanuel Swedenborg among the Doctors written following an encounter with Robert Thomas Cooper, the friend of John Henry Clarke and James Compton Burnett.

Wilkinson had been invited [1895] to meet the Cooper Club of homeopathic physicians to discuss ”Emanuel Swedenborg as a scientist”, restricting his conversation to medicine; the guests were informed that theological discussion is especially to be avoided’. There must have been polite resistance to spiritualism.

Since Wilkinson could not exclude theology from the discussion, he declined the invitation to the meeting and politely contributed a paper instead, combining his views without offending hospitality. He called it Emanuel Swedenborg among the Doctors. …

Emanuel Swedenborg’s ideas of 1734 to 1744 were buried in Latin for almost a century until Wilkinson’s translations made their timely arrival, on the eastern seaboard of America…

James John Garth Wilkinson was also inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg, to the elucidation of whose writings he devoted much of his life.

James John Garth Wilkinson’s brother William Martin Wilkinson 1814 - 1897 was an officer at the Swedenborgian Society and a spiritualist). Between 1840 and 1850 he edited Emanuel Swedenborg’s treatises on The Doctrine of Charity, The Animal Kingdom, Outlines of a Philosophic Argument on the Infinite, and Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Mysteries.

Wilkinson’s preliminary discourses to these translations and his criticisms of Samuel TaylorColeridge’s comments on Emanuel Swedenborg displayed an aptitude not only for mystical research, but also for original philosophic debate.

The vigour of his thought won admiration from Henry James Snr and from Ralph Waldo Emerson, through whom he met Thomas Carlyle and James Anthony Froude; and his speculation further attracted Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Oliphants and Edward Maitland.

He wrote an able sketch of Emanuel Swedenborg for the Penny Cyclopaedia, and a standard biography, \*_Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography_*** (1849); but these were not his only interests.

He was a traveller, a linguist, well versed in Scandinavian literature and philology, the author of mystical poems entitled Improvisations from the Spirit (1857), a social and medical reformer, a convinced opponent of vivisection and also of vaccination. He is commemorated by a bust and portrait in the rooms of the Swedenborgian Society in Bloomsbury Street, London.

Homeopathic physician, translator and biographer of Swedenborg and a writer on a variety of religious, medical and social topics. He edited the first letter press edition of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.

His greatest friend was the American Swedenborgian thinker Henry James Snr, who named his third son Garth Wilkinson James in his honour, and Wilkinson named his daughter Mary James Wilkinson in return.

An early practitioner of homeopathy, he saw Hahnemann’s system as a scientific application of Swedenborg’s Doctrine of Correspondences.

Henry James Snr financed Wilkinson’s work:

Henry James Snr began to finance Wilkinson’s translations of Swedenborg, which were distributed by Otis Clapp in Boston. As a result of this relationship, Ralph Waldo Emerson derived much of his knowledge of Swedenborg in the 1840s from Wilkinson and Henry James Snr. Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured on Swedenborg for several years and finally published his lecture as ”Swedenborg the Mystic” in Representative Men.

Wilkinson’s methods for the homeopathic treatment of insanity were linked to a stream of consciousness technique he had developed for the speaking, writing, and drawing of literary subjects; and we know that Wilkinson’s unpublished manuscript on a case of hysterical fasting in a young girl was one of the most highly prized pieces in William James’s personal library.

Wilkinson and William James also shared a mutual contempt for the arrogance of orthodox medical men concerning their claim to have superior ability over the mental healers in caring for the mentally ill…

This variation on Swedenborg’s doctrine of use, inherited through Henry James Snr, modified by Wilkinson’s views on mental healing, and interpreted through Peirce’s philosophy, was to have a profound effect on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century development of a uniquely American functional psychology.

Wilkinson was a fighter for homeopathy. According to Peter Morrell:

I therefore hope that the following quote from an article about the Swedenborgian homeopath, John James Garth Wilkinson by Logie Barrow, will convey some of the tone of that ‘golden age of medical liberalism’ which were the 1850s, and serve, ever so slightly perhaps, to illuminate our darkness:

'...the 'bible of nature' would be opened to the public as well as to the professions; and the professions themselves must be content to... stand... in a clear... connection with the common sense of mankind.'

Addressing a congress of British homeopathic practitioners during the mid 1850s, Wilkinson thundered that, even were they to become

‘the recognised Drug medicine of tomorrow, it could never set up into the old benches which its predecessor had occupied… the homeopaths would have to smash the current institutional structure of medicine.’

Anything less and they would find themselves at the apex of what he called ‘a second medical despotism’. Around the 1850s many plebeian practitioners [most consistently the Botanists] seem to have shared Wilkinson’s confidence that they were about to lay siege to orthodoxy.’

Wilkinson discovered the remedy Hecla Lava [See http://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/the-trip-to-iceland-to-obtain-hekla-lava-1868/] on his many travels. In 1868, he travelled to Iceland and became very interested in Icelandic Sagas. In 1869, he travelled to America. Wilkinson’s brother **William Martin Wilkinson **1814 - 1897, was also active in Swedenborgianism and in Spiritualism:

In 1855 Daniel Douglas Home came to England and held a séance at the London home of Dr Garth Wilkinson, homeopathic physician, friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James Snr, translator of Swedenborg and a well-known member of this Society.

Wilkinson was sufficiently impressed by Daniel Douglas Home’s performance to write a detailed account, which was published in a daily newspaper, The Morning Advertiser.

He reported that during the seance a large hand appeared with fingers extended. Daniel Douglas Home recoiled from it, saying: ‘O! keep me from that hand! It is so cold! Do not let it touch me’. The hand disappeared and was replaced almost immediately by a hand wearing a glove.

Garth’s brother, the solicitor William Martin Wilkinson 1814 - 1897 (at that time Secretary of the Swedenborg Society) was even more involved with spiritualism. He edited the Spiritual Magazine for a number of years and actually ‘ghosted’ the bulk of Daniel Douglas Home’s memoirs, Incidents in My Life, published in 1863, and wrote a preface to the second edition published the following year.

As Secretary of the Swedenborgian Society, William Martin Wilkinson 1814 - 1897 supported the efforts of the agent and manager William White to introduce spiritualist literature into the Society’s shop (then at 1 Bloomsbury Street), but left office when the Society’s committee took legal proceedings to evict William White from the building.

For Garth Wilkinson, the interest in spiritualist manifestations appears to have been a passing phase. Twenty years later he made plain his final attitude:

‘... I do not deny, but prize, in their place, spontaneous motions of the spiritual world upon and in the natural world… On the other hand, solicited intercourse with the spiritual world is, to me, a mistake, and with my convictions, it would be a sin to take part in seances, or any other means, in such solicitation...’

That seems to me to be a good summary of the Swedenborgian position with regard to spiritualism.

James John Garth Wilkinson wrote Epidemic Man and his Visitations, On Human Science, Good and Evil, and its works: and on Divine Revelation and its Works and Sciences, War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People, _The Book of Edda Called Voluspa_, __Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography_, _The Development of Both Hands_, _Improvisations of the Spirit_, _The Forcible Introspection of Women for the Army and Navy by the Oligarchy _considered physically_ 1870 (in support of Josephine Elizabeth Butler’s work). Wilkinson was a prolific writer, including articles On the Cure, Arrest and Isolation of Smallpox by a new method 1864, The Infectious Nature of the Vaccine Disease, and the necessity of excluding the vaccinated and the revaccinated, during that disease, from intercourse with healthy persons 1874 (quoted in Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830-1930, (Cambridge University Press, 19 Aug 1999). Page 290), The cases of the Welsh fasting girl & her father: on the possibility of long-continued abstinence from food by William Martin Wilkinson, James John Garth Wilkinson, and Charles Edouard Brown Sequard published by J. Burns in 1870,

James John Garth Wilkinson An Introduction by Frederick Henry Evans. Originally printed in The Homeopathic World volume 47,_No. 553 on 1.1.1912 pages 7-12, No. 553 on 1.2.1912 pages 70-86, No. 555 on 1.3.1912 pages 116-128, and reprinted in 1936 by his youngest daughter Mrs. Frank Claughton Mathews with Turnbull and Spears Edinburgh, include Obituary notes from _The Whig.

Of interest:

*Amelia Matilda Murray (1795-1884) ‘…one of Queen’s Victoria’s Maids of Honour, and Extra Women of the Bedchamber; daughter of Lord George Murray, Bishop of Saint David’s…’ social reformer, traveller, author. Amelia was a close friend of James John Garth Wilkinson ( Swedenborg Archive Family Register A148a Temple Bar loose leaf Documents and Summary Enclosed English Documents from 1662 (Latin documents begin 1621, letter from James John Garth Wilkinson dated 19.6.1851).

Godfrey Wedgwood (1833-1905), Julia Snow Wedgwood (1833-1913) *and Garth Wilkinson were all subscribers of the Egypt Exploration Society in 1888 (Herbert Wallace Schneider, George Lawton, [A Prophet and a Pilgrim, Being the Incredible History of Thomas Lake Harris and Laurence Oliphant: Their Sexual Mysticisms and Utopian Communities*](http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&ei=KLPeS9aXFY6CygSl2bT6CA&cd=46&id=jgQvAAAAYAAJ&dq=wedgwood+garth+wilkinson&q=julia+wedgwood#search_anchor), (Columbia University Press, 1942). Pages 110, 111 and 566. See also *Anon, [Report of the … Ordinary General Meeting, Subscription List and Balance Sheets, Volumes 2-15*](http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&ei=2q_eS6bvApXmzATiqL24Dg&cd=8&id=qSgwAAAAYAAJ&dq=wedgwood+garth+wilkinson&q=garth+wilkinson&redir_esc=y#search_anchor), (Egypt Exploration Society, 1888). Pages 25. 45, 35 and 39).

Alfred George Wilkinson (1845-1923), MRCS (England), LSA was a homeopath who lived at 28 Newland, Northampton, in 1908. Obituary in the BMJ 1923 September 22, 2(3273): 544 *‘… Dr. Alfred George Wilkinson, a veteran practitioner of Northampton, died on September 15th (1923), aged

  1. He took the diplomas of MRCS Eng. in 1857 and of LSA in 1866. While still a student he went to the **Crimea as a dresser, and worked with Florence Nightingale; he assisted in attending the wounded after then charge of the Light Brigade. Dr. Wilkinson settled in practice in Northampton in 1870, and he continued to work until a few days before his death…’* Alfred George Wilkinson worked with Arthur Crowden Clifton at the Northampton Homeopathic Dispensary at 57 Abingdon Street and 21 Clare Street Northampton in 1885. (Anon, The Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, and Annual Abstract of British and American Homeopathic Serial Literature, (1873). Page 67).

Clement John Wilkinson ?1825 - ?1894 senior (cousin of James John Garth Wilkinson) was on the Management Committee of the Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square (Anon, Homeopathic Record Volumes 1-2, (Arthur Clifden, London; James Epps, 112 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury and 8 Old Broad Street, Manchester; and Henry Turner, 41 Picadilly, 1851). Page 277),

Clement John Wilkinson 1860 - ? junior MRCS (England), LSA (London) was a homeopath in 1908, (nephew of James John Garth Wilkinson), was on the Management Committee of the Tunbridge Wells and West Kent Homeopathic Dispensary, and he wrote James John Garth Wilkinson: a memoir of his life, Associated Symptoms in Provings and Disease Without Obvious Pathological Basis in Windsor (published in 1911), Acute Nephritis with special reference to Cantharide and Cantheridine in 1905, and he was a colleague of Charles Edwin Wheeler, Percy Roberts Wilde, Dudley d’Auvergne Wright, in 1911,

James John Wilkinson (father of James John Garth Wilkinson) was a Special Pleader (Judge), born in Durham, and he had 8 children with his wife Harriet (James John Garth Wilkinson was the eldest),

James John Garth Wilkinson himself had three daughters and one son) Emma married Hermann Pertz, Florence married Benjamin St. John Mathews, and Mary married Francis Claughton Mathews. Florence and Mary had no children, but Florence had a wide social circle that included Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Stanley Owen Buckmaster, Israel Gollancz, Etheldreda Hull, and Henry James Junior.

Emma Marsh Wilkinson had two daughters and two sons, and James John Garth Wilkinson’s great grand daughter was Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkin, the first astronomer to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time. Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkin was also related to Charles Lyell through her Aunt Katherine Lyell, who was Charles Lyell’s sister in law. Anthony Wedgwood Benn was a close friend of Florence Wilkinson, the daughter of James John Garth Wilkinson. (Anthony Wedgwood Benn received homeopathic treatment from Sheila Hubacher, his researcher for most of the 1990s, who was a homeopathic practitioner).

John Gardner Wilkinson 1797 - 1875, (no relation) - the “the Father of British Egyptology”, made a study of homeopathy.

William Martin Wilkinson **1814 - 1897 Solicitor, brother of **James John Garth Wilkinson, was a was an officer at the Swedenborgian Society and a spiritualist), and a colleague of Thomas Shorter, his co-editor of The Spiritual Magazine:

Toward the end of 1860 The Spiritual Magazine was founded by William Martin Wilkinson (brother of James John Garth Wilkinson) and became the leading organ. It ran until 1875. Thomas Shorter and William Martin Wilkinson were the editors for the greater part of its existence, and William Howitt was the chief contributor.

William Martin Wilkinson… actually ‘ghosted’ the bulk of Daniel Douglas Home’s memoirs, Incidents in My Life, published in 1863 and wrote a preface to the second edition published the following year.

As Secretary of the Swedenborgian Society, William Martin Wilkinson supported the efforts of the agent and manager William White to introduce spiritualist literature into the Society’s shop (then at 1 Bloomsbury Street), but left office when the Society’s committee took legal proceedings to evict William White from the building.

The Veterinary Connection:

Professor William Sewell 1780 - 1853, ?maternal uncle of James John Garth Wilkinson, was a famous veterinary surgeon.

John Wilkinson and James Wilkinson (?unrelated) were homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons in 1868, and colleagues of William C Lord. Both James Wilkinson and John Wilkinson are recorded on the India Office and Burma Office list in 1823. James Wilkinson 1800? - 1879?  MRCVS, ?brother of John Wilkinson Veterinary Surgeon, was an orthodox Veterinary Surgeon who converted to homeopathy. James Wilkinson practiced at 60 Miles Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, and in Forfarshire, Scotland, John Wilkinson 1799? - 1871 MRCVS, was an orthodox Veterinary Surgeon of the 2nd Regiment of the Lifeguards, Principlal Veterinary Surgeon at Woolwich Barracks, Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1854, Veterinary Surgeon to the Duke of Cambridge’s Own 17th Lancers (most famous for its participation in the Charge of the Light Brigade in the **Crimean War), who converted to homeopathy. In 1867, John Wilkinson was an activist against vivisection, and he was kept fully appraised of the homeopathic treatment of epidemics in horses by his colleague of William C Lord. John Wilkinsonalso practiced at Aigburth Road, Liverpool,

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