Charles Locock 1st Baronet 1799 - 1875

Charles Locock 1st Baronet 1799 - 1875 MD Edinburgh 1821, FRCP 1836, FRS,  DOL Oxford, 1864 Obstetric Physician, Fellow of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Physician Accoucher to Queen Victoria (and used chloroform during her deliveries), President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Honorary President of the Obstetrics Society, who discovered the efficacy of bromide of potassium in epilepsy,

Charles Locock was a friend of Hugh Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet, James Clark, Charles Dickens, Harris F Dunsford, William Fergusson 1st Baronet, Henry William Paget Marquess of Anglesey, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin,

Charles Locock conducted clinical trials on the homeopathic remedy belladonna for the treatment of scarlet fever in ?1854,

In 1838, Henry William Paget Marquess of Anglesey wrote to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin:

Edward Hamilton, _A Memoir of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin_. (British Homeopathic Society, 1879). Page 46. ‘… I saw Charles Mansfield Clarke 1st Baronet today, he talked most liberally of you and of the good the homeopathic system had effected for both Lady Anglesey and me.

‘… I proposed to him to meet you at dinner on Friday next, and I hope you will give us your company. I think we shall have some pretty good fun, for Locock and Harris F Dunsford will also be of the party…’

In 1861, William Fergusson 1st Baronet was reprimanded by _The Lancet_ for visiting patients that were also patients of homeopaths, and he subsequently promised not to do so in the future.

Charles Locock felt compelled to write to the British Medical Journal (Professional Consultations with Homœopaths, BMJ 1861;2:183.2 (Published 17 August 1861)) to suggest that if William Fergusson 1st Baronet:

Charles Locock, Professional Consultations with Homœopaths, BMJ 1861;2:183.2 (Published 17 August 1861) ’… rubs up his memory a little…’ and recall that _’… within a day or two of inditing this ambiguous note, he did not visit a patient at the suggestion of a homeopathic practitioner residing not a hundred miles from Mayfair?…’ _(obviously Frederick Hervey Foster Quin),

Charles Locock continued:

’… if he rubs up his memory a little, he will be able to state whether he have or have not personally visited patients in company with the same practitioner?… ’

(As Charles Locock and William Fergusson 1st Baronet were both friends of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, he would know this!) Charles Locock has obviously also been criticised for the same sin, as he continues to dissemble:

’… I reply in stronger language that these insinuations or direct charges are entirely false. There are, I believe, only two homeopaths in my neighbourhood in Hertford Street - W Bell (William Bell) and Hugh Cameron.

’… To the former I have never spoke in my life, and I have certainly not been in the same room as Hugh Cameron for more than two years, and then not in the presence of a patient…’

How carefully Charles Locock conceals his own friendship with Frederick Hervey Foster Quin (and with Harris F Dunsford) - but why is he criticising his friend William Fergusson 1st Baronet if not to ubraid him for betraying a friendship?

William Fergusson 1st Baronet wrote to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin a few days later:

‘… I have never considered that you were under any pecuniary obligations to me, and the personal services which I have been able to give I have always deemed as of a friendly kind. I am truly pained that you should think otherwise… and I must express a hope that you will let our personal relations stand as heretofore…‘ (William Fergusson 1st Baronet’s letter to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin 23.8.1861).

Andrew Wynter (1819-1876), the Editor of the *British Medical Journal wrote an brief comment in the same issue on 19th October 1861, _to the effect that Spencer Wells had fully explained his involvement with Gully, who could not be a homeopath as the Editor had never yet heard of any *‘… accomplished physician figuring as a homeopath in Britain…‘* and that he would *‘… deeply regret to find that such a thing was possible…_‘ _The Editor affirmed that Spencer Wells has acquitted himself of any stain of associating with homeopaths, and it was also *‘… impossible…’ that Grindrod had any *‘… dealings with a homeopath…‘ _and since the original article on the 19th October 1861, no one had come forward to contradict this position. Why would they? They were too busy holding their sides, laughing and rolling around on the floor? Andrew Wynter was already in print from 13th July 1861 as:

*‘… A correspondent assures us, the present agitation amongst the ‘social bees’ Dr. Wynter left in the ‘Journal of the Association’, is the merest bosh; and that ninety nine men in a hundred of the consulting lions of the hospitals are following the advice of Sir Charles Locock, and meeting homeopaths every week. Though we may not approve of this, we think an Editor going about with a bee in his bonnet to abuse Mr. Fergusson, will only do mischief. Sir Charles Locock says we can never convert them or their patients… *(Andrew Wynter (Ed.), British Medical Journal: BMJ, Volume 2, (British Medical Association, 1861). Page 53.)’

Charles Locock was the son of Henry Locock and Susannah Smyth, and they had five sons including Charles Brodie Locock,

Charles Locock’s Obituary is in the London Echo the in 1875,

Of interest:

In 1886, a Mrs. Locock was a sponsor of homeopathy,

Henry Frederick Leicester **Locock **1867 - 1907

The highest church court in the land is to decide whether a body can be exhumed from an overgrown Kent churchyard vault as part of a campaign to prove that it is the illegitimate grandson of Queen Victoria.

Henry Frederick Leicester Locock was adopted by Frederick Locock, the son of Queen Victoria’s gynaecologist, Sir Charles Locock, after he was born in December 1867.

One of his grandchildren, Nicholas Locock, is seeking to take a bone sample from Henry Locock’s body for mitochondrial DNA testing to establish the truth or otherwise of a family legend that Henry Locock’s mother was the bohemian sculptor Princess Louise, the sixth child of Queen Victoria.

His aim is to compare his grandfather’s DNA with that of the Tsarina Alexandra, whose body was one of nine discovered in a grave in Russia in 1991 and whose identity was established by comparison with the DNA of the Duke of Edinburgh, one of her living relatives.

If the Locock family legend is correct, Henry Locock would have been a first cousin of the Tsarina, who was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter.

Judge Michael Goodman, chancellor of the Rochester diocese where the remains are buried in a family vault, refused the exhumation petition at a consistory court last year but Mr Locock has appealed to the Court of Arches, the highest ecclesiastical court in the country. The case will be heard on April 3 at St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London.

Henry Locock, who died aged 39 in 1907, was buried in the Locock family vault, now overgrown and barely accessible, at St Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks.