Dr Thomas Trotter sometime surgeon on the slave ship Brookes writing in 1827

 

This short letter is significant only because of its author. Older biographies of Thomas Trotter (1760-1832) like that to be found at Electric Scotland (and which appears unreliable) focus on his career after he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine from Edinburgh in 1788 and rose to be appointed Physician to the Royal Navy’s Channel Fleet in 1794 on the strength of a 1790 published proposal to reform the Medical Department of the Royal Navy. He was aboard ship during the naval engagements with the French fleet during 1794 and 1795 and had occasion to treat Nelson. But in 1802 an accident at sea produced a hernia which rendered him unfit for active service; he was given a pension and went into medical practice at Newcastle. He published significant work on reform of naval medicine, scurvy, the effects of drunkenness on the body, and on the prevention of “Fire and Choak Damps” in coal mines. He had literary pretensions and published poems and plays.

More recent biographies, like that now online at the Royal Museums of Greenwich website (see References) draw attention to his earlier career. The son of a baker, he enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1779 from uncompleted medical studies at Edinburgh and was assigned the role of surgeon’s mate. He saw very active service in conflicts, including those around the Great Siege of Gibraltar, and was promoted to full surgeon but then discharged in 1783 when those conflicts ended. Unemployed, he took a job as surgeon on a ship which  for over two centuries has been familiar to students of the slave trade, the Brookes. He was horrified by what he encountered at sea and found himself in conflict with the ship’s Master, Clement Noble, who refused his appeals to allow the captives on board more freedom of movement and more fruit & vegetables to combat scurvy, He made just one round trip on the Brookes and returned to Britain with a strong sense of guilt and convinced that the slave trade should be stopped.  He appeared before a House of Commons committee and recounted his experiences; Noble was also questioned. Later in life he argued for the abolition of impressment into Navy service; the practice was not formally abolished but lapsed after the end of the Napoleonic wars because the Navy was able to find enough voluntary recruits. My maternal grandfather ran away from his unhappy Kentish home in the 1870s, aged fourteen, made his way to the naval dockyards at Chatham, falsified his age to sixteen and enlisted. Only at his death in 1924 was his real age  recorded and revealed.

Mark Benson writing for the Royal Greenwich Museum (see References)  indicates that Trotter felt that the value of his work had not been fully recognised in the size of  his pension and this letter contains a statement to that effect; but he may also have hoped to receive some honour for what he had done both as a practising surgeon and, perhaps more so, as a contributor to both medicine and policies of naval reform.

The recipient of this letter, living fairly near to Trotter, is a man who eventually became Lieutenant General James Home (died 1849) of the Royal Marines. See the final reference for more about his career.  There were family as well as professional connections between the Trotters of Melrose and the Homes of Broomhouse. 

 

 Transcription

Addressed: To   Col. James Home    R.M.     Broomhouse    Dunse

Datelined: Melrose, July 30. 1827

Postmarked MELROSE and other markings which suggest the letter followed a rounabout route

Docketing note: 30 July 1827 Dr Trotter Melrose

My Dear Sir

Permit me to acknowledge the receipt of your kind Letter, with the inclosure for which again accept my warmest thanks.

Many of our old friends are now dropping into the grave; among the rest I lately observed Willie Minto, aged above 72.

I feel my general health improved in the country [he has been living in Newcastle and has returned to his place of birth], but my local [?] complaints cannot be mended.

The Duke of Clarence seems doing some liberal things [as Lord High Admiral he severely reduced the range of offences for which corporal punishment could be used in the Navy] but I have no hopes of any favor being extended to me. The acknowledged Good which I have done the Navy, seems only to have been the means of being treated with neglect & injustice. I remain, My Dear Sir, your ever grateful friend

T. Trotter

References

Wikipedia: Thomas Trotter (physician)

https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/library-archive/dr-thomas-trotter [Mark Benson]

https://electricscotland.com/history/men/trotter_thomas.htm

https://snr.org.uk/two-scottish-marines-in-the-american-war-the-letters-of-william-and-james-home-of-broomhouse-1778-1782/