6. Fine yarn

Dickson’s 1809 article “On the spinning of fine yarn” [1] mentions the impressive hand-spinning feats of Ann McQuillan (or McQuillin etc.) of Comber in the Ards, and praises Ann’s grandmother Mrs Wilson (c. 1699 - c. 1791), a practitioner of the “Suttonian” treatments [2] for smallpox:

The article was published almost simultaneously in The Monthly Pantheon, a magazine printed in Dublin by John Stockdale, with whom Dickson had other dealings [3]. The Belfast Monthly Magazine was miffed:

We are obliged to our Correspondents for the favour of their Communications. But we are once again necessitated to complain that we appear as plagiarists, when the fault is not ours. After the account of Ann M’Quillen in this number was wrought off, we found that a similar article was published nearly verbatim in the Monthly Pantheon. We earnestly request of our Correspondents not to place us in so unpleasant a predicament. We cannot accept of divided favour without risquing our character for originality, which it is essentially our aim to preserve.

“Nearly verbatim”: there are minor typesetting differences, but the Pantheon has a notable point on smallpox omitted by the Magazine, between “of great service to the public” and “I hope I shall not be deemed impertinent”:

In one important case, she [Mrs Wilson] may be said to have been, not only blessed, but blessable, above her rivals. To her assidious [sic] attention, judicious treatment, and well regulated application, of air, ailment [sic; not aliment, but perhaps a misprint], and medicine, under the direction of the late Dr. Halyday, and the superintendence of providence, during a long and alarming attack of that dangerous and loathsome disease, I have heard it generally allowed, that we are indebted for the life, talent, learning, and virtues, of the illustrious Lord V.C-r­­-gh, whose name will ever be dear to Irishmen, as the memory of, what was once, Ireland must still be dear to him!

"Generally allowed...indebted": the parents of Robert Stewart (1769-1822, later Viscount Castlereagh) married in 1766 and he, notoriously sickly, was the only surviving child. His elder brother Alexander-Francis died in infancy in 1769, and his mother Sarah Frances Seymour-Conway died in childbirth in 1770. A large family of half-siblings followed his father's 1775 remarriage to Frances Pratt. The rumour relayed by Dickson must be that at least one of the Stewart family survived under Mrs Wilson's care and the “direction” of Dr Alexander Henry Halyday (or Haliday / Halliday, 1728-1802; he held much of the ex-Donegall land in Ballyhenry townland, adjoining Ballycraigy). But Dickson does not positively say who caught smallpox, or whether Mrs Wilson was nurse or midwife to the Stewart family; he says that he knew her from 1767, but does not say when she began to variolate.

By 1809 Dickson, formerly on good terms with the Stewarts and other powerful families, was a poor ex-prisoner dogged by unproven accusations about the 1798 Rebellion; so this passage on Castlereagh’s “virtues” and the memory of a former Ireland seems pointed. There might have been deliberate caution at the Magazine, or a wise second thought.

Suttonians in Ireland

The large technical and popular literatures on smallpox are slightly thin on female Irish variolators. For example, “Jurin rapidly set up a correspondence network with almost all the known variolators in Britain” [4]; but those named in James Jurin’s Letter to the learned Caleb Cotesworth (London, 1723) are in England:

David van Zwanenberg [5] describes the growing Sutton family business as “an enterprise that stitched up several counties in eastern England and stretched to Ireland, Holland and France”, adding “By 1768, Houlton [Robert Houlton, a colleague and promoter] could announce that surgeons throughout the country and at certain selected cities overseas had contracted to practise only the Suttonian System of inoculation”. Houlton wrote [6] in 1768: 

There are many press advertisements in Ireland for the chief Suttonians and the “franchisee” Dr Hamilton Kelso:

“The Counties of Down and Armagh are assigned to him alone, as the District of his Practice” – Wexford, 28 June 1768.

Houlton gives a “perfect list” of adherents, starting with Robert Sutton senior (in Norfolk) and continuing:

For example, Joseph Arnold works in Belfast:

Vachell, Ward, and Doherty are “soon to be appointed” in Ireland. Houlton writes here in 1768 that “No person is at present in connection with the Sutton family whose name is not to be found in this list”. There may be some uncertainty in counting because of “Messrs”, but only 12 of these gentlemen, not all 60-odd,  are in Ireland [7].

Questions

Castlereagh’s later mental state and suicide are much studied, but are his childhood illnesses documented? Did he catch smallpox naturally, or by Suttonian variolation?  Does Mrs Wilson, said here to be often a midwife for upper-class families, appear in records elsewhere? These questions may be of some interest, besides the Dickson link and the remarkable craft of Ann McQuillin.

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Jon Rhodes, the staff of the Edward Jenner museum in Berkeley, and the staff of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast.

References

[1] Belfast Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, pp. 165-169, 31 March 1809.

[2] Mild attacks of smallpox were unpleasant, and severe ones were often fatal. Controlled infection of the otherwise healthy could induce a mild version, and leave patients more or less protected. The terminology has changed over time but “variolation” or “inoculation” means here the deliberate introduction of infectious material from smallpox sores. “Vaccination” means introducing less deadly material (for example from cowpox sores) that still activates our “antibody” immune system. Variolation could be through incisions or ingestion; Robert Sutton and his sons refined and exploited a method of gentle skin scraping. Their patients paid for house and board, in relative isolation, before treatment and during recovery – an effective and very profitable business.

[3] Kenneth Robinson, “Publishing the Rev. Dr. Steel Dickson’s Narrative”, Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society, No. 32, 2008.

[4] Gareth Williams, Angel of Death (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), page 131.

[5] David van Zwanenberg, “The Suttons and the business of inoculation”, Medical History, vol. 22, pp. 71-82 (1978).

[6] Robert Houlton, “Indisputable facts relative to the Suttonian art of inoculation, with observations on its discovery, progress, encouragement, opposition etc.”, Dublin, W G Jones, 1768.

[7] Simon Schama, Foreign Bodies (Jonathan Cape, 2023).