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The story of Dr Lettsom
Everyone at Dog Kennel Hill has a chance to play and learn in Lettsom Gardens, the community garden across the road, and some pupils also look after the school allotment there. If you're in year 3, you'll know that the gardens are named after an eighteenth century doctor called John Coakley Lettsom, who built a house there called Grove Hill. This is how his friend James Boswell described him in a poem: "West India bred, warm heart, cool head, The City's first physician: By schemes humane,--Want, Sickness, Pain, To aid is his ambition." Dr Lettsom was a man who took the DKH Golden Rule very seriously.
Dr Lettsom's golden rule
It's hard to sum up his John Coakley Lettsom's life because he wasn't famous for just one thing, but did lots of different things to try to make the world a better place...
Growing up at Grove Hill. . .
We know how the Lettsom boys were educated, because their father wrote about his oldest son, John. He was terribly proud of him, and hoped he would become a doctor too and inherit his practice - a strong tradition in medical families at the time. It was a great tragedy for Dr Lettsom when John died quite suddenly in January 1800, from a 'putrid fever' probably caught at the London Hospital where he worked.
Dr Lettsom's house, Grove Hill
The hill south of Camberwell - a rural village in the eighteenth century - was the ideal place for Dr Lettsom to build a country house with high grounds where his family could enjoy the healthy air and fertile soil for the doctor's horticultural experiments.
Dr Lettsom's Caribbean childhood
John Coakley Lettsom was born on the island of Little Jost Van Dyke, in the Virgin Islands. This picture of his family house was drawn by his friend and relative Dr William Thornton (of the nearby island of Tortola) in 1795, when Lettsom was seriously considering shipping the whole building to England and re-erecting in the grounds of Grove Hill.
The Library and Museum
Public museums and libraries were rare in the eighteenth century - the British Museum first opened to the public in 1759 - but many private collectors wanted to make sure that others could enjoy their collections. Lettsom's Library and Museum were open to members of the medical profession on Saturdays. This is how the doctor described them:
Bees
Near the Temple of the Sybils at Grove Hill was Lettsom's Apiary: sixty-four bee hives were each labelled with the name of a kingdom or independent nation, beginning in northern Europe, and continuing through Asia, Africa and America, "concluding with the great European islands," so that "a kind of history of the world was exhibited in the habitations of the industrious Bee."
Camberwell Soup
Lettsom was active in promoting soup kitchens, to feed the poor. Here's a recipe from his pamphlet "Hints Respecting the Distresses of the Poor"
Grove Hill in poetry and prose
The grounds and views at Grove Hill were well-known in eighteenth-century England, and celebrated in poems and magazine articles.
