13/06/2019

Francis Labee d 1755

The suggestion that Francis Labee was raised a Baptist and that one of his apprentices was the Baptist minister and hymnwriter Benjamin Beddome can be found in William Dyer's Diary Bristol in 1762 here. Apparently Labee and his wife, who remarried following his death, were also close to the Wesleys from 1739 onwards. Dyer (d 1805) an apothecary himself had bought Mrs Labbee’s old clock at auction for 4 guineas in 1758, and noted that ‘it continues good’ in 1801. The diary is edited by Professor Jonathan Barry.
Labee was a surgeon and man midwife, who was freed in 1726 and was described at his death in his house in Castle Street in 1755 as ‘an eminent surgeon of the city for 30 or more years’.
A letter of 1750 notes that Mr Labee had lent the (Bristol Methodist) society £50 but demanded its return: he was a surgeon in Bristol who had given hospitality to Howell Harris in 1746.

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