More on Francis Labee 1697-1755

Francis Labee, the senior surgeon/barber-surgeon under whom Beddome trained for the medical profession appears to have been born around 1697 and died in 1755. He was probably a Huguenot ship’s-captain’s son. Beginning as a Baptist he became a Methodist. He appears to have taken on two apprentices after 1726 and apprenticed more over a 30 year period (1726-1754). His wife's name was Sarah Labee. Their son Francis junior was also a barber-surgeon. He was apprenticed to his father in 1741 and in 1746 became a surgeon’s mate on a privateer. He himself also taught students later on.

Besides Beddome and his son, Labee's other apprentices include

• The surgeon John Eaton
• The barber surgeon John Evans who began in 1735 and was discharged in 1737.
• The senior surgeon Abraham Ludlow, a Bristolian, in an informal arrangement from 1724. The payment was £20. He himself became a master. He died in 1753. His wife's name was Martha.
• The surgeon/surgeon-manmidwife Morgan Nicholas who was a Carmarthenshire gentleman. He began his apprenticeship in 1754. The payment was £50. His wife's name was Mary Gifford. He moved on to Bath.

Beddome's apprenticeship involved the payment of £26 5s.

Labee was also responsible for the training of Martha Powell as a midwife about 1752. She practised in the countryside until 1762 when she returned to Bristol.

This information can be found here.

Apprenticeship

We know that Beddome trained as a surgeon apothecary under Francis Labee in Bristol some time around the 1730s. Here we read that

Boys as young as 12 were “bound” by way of an apprenticeship indenture to a master for seven years - the usual term to serve an apprenticeship for any trade or profession. An apprenticeship indenture was a legally binding document and money was paid to the master by a parent or guardian in exchange for the master agreeing to train the boy in their profession, and to supply the apprentice with food, clothing and lodging for the duration of the seven-year apprenticeship.

During the seven-year apprenticeship a boy was taught to compound pharmacopoeia preparations, recognise drugs and their use and to dispense complicated prescriptions. Throughout the 18th Century, most medicines were derived from herbs, plants and vegetables and the Chelsea Physic Garden served as a place of instruction for the apothecary’s apprentice, providing simples and raw materials for the drugs manufactured in the laboratory of the Apothecaries’ Hall attached to the headquarters of the Company of Worshipful Apothecaries. An apprentice attended lectures and demonstrations in the hall of Barber-Surgeons and could participate in anatomical dissections if they wanted to. However, the Company of Worshipful Apothecaries did not require an apprentice to be examined on his expertise as a surgeon. So it was left entirely up to the apprentice to practice and become expert if he wished to use his skills as a surgeon - reason enough why barber-surgeons frowned on apothecaries who “crossed the line” and not only dispensed medicines and attended patients for general medical complaints but performed surgery - an extremely risky venture in the pre-anesthetic and unhygienic conditions of the 1700’s.

Masters usually took on one apprentice but there were instances of masters binding seven apprentices to his service. Given that parents paid a premium for their sons to be educated as apothecaries, these boys were less open to abuse. However, mistreatment at the hands of masters happened, and there are cases of boys being beaten, starved, worked almost death and made to live in appalling conditions. The usual place these apprentices lived out their seven years was at the back of the apothecary shop, in the workroom or “laboratory” with the herbs and powders, medicinals and apparatus needed for compounding. An unsafe and lonely place for a young boy if the master did not take the boy into his home and thus share his table and company of his friends and family.

Surgeon Apothecary

We have noted that following his schooling in Bristol, Beddome was apprenticed to a surgeon apothecary and seems to have taken well to it.* He apparently never lost his love for things medical. Two of his sons trained in the same field and he himself, it seems, carried on some form of medical practice in Bourton. It is said that he would often turn to the world of medicine for an apt illustration in his preaching. (Remarks in Memoir, xi, which reveals that Bernard Foskett, like many a nonconformist minister at that time, also had a medical training).

It is perhaps worth noting, therefore, that the term apothecary, often used between the 1600s and 1800s, does not refer to a chemist or druggist but was used for individuals living in London who had passed the examinations of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London, founded in 1617 (a break away from the grocers company), or to their often less well qualified counterparts in the provinces. Although the apothecary's practice included a strong dispensing element, it was more all-encompassing than the handling of drugs and chemicals. Following a ruling in the Rose Case (1701-1703/4), apothecaries became legally ratified members of the medical profession, able to prescribe as well as dispense medicines.

In the 1700s apothecaries were some of the most common medical practitioners. In Bristol in 1775 there were 8 physicians, 56 surgeon-apothecaries and 3 druggists. Medical students could become a surgeon-apothecary without going to university (nonconformists were barred from Oxford and Cambridge until 1828 so it was an obvious route into medicine for them), and could earn a living from minor surgery and dispensing drugs. Until 1754, surgeons were allied with barbers in the barber-surgeons company. Under the Apothecaries Act of 1815, apothecaries who took a specified course of training with the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries could be licensed as general practitioners, and were called licentiates.

*We later discovered that this man's name was Francis Labee. Beddome's apprenticeship perhaps lasted from about 1730-1737.