A chance encounter

We met by chance. My intention was simply to collect a picture from Gale and Co, the oldest surviving picture framing and restoration company outside London. This business completed, an invitation followed to join the owner in the inner office. And there he was: Dr William Pitcairn (1711–91), president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) from 1775–85. Or at least there he was in a fine original 18th-century engraving of 1785 by John Jones who was active in London from 1775 to the turn of the century. Jones was an expert in mezzo tint and stipple engraving particularly of portraits painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He exhibited at the Society of Artists between 1780 and 1791 and served as engraver extraordinary to the Prince of Wales between 1790 and 1797. The engraving was made from the Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait still in the RCP collection and currently displayed on the heritage website as a fine picture urgently in need of restoration.

Pitcairn seems to have been something of an elusive figure. He receives but a passing mention in the history of the RCP. Even William Munk, who compiled his roll of all College fellows, noted that he was the oldest son of the Reverend David Pitcairn of Dysart, Fife, by his wife Catherine Hamilton of the ‘ducal family of that name’ but could recover few particulars of his general or medical education. He studied for a time with Boerhaave in Leyden and graduated doctor of medicine in Rheims. Rather remarkably at the opening ceremony for the Radcliffe Library in Oxford in 1749, on the recommendation of the trustees, the degree of doctor of medicine by diploma was conferred upon him.

Other information has now come to light. The Pitcairn family have been long established in Fife and one of their devoted descendants has traced the family back for nearly 600 years.¹ He was physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital between 1750 and 1780 and physician to both Christ's Hospital and the Blue Coat Schools. In the spring of 1770 he was successfully proposed as a fellow of the Royal Society by 12 fellows including Dr William Hunter and Dr John Fothergill.

A gentleman well versed in all branches of literature and natural history and especially distinguished by his application to botany and his success in rearing scarce and foreign plants.

He had a botanical garden of some five acres at his country house in Islington. Pitcairnia is a genus of the botanical family Bromeliaceae (the pineapple family) with some 46 species which records his name to posterity.²

In the 18th century the physician's cane was part of his professional outfit and he would not have been seen in public or visited a patient without it. The gold-headed cane owned by Dr John Radcliffe (1652–1714) was engraved with his coat of arms and was handed on to Dr Mead and Dr Askew then to Pitcairn and his nephew Dr David Pitcairn and finally to Dr William Baillie (each engraving the cane with their own coat of arms) whose widow donated the cane to the RCP just before the ‘new’ College opened in Trafalgar Square in 1825.³ The cane can still be seen in the heritage collection. Pitcairn can also be seen in the current exhibition at the College celebrating the pioneer fellows of the RCP and the Royal Society.