A Tale of a Quack Doctor

An unpleasant itch

In the search for family we often come across little items that intrigue us all. They are the point where you think, “Oh, I wonder what that was all about?” or “I must make a note of that and come back to it”. They are like an itch; you want to scratch it but you don’t have time right then. Sometimes we manage to follow them up but more often than not they slip out of our mind. Here’s one of my itches that I think I’ve scratched.

Ancestral home

In researching my family in Hull, some lived in both Medley Street and Vincent Street. My grandfather was born in a terrace at 5, Vincent Place, Medley Street and his mother was born in Admiral Place, Vincent Street. Both of these streets were cleared away for the creation of King Edward Street. The site of my Great Great Grandfather’s house at 17, Vincent Street is lost so much has this area been changed since the turn of the 20^th century. I would estimate that it would have stood near the alley that runs off Saville Street to service the shops there. I’ve looked for any visible remains but the closest I have come to any residual artefacts is the brick wall at the back of the old Gough and Davy store. We’ve all grasped at such flimsy ancestral straws, haven’t we?

Quack doctor

John Richardson’s “History of the Streets of Hull” states that Medley Street, “was formerly called Ordovas Place from a person named Francis C. Ordovas, a quack doctor, who lived in it and built a house in it.” Now this was the “itch” I felt. A quack doctor with a street named after him! Come on, doesn’t that make you curious just a little? Perhaps my imagination was nurtured in childhood with a fascination for the unusual and weird and weaned on a diet of Karloff and Lugosi. A quack doctor in the late 18^th and early 19^th century! I think I’ve seen the movie. Lightning! A corpse! Electricity! Quick Igor, the Brain!!!

You’ll be sad to hear that my re-animation scenario is far from the truth alas. (1) Dr Ordovas was a practising physician in Hull, Sculcoates and other areas for about 40 years but as for conducting strange experiments late at night with a hunchback servant. Sorry.

Tracking him down

The first indication we have of him is an advertisement in The Hull Packet of October 1788. A testimonial from Mr John Tinegate, states that he placed his wife under Dr Ordovas’s care after she had suffered 14 years of ill health. In 5 weeks Dr Ordovas had restored this woman back to “such a state of health as leaves me no doubt of her being properly cured.” This piece is then followed by the doctor’s address.

The address given was Mr. Storey’s, Trippet, near the Dock Offices. The Dock Offices then were situated near where the old North Bridge stood, a little south of the present North Bridge. In the 1791 Hull Directory he is listed as a surgeon at 3, Bridge Street, Dockside. In 1795 he is once again cited in the press amongst a list of the “great and good” of Hull subscribers for the relief of the poor in Hull as is Mr John Tinegate. The doctor subscribed a guinea. It is also reported that in 1796 a “Mr Wharton, was walking across a room in Dr Ordovas’s house when, turning sharply he broke a blood vessel and died” (2). In 1797, in an advertisement for a Dr Dick, our doctor is name checked again, Dr. Dick having been an apprentice to Dr. Ordovas in the past.

Ordova’s Place

By this time the good doctor appears to have become a member of Hull’s middle class. It was probably about this time that he set up his home and practice surgery in a small street off Chariot Street leading eastwards. It is marked on Craggs’s map of Hull of 1817 below, close to the centre of the map and off Chariot Street to the east.

Dr. Ordovas had a house built at the eastern end of this as yet unnamed street. Unnamed streets were not uncommon then as most people knew where they lived and where most of their neighbours did too and people had no need of a postal address as they would either not receive any post, or if they did, it would probably be carried by someone who knew them. We really, as creatures of such huge cities as today, can’t grasp the small nature of towns of this period. Yes, it was changing even then but remember that Hull in 1801 only had a population of about 20,000. They could all fit in the KC Stadium and there would still be room for another 5,000.

Leg-bone

We have no idea if other houses were there already in this street or if he initiated this new street. We know that Charles Grimston owned the land and that the Doctor had leased the ground from him to build his house on a 30-year lease. Also about this time, according to Alderman Thomas Johnson in his history of himself and four of his ancestors, Dr Ordovas was one of the learned men of Hull who picked over some of the antiquities that came to light after the re-building of St Mary’s Church in the latter part of the 18^th century. Dr Ordovas’s share appears to have been, “a leg-bone, on which was an old iron ring” which he had hung in his “doctor-shop”. Well, my doctor used to have a fish tank but I suppose an old leg bone complete with manacle makes just as valid a statement.

Unstable times

In November 1798 the career of the good doctor appears to have come to a stumbling halt in that he assigned all of his debts and assets over to a William Etherington of Gainsborough who was also a creditor of the doctors along with a number of others. It all looked like Doctor Ordovas’ adventure in Hull was to end ingloriously.

But you can’t keep a good man down. Within 2 months the doctor had put his shingle out so to speak by placing the following advert in the Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette of the 9^th March 1799.

Alas although the doctor wished to “render every assistance in his power to the afflicted” his hold upon money surely failed him because in the June of that year his house, situated at the end of what was now known as Ordovas Place was sold.

The house itself did not sell, probably until at least June of the following year, 1800. In July of that year creditors of Dr Ordovas were required to contact the Assignees of Doctor Ordovas who intended to “make a dividend of his estate and effects” to such creditors who appeared at their offices on the required date. Surely this is the last of Doctor Ordovas?

New beginning?

Well, not quite. In that very month when the creditors were arguing about what they were to get from his assets, and I’m sure the debate was long and hard when it came to the leg bone, he placed yet another advert in the local press.

Although he has now moved from the street that bore his name, he still appears to be bearing up to what the cruel world has thrown at him. In fact, there is no mention of recent financial issues just a simple note that he has just returned from London. One can imagine him returning by coach to Hull from London and looking round and saying, “Hello, where’s my house gone?” Who’s got my leg bone?”

Spreading his wings

I quite frankly admire such brass necked affrontery. One notes however the reduced surgery times. This may have been because, probably finding that his medical prowess was not conducive to providing a good income, at least in Hull, he was now spreading his wings. There is an advert in the Stamford Mercury dated November 1801 in which our good doctor states that he will commence, once a fortnight, to see patients at Mr J.Pioty’s, Optician, Looking Glass and Picture Frame Manufacturer in New Street, Lincoln.

In December 1801 and the following January, he has to place an advert in the same newspaper warning against a “person (that) has lately travelled through the neighbourhood of Sleaford and Lincoln, selling medicines, pretending to be prepared by him, (Dr Ordovas).”

My mind fairly runs away with itself now. Was this a genuine plea to people not to buy fake merchandise from a “Dr Ordovas”, who was patently not our good doctor, or was it an attempt to throw dust into his previous patients’ eyes who having used some of his concoctions were now feeling decidedly unwell?

Apprentice

In the April, in the same newspaper he advertises for an apprentice, “a young man of respectable connections and liberally educated.” The doctor, generous to a fault, simply felt that, “a genteel premium would be expected” from any suitable applicant. Why do I believe that the applicant with the most “premium” would be the most suitable?

No more is heard of the doctor until some 10 years later when an announcement stated that he was due to resume his practice in Hull from his lodgings. He again advertised in October of 1812 in The Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette that,

This relocation to Hull however did not stop him in his Lincolnshire adventures. In the April of that year he is once again advertising his services in Lincoln for 3 days in every fortnight for the “benefit of the afflicted.” That his surgery was now at a Mrs Turners next door to The Falstaff Inn was probably an incentive to his patients.

Botanist

In the 1814 directory he is listed as a Botanist at Stepney Place, Stepney, rather than as a surgeon or physician and this term may possibly give the clue to how his reputation as a quack doctor arose. He may have been using more herbal remedies than other physicians of his day and this may have been both a harking back to medieval medicine and also a forerunner of the homeopathic practices of today. It would also have been seen as “unscientific” and therefore at odds in the Age of Reason.

The end

Alas, no more is heard of the doctor until his obituary notice appear in the press that he had died at the age of 84 on the 22^nd of November 1826. The notices all state that he was, “formerly an eminent physician of Hull” and also allow him the title of M.D. although nowhere has it been found where he actually attained this qualification if ever. He was buried in St Marys, Air Street, Wincolmlee. Whatever the man’s faults, and they are not proven by any means, he always said he would give free medical advice and sometimes remedies to the poor. I wonder how many of his peers were so charitable with their time and skill?

Ordova’s Place

But what of Ordovas Place? It is first mentioned, ironically, in the sale of Dr Ordovas house in 1800 and then had a life of about 30 years before the last mention was in 1829 when a policeman found a group of youths gambling at the entrance to it. By this time the leases that Mr. Grimston had let had now expired and by 1810 new leases were being issued. One of the consequences of this was that Dr Ordovas’ house was demolished and the land it stood on was replaced by extending the road through to what was then known as Fox Street but what later became known as Vincent Street. Ordovas Place was completely rebuilt by 1830 and about this time it gained the name Medley Street named after a distant relative of the Grimstons, Admiral Henry Medley, (1687-1747).

Last vestiges

The map below of Hull in 1853, the top edge being north, will give you some idea of how the streets were situated in relation to each other. If you wanted to explore it yourself then the final remaining yardage of Davis Street remained as the gap between the disused old Co-operative store and the old Edwin Davis Store on Bond Street with which to orient yourself. Unfortunately that has now disappeared over the last couple of years and the search would be more difficult now.

So, not quite the brooding quasi-scientist of my imaginings, probably more like, at least to me, Professor Calculus from the Tin-Tin comics. Or am I doing the good doctor a disservice? Well, I can tell you one thing. He cured my itch.

1. As we know grave robbing was still prevalent during this period. I’m reminded of a wonderful little article in East Yorkshire Local History Society Bulletin, Summer 1993, by Marjorie Salkeld of a case of a corpse being stolen from a local graveyard and it being found in a carriage in Charles Street. If you haven’t read it do try to get hold of it, it is well worth reading.
2. The Medical Profession in Hull, 1400-1900. Bickford J.A.R. & M.E.Bickford (1983). p.99.

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Featured image credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org A sailor with a bandaged eye consulting a quack doctor. Coloured etching by I. Cruikshank, 1807?, after G.M. Woodward. 1807 By: George Moutard Woodwardafter: Isaac CruikshankPublished: 1807?Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/