CHAMBERS, WILLIAM FREDERIC
TitleCHAMBERS, WILLIAM FREDERIC
ReferenceMS-CHAMW
Date
1800 - 1879
Creator William Frederick (1786-1855) Chambers
Admin history: William Frederic Chambers (1786-1855) was the eldest son of William Chambers, a distinguished oriental scholar and a political servant of the East India Trading Company, and Charity Chambers, the daughter of Thomas Fraser, of Balmain, Inverness-shire. He had at least one brother (Charles Harcourt Chambers) and two sisters, Eliza and Anne (called Annie throughout the collection).
Commonly referred to as Frederic, he was born in India and brought to England in 1793 following the death of his father. He was educated at a grammar school in Bath and then at Westminster School. Frederic later gained a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge where he graduated BA (1808) MA (1811) and MD (1818). After graduating he trained and practiced at St. George’s Hospital, the Windmill Street School of Medicine and spent one year in Edinburgh.
He was admitted as inceptor candidate of the Royal College of Physicians 22 December 1813, a candidate 30 September 1818 and a fellow 30 September 1819. He was a censor (police of the RCP) in 1822 and 1836, consiliarius 1836, 1841, 1845 and an elect in 1847.
Frederic was elected physician to St. George’s Hospital, London on 20 April 1816, despite being the youngest of the candidates, whereby he held the post until 1839. Following the deaths of William George Maton in 1835 and Sir Henry Halford in 1844, Frederic gained much of these physician’s practices, becoming a very prominent figure in London.
He was gazetted physician in ordinary to Queen Adelaide on 25 October 1836, and later physician in ordinary to William IV on 4 May 1837. Ernest, the new King of Hanover created him KCH on 8 August 1837, but at his urgent request allowed him to decline the assumption of the ordinary prefix of knighthood. In the succeeding reign he became physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria on 8 August 1837 and to the Duchess of Kent in 1839.
He continued to be a leading physician in London, with an income of between seven to nine thousand guineas a year, until 1848, when bad health obliged him to retire into private life. In 1834 a poisoned wound, obtained in a post-mortem examination, lost him a thumb and nearly cost him his life, and from its effects he never fully recovered. On his retirement he took up his residence on his estate at Hordlecliffe, near Lymington, Hampshire, where he died of paralysis on 16 December 1855, aged 69.
Frederic married Mary Fraser on 10 February 1821, daughter of William Mackinen Fraser, MD, of Lower Grosvenor Street, London. Mary died in 1839. He had at least two children, a son, Willie Chambers and a daughter, Frances Chambers – who died aged 33 and was buried at her father’s grave in Lymington.
[Munk’s Roll Vol.I p.196]
Production date 1800 - 1879
Scope and ContentThese papers include correspondence between Frederic and members of his family and friends, and between family members and friends about Frederic, spanning his early life and career. Also includes papers, notes and correspondence relating to Frederic’s professional career; his various appointments, from his early career as a physician at St. George’s Hospital London, to his appointment as physician in ordinary to Queen Adelaide, William IV, Queen Victoria and the Duchess of Kent and his address to the Medico-Chirurgical Society as President. Correspondence also details his relationship with his siblings Charles, Eliza and Anne, his children Willie and Frances and the deaths of his mother Charity Chambers and his wife, Mary Chambers, and biographical material about Frederic himself and his personal life, including the sale of his estate and a rubbing of his memorial stone.
Extent3 boxes
LanguageEnglish
Archival historyAcquired c.1957
Levelfonds
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