Most people living in our region will be aware of the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston. Those living in that area, people of wide general knowledge and, most especially, people with a medical background or interest, or intuitive guessers will be aware that James Paget was “a medical man” whose hometown was Great Yarmouth; few, however, will be aware that he was co-author with his older brother Charles, of a book on the natural history of the areas of Suffolk and Norfolk around Yarmouth and that it contains an annotated catalogue of the animals and plants known to occur in the district. This account attempts to rectify these deficits by examining the lives of the two men in the context of their family and assesses the importance of their book from a national and local perspective. In addition, in this important Darwin anniversary year, it looks at the connections, similarities and differences between the Paget family and that of Charles Darwin.

Departure and Retrospection

          At the end of September, 1834 a rather small, good-looking young man of twenty with a kind, calm-looking expression and engagingly expressive eyes, left his house on the South Quay at Yarmouth in Norfolk and entered a horse-drawn carriage. He was travelling to London, a journey at that time which would take almost 24 hours, and to a place which he had never before visited. Indeed, he had never ever previously been much more than twenty miles from the port in which he had been born. Not only was this journey to be his first to take him a significant distance from home, it was also a journey which was to change his life forever and in ways which he could never have imagined. This young man was James Paget and he was planning to stay in lodgings in the capital for an indeterminate period. A love of science and family were at the still centre of the young man’s being. As he travelled, he would certainly have been thinking about his own contribution to the knowledge of the natural history of those areas of Norfolk and Suffolk around his home as well as of the family which he was leaving behind.

          His parents were Samuel Paget, a self-made business man, and his wife Sarah. They had married in December, 1799 when Samuel was twenty-five and had moved immediately into a large old house on the South Quay in Yarmouth. Samuel had only received a very basic education but had taught himself to be proficient in reading, writing and numeracy. On leaving school he had gone to work as a clerk to a merchant supplying provisions to the North Sea fleet. His employer died suddenly when Samuel was seventeen. Amazingly, for such a young man, he recognised an opportunity for self-advancement, made the long journey to the Admiralty in London alone, and demonstrated such a thorough knowledge of the business that he was told that he could continue to hold the contract if he so wished. Initially, he had had to borrow money to operate but so quickly did he impress the Admiralty with his efficiency in fulfilling the original contract that he soon ended up with additional, lucrative contracts enabling him to pay off his loans. By the time of the marriage he had become a rich man and was very busy as a brewer, large ship-owner and one of the chief business men in Yarmouth.

          Over the next twenty-six years, seventeen children were to be born to them of whom only nine were to survive. Between 1800 and 1813 eleven children were born, five of whom survived to grow up – Martha, Frederick, Arthur, George and Charles. In 1812–1813, such was their wealth, they had built a magnificent new house on the site of their old one and it was there on January 11th, 1814 that their next child, our young traveller James had been born, to be followed by two more sons, Frank and Alfred, and finally Kate.

          The Paget sons were the focus of all the attention within the household. At this time and in a male-orientated society, wealth passed down the male line so despite being born into a rich family, with so many brothers there was no chance for the daughters Martha and Kate to achieve financial independence; they became ladiesin- waiting trapped in the fine house on the Quay, waiting for a chance encounter with a socially suitable and wealthy gentleman who would want to marry them and thus enable them to leave the family home. If no suitable suitor turned up, the only honourable and viable alternative they had to becoming penniless old maids, would be to become governesses.

          James was to enjoy all the privileges which wealth could buy – his own nurse, a huge playroom, and a house full of servants to wait upon him and a horse and carriage in which to ride. With Waterloo in 1815 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars , peace-time Yarmouth had settled down to trade and expand and James’ formative years were to be spent during the period of his father’s greatest affluence and influence. But it was not wealth alone which contributed to James’ apparently idyllic young life; it was the loving family members among whom he found himself and who nurtured him so capably and whose various members existed in a kind of spoked wheel-like syNovember 19, 2011 9:12 each other with Samuel and Sarah at the hub passing on their observable qualities to their children on the rim. They were truly good parents in every sense of the word.

          Samuel was rather small, handsome and a thorough gentleman; cheerful, wellmannered, peace loving, and hospitable, temperate, refined in conversation, and a lover of all that was simply beautiful in literature and art. He was also calm and gentle in manner always seeming to love more than anything else the quiet of his home. As a business man, he was punctual and hard-working, and people considered him perfectly fair, liberal and honest. Such qualities made him an ideal candidate for mayor of the town and this he had become in 1817.

          Sarah was a fine-looking, tall and graceful woman; she was resolute, strongwilled and strong in speech, characteristics not normally welcomed and approved of in a woman at this time. She had great appreciation for all that was beautiful in art and nature. She was skilled in writing, needlework and oil-painting and was a prolific sketcher, filling countless albums with her work. As was becoming increasingly fashionable at that time, she collected “everything” – autographs and seals, caricatures, shells, corals, agates, old china and glass and “curiosities” including all that she could persuade the masters of her husband’s ships to bring home from their long voyages. Each collection was beautifully arranged and was labelled in her own exquisite handwriting.

          But the quality which James best remembered her for was her intense love of her children, for in spite of the nanny and the servants, she took close charge and guidance of them all; she was the most motherly of women. Of all her various activities, there was not one which she did not neglect or put aside when one of her children was ill or unhappy, or on the point of leaving home for any time, or upon a return from absence. Whilst away, a child would receive regular letters with home news and loving messages written in her beautiful handwriting and James was looking forward to receiving these in London.

          James and his brothers were educated at a school in Yarmouth run by a Mr Bowles where the standard of teaching was such as to fit a young man for entrance to a public school and the three eldest brothers went on to Charterhouse. But by the time the four younger sons were of an age to leave Mr. Bowles’ school, Samuel Paget’s business empire was crumbling. There was increasing competition in Yarmouth between those involved in running shipping companies and breweries which inevitably resulted in some, including Samuel Paget’s, becoming far less successful than others. Samuel was respected as an honourable man and he was well liked by everyone, including the poor of the town. But such qualities were no longer now prevailed as the population of Yarmouth grew. Samuel had a very large family and he had always treated them very generously and educated them expensively. Money had originally been no object but now the debts were accumulating and he was becoming poorer by the day. This decline in the Paget family’s fortunes meant no more public school education for its sons and the four younger sons, including Charles and James, remained at home after they left school.

          Samuel Paget when wealthy had built up a considerable library not for his own use, for he was far too busy, but for the use of his children whatever might be their choice of study. Among his botanical books were the great “English Botany; or coloured figures of British plants” (1790-1814) of Sir James Smith and James Sowerby in 36 volumes with 2,592 coloured plates of all known Phanerogams and also Dawson Turner’s beautifully illustrated book on seaweeds which James knew as the “Historia Fucorum” (1808-1819). Both Charles and James had inherited their mother’s love of collecting and natural history; now Charles became the entomologist of the family and James the botanist.

          In 1824, when eleven, Charles had been kept back at school by a very long illness and had been attended by the family doctor, Mr. Charles Costerton. Fortunately, he survived and after leaving school he had been content to stay at home in Yarmouth to work with his father and younger brother Frank to try to turn around the failing business, now appropriately named Paget & Sons. By the time of James’ departure for London, Charles had devoted around six or seven years to the study of the insects around Yarmouth and, aided by the valuable identification books in the family library, had steadily compiled a long and very impressive list.

          A naval career had originally been planned for James when he left school but it was then decided that he should be a general practitioner or something in the medical profession. Accordingly, in 1830 aged sixteen, he had been apprenticed for the then standard five years to Mr Costerton their well-educated family doctor, with the proviso that the last six months should be spent in hospital-study in London. Although much of his daily work during the four and a half years had been dull, tedious and apparently useless, he had also learnt things of great utility – dispensing and a practical knowledge of medicines and how to make them, account-keeping, the business-like habits needed for practice and the need for care, neatness and cleanliness in all minor surgery. He had also learnt the importance of careful observation as he was taught the anatomy of bones, dissected internal organs and portions of those limbs which he had recently seen amputated without anaesthetic. He had watched operations carried out by his employer and other surgeons in the town and had look closely and critically at the different methods of treatment. Above all else his apprenticeship had given him the opportunity to study science and he read avidly and voraciously, learning in the process the art of reading quickly. Apart from the standard medical text books available to him and current issues of “The Lancet”, he had immersed himself in botany having been initially encouraged towards this by a nephew of Mr Dawson Turner and subsequently by his son-in-law Sir William Hooker, the then greatest English botanist with whom he had gone on to correspond and exchange specimens.

          During the course of the apprenticeship he had made a nearly complete collection of the flora of the district including the seaweeds washed up there. He had collected chiefly on Saturday afternoons but also at any free moments during the day, including before breakfast. He had given so much time to his botanizing that one old lady of Yarmouth who had observed his collecting activities was moved to say that he walked about too much to be a student of medicine !

          Over these years, James had also meticulously collated at first-hand from local collectors, all the records of the flora and fauna of the Yarmouth area which he could gather. As a result, he and Charles had come to realise that this presented a golden opportunity for them not only to make their début as scientific authors, but more importantly to make some money to aid their ailing family fortunes by publishing all their records in book form. So James had set to work on a manuscript. He began with an outline of the study area, its habitats and the groups of organisms included in the book and followed this with a systematic catalogue of species and their known localities for which Charles had written the section on insects. He had checked the manuscript one last time before departing for London and now it fell to Charles to oversee its production at Mr Skill’s printing works in the town.

          Many memories and thoughts must have raced and flittered through the young James Paget’s excited mind during that long journey but as the coach approached the capital they would almost certainly have become inexorably channelled towards the reason for his trip. Despite his determination to succeed at his chosen vocation and the self-confidence which had originally been created and fostered in him by his parents and which had been strengthened further by the success which came from his own efforts; despite all this, his mind must have forced him to focus apprehensively on the reason for his trip. And the reason was that in a few days he was to enter the prestigious St. Bartholomew’s Hospital as a pupil.

Continued in White Admiral 74, click here.