On reviewing an inventory of the contents of Bamburgh Castle dated 16-18 July 1792, I became intrigued by one of the entries. In the Surgery, alongside equipment that you may expect like knives, splints and needles, there was “1 Electrifying Machine”. I was aware that electricity was used for medical purposes, but the date was much earlier than I had imagined.
It was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that her personal doctor, William Gilbert, experimented with a range of materials to see which would generate an electrical charge. His work and observations were to influence numerous European inventors. Electrostatic machines, which generated static electricity in glass tubes, were invented in Holland and German and were forerunners to the inventions by the more famous Benjamin Franklin in the mid-eighteenth century.
But what would such a device be doing in Bamburgh Castle? In the 1700s Bamburgh Castle was owned by the Forster family, having been gifted the Castle by King James I in 1610. Upon the death of Dorothy, the last surviving Forster heir, her mournful husband, Lord Nathaniel Crewe, set up a charity to restore the now ruinous Castle and to support the villagers of Bamburgh. It was after his death that this money was placed into trust. It was under the Lord Crewe Trustees, and Dr John Sharp as trustee, that the Castle became a surgery for out-patients, hospital and free school. Dr Sharp died in 1792, the year the inventory was taken.
In the homes of the gentry, electricity had been used since the mid- eighteenth century for the amusement of guests; ‘friction machines’ would give shocks to male and female guests alike. However, the use for medical purposes was new. In 1747 John Wesley, founder of Methodism, suggested that electrical treatment could be a ‘universal panacea’ for all diseases, this was rejected by mainstream medicine at the time. The first recorded treatment with electricity in London was at Middlesex Hospital in 1767, with the use of specialised equipment. The same machinery was also purchased a decade later by that other great London infirmary, St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
What the first use of this electrifying machine was, or indeed, who was the first, rather brave, patient at the hospital in Bamburgh Castle, are perhaps now lost to history. However, the fact that such a machine was in a rural corner of Northumberland at this time, gives a fascinating insight to how the words “1 Electrifying Machine” can lead us to wanting to know a whole lot more.
References
NRO 00452/B/5/2 (‘An Inventory of Castle Furniture’, an inventory of Bamburgh Castle.
16 July 1792-18 July 1792)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrotherapy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_electrostatic_machine
https://thecozydrawingroom.com/2014/06/22/a-shocking-way-to-entertain-guests-during-the-regency-era/
https://www.bamburghcastle.com/castle/
http://www.lordcrewescharity.org.uk/history/dr-sharps-bamburgh-charities
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-electricity-1989860
