Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/210

 1704 and M.A. in 1707. William proceeded B.A. in 1708 and M.A. in 1711, and died in 1739. They were probably descendants of the earlier William Blandy, and sons of Adam Blandy of Letcombe Regis, Berkshire ( Berkshire Genealogies, 144).

 BLANDY, MARY (d. 1752), murderess, was the only child of Francis Blandy, attorney, of Henley-on-Thames, who had said that he could leave her a fortune of 10,000l. An officer in the marines, named William Henry Cranstoun, son of William, fifth Lord Cranstoun, proposed to marry her. The father objected, suspecting Cranstoun to be already married. He had, in fact, married Anne Murray in 1745. Hereupon Cranstoun induced Miss Blandy to administer arsenic in small doses to her father. He died after some months on 14 Aug. 1761. Miss Blandy was tried at Oxford on 3 March 1752, convicted upon strong evidence, including that of her father's physician, Anthony Addington [q. v.], and hanged on 6 April 1752. Much attention was aroused at the time, especially by the pathetic circumstance that the father, when he knew himself to be dying by his daughter's hands, only pitied her and tried to prevent her committing herself. He appears to have thought that she mistook the poison which she perceived from Cranstoun for a potion intended to win his favour to the match. This view was suggested at the trial and solemnly asserted by Miss Blandy at her death, but is inconsistent with many facts brought out in evidence. Cranstoun escaped, but died 2 Dec. 1752. It was remarked as a strange coincidence that a banker in the Strand named Gillingham Cooper, received, as lord of the manor at Henley, the forfeiture of two fields belonging to Miss Blandy and of a malthouse belonging to Miss Jefferys, who on 28 March 1752 was hanged for the murder of her uncle at Walthumstow.  BLANE, GILBERT (1749–1834), physician, was the fourth son of Mr. Gilbert Blane of Blanefield, Ayrshire, where he was born on 29 Aug. (O.S.) 1749. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, being at first intended for the church, but was ultimately led to study medicine. After spending five years in the faculty of arts, and five more in that of medicine at Edinburgh, he took the degree of M.D. in the university of Glasgow on 28 Aug. 1778. During his studentship he was elected one of the presidents of the (Students') Medical Society of Edinburgh. On leaving Edinburgh Blane came to London furnished with introductions from his teacher, Dr. Cullen, to Dr. William Hunter, who recommended him as private physician to Lord Holdernesse, and afterwards in the same capacity to Admiral Rodney, who was then sailing on his notable expedition to the West Indies in 1779. Blane won Rodney's good opinion by his professional skill and also by his personal bravery, which was shown in conveying the admiral's orders under fire in a dangerous emergency to the officers at the guns. Rodney at once placed him in the important position of physician to the fleet, which he occupied till the close of the war, returning to England with Admiral Francis William Drake in the spring of 1783. He was present at six general engagements, and wrote an account, which was published, of the great victory over the French fleet commanded by the Comte de Grasse on 12 April 1782. He also furnished materials for Mundy's ‘Life of Rodney,’ and took part in a controversy which subsequently arose respecting that great admiral's originality in introducing into naval warfare the manœuvre of ‘breaking the line.’ These, with many other circumstances, show the intimate friendship which existed between Blane and his commander. The officers of the West India fleet also marked their appreciation of Blane's services by unanimously recommending him to the admiralty for a special recompense, which he received in the form of a pension from the crown. In 1781, when Rodney was compelled by the state of his health to come home for a time, Blane accompanied him, and took the opportunity of being admitted as licentiate of the College of Physicians on 3 Dec. 1781, but returned to the West India station early in 1782.

The services which Blane rendered while in medical charge of the West India fleet, and the reforms which, firmly supported by Rodney, he was able to introduce, were indeed of the most signal importance, not only to the efficiency of that fleet, but as inaugurating a new era in the sanitary condition of the