Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/140

Rh last-named work it appears his press was ‘Juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum’—the indefinite designation of eight London churches. 

LETTS, THOMAS (1803–1873), inventor of ‘Letts's Diaries,’ son of John Letts, a London bookbinder, by his wife Susan Spicer, was born at Stockwell, London, in 1803. He was educated at Dr. Crosby's school at Greenwich, and then apprenticed to his father's business. On his father's retirement about 1835 he continued to carry on the business, but devoted himself specially to the manufacture of diaries. Ruled diaries existed long before Letts's time, but he improved them and adapted them to a variety of requirements. By 1839 no less than twenty-eight varieties of the ordinary diary were issued, ranging from foolscap folio, one day to a page, to the small pocket diary of a few inches in size each way. Letts also issued interest tables, medical diaries, office calendars, parliamentary registers and guides, ledgers, log-books, clerical diaries, and washing-books (cf. Brit. Mus. Cat.) The sale gradually increased to several hundred thousands annually, and Letts erected large factories at New Cross. He acquired a property at Chale, Isle of Wight, and in 1864, on the occasion of the Shakespeare tercentenary, he erected a small Doric temple in the neighbouring woods as a memorial to the poet. This is still to be seen from the road above St. Catherine's Point. Letts died at Granville Park, Blackheath, on 8 Aug. 1873, and was buried in Norwood cemetery. He married, first, in 1837 Harriet Cory, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, and on her death Emma Horwood Barry, by whom he had seven children. Shortly after Letts's death the business was turned into a limited liability company, but in 1885 the company went into liquidation, and the entire diary business was purchased by Messrs. Cassell & Co. Thackeray, in his ‘Roundabout Papers,’ No. 18, first published in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for January 1862, made ‘Letts's Diary’ the text of a New-year's sermon. He declared his preference for ‘one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth boards; silk limp, gilt edges, three and six; French morocco, tuck ditto, four and six.’

 LETTSOM, JOHN COAKLEY (1744–1815), physician, was born on 22 Nov. 1744 at Little Vandyke, one of the Virgin Islands, West Indies, of a quaker family of Cheshire origin. When six years old he was sent to England for his education, and came under the notice of Samuel Fothergill [q. v.], the quaker preacher. He was placed at school with Gilbert Thompson, afterwards a physician, whose academy was celebrated among the Society of Friends. In April 1761 he was apprenticed to Abraham Sutcliff, a surgeon and apothecary at Settle, Yorkshire. Here Lettsom acquired a good knowledge of Latin, and became well versed in botany. At the end of five years' apprenticeship he went to London, introduced by Samuel Fothergill to his brother, Dr. John Fothergill [q. v.], the physician. He became a pupil at St. Thomas's Hospital, under Benjamin Cowell the surgeon, with the physicians Russell, Grieve, and especially Mark Akenside, of whose manners in the hospital he has left an amusing description. He also attended the lectures of Dr. Fordyce, but occupied himself chiefly with carefully studying and taking notes of the cases, at that time an unusual practice, and not pursued by any other pupil of the hospital.

In October 1767 he returned to the West Indies to take possession of a small property left him by his father, the most valuable portion of which consisted of fifty slaves, whom Lettsom, though possessed of no other resources, at once emancipated. He then went into practice at Tortola, and in six months made about 2,000l., on the strength of which capital he returned to London to follow in the steps of the great Fothergill. In October 1768 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he studied under Cullen and Home. After visiting several universities and health resorts on the continent he graduated M.D. at Leyden on 20 June 1769, with a dissertation, ‘Observationes ad vires Theæ pertinentes,’ 4to, Leyden, 1769. In 1770 he became licentiate of the College of Physicians, and commenced practice in the city of London. By his marriage in the same year with the daughter of John Miers he acquired a considerable fortune. Thus favourably launched, his quaker connections and the recommendation of Dr. Fothergill, who was at that time leaving the city, soon brought him a large practice. In 1770 he became F.S.A., and in 1771 F.R.S., and afterwards joined many other medical and scientific societies. For many years his income amounted to several thousands, but his great munificence, and still more his lavish expenditure, kept him in continual pecuniary difficulties, so that (as he himself explains) constant occupation became a necessity, and for nineteen years he never took a holiday. Towards the