Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/232

 spring of 1844, and was received with much distinction. He was made a member of the privy council (23 May 1844), was presented with the freedom of many cities, and the House of Commons voted him 1,500l. a year for life in June 1845. He attained the rank of lieutenant-general in 1851. He was not long out of harness. On 28 Sept. 1846 he succeeded Sir Peregrine Maitland as governor of the Cape of Good Hope. He stayed there less than six months. On 4 Aug. 1847 he returned once more to India as governor of Madras. That post he held till 1854, when he came back to England in broken health. His government of Madras was not a success. He had become somewhat inert and dilatory in the disposal of public business, and failed to recognise the necessity of improvements which were essential to the moral and material progress of the country. He was better fitted to deal firmly with a crisis than to conduct ordinary administrative duties. He died at Malta on 18 March 1856, and was buried at Valetta.

Sir Henry married, in 1820, Susanna Maria (1800–1886), daughter of Captain Richard Cooke of Dublin, whose family was a branch of the Cookes of Cookesborough, co. Westmeath. By her he had three sons, the eldest of whom died in infancy, while the other two successively succeeded to the baronetcy, and a daughter.

Sir Henry's portrait was painted by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., and there were three replicas. One is in the Oriental Club, Hanover Square; another became the property of his son; and the third was sent to China as a present.

[Dublin University Magazine, clxvi. (October 1846) 426–42; Knight's English Cyclopædia—Biography, iv. 954–8; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Alison's Hist., Index; Parliamentary correspondence relative to Sind, 1836 to 1838 and 1838 to 1843; Knollys's Life of Sir Hope Grant, i. 31, 35, 41; S. Lane-Poole's Life of Sir Harry Parkes, passim; Burke's Peerages; Dodwell and Myles's India Army Lists; information supplied by Pottinger's second son, Sir H. Pottinger, third baronet.] 

POTTINGER, ISRAEL (fl. 1770), dramatist, began life as an apprentice to a book-seller named Worral. Setting up for himself in Paternoster Row, he projected a variety of periodicals. One of them, ‘The Busy Body,’ was published thrice a week for twopence at the Dunciad, Paternoster Row, and to it Goldsmith contributed in 1759 (, Life of Goldsmith, 1871, i. 212). Not meeting with much success, he next opened a circulating library near Great Turnstile, Holborn, and delivered for a time at Islington G. A. Stevens's popular ‘Lecture on Heads.’ He subsequently suffered from a mental disorder, but supported himself in his lucid intervals by his pen. In 1761 he published an unacted comedy called ‘The Methodist,’ which he described as ‘a continuation or completion of the plan of Foote's “Minor.”’ It was a scurrilous attack on Whitefield. A third edition appeared within the year. In the same year (1761) a farce by Pottinger, entitled ‘The Humorous Quarrel, or the Battle of the Greybeards,’ was acted at Southwark Fair, and subsequently published. ‘The Duenna,’ a comic opera in three acts, a parody on Sheridan's play, published in 1776, and ‘acted by his majesty's servants,’ is supposed to have been by Pottinger. A new edition appeared within the year.

[Baker's Biographia Dramatica (Reed and Jones), i. 580, ii. 178, iii. 40; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 

POTTINGER, JOHN (1617–1738), master in chancery, [See .]

POTTS, LAURENCE HOLKER (1789–1850), physician and inventor, son of Cuthbert Potts, surgeon, and Ethelinda Margaret Thorpe, daughter of John Thorpe, M.D., F.S.A. [see ], was born in Pall Mall, London, on 18 April 1789. He was educated at Westminster School and at a school in Northamptonshire, and in 1805 he was apprenticed to Mr. Birch, surgeon, of Warwick. In 1810 he was entered at St. George's Hospital and became a house-pupil of Sir Benjamin Brodie; William Frederick Chambers [q. v.] and (Sir) Charles Locock [q. v.] were house-pupils at the same time. He passed the College of Surgeons in 1812, and graduated M.D. at Aberdeen in 1825. In 1812 he was appointed surgeon to the Royal Devon and Cornwall miners militia, then quartered in Ireland. The regiment returned to Truro in 1814, and was subsequently disbanded, Potts starting in practice in the town. He had always taken much interest in scientific pursuits, and in 1818 took an active part in founding the Royal Institution of Cornwall. He gave several courses of lectures there, and was in the habit of making gratuitous analyses of minerals for the miners. In 1828 he became superintendent and physician of the Cornwall county lunatic asylum at Bodmin. This appointment he resigned in 1837, removing in the following year to Vanbrugh Castle, Blackheath, where he established an institution for the treatment of spinal diseases. Here he established a workshop for the manufacture of the various appliances and apparatus, of which he devised many new forms. He