Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/308

 . In 1830 he became a house pupil at the Lying-in Hospital in York Road, Lambeth, where he subsequently held the appointments of junior and senior physician successively. In 1831 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians, and in 1843 became a fellow. In 1831 he began to lecture on midwifery at St. Thomas's, and from 1838 to 1848 he lectured on the same subject at St. Bartholomew's. He was examiner in midwifery in London University from 1841 to 1860. He was regarded as the first obstetric physician in London after Sir Charles Locock [q. v.] retired from practice. When the Obstetrical Society was founded in 1859 he was elected its first president. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society, and a member of many foreign medical societies. Rigby died on 27 Dec. 1860 at 35 Berkeley Square, London.

He married, in September 1838, Susan, second daughter of John Taylor, F.R.S., F.G.S. She died in 1841, leaving a daughter. He married secondly, in 1851, Marianne, eldest daughter of S. D. Darbishire of Pendyffrin, North Wales. She died in 1853, leaving two daughters.

Rigby was author of: 1. ‘Memoranda for Young Practitioners in Midwifery,’ London, 1837, 24mo; 4th edit. 1868, 16mo. 2. ‘A System of Midwifery’ (vol. vi. of Tweedie's ‘Library of Medicine’), London, 1841, 8vo. 3. ‘On Dysmenorrhœa,’ London, 1844, 8vo. 4. ‘On the Constitutional Treatment of Female Diseases,’ London, 1857.

He also contributed ‘Midwifery Hospital Reports’ to the ‘Medical Gazette,’ and ‘Reports on Uterine Affections’ to the ‘Medical Times,’ and brought out the second edition of Hunter's ‘Anatomical Description of the Gravid Uterus,’ London, 1843, 8vo.

[Familiæ Minorum Gentium (Harl. Soc.), p. 1106; Medical Times, 5 Jan. 1861.]  RIGBY, JOSEPH (d. 1671), parliamentarian, of Aspull, near Wigan, Lancashire, was third son of Alexander Rigby of Wigan, and brother of Alexander Rigby [q. v.], baron of the exchequer, and of George Rigby, one of the commanders at the siege of Lathom House. He was educated at Eton. At the outbreak of the civil war he joined the parliamentary army, and rose to be lieutenant-colonel, to which office he was appointed on 16 April 1650. In September 1644 he distinguished himself in the attack on Greenhaugh Castle. In April 1650 his offer to bring a regiment to the waterside for service in Ireland was under consideration by the council. Like many other members of his family, he held the office of clerk of the peace for Lancashire. In 1653 and afterwards there was much litigation concerning the profits of the office, part of which was claimed for the children of his brother George. He was in 1654 committed for contempt for refusing to deliver up his books and papers, but he regained his liberty, and continued in office until the Restoration.

He published in 1656 a duodecimo volume of verse, entitled ‘The Drunkard's Prospective, or Burning Glasse,’ directed against the evils of alcoholic drink. The volume contains a number of complimentary verses addressed to the author by Charles Hotham and other literary friends. He also wrote a poem on repentance, from which extracts are given in Heywood's ‘Observations in Verse’ (Chetham Society, 1869). The original manuscript is in the Wigan Free Library. Rigby died in November 1671. He married Margaret, daughter of Gabriel Haighton or Houghton of Knowsley, Lancashire.

[Palatine Note-book, iii. 166, iv. 144; Dugdale's Visitation of Lancashire (Chetham Soc.), iii. 243; Discourse of the Warr in Lancashire (Chetham Soc.), pp. 58, 144; Lancashire Lieutenancy (Chetham Soc.) p. 292; Brydges's Restituta, iv. 296; Book Lore, 1885, i. 55; Kenyon MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm.), 1894, p. 90; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1645–7, 1649–50, 1650, 1653–4, 1654, and 1660–1.]  RIGBY, RICHARD (1722–1788), politician, only son of Richard Rigby of Mistley Hall, Essex, by his wife Anne (born Perry), who died in February 1741, was born at Mistley in the early part of 1722. His grandfather, Edward Rigby, a prosperous London linendraper, obtained the reversion of the Mistley estate from Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last earl of Oxford [q. v.], and came into the property in 1703. Edward's son, having sold the business and amassed a fortune as a factor to the South Sea Company, built a mansion at Mistley, where he died in 1730. After making the grand tour, Richard attached himself to Frederick, prince of Wales, to whom he politely lost money at the gaming-table, and was a regular frequenter of the levees at Leicester House. The prince promised to appoint him a lord of the bedchamber as soon as a vacancy occurred, but, finding it convenient to break his word, he attempted to soothe Rigby, whose fortune was by this time greatly impaired, by a considerable present. Rigby felt himself undervalued, and transferred his allegiance to the Duke of Bedford, whom he put under a lasting obligation by rescuing from a murderous mob at the Lichfield races in 1752. Rigby had already sat in parliament for Castle Rising (1745) and 