Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/205

 and John, publisher of the ‘Repertory of Arts’ (1818).

A number of his papers, plans, and designs for inventions were presented to the Reference Library, Birmingham, by Mrs. Silvester of Bath. The original model constructed by Wyatt and Paul, by which the first cotton thread is said to have been spun, was ‘offered to Arkwright as an interesting relic, but the successful adapter declined to take it’ (, Indust. Hist. of Birmingham, 1866, p. 214). Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of Westminster Bridge in 1736.

[John Wyatt, Master Carpenter and Inventor, London, 1885; French's Life and Times of Samuel Crompton, chap. iv.; Baines's Hist. of the Cotton Manufacture, pp. 121–40 (Baines's advocacy of Wyatt's claims against Paul was strongly combated by Cole); Cole's Account of Louis Paul and his Invention for Spinning Cotton and Wool by Rollers, September 1858; Guest's Hist. of the Cotton Manufacture, 1823; Dent's Making of Birmingham, 1894, p. 79; Gent. Mag. 1812 i. 196, 1836 ii. 231; Builder, 14 Aug. 1880; Simms's Bibliotheca Staffordiensis, 1894, p. 530.] 

WYATT, JOHN (1825–1874), army surgeon, eldest son of James Wyatt of Lidsey, near Chichester, yeoman, by his wife Caroline, was baptised in the parish church of Aldingbourne, Sussex, on 28 Oct. 1825. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 26 May 1848, becoming a fellow of that body on 13 Dec. 1866. He entered the army medical service with the rank of assistant-surgeon on 17 June 1851, was gazetted surgeon on 9 April 1857, and surgeon-major on 9 Jan. 1863, being attached throughout his life to the first battalion of the Coldstream guards. He was engaged in active service in the Crimean war, and was present at the battles of Alma, Balaclava, and Inkerman, and at the siege of Sebastopol. At Inkerman his horse was shot under him. At the close of the war he received the Crimean medal with four clasps, the Turkish medal, and a knighthood of the legion of honour. In 1870 he was selected by the war department to act as medical commissioner at the headquarters of the French army during the Franco-German war, and in this capacity he was present in Paris during the whole of the siege. At this time he rendered important services to the sick and wounded, for he was attached to an ambulance and was a member of the Société de Secours aux Blessés. For these services he was made a companion of the Bath in 1873. He died at Bournemouth on 2 April 1874, and was buried at Brompton cemetery.

[Registers of Aldingbourne Parish Church; Obituary notices in the Proceedings of the Royal Med. and Chir. Soc. vii. 320; Medical Times and Gazette, 1874 i. 414, 1874 ii. 192.] 

WYATT, MATTHEW COTES (1777–1862), sculptor, youngest son of James Wyatt [q. v.], was born in 1777 and educated at Eton. After studying in the schools of the Royal Academy he, through his father's influence, obtained employment at Windsor Castle, where he became a favourite with the king and queen. From 1803 to 1814 he was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy of portraits and historical subjects in oils, and in 1811 sent his only contribution in sculpture, a bust of the king. One of his earliest public commissions was the Nelson monument in the Exchange quadrangle at Liverpool. After the death of Princess Charlotte, Wyatt was employed to execute the marble cenotaph to her memory in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, for which 15,000l. had been subscribed; this was completed in 1826, and gained much admiration (Gent. Mag. 1826, i. 350). When George III died and a subscription for a national monument was started, Wyatt prepared a design representing the king standing in a quadriga, and of this he published an etching; but, though highly approved of and provisionally accepted, lack of funds necessitated its abandonment. Eventually, in 1832, a committee of the subscribers commissioned him to execute the bronze equestrian statue of the king which now stands in Pall Mall East, and is his best work. Other well-known productions by Wyatt are the marble monument to the Duchess of Rutland at Belvoir, and the poorly modelled colossal bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington which was placed on Decimus Burton's arch at Hyde Park Corner in 1846 and remained there until 1883, when it was removed to Aldershot. A portrait of a Newfoundland dog, sculptured in coloured marbles by Wyatt, was shown at the International Exhibition of 1851. Thanks to royal and other influential patronage, Wyatt enjoyed a reputation and practice to which his mediocre abilities hardly entitled him, and he amassed considerable wealth. He died at his house in the Harrow Road, London, on 3 Jan. 1862. By his wife Maria (d. 1852) he had, with other children, two sons—Matthew, who became a lieutenant of the queen's bodyguard and was knighted; and James, who followed his father's profession and worked as his assistant. 