The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.2 | September 2022

Member’s article

residence, " Paradise", to attend to a large boil on her husband's face, she recorded the visit. Her Diary entry acknowledged that Wilson had constantly been obliging to them and she liked him but didn’t think him very amiable. He had, she says, “a sarcastic mind and a good bit of envy in it and ill will suppressed to his superior the more eminent Dr Pattison in whose situation Wilson expected to have been”. She also saw, if she was to encourage him, he “would like to tell her many scandalous and ill-natured stories of private people”. She found it prudent to restrain herself “in all private conversation with such sort of people” which evidently awed and deterred Wilson. Herself a Scot, she thought him “much more resembling in face and manner and mind (if I dare to attribute the exaggerated foibles supposed to belong to our Nation) to a Scotchman than to an Irish Man which he is”. This scarcely reflects well on Wilson. Not three years previously Dr Pattison had supported his application to St Andrew's University for a medical degree. Moreover, Lady Anne's other correspondence show that she thought highly of Pattison. Yet, if not the more affable, Wilson may have been right that he would prove the abler and more successful man. It appears that William Pattison was still just a surgeon when he died in 1836. Business and bankruptcy On the Cape Wilson went into partnership with a local doctor and merchant, Thomas Haines, apparently dealing in fruit and importing goods from England. This was potentially a profitable line. Cape Town's strategic position halfway between Europe and Asia had been noted in Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of

Nations. Before the construction of the Suez Canal, almost every ship involved in the spice trade between those two continents docked at Cape Town to resupply. The victualling of these ships with fresh provisions, fruit and wine provided a very large market for the surplus produce of the Cape Colony. By the late 18th century, it was one of the best developed European settlements outside of Europe or the Americas. As a naval doctor, Wilson would have been aware of the importance of fresh fruit and vegetables to the health of sailors and no doubt in particular of James Lind's work to establish the superiority of citrus fruit over all other supposed remedies for scurvy. Lind's 'A Treatise of the Scurvy' had been published in 1753 and his 'Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy' in 1757. Nevertheless, by an Indenture of 10 March 1800, Haines and Wilson dissolved their partnership with Wilson assigning to Haines his share in the money owing and partnership stock and Haines agreeing to discharge the partnership debts and pay Wilson £6000. Perhaps Wilson was too busy with his naval duties, or did not wholly trust Haines. The arrangements under their agreement were somewhat intricate. Subject to certain specified rights for Wilson over the former partnership goods and Haines’ Cape Town houses, the substantial partnership debts were to be paid off, with specified provision in respect of David Evans, the partners' “Correspondent in London”, by complex instalments ending on 1st March 1801, while Haines had until 1st March 1802 to pay Wilson the £6000. Litigation by others against Haines

seems already to have been in train as Isaac Wilson was about to leave the

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