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

Member’s article

a comfortable situation with the Napoleonic Wars having finally ended in 1815, Wilson did not rest on his laurels. According to Marshall’s biography, Wilson “was sent privately by the King to report on the health and constitution of the Duchess of Kent, previous to her marriage to the Duke of Kent, which he did favourably, becoming afterwards domestic physician to the Duke of Kent”. George III might well have taken an interest in the Kents’ reproductive potential because he was nearing the end of his life and lacked grandchildren, but the matter is explained slightly differently in a letter of 28 February 1819 from the Duke to Dr David Daniel Davis, a specialist obstetrician who would attend the birth of the future Queen Victoria. This says that in 1816, when the Duke went to live on the Continent, he reserved for himself the services of an old medical friend, Dr Isaac Wilson and who had long been an honorary physician to his establishment. Dr Wilson agreed to follow him to Brussels and was available to attend him and the Duchess and members of his staff. As already noted, Wilson is understood to have made the future Duke’s acquaintance in Canada during the 1790s. Quite how Wilson accommodated these commitments with his duties as the Plymouth Hospital Physician is not at all clear, but this was a different age: perhaps the former in the eyes of the Admiralty could properly take precedence over the latter. Stanley Weintraub’s Victoria: Biography of a Queen confirms that Wilson was acting as the Kents’ family general practitioner from the time of their marriage in 1818 until the Duke’s death in 1820. Thus, (at page 39) on the journey of the Duke and Duchess to Britain

from Amorbach in the spring of 1819 the substantial entourage included “a curricle for Dr Wilson, the Duke’s personal physician and manager of the Duchess’s pregnancy (although his medical experience had been largely as a ship’s doctor in the Royal Navy)”. Moreover, in a letter of 5 April 1819 to his friend, James Putnam, the Duke himself reported that "we are attended by your old acquaintance Dr Wilson of the Hussar Frigate, as our Physician, whose conduct has been handsome and disinterested beyond anything I can say, and who has certainly managed the Duchess to perfection from the first moment of her pregnancy." While Wilson's manner and attention had manifestly inspired confidence in both Duchess and Duke, a specialist obstetric team was called in for the actual confinement. Victoria’s birth was presided over by Frau Seibold (a celebrated German expert) with Dr David Daniel Davis standing by. Wilson was nevertheless one of the co-signatories of the birth announcement which, according to Marshall’s biography, read:- “Kensington Palace, May 24th 1819. Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent was safely delivered of a princess this morning at a quarter past four o’clock. (Signed) I. Wilson D. D. Davis.” Wilson continued to support the Kents through the illness that would unhappily soon overtake them. He was in attendance for their visit in the winter of 1819/1820 to Woolbrook Cottage, Sidmouth. As Weintraub says: “the

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