Sutton’s Swan Song

Abstract

This chapter recounts how, once he had moved out of Sutton House, Daniel Sutton became itinerant, moving from one West End street to another in quick succession. In 1779, he announced that he had been 'engaged by the Governors of the General Inoculation Dispensary' and he had moved nearby to Southampton Street in Bloomsbury. Although he was still inoculating on his own account on his usual terms of 10 guineas, to have any kind of official post was out of character. Times had changed and he made it clear in yet another newspaper advertisement that he was well aware of the waning of his celebrity. Announcing his appointment to the dispensary, he felt it necessary to plead that he was the 'identical person who, in 1767 (by royal approbation) was complimented with a grant of the following honorary Patent for his singular and new method of inoculation'. This method, he claimed, was now 'very materially improved'. Once again the family coat of arms awarded to himself and his family was evoked. The chapter then looks at the publication in 1796 of Daniel's account of his discoveries as an inoculator.