John Langdon Down’s London

31 May 2024

To mark London History Day, Chris Rees, the DSA’s Policy Manager, has written this piece to highlight some of the places in London that John Langdon Down would have known.

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What’s in a name?

John Langdon Down was a nineteenth century English physician who spent most of his life working with, and attempting to better understand, people that today we refer to as having a learning/intellectual disability. Dr Langdon Down identified this group of people as being worthy of education and support, a view that was not shared by many of his fellow medics at that time. Due to his endeavours and discoveries, it is his name that was chosen when the World Health Organisation came to classify and provide a title for Down’s syndrome in 1965.

John Langdon Down’s achievements are all the more impressive considering that he did not come from a background of wealth, privilege and connections. He was born in 1828 in Torpoint, Cornwall. His father was an apothecary (at the time, a combination of a GP, chemist and grocer) and despite early signs of academic prowess, Langdon Down spent much of his childhood helping out the family business.

 

London Calling

Langdon Down’s first steps into medicine and a life in London took place in 1846, when at the age of 18 he was apprenticed to Matthew Coleman, an apothecary based at 265 Whitechapel Road in the East End of London.

As a new apprentice John Langdon Down was taught to extract teeth, apply leeches, let blood and apply blisters – he would have been familiar with much of this from the family business, though the contrast between life in the small coastal town of Torpoint and London’s East End must have been overwhelming. Whitechapel in the 1840s had a well-earned reputation for extreme levels of poverty, overcrowding and crime – but this was an area that would stay connected with John Langdon Down’s professional life for many years to come.

The site of his former workplace on 265 Whitechapel Road is no less busy now than it would have been nearly 180 years ago. It is now a thriving ‘Fish Bazar’, with significantly less leeches onsite (one hopes).

 

Student days

During his time as an apprentice apothecary Langdon Down started to develop his plans to gain further qualifications in medicine. As a first step to medical school he paid £38 (almost all his savings, and about £5,500 in today’s money) to enrol in a course for chemists at the Pharmaceutical Society. The course was highly sought after. There were only 80 places, and approximately 3,000 pharmaceutical trainees in the UK at that time. Langdon Down not only got accepted onto the course, he thrived. In 1848, he was offered a post as laboratory assistant to the highly respected Professor Theophilus Redwood in the Pharmaceutical Society, a post he would keep until ill health (possibly tuberculosis) a few years later would lead him to return to Torpoint in order to recuperate.

Today the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s original building in Bloomsbury Square, where Langdon Down worked, is the German Historical Institute, though the engraved title of the Society remains emblazoned across the front of the building. The Society is now based, coincidentally, in Whitechapel and their museum is well worth a visit, with many interesting artefacts from the development of chemistry and medicine (anyone for ‘Cyanide Wool’ or ‘Arsenic Complexion Soap’?).

 

Return to London

In 1853, following the death of his father Joseph, Langdon Down returned to the East End of London to continue his medical studies at the London Hospital (directly across the road from his first job in Whitechapel).

The Royal London Hospital (it was bestowed its ‘Royal’ patronage by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding) is an iconic East End institution. It continues to function as a hospital, albeit from a new (2012), huge and shiny blue building located directly behind the original structure. The old hospital has recently been converted into the new Tower Hamlets Town Hall. Notable staff include Nurse Edith Cavell and, one of John Langdon Down’s contemporaries, Sir Frederick Treves (known for treating John Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’ at the hospital).

Langdon Down excelled as a medical student. He must have worked incredibly hard during the next three years. Alongside his studies at the London Hospital, he also got a degree from the University of London (1854), a licentiate from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (1856) and in 1856 became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, which allowed him to practice as a GP.

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (originally part of the Grocers Company – which gives an indication of the development of the profession) are one of the many historic Livery Companies based in the City of London. As well as providing charitable and social activities, they continue to offer education and qualifications for members of the medical profession. Their splendid 17th century Hall near Blackfriars Station (originally part of the Dominican Priory of Black Friars) which was rebuilt after being destroyed in the Great Fire of London (1666) managed to survive the Blitz and is the oldest standing livery hall in the City.

The Royal College of Surgeons can be found in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn. They also emerged from the world of the City Livery Companies – created as an offshoot of the Company of Barber-Surgeons in 1745. Their first college was built in 1797, and gradually expanded until a new building was completed in 1855. It too maintains an important function in the world of medicine, providing research, qualifications and events. The building also hosts the famous Hunterian museum which displays many thousands of (sometimes gruesome) anatomical specimens – not for the faint hearted.

 

Normansfield – home to roost

In 1858 Langdon Down’s career, and life, changed significantly when he left London and took up a post at the Earlswood Hospital in Redhill, Surrey. He was employed as Medical Superintendent, despite having little experience to date of treating people with learning disabilities. The 10 years he spent there set the course of the rest of his life; professionally, as a doctor treating and attempting to understand the needs of patients with disabilities; and personally, as he married his wife Mary Crellin (in 1860 at the Mare Street Chapel in Hackney, sadly destroyed by bombing during World War 2) and started a family.

In 1868, after leaving his post at Earlswood Asylum, Langdon Down and Mary took the ambitious step of creating their own Institution in Teddington. Initially they bought a large ‘gentleman’s residence’ (The White House) which was soon renamed ‘Normansfield’ in honour of their lawyer. Further buildings were acquired, and before long the mortgages across the new hospital site totalled £43,500 (approx. £6m today).

You can read a full history of Normansfield here. The DSA is extremely proud to be based in this historic building, including the unique theatre the Langdon Down’s built for their patients, and which is still in use today.

 

A private practice

In order to support the huge costs of the construction, and ongoing development, of Normansfield, Langdon Down set up a consultant practice (alongside his duties at his own hospital) in London.

39 Welbeck Street

81 Harley Street

His first office was established in 1868 at 39 Welbeck Street (just north of Bond Street), where he continued to build his medical reputation (engaging in a correspondence with Charles Darwin, amongst others). Langdon Down made his regular journey from Richmond to West London by horse drawn coach (no doubt more reliable and possibly quicker than today’s public transport). Indeed, his coachman, Walter Lee was, one of his first employees to receive an award for long service (21 years). As his renown as a medical expert increased he relocated, in 1881, the short distance to 81 Harley Street, which was at that time developing its reputation as the epicentre of medical expertise in London. The change in his financial circumstances meant that he was able to purchase the whole of 81 Harley Street, staying overnight when commitments required.

A further indication of Langdon Down’s success and repute was his engagement in the upper echelons of Victorian society – he became a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall, and he returned to the world of the City Livery Companies when he was made a liveryman in the Worshipful Company of Broderers (embroidery workers), rising to company auditor in 1889. Sadly the Broderers Hall, located in Gutter Lane near St Paul’s Cathedral, was destroyed in the London blitz, with only a small plaque to mark its existence.

 

John Langdon Down – a Legacy

On the morning of 7 October 1896 John Langdon Down planned to set off early to his practice in Harley Street. As he went to take breakfast he suddenly collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was 67. His public funeral ceremony was held at St Thomas’ Church in Portland Square, Marylebone (now sadly destroyed), where the pavements were lined with mourners eager to pay their respects. This was followed by a family service at Normansfield. His ashes were retained until, after the death of his wife Mary in 1900 of influenza and pneumonia, both their remains were scattered in an unknown location in the grounds of Normansfield.

In 67 years John Langdon Down left an enormous legacy, and a fulfilled and meaningful life. And though born and brought up a Cornishman, he was in every way a man who shaped, and was shaped by, Victorian London.

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