 James
Paget was born in Great Yarmouth on 11th January 1814. He was one of
18 children but only 8 survived to adulthood. His father, Samuel Paget,
was a successful businessman as both a shipping merchant and brewer.
This allowed him to privately educate his three eldest sons at
Charterhouse School. Unfortunately, by the time James reached school
age his father's financial situation had changed, resulting in him
remaining in Great Yarmouth for his early education. On leaving school,
he initially contemplated joining the navy but instead, at the age of
sixteen, became apprentice to a local surgeon, Mr Charles Costerton, for
a period of five years.
In 1834, he
moved to London to continue his medical training at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital and at the age of 22 he passed the MRCS examination. Without
the patronage of a great London surgeon and instead he was forced to be
essentially self-taught by attending the ward rounds of Dr Peter
Latham. In his spare time he performed as many postmortem examinations
as possible and read many anatomy and surgical texts. In 1837, he was
appointed curator at St Bartholomew's with a salary of £100 per year.
During the following years he contributed significantly to both the
Medical Gazette and Medical Quarterly Review. In 1836 he
had been elected as one of the founding fellows of the Royal College of
Surgeons and within a year he became the Aris and Gale Professor of the
college. At the age of 36 he was unusually young to receive this
honour.
In 1843, his
fortune changed. He was appointed as a lecturer in general anatomy and
physiology and within months he became the warden at the newly formed St
Bartholomew's College. In 1844, he married his wife Lydia (1815 -
1895); they had six children. The marriage was a happy one, with his
wife being ‘one who never failed in love, in wise counsel, in prudence
and in gentle care of me’. His standing at St Bartholomew's rapidly
increased and he was finally appointed to the post of assistant surgeon,
seeing up to 200 patients in a day. In 1858 he was appointed
Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the Prince of Wales . In March 1871 The Times
reported his illness from ‘poisonous vaccine matter’, and later that
year he was made a Baronet by Queen Victoria. 1875 he became President
of the Royal College of Surgeons. He died on 30 December 1899.
Sir James was
a slightly built man, who was a gifted orator and lecturer. He had a
charming manner, and included among his friends Alfred Lord Tennyson,
Florence Nightingale and Charles Darwin.
His son
Francis (1851 – 1911) became Bishop of Oxford and presided over his
funeral at Westminster Abbey. Another son, Stephen, (1855 – 1926)
founded the Research Defence Society. His son Henry Luke (1853 – 1937)
became Bishop of Chester. John Rahere (1848 – 1938) 2nd Bt
became a KC in 1902 and wrote several articles on law and banking.
He published over 20 articles on various aspects of pathology and
surgery. He was one of the first surgeons to correlate patient's
symptoms with the clinical examination and as such to develop many of
the ideas of clinical surgery. His name is eponymous with several
conditions, eg. Paget’s Disease of the Nipple, Paget’s Abscess.
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