By Basil Clarke

Previous articles have shown that a Dr John Walling MD, from Silverdale, practised in Yealand Conyers. He lived somewhere “adjoining” Beechfield until about 1857, and then moved to Preston.

Dr James Matthews practised from The Croft (Clifford Hall) but did not begin work there till 1868. In between came Dr Peter Allen. Allen was born in Kent in 1827, the son and grandson of country surgeons. He was at King’s College, Aberdeen, and became M.D., MRCS Eng., and LSA in 1849. In 1851 he was practising in Dorset at Bridport and married Flora Nicholetts, a solicitor’s daughter, there. In Bridport in 1852 he was a certifying surgeon under the Factories Act, checking children allowed to work in factories. In 1853 he wrote “Practical observations on deafness arising from exanthemata” [measles, etc.].

In July 1855 he became an acting assistant surgeon in the Army’s Medical Department, and was sent to the Crimea. He received a medal and clasp for Sebastopol: the siege ended in the autumn of 1855. He was in Yealand Conyers (and Burton) in 1858. There seems to haye been no overlap with Dr Walling, whose effects were auctioned in 1857 after he moved to Preston.

Dr Allen was again a certifying surgeon under the Factories Act in 1858 and a medical officer to the Lancashire Union; Dr Matthews, his successor, held both these positions. In Yealand Conyers Dr Allen lived with his wife and mother-in-law at Ivy Cottage (opposite the Catholic church). He was there by the census of 1861, when he also became the honorary surgeon to the 10th Lancashire Volunteer Rifles.

He may have stayed on for a while after Dr Matthews arrived, since Matthews was at Dykes Lane, not Ivy Cottage. A directory shows Allen still in Yealand Conyers up to 1868. But Matthews’ first-year casebook runs from the beginning of 1868, and any handover would have happened before the end of 1867.

From 1869 to 1871 Dr Allen was at 1 Queens Square, Westminster, but by the 1871 census he was at 15 Saville Row and was a consulting surgeon at St Mary’s hospital. In 1872 he had moved to 117 Harley Street. He caught typhoid fever in January 1874 and died in February 1874 at forty seven.

It is noted that these three doctors in a small village were all well-qualified. Dr James Matthews, at least, ran a very wide general practice. No details of Dr Allen’s professional activities and techniques have come to hand as yet.

Acknowledgment is made to Mr Maurice Allen for information about Dr Peter Allen.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 19 1992