The Damnation of John Donellan by Elizabeth Cooke Page A

the feet.
    In the
Northampton Mercury
of 7 May 1781, ‘anti-venereal diuretic vegetable drops’ were advertised, ‘famous in curing every species of venereal infection in bottles at 10s. 6d., 6 shillings, 4 shillings and two shillings each’. In October of the same year, the newspaper advertised Fothergil’s Chymical Nervous Drops, supposedly a cure ‘for those who have polluted themselves with secret Venery’, who ‘may have their Constitution Strengthen’d for 10 shillings 6d.’. More chilling is the advertisement for Leake’s Pilula Salutaria in December 1773, in which a Mr Marshall of Northampton claimed an absolute cure for venereal disease ‘should the Malignancy be ever so great. Effecting a cure where salivation fails in boxes for 2s. 6d. each.’ Mr Marshall, in common with all his colleagues and competitors, did not say what was in his super-strength ‘Pilula Salutaria’.
    These are the types of self-medicating ‘cures’ which Theodosius would have bought or had prescribed to him, and which Donellan is supposed to have referred to as reported in the
Northampton Mercury
of 23 April 1781: ‘On the Saturday preceding the Death of Sir Theodosius, The Rev. Newsam took Notice to Mr Donellan that Sir Theodosius appeared much worse than usual, which Mr Donellan, by Way of Reply, said he did not wonder at, for that he was continually quacking himself with Mercury.’
    In the summer of 1777, when Theodosius was almost seventeen and very soon after the Donellans’ visit to Eton, Anna Mariabrought her son home. It was reported in the newspaper that ‘Mr & Mrs Donellan received several letters from Lady Boughton in the first of which she tells them that she had fetched her son from Eton, and had placed him under the care of a Mr Clare, an apothecary at Rugby, plain proof that he was not then well; and in all the rest she complains of her son’s irregularities and says that blotches appeared upon his Face, and that he had lost his fine Complexion and that he was taking Things for his Complaint.’
    A letter survives which shows that Theodosius also went to stay with the Donellans in Bath for a while. 11 It seems that Theodosius was not interested in education. What he
was
interested in was hunting and fishing, drinking and fighting, brawling over imagined insults and generally running riot in the countryside. In the same article, the newspaper continues that ‘he was engaged in several disputes and quarrels, one or two of which were near to be carried to serious lengths had not Mr Donellan stepp’d in and prevented them.’
    Following several requests from Anna Maria, the Donellans left Bath in June 1778 and went to live at Lawford Hall. The
Northampton Mercury
reports that Anna Maria employed a tutor, a ‘Mr Jones, near Northampton’, for Theodosius for five months, until November 1778. But when Theodosius returned to Lawford, his health was no better. The newspaper goes on: ‘On Sir Theodosius’s return from Mr Jones’s, he was so much altered in his Countenance and Person that Mr Donellan suspected he had contracted a fresh Venereal Complaint; and therefore, merely with the View of recommending a skilful Surgeon to him, he took an opportunity of questioning him … At first he seemed unwilling to give any answer, but at length confess’d that when he went to Mr Jones’s he was not well in his Old Complaint, and that while he was there he used a great Deal of Mercurial Ointment.’ The paper adds the rather poignant detail that Theodosius admitted to using so much that he wore flannel drawers in bed every night ‘in Order to prevent a Discovery upon the Sheets’.
    John Donellan, the newspaper concludes, was convinced that Anna Maria would not employ a reputable surgeon to helpTheodosius; instead she bought him a book called
The Family Physician
, from which Theodosius ‘was continually