“In the north
transept of Southwark Cathedral, close to the Harvard Chapel, are the monument
and grave of Lionel Lockyer, a seventeenth century quack. The monument is
perhaps the most prominent object in the transept, and includes as its
principal feature a large semi-recumbent figure of the doctor. The face wears
an expression of unctuous self-satisfaction, quite in keeping with what we know
of Lockyer himself.”
Hector A. Colwell M.B. Lond.
What
little we can learn of the life of Lionel Lockyer we have to learn from his
detractors, in particular to his principal rival in the field of patent
medicine, the American alchemist George Starkey (or Eireneaus Philalethes as he
was known in alchemistical circles). In 1664, goaded by Lockyers overwrought
claims for his famous pills, Starkey wrote “A smart Scourge for a silly, sawcy
Fool, an answer to letter at the end of a pamphlet of Lionell Lockyer.” Starkey
clearly hoped his tract would demolish Lockyer’s reputation and fatally undermine
his business but he was to be disappointed.
Not even death managed to do that; in 1824, 150 years after his death,
James Granger reports that Lockyer’s Pills were still being sold by Newbury the
bookseller in St Paul’s Churchyard.
 |
| A contemporary portrait |
From
Starkey we learn that before he took up medicine Lionel Lockyer had been a
tailor and a butcher and that he had learned his medicine from a certain Molton
of Hogg Lane. The first version of his pills, “a very common and churlish
medicine” had been simply produced by dyeing some pills produced from a
solution of the salt of antimony bright red with cochineal and vending them as ‘mercurialis
vitae’. A more refined product, Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae, one of the key
ingredients of which was supposedly sun beams, made Lockyer a fortune. The
vulgar had trouble with the Latin name so Lockyer, citing a biblical precedence
simply named them after himself; "Absolom
because he had no son to succeed him, he erected a Pillar and called it after
his own name (2 Sam. xviii, 18). And I have had sons, but They are not, and so
I shall call the pill after my own name, Lockier's Pill."' The unsympathetic
Starkey never mentions Lockyer’s loss of his children; at the time it was not perhaps
a noteworthy event.
Lockyer
had a genius for marketing. He supposedly printed upwards of 200,000 copies of
his famous handbill advertising the miraculous qualities of his pilulae which
were a medicine “of a solar nature, dispelling of those causes in our Bodies,
which continued, would not only darken the Lustre, but extinguish the Light of
Our Microcosmical Sun.” The price of this sovereign remedy was 4 shillings a
box, the box stamped with the makers coat of arms and only available from some
forty authorised dealers in town and country and which included “Mrs. Harfords
at the Bible in Heart in Little Britain, Mr. Russel’s in Mugwel Street near
Cripple Gate, Mr. Randal’s at the Three Pigeons, beyond St. Clements Church, in
the Strand, Thomas Virgoes, cutler, upper end of New Fish Street and Mr. Brugis,
printer, next door to Red Lyon Inn, in Newstreet near Fetter Lane.” As was
generally the case this was another pill to cure all ills and even to be taken
by those in full heath as a “preservative against all accidents as contagious
aires, for which it stands Centinel in the body and not permitting any enemy of
nature to enter.” Lockyer’s broadsheet also included case studies demonstrating
the efficacy of his remedy "Mrs. Dixon suffered for two years at least
with a griping, gnawing pain in the belly, and by the use of my Pills, and
God's blessing upon it, was cured; For before she had taken of my Pills six times
she had a live worm come from her by Siege, four yards long; the woman lives in
Dead-man's Place in Southwark, near unto the Colledge Gate. Her age is about
thirty-two years, the worm came from her the latter end of May, 1662. If any
desire to see the worm I have it by me." He also relates the heart warming
story of a young man who “told a friend of mine, that he had the POX, who gave
him two boxes of pills, and in three weeks time he was perfectly cured,
although he scarce went to bed sober all that time, and within three weeks time
he married a wife, and both of them very well to this day."
Lockyer
later added an appendix to his advertisement, a letter supposedly from a “Person
of Quality” which discloses that on June 13, 1664 Lockyer calcined the powder
for his pill before King Charles and the Court at Southampton House. It was
this letter that drew the ire of George Starkey and drove him to compose the “smart
Scourge” in which he poured scorn on Lockyer’s, or his correspondent’s, Latin “I
will take notice first of your false Latine....for which I should take you to
task as a rigid Paedogogue, and nake you untruss for the first fault, your
Breech would be bloudy and too sore to sit on, if for all the lapses committed
in that very short epistle you had (as you deserve) a several lash.”
Locker
died in 1672 leaving a small fortune of £1900 in ready, the leases on four
houses and a quarter share in a ship. As well as a lavish funeral and his ostentatious
monument he left a sizeable amount towards charity. Even in death he could not
resist one last chance to sell his pilulae and his epitaph is little more than
an advertising opportunity;
Here
Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name
Speakes
one hath few competitors in fame:
A
name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne
Inscriptions
whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.
A
diminution 'tis to write in verse
His
eulogies whch most mens mouths rehearse.
His
virtues & his PILLS are soe well known
That
envy can't confine them vnder stone.
But
they'll surviue his dust and not expire
Till
all things else at th'universall fire.
This
verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
To
future times without an Epitaph
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