John Coakley Lettsom

John Coakley Lettsom was born in 1744 in the West Indies. After returning to England, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary in 1761. He returned to the West Indies briefly in 1767, after his father's death, where he freed the enslaved people his father had bequeathed to him before going into medical practice in the Caribbean. Returning to Britain, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh before graduating MD at Leiden in 1769. Lettsom then set up practice in London and was the co-founded, in 1770, of the General Dispensary which gave free medical treatment to the poor. Subsequently, Lettsom was awarded fellowship of the Royal Society in 1773. Lettsom was also a co-founder of the Medical Society of London. He died in London in 1815.