The father of cremation

Dr Dalrymple's piece on Dr Price needs to be augmented for discerning
BMJ readers by reference to the Presidential Address by the late Mr
Goronwy Thomas to the Liverpool Medical Institution some time in the late
1960s. That address contains the progressively interesting entries in the
Medical Directories of later part of that century where Dr Price's details
were in a near Druidic language known only to himself. There are also
enlightening photographs of Dr Thomas dressed in specially made robes.

From memory, as I write from a distant land, the mother of the dead
child was perhaps only 16 whilst Dr Price was near or in his ninth decade.
The only other notable similar age gap in marriage a little earlier in the
nineteenth century period was that of the Prime Minister of Naples, Sir
John Acton, whose prowess at the age of sixty seven on taking a twelve
year old for his wife was admiringly commented upon by Nelson.

Competing interests:
None declared