King’s library given to nation

Tens of thousands of books collected by King George III during his 60 year reign have been given to the nation by his son, George IV. о

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, the King said the donation was a just tribute to his “revered” father, as well as advancing Britain’s literature.

The government will now have to decide what to do with the huge collection, containing, according to the King, 120,000 volumes, though this number may include unbound tracts and manuscripts. The most likely home is believed to be the British Museum.

George III is said to have spent at least о £1,500 a year buying books, old and new.

Rural campaigner and writer William Cobbett took his case for change to another officially-sanctioned county meeting, in Herefordshire.

Fresh from his success in getting Norfolk to back calls for the sale of church and crown lands, abolition of a standing army, and a moratorium on seizure of property for unpaid rents, he told the meeting in Herefordshire that “ministers did not know how to do what was right”. The meeting backed a call for sinecurespaid appointments requiring little work - to be suspended and public sector salaries to be cut back to 1792 levels.

A Yorkshire meeting was told by the county’s former Radical MP Walter Fawkes that Britain’s political system was characterised by “rapid and alarming venality,” with ‘placemen and sinecurists’ living off public revenues while many of their countrymen were “steeped in poverty”.

TheGloucestershire doctor who transformed medicine and science with his vaccine against the killer disease of smallpox has died.

Dr Edward Jenner dramatically advanced the prevention of smallpox by experimenting with, and then developing the use of pus from the cowpox spots of a dairy maid to infect a healthy person, whose body would develop immunity to the disease.

Previously the only protection had been variolation, a method similar to vaccination which had been used in Asia and Africa for centuries, but carried with it risks and had not been widely used in Britain.

For some years Dr Jenner had researched the idea that those who had once contracted cowpox were immune from smallpox.

In 1796, Edward Jenner took material from the arm of cowpox sufferer Sarah Nelmes and successfully inoculated an eight-year-old boy. Sarah had developed blisters after milking a cow called Blossom.

Despite initial resistance, the medical profession soon backed vaccination, usage spread, and Parliament awarded о £30,000 in funding for Dr Jenner’s work.

Dr Jenner pushed the case for vaccination in a 1798 book and he supplied the vaccine to other doctors, determined to make the remedy available on the basis of need, rather than making money. Part of his Berkeley home was turned into what has been called the world’s first free vaccination clinic. But Dr Jenner’s work has not always been popular.

Some priests and doctors have opposed his work, and cartoonists have claimed there is a risk of those vaccinated developing cow-like features. The government is being urged to build a monument to Dr Jenner. A burial in Westminster Abbey has been offered to the family. о

Edward Jenner, 17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823