George Augustus Baddeley, Gnosall GP, 1824-1882

George Augustus Baddeley practised as a doctor in Gnosall from about 1850 and became Registrar of BMD. George August Baddeley was born in Newport in 1824 to Thomas Baddeley, surgeon, and his wife Isabella. On 3 Dec, 1836 his father Thomas was elected medical attendant for Newport Union District 1, and was responsible for "dieting" the sick paupers. 1 Was he the officer responsible for the death of William Allman in March 1840? In 1841 George, aged 15, was living on Newport High Street with his parents, sister Eliza, 10 years older, twin sister Isabella and younger brother Herbert. In this decade he gained his qualifications of Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and L.A.C., London, and the 1851 White’s Directory listed him as a surgeon in Gnosall, along with John Jones. By 1850 he was a member of the Gnosall Association for the Prosecution of Felons. The 1851 census shows him living in Gnosall near James Belcher, listed as “General Practitioner MRCS & LAC Ln”, and with a housekeeper and teenage groom. In 1852 with the agreement of the Union Board he took over the role of Deputy Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths (John Hawkins at Gnosall Poorhouse was unwell and his deputy Thomas Parton “incapable”). He took on the official role of BMD Registrar in August 1852 when John Hawkins resigned. On 1861 census he was near the Duke's Head, unmarried, with a female house servant and a teenage groom. At the Gnosall Wakes fete horse races in 1862, he acted as judge, while James Belcher was the starter. A notice dated 2 Feb 1867 listed him as trustee, with Thomas Addison Ash, for bankrupt grocer William Blackband. In September 1870 John Wiggan was killed for intervening in a drunken brawl at Bromstead. Baddeley performed the postmortem and found the vertebrae of his neck were broken. The 1871 census lists Baddeley after the Vicarage and Thomas Belcher. He was still unmarried, with a female housemaid and cook, and male groom and gardener living in. The 1881 census shows him on the High Street next to chemist and druggist William Pickin Duncalfe. He now had two female servants and two male ones. He died intestate Sept. 1882. In 1888 probate was granted to Thomas Webb Baddeley of Newport "for the use and benefit of Isabella Baddeley, a person of unsound mind, the natural and lawful sister of the said deceased. 1 Newport Union minutes