Viewers of the Victorian thriller Ripper Street currently showing on television may be unaware that it has an interesting connection with Dorset.
Important among the characters are two actual historical people.
These are the surgeon, Frederick Treves, and his patient, the ‘Elephant Man’, Joseph Merrick.
Merrick’s appearance was so dreadfully distorted that he was exhibited in a freak show, from which Treves rescued him.
Some readers will remember the Elephant Man film with John Hurt.
Treves was a Dorset boy and partly educated at William Barnes’s school in Dorchester.
He first practised medicine by treating poor people in London, and later became a surgeon to Queen Victoria and Edward VII. He diagnosed the King's appendicitis in 1901 but, when the King informed him that the coronations must go ahead, Treves coolly replied that then he expected to go to the next one in a few months’ time.
In all Treves’s activities I can trace the influence of Barnes, his old schoolmaster.
Whether in his independence of mind, his fascination for science or his love of the county about which he wrote the book Highways and Byways in Dorset.
Most of all he took from Barnes a deep humanity which appeared in his treatment of poor patients and in his concern for Merrick.
Dr Alan Chedzoy, Chairman, The William Barnes Society
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